Destiny vs. Inevitability

Few in August projected the Kansas football team to get to a BCS bowl, while Virginia Tech entered the season in the AP top ten and expecting to return for their fifth major bowl. In December, though, the Orange Bowl announced the unlikely match-up between the Jayhawks and the Hokies. Pundits hailed KU's inspiring Cinderella story, but even Lou Holtz agreed that more experienced Hokies would crush the untested Jayhawks. But when Aqib Talib highstepped into the endzone in the first quarter, it was clear that the Jayhawks possessed an intangible element that not even the vaunted Virginia Tech juggernaut could stop. The Jaykawks' feeling of destiny trumped the Hokies expectations of inevitability last Thursday in Miami.

Destiny and inevitability also squared off hundreds of miles away that night in Iowa. And from the tropical rains of south Florida to the icy tundra of rural Iowa, destiny bested inevitability. "Our moment is now" promises Barack Obama, encapsulating the unique essence of his campaign. Unlike the incessant peons to experience coming from Hillary Clinton, which necessarily emphasize the recent past, Obama speaks to the hopes of a future inspired by collective myths of American destiny. Their post-caucus speeches juxtaposed not just two campaign styles, but two philosophies of history and politics. Surrounded by former cabinet members, Clinton ticked off the challenges facing the country and claimed that her political acumen uniquely enables her to cut the deals that can change policies. The visual and the verbal combined to form a rhetoric of steady but incremental change. Obama, in contrast, constructed a narrative of national unity in the face of national challenges. By evoking Washington, Roosevelt, and King, he contextualized present challenges in the story of the nation. Clinton promises to implement Democratic solutions to policy problems while Obama offers democratic responses to national challenges. Clinton recalls the mediocrity of the 1990s while Obama has the audacity to tap into America's latent feelings of Manifest Destiny; unlike the 19th century land grab, though, Obama promises to live up to America's boundless potential.

The spirit of the age calls for a leader who can weave contemporary problems into a coherent and inspiring story of American possibilities. Clinton may better navigate the halls of power, but only Obama can harness the zeitgeist to power the ship of state in a new direction. Inevitability relies on the past, but destiny promises the future. Destiny overpowered conventional wisdom on the football field in 2007, and I think it is fated to give an encore in the voting booths in 2008.

Kenya Tragedy

I claim only an elementary understanding of the crisis in Kenya, but I've been somewhat troubled by the coverage (and lack thereof). It seems that President Kikuyu claimed re-election on the basis of a vote plagued by irregularities, sparking violent protests by his opponents and the concomitant heavy-handed backlash. Obama's pleas for peace and Desmund Tutu's visit are encouraging, but it seems that most of the world seems to be writing this off as just some sort of natural and inevitable African bloodletting. The media narrative has stressed the "tribal element" which I think re-enforces Western apathy and a sense of fatalism about African politics. "Those savages just can't handle democracy and will always revert to their tribal allegiences" seems to be the message implied by the coverage. An actual Kenyan reports that "what we have in Kenya is a popular uprising against a rigged election where some people have taken advantage to settle scores related to ethnicity." (I found it on the Daily Dish http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/01/kenya-rwanda.html_ ). The main battle, then, seems to revolve around democracy advocates vs. corrupt rulers (well, I guess Kikuya had been seen as fairly benign, but I think his recent actions destroy any claims of openness), but the media portrays it as some intractable "tribal war", thereby condescending to and ignoring African democrats. But I guess countries like the US would never have irregular voting patterns or racial/ethnic disparities in voting access...

GOP caucus eve analysis

The situation for the entire Republican field mirrors the fluidity between the top three democratic contenders--anything can happen, but there's just enough of a pattern to make a prediction. Yet unlike the Democratic side, where many voters are struggling to determine whom they like most , the GOP uncertainty seems to stem from the negatives associated with each candidate (I echo Mathew Yglesias on this point). Guliani turns off the religious right, Huckabee offends the economic and foreign policy establishment, McCain angers the immigration demagogues, etc. Nonetheless, I believe Guliani will be the first candidate ever to slide his way to the nomination on a wave of negative momentum, though recent trends suggest a possible McCain comeback.

Guliani presciently decided to focus on the February 5th primaries instead of Iowa and New Hampshire, and this strategy plays perfectly to the dynamics of the campaign while also minimizing Guliani's weaknesses. Huckabee's rise in Iowa disrupted Romney's early-state plan and promises to shatter the Massuchettes governor's chances. Its currently a two-man race in Iowa between Romney and Huckabee, but the actual winner seems irrelevant at this point. Even if Romney squeaks by Huckabee on Thursday, the media will emphasize his financial and organizational advantages and likely marvel that the underfunded Huckabee could even make it as close as it is. For all his deliberateness, Romney has utterly failed in the expectation game--the media expects him to do well in Iowa and New Hampshire, and his campaign depends on momentum from those two states to propel him through Super Tuesday. A new CNN poll out Wednesday shows McCain tying Romney in New Hampshire, suggesting that his support is already eroding there before the caucuses. Romney's early leads in Iowa and New Hampshire raised his expectations as well as his exposure, and the more people learn about Romney, the less they appear to like. Behind his handsome facade most voters seem to detect a say-anything phony (thoughts the Concord Monitor expressed last week: http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071222/OPINION/712230301 ).

Mike Huckabee has benefited from Romney's decline, but I doubt that his already falling support can survive much past Iowa. Romney's attacks have already taken a toll among the former Arkansas governor's Christian right base, and Huckabee's schtick will never win over the GOP establishment. The man is utterly unfit to be president, and he's used his recent rise in media attention to broadcast his total incompetence. He used Benazir Bhutto's recent assassination to wrongly assert that more illegal immigrants come from Pakistan than anywhere else save Mexico, betraying both his geopolitical ignorance and his shameless willingness to pander to fellow morons. I've gotta agree with Christopher Hitchens when he calls Huckabee "a cynical... moon-faced trued believer and anti-Darwin pulpit-puncher from Arkansas who doesn't seem to know the difference between being born again and born yesterday. " In other words, he's very much like George W. Bush, but without the family connections (thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the comparison). I doubt that even Republican primary voters are willing to risk another president as incompetent as our current one.

Fred Thompson's legendary laziness seems to have undermined his campaign, and the loony Ron Paul (who joins Huckabee in refusing to acknowledge evolution but stands alone in calling for a return to the Gold Standard) will never get past his niche of fellow 19th century nostalgics. So that leaves McCain and Guliani as the viable alternatives (my apologies to any Duncan Hunter supporters out there, though I doubt that you get internet access in whatever cave you're living in). I think McCain would make the strongest general election candidate and he's experiencing somewhat of a rebound, but it's most likely too little too late. His belief in the basic humanity of detainees and immigrants should be common to all credible candidates, but unfortunately puts him outside the mainstream of the GOP. His campaign's near collapse over the summer shielded him from his rivals' attention, but expect a desperate and well-funded Romney to barrage him from the right as the primary season begins in earnest. McCain may do well in independent-rich New Hampshire but I doubt that that support will translate to success in more conservative states.

The GOP tends to fall behind its front-runner early, but this campaign will likely lack a clear standard-bearer going into Super-Tuesday. Huckabee may win Iowa, Romney or McCain may win New Hampshire, but none will likely be able to claim much legitimate momentum going into February, benefiting the man with leads in the national polls, ie, Rudy Guliani. Guliani heeded controversial advice when he decided to functionally forgo Iowa and New Hampshire to campaign in Florida and other later-primary states. Conventional wisdom dictates that a candidate must finish at or near the top in the early states to even be relevant in February but, for the reasons outlined above, the 79 delegates to the Republican convention chosen before Florida will be just that: a tiny fraction of the total required to garner the party's nod. Even though Guliani's national numbers are slipping, he still holds commanding leads in most of the later primary states, and the flaws of the other candidates mean that more media attention will actually hurt their campaigns in the long run. The poor strength of the GOP field makes this the rare year when wins in Iowa and/or New Hampshire may actually hurt a campaign by exposing the candidates' flaws. Romney's support dipped as he became more well known in Iowa and New Hampshire, and Huckabee is echoing Romney's slide just as he becomes a media focal point.

Guliani needs the spotlight focused elsewhere, too, because his negatives dwarf even Romney's. Though he incessantly touts his New York record, a closer look reveals that the city's decline in crime rate began before his tenure and only mirrored the national trend of the 1990s. The city's Firefighters generally loathe the former mayor, and his decision to put the city's terrorism command center on the seventh floor of the city's most obvious target calls into question his judgment. September 11th works best for Guliani as a vague memory rather than a crisis to be examined in a campaign. His ties to the felonious Bernard Kerick and his messy personal life also tar his image, but the media whirlwind around Iowa and New Hampshire have largely kept these issues out of the public eye. Guliani has used his relative press and opponents' free pass to build organization and support in the states not used to such campaigning. Guliani is slipping under his opponent's dirty laundry line into the back-door of the nomination (to push a metaphor to the limit).

Caucus week analysis: Democratic Side

The only thing more dangerous than betting against a candidate with 30% leads in national polls is to predict the political process in the first place, but in honor of the late Evel Kneveval I've decided to live on the edge. Barack Obama will win the Democratic nomination for the presidency and then beat Rudy Guliani in the general election. Here' s his path to the White House.

Polls almost unanimosly report a three way tie in Iowa between Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards, but several factors indicate an edge for the Illinois Senator. First, though most polls put the three top candidates in a statistical dead heat, John Edwards almost always brings up the rear. Though he usually remains within the margin of error, his numbers reflect a consistent level of support of around 22%, likely from residual 2004 supporters, but usually 3-5 points off Obama and Hillary. Clinton's numbers have also remained fairly constant, hovering between 25-30 percent. Obama, however, has climbed in the polls as he has toured Iowa, and he's climbing at the right time. Taken individually, the polls do not reveal a frontrunner, but the taken together and across time they suggest that both Hillary and Edwards have topped out their support, while Obama has yet to approach his ceiling. Given the nature of the caucuses, where voters who's preferred candidate fails to garner at least 15% of caucusgoers at a given location must shift their support elsewhere (or leave), a higher ceiling of support predicts that more people are willing to give the candidate a second look. If Obama, Clinton and Edwards pull in between 60-75% of the vote as the polls would predict, that means that the remaining 4 candidates (Richardson, Biden, Dodd, and Kucinich) will have to split the rest, decreasing the odds that they will achieve viability. If Edwards supporters are mostly his hardcore from 04, and Hillary is mostly loved or loathed, it means that Obama will likely pick up a plurality of the second phase votes and win the caucuses.

Hillary Clinton hoped that New Hampshire would be a "firewall" against an Iowa loss, but Obama seems to be pulling even there. Ironically enough, Clinton would do better if Edwards edges her out for second place in Iowa, since it may convince him to stay in the race. If Edwards comes in third in Iowa, which seems the mostly likely scenario, then he will have to drop out of the race. He lacks the fundraising to make a second charge, and his campaign's almost exclusive focus on Iowa betrays his dependence on that state. The large African-American vote in South Carolina, and that consituency's current and likely loyal support of Obama or Clinton makes a repeat of his 2004 performance there unlikely, meaning that Edwards, like Gephardt in 2004, will drop out after losing Iowa. There are five days between Iowa and New Hampsire, and Edwards concession will combine with the historical post-Iowa bounce to push Obama past Clinton in New Hampsire. Again, Hillary's high negativety ratings make it unlikely for erswhile Edwards supporters to switch their allegience to her. Indeed, Edwards and Obama draw mostly from the same pool of potential voters, that is, those who want radical change over self-proclaimed experience, his supporters are the least likely to back Clinton.

Kerry used victories in Iowa and New Hampshire to catapult him to the nomination in 2004, and he dynamics of this race mean that Obama victories in Iowa and New Hampsire would foster even greater momentum, especially in the next primary state, South Carolina. South Carolina's large African-American constiuency has been trending toward Obama recently, especially since the Oprah appearances, but most misgivings among that community toward Obama stem from his percieved inability to win the general election. Many African Americans harbor an understandable skepticism as to whether the nation would actually elect a black man to be president, but Obama victories in extremely white Iowa and New Hampshire would assuage those concerns and amplify the existing trend toward Obama in South Carolina. Edwards, who picked up South Carolina as his only primary victory in 2004, also retains some support there and as previously explained will likely shift to Obama.

Howard Dean maintained huge leads in the super-Tuesday states at this time in 2003, but Kerry's victories re-enforced his narrative of electibility. The converse is likely to happen to Hillary in 2008. Her recent attacks on Obama's electibility reveal her "closing argument", so losses in the first 3 primary states will completely shatter her campaign's narrative and utterly erode her support in the polls. The once inevetable candidate will endorse Obama for president by the middle of February.

Old but still held thoughts on hijab

Hijab

Last weeks heat wave in my home state of Kansas made me thankful for my collection of fine shorts and t-shirts, but women in Iran and other countries under Sharia, or Islamic law, cannot enjoy similarly seasonal clothing. Indeed, the Iranian vice squad has been working overtime recently to crack down on women with the temerity to show their hair, much less walk outside in shorts and a tank top. Luckily for Americans, the first amendment guarantees all persons freedom of and from religion, so my sister can legally complete her morning runs in appropriately athletic attire. Some women in America choose to wear the hijab, or Muslim headscarve, despite summer heat. Their choice is well within their right to free religious exercise, but with women beaten and harassed in Iran and other parts of the world for declining to conform to religiously-mandated fashion advice, the choice to wear a hijab seems to be a religious exercise in bad taste. Given the opportunity to express solidarity with their sisters in Iran and elsewhere or with the regimes denying them their rights, those sporting the hijab choose the later. Wearing the hijab in America is a figurative slap in the face to the women elsewhere who dare to show their hair and who are facing very real slaps (and acid) in the face.

Tourism

A semester in Europe inspired (perhaps "mandated" is a better verb, as it was for a class) the following essay, and it sums up my thinking about tourism.

Tourism and Culture in an Unequal World

A gaggle of tourists constantly crowds the rear of Notre Dame cathedral, each one eagerly awaiting her turn to snap a photo of the model of the church that sits enclosed in a glass case. Virtually oblivious to the medieval architecture surrounding them, the travelers quickly snap their shot of the miniature before shuffling past their fellow pilgrims on their way out of the church. Some certainly admire the Gothic arches and ancient stained glass, but most seem content to capture an image of the prepared reproduction and move on to the next site on their itineraries. These 21st century tourists embody the capitalist ethos by conceptualizing themselves as consumers of commodities rather than viewers of unique genius. The prepackaged model allows them to store an image of the entire building in a single photograph that can be taken home and shown to others as proof that one "saw" Notre Dame. The size of the actual cathedral becomes its detriment in a commodified world, since the viewer cannot easily frame a picture of the entire church. Whereas visitors used to stand in awe of the the craftmanship and beauty of works of art, today's traveler quickly takes a photograph, preferably of a more easily captured miniature recreation, to add to her collection of "sites", and moves on to the next scene. Conditioned to equate value with ownership, the Western bourgeoisie tourist disconnects herself from the subjective experience of travel in an insatiable quest to possess a piece of her destination. The ubiquity of cameras fuels this obsession with the tangible image, but many tourists today end up with photographs of places that they have scarcely seen. More dangerously, wealthy Western travelers to the developing world caricature and exploit other cultures in their quest for a commodified version of their experience. Only a more fair global economy can facilitate a truly free and authentic exchange of peoples and places.

Pre-modern tourism revolved around holy sites. The pilgrims that flocked to churches and historical places sought a closer connection with the divine. Though they often took home physical reminders of their journeys, the spiritual experience directed their purpose. Church and temporal powers encouraged a certain level of pilgrimages, since once-on-a-lifetime trips by the serfs hardly threatened the feudal economy. Indeed, religious pilgrimages reinforced the prestige and wealth of the existing authorities, and the benefits of a pious underclass outweighed the lost productivity of a single pilgrimage.¹ The Industrial Revolution ended the feudal "pilgrimage tourism" in two main ways; it codified free-time and working-time, and it attached primary value to ownership of commodities instead of experience. Between the 1820s to the 1960s, that is, the height of the factory-based economy in the West, leisure and consumption replaced salvation and piety as the motivators for travel, but economic disparity limited vacations to the managerial class.² . The post-Industrial economies that took shape in the 1960s facilitated more travel for the Western masses, but the bourgeoisie values of the 19th and early 20th centuries, coupled with image-taking technologies, informs the commidity-fetishism that underlies contemporary tourism.

Technological and economic innovations following the Second World War (e.g., air travel, the World Bank) precipitated the development of mass tourism in the 1960s. Yet just as world travel belonged exclusively to the elite class in the Industrial Age, tourism starting the the second half of the 20th century is virtually limited to citizens of the First World. Globalization shifted manufacturing to the developing world and radically altered the economies in the West.³ Though many former factory workers in the West find themselves struggling in low wage service jobs, the middle class has more time and credit to see the world. Freed from the constraints that first stage industrialization (i.e., the 19th and early 20th century factory economy) imposed on their parents, today's Western tourists consider traveling a right (Ostergren and Rice, p.341). Most European travelers stay within the Continent, and France attracts the most tourists overall (Ostergren and Rice, p. 342), but many people are increasingly looking for cheaper alternatives outside the West. The harmless obsession with image taking and consumption in the West takes on a more sinister form when it commodifies culture, race, and gender in the developing world.

Mass tourism from the West began when production shifted to the global South, and has intensified just as global economic disparities grow wider. Many people in the destination countries look to the tourist economy as an alternative to poverty and sweat-shop labor, often at the expense of cultural and personal dignity. Within Europe, cheap prices are drawing more and more travelers to eastern and southern European countries like Romania and Turkey. My recent sojourn to Istanbul revealed the tension between a country's economic reliance on tourism and the people's annoyance with the incessant inflow of wealthier and culturally ignorant outsiders. Dozens of salesmen lined the streets beckoning me with their Turkish carpets, porcelain, and cloth. Trying to stoke my own commodity-fetishism, they claimed that a trip to Istanbul would not be complete with an expensive souvenir from their shop. Though all were outwardly kind when I declined their offers, I undoubtedly sensed frustration as they pushed me out of their stores to make room for their next prospective client. The pressure to commodify culture is strong within Europe, but the economic disparities between the West and the developing world lead to more egregious examples of this phenomenon.

Colonial propaganda ingrained the European mind with images of the exotic and mysterious qualities of the non-Western world.⁴ Today, the West's latent myths about the "Other" world combine with the urge to take home pieces of one's travels has led to bizarre cultural practices in the developing world. Driven by economic necessity, people in some poorer countries try to draw tourists by simulating the West's distorted vision of their "authentic" culture. In Cuba, for example, licensed actors dress up in "traditional" garb to attract rich tourists. For a fee, the Western traveler can get a picture with a "real old fashioned" Cuban.⁵ The tourists' love of artificially framed pictures , as more benignly displayed at Notre Dame, takes on a personal character here. To assuage their guilt about the economic inequality that fosters this environment, many tourists tell themselves that they are pumping money into the economy. Taking photographs with simulated and exoticized foreigners does not alter the economic system that creates these disparities, though, but rather reinforces the "neoliberal commodification (that) creates pleasures but also poverty, and, as ever, social inequality is raced and gendered, with women and people of color inexorably "winning" the race to the bottom."⁶ Indeed, women and minorities are most victimized in "sex tourism", which is the logical end of cultural commodification. In this perverse industry, men from wealthy countries travel to poorer areas to fulfill fantasies about obediant and exotic foreign women. Few would argue that participation in this exchange helps the women involved, yet this practice is merely an extension of the commodification of cultures endemic to the present global political economy.

There is nothing inherently wrong with tourism, and even the West's obsession with ownership can express itself benignly. Unfortunately, the one-directional, global north-to-south flow of travelers testifies to the unequal system on which the present tourism industry depends. Europeans may consider vacations to be a human right, but for the millions of people in the developing world without the means to leave their villages, "tourism" only means showing the Western travelers what they want see. The free flow of individuals across continents and cultures can only improve our understanding of the diversity of human nature, but such a scenario will not exist until there is an equal exchange of travelers between north and south. Solving global inequality is a herculean task and beyond the scope of this paper, but the enormity of a problem does not excuse participation in it. The first step toward tackling global inequality is to recognize its existence, so instead of snapping photographs of "the natives", Western travelers should question the conditions that force them into the costumes in the first place.

1The notion of lost productivity is something of an anachronism in the pre-wage fuedal economy. Feudal lords calculated their wealth in terms of the size of their land and the number of serfs working it, rather than the hourly or daily productivity of the peasants, so they allowed the rare and temporary pilgrimage because they likely did not account for its effects on their wealth or prestige.

2Though progressive politicians opened up royal parks for broad public use in the 19th century and facilities like Battersea Park offered day trips to the working class (Ostergren and Rice, p. 344), tourism in the contemporary sense, i.e., extended visits to foreign locales, remained the exclusive right of the elite (Ostergren and Rice, p. 345).

3In depth analysis of the world political economy lies outside the scope of this paper. I here refer to the general trend of basic manufacturing to places like China, Mexico, and Southeast Asian countries and away from the global North.

4Humanities has established postcolonial studies as a subfield to analyze this phenomena. Danial J. Sherman's article "The Arts and Sciences of Colonialism" in French Historical Studies (Vol. 23 No. 4) 2000 pp. 707-729, provides a good literature review.

5Maki Tanaka. "Tourism Development in Socialist Cuba: Old Havana and Its Residents". 2005 Summer Research Report, 2005. University of California, Berkeley. Center for Latin American Studies. Accessed at http://www.clas.berkeley.edu:7001/Research/graduate/summer2005/tinker/Tanaka/index.html

6Joe Perry. "Consumer Citizenship in the Interwar Era: Gender, Race, and the State in Global-Historical Perspective." Journal of Women's History (Vol. 18, No. 4) 2006. pp. 157-172