Oh, That Inter... Oh That Gore

Al Gore did not say “I invented the internet.” For details, see Snopes. But there is a spin on the story that came up in office chat this morning and which nobody, to my knowledge, has made much of. So à propos of nothing at all, I surface it here.

Forget about the internet. The subject for the moment is the interstate—more precisely, the interstate highway system that transformed the nation in the 50s. It’s customary to think of the interstate as a child of the Eisenhower administration and hence, a child of President Eisenhower. This is insufficiently nuanced. There was, of course, a “highway lobby”—car companies and oil companies and construction companies who figured to profit from a vast new public construction boondoggle. But old-fashioned fiscal conservatives were not with them: old fashioned fiscal conservatives thought the interstate was a terrible idea.

Why? Oh, who knows, exactly. Maybe the thought it would destroy the motherhood-and-apple-pie America they liked to remember. But they also just thought it would cost too much money. Anyway, on this one, they pretty much had Ike in their pocket.

The breakthrough came on the initiative of one hard-working, imaginative, wonky senator, who convinced the lobby they would get their project only if they made it self-financing. Hence the “highway trust fund,” funded out of gas taxes, which paid 90 percent of the cost (states paid the other 10 percent).

And who is this far-sighted policy wonk? Glad you asked, but perhaps you are ahead of me on this one: it was Al Gore—senior that is, himself a Senator from Tennessee.

So Al Gore does not, and did not, claim to have invented the internet. But Al Gore does have a pretty good claim to have invented the interstate. There, I guess that clears up all the confusion, right? Right?

Footnote on Ancient History: It’s hard to believe now, but not everyone wanted the interstate, even after it was funded. Vermont resisted: they weren’t sure they could come up with the 10 percent state share (nobody told them about the market for second homes for Harvard professors). And in Ohio in 1958, there was a candidate for governor—I believe his name was Albert S. Porter, and that he was county engineer of Cuyahoga (Cleveland) County. Porter was a monkey wrench kind of guy. His whole campaign was based on the proposition that the internet was a prodigal waste: overengineered, way too invasive, way too costly. My recollection is that he ran third (hey this was my maiden voyage as a newspaper reporter; I have reason to remember).

Sources: I gasp at Google. It took me about 10 seconds to find this. Papa Gore’s Wiki is here; the interstate gets a cameo. The Wiki page on the interstate notes the full name: Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways (link). The wiki says that Eisenhower “championed” the system; it does not mention Gore.

Curious Footnote: Oddly, the Snopes entry on "invented the internet" (supra) mentions the interstate parallel, but doesn't mention papa's role.

Tracking Krugman Tracking Gore

Paul Krugman, who ought to know better, says that a certain claim is “is no more real than Al Gore’s claim that he invented the Internet” (link).

Look, for the eight billionth time, Al Gore did not claim that he invented the internet. For details, go here and here and here.

Isn’t it time to trade the old canard for a new canard. Shouldn’t someone like Krugman, at least, be saying “no more real than the claim that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet”? Probably nobody would much notice, but it would have the virtue of being correct.

Climate Change and "Aha!"

The often-truculent and always-interesting Carpe Diem has a link up re climate change and the tone, I think, is jubilant. "Climate warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence," reports Professor Perry, the proprietor, summarizing a new study (link). "A Very Inconvenient Peer-Reviewed Climate Study," he declares.

I admit I am not a very good a very good team player on climate change. I tend to find Al Gore's emissions exhausting, and I thought Scientific American way out of line when it refused to let Bjørn Lomborg (link) use its copy on his website as a rebuttal to charges against him ; (details here). I suspect that climate change is (the last refuge of a cowardly liberal) "a complicated issue."

Yet on the whole, I think the general proposition that we experience human-caused global warming must surely be right; it beggars all expectation that we could plunk six billion people onto this rock without some external effects. In context, therefore, Professor Perry's "aha!" attititude strikes me as at least surprising, not a little implausible. Which prompts two thoughts.

One, does Professor Perry really believe that we can plunk six billion people onto this rock without some external effect? He says he is an economist; has he no sense of limits, of choice under constraint?

Second, a more general question: has Professor Perry ever carried out a piece of research whose conclusions countered his expectations? The question is not rhetorical; I have no idea what his answer might be. But it might be a good general test for any researcher (particularly in economics). Has s/he ever had occasion to write "the results of this inquiry suprised us..."

Gore Again?

I've been away so I just now caught up with the news that Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Wonder if they can get the Supreme Court to reverse it.

Update: No, I know. It's a joke. Sheesh, some people.

Hillary the Unbold

When Bill Richardson starts looking good to you, you know the Democratic Party field is weak. In this week’s London Review of Books, Linda Colley helps to explain why:

[Hillary] can still appear confined within some of the radical priorities of the later 20^th century, and unable or unwilling to generate a comprehensive and compelling vision of America and of the world’s present and future. But it is Al Gore who has hammered out an informed and powerful position on the environment, energy conservation and global warming. She has only belatedly borrowed some of his language and ideas. And it has been John Edwards who has been steering the Democratic Party firmly back form the direction of economics. He, not Hillary, has been the most eager to address the gulf between America’s rich and poor. A one-time Democratic senator’s critique of Hillary’s initial hard-line support of the Iraq war therefore seems more broadly applicable. She puts herself, he argued “in the position of looking backward, not forward, of caving to conventional wisdom instead of moving in the direction of…new ideas, being bold.”

—Linday Colley, “The Clinton Succession”, LRB 5, 16 Ag 2007

An Inconvenient Spoof

Source: Der Spiegel, via Underbelly's Deutschland Correspondent, who still plies his craft out of Wichita (link).

When Stupidity Is Not Enough

Eugene Robinson seems to think Al Gore is smart, in the sense of braniac (link). Greg Mankiw counterpunches with the proposition that Gore’s college grades fell lower than George W. Bush’s, and that if you want a braniac for president, there is only one valedictorian in the race (hint: think Brigham Young) (link). I think they both miss the point, or a lot of points.

First, re Gore, and whether he is smart. I recall that back in 2000, someone asked Al Gore his favorite novel. He answered, Charterhouse of Parma.

What a lunk-headed answer that was. In fact, Charterhouse of Parma is a great political novel, perhaps the best. But for a politician to say it is favorite novel—now, that is really stupid. It means either (a) you are sincere but clueless; or (b) that you are a pretentious jackass. On this front, I have never quite made up my mind about Gore. I tend towards (a) (sincere but clueless). If correct it could well mean that Gore is indeed a serious reader and thinker, but yet ill-equipped to exercise the kind of leadership that we should want.

[As a semi-aside--I am not much troubled by the fact that Gore had one bad semester. Hey, I bombed out of college altogether and look at me.]

But for Mankiw to rebound with Romney’s supposed superior cortical power—you know, that is pretty rich from a party that has spent most of the last eight years telling us that brains didn’t really matter in a president and that we were much better off with the good-natured but dopey W than his truly brainy predecessor.

[I admit I cant find enough evidence to lay this trip on Mankiw personally, but it certainly has been part of the running dogs’ mantra.]

In fact, I think the running dogs were in principle right on the character issue. Brains are on the list of important qualities for a good president, but they are not at the top of the list. Richard Nixon may be the brainiest president of the 20^th Century and look what that got us. Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter are three presidents who let their brains get in the way of doing a good job. Bill Clinton was actually a pretty good president, but his fabled brainpower was only one of the reasons, and not the most important.

In fact, good character has not been in plentiful supply among 20^th Century presidents. Eisenhower probably makes the cut, and Truman, and Coolidge. I’ve always had a soft spot for Gerald Ford—you gotta love a president who cooks breakfast for his wife—although I have to admit it grieves me to think of him as the man who gave us Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

But the trouble with W is not his weak brainpower, but his utter lack of character—his narcissistic self-absorption and his utter indifference to received institutions and the rule of law.

I don’t think Gore would make a great president because I think he lacks the essential political schools. He may be the kind of braniac that Robinson has in mind, I’m not sure. He almost certainly scores higher on the character chart than W. Where exactly Romney fits in this calculus, I don’t really know; I find him creepy but I doubt very much that he as insistently evil as the incumbent. My immediate point is to try to get the agenda straight: brains can be overrated. Without decent character, even stupidity is not enough.

Could It Be He?

Admit it, now, you haven't any idea whom you want to vote for in 2008. You enjoy Obama, but you know he's an empty suit. You figure you ought to like John Edwards, but you're really not crazy about his shallow populism. You take a deep breath and figure it has to be Hillary, but then she does something tacky and mean-spirited that gives you the hiccups.

The Republicans, oh don't get me started. What a sorry lot of embarrassments they are--even to themselves. I'd still wager a few bucks on the proposition that the frontrunners beat each other to a pulp and they wind up with this guy (and I see I'm in good company).

Admit it also, you weren't all that nuts about Al Gore back in 2000. Remember? You gnashed your teeth a hundred times over the way he ran his campaign (good company again: Bill Clinton felt the same way). And don't get me started on the tangle on Tallahassee.

Okay, that was then. It doesn't say anything to venture that Gore would have done better--who wouldn't have? Six years later and we know that a burnt stump could have done better. But what if it turns out that Gore is not just a default improvement, but actually the kind of guy you might want as President? Jump cut to The New Yorker, and let David Remnick explain.