Thanks to the largesse of Mr. Keltanen, I had the opportunity to attend an Intelligence Squared debate last night. This program provides an ongoing series of Oxford-style debates with provocative premises such as Good riddance to mainstream media and America is to blame for the Mexican drug war. Be sure to catch Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry’s tour de force in Is the Catholic church a force for good?

Last night’s topic was: Obama’s Economic Policies Are Working Effectively. At the beginning of the debate, they polled the audience:

32% thought Obama’s policies were working.
29% didn’t think they were.
39% weren’t sure.

I came into the event thinking No. We’re facing terrifying deficits yet we’re pumping money into intangible goods such as ‘financial services’ rather than new infrastructure and research. The same institutions that reached giddy heights via capitalism should now perish by its same rules. And Detroit? The big three automakers started falling apart a long time ago — why prop them up and create a state-funded zombie like Amtrak?

But the supporters for Obama’s policies painted a chilling portrait of what a failed auto industry would look like: an additional three million on the unemployement rolls and a daisy-chain collapse of suppliers and manufacturers. Lawrence Mischel likened the situation to inheriting a building that’s on fire and, despite putting out the fire on half of the floors, Obama’s opposition complains that the building is still burning. Even though they set it on fire. And they’re blocking access to fire trucks and hoses. It was an effective analogy that drew a lot of cheers. Hold on to it for a moment.

My camera, refusing to focus on Spitzer

A detour: I freaked when I saw Eliot Spitzer’s name on the program and I punched out an uncharacteristically grouchy tweet:

OMFG. Eliot Spitzer is on the panel? Why does this man still have anything resembling a career? They left a lot of stuff out of his bio.

I’m normally a bowl of sunshine on Twitter, but anger and disgust got the better of me. I couldn’t look at Spitzer. But I could listen (he was very loud). To my surprise, I found myself agreeing with almost everything he said. He was remarkably lucid and spent much of his ten minutes hammering on two points:

1. Too big to fail is too big. (Agreed, although how about . . . Google?)

2. Obama’s policies were failing because they’re rebuilding the same busted structure that led to the collapse in the first place. Why not redesign our financial engine?

It was an odd sensation, wanting to applaud but stopping because I could only think about hookers. The scene got particularly awkward when, acknowledging capitalism’s kinship with greed, Allan Meltzer said “You can’t have religion without sin, something that Governer Spitzer should know” — and the place boomed with uncomfortable laughter. Spitzer guffawed the loudest.

After you get caught with your pants down, go away. You’re a distraction.

I am not moralizing. If you want to cheat on your wife, go nuts. My problem begins when you get caught. It’s embarassing for everybody and if you are going to be that reckless in your personal life, with the people closest to you, then god knows what you’re doing with the public trust, with the lives of people you don’t know. It’s a pragmatic concern.

So forgiveness and understanding? No debate there. Spitzer’s past haunts him and I question the people allowing him to return to the public arena in any context.

Mr. Meltzer was asking for a bit of amnesty, too: “Leadership is not blaming the administrations of the past.” Everybody kept talking about that burning building — whose building was it? Never mind who started the fire, it was still burning…

The Bush administration (and almost every member of Congress) neither asks for nor deserves any sort of forgiveness for its absenteeism with regards to the economy. But “we inherited this mess” only gets you so much mileage. Obama ran for the job because he thought he could fix things.

It was a colorful debate (at one point a man in the audience roared that “it takes a long time to get the ship out of the mud. As a sailor, I know!”) and by the end of it, the lines were clearly drawn, as Steve Rattner said, between Obama’s policies being too hot, too cold, or getting it just right.

The post-debate poll numbers came in:

46% think Obama’s policies are working.
42% don’t think they are.
12% were undecided.

Most people picked a team. I thought it was a good debate because I left undecided. Forgiveness and acceptance were on my mind throughout the debate, blurring the lines between the personal and political. On economic terms, the takeaway was that the Obama administration is doing an incredible job. But we’re still heading off a cliff.

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She – Easy Money
Genius Records, 1980
All of the best parts of 1980 at once.
via Bumrocks

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Hey, that was the 500th post on KinoSport. Neat.