A Bear Market for Liberty?

As I was reminded by a random commenter on a recent blog post, there is no shortage of people in this country with irrational and absurd notions as to how our society and its economy "ought" to be structured. And as a rule of thumb, I try not to pay them much heed. One of the greatest things about this great country of ours is that everybody has the constitutional right to say whatever they please, without fear of legal retribution. But the unspoken corollary to that freedom is that no one is obligated to listen, thank God.

However, when influential people with irrational and absurd notions of how our economy "ought" to be structured have certain powerful congressmen nodding in agreement, I tend to sit up and take note. And such is the case right now. Lost in all the sound and fury over the looming election and the plunging economy is a proposal -- currently winning some powerful converts on Capitol Hill -- that would fundamentally alter the way most Americans save and invest for their retirement years.

Economist Teresa Ghilarducci of the New School for Social Research has lately been promoting a plan to scrap the current system of allowing workers to shelter a portion of their income from taxes by investing it in a 401(k) or company-sponsored pension plan, and replace it with a government-run system in which all workers must participate by contributing at least 5 percent of their paycheck. In return, they'd receive an annual tax credit of $600, and a "guaranteed" return on their retirement savings of 3 percent, adjusted for inflation. Are we having fun yet?

The rationale for this not-so-subtle abrogation of personal freedom and choice is multifaceted, and deserving of at least a little consideration. First and foremost, such a plan would end the "subsidy" that 401(k) and pension plan contributions receive by virtue of their tax-exempt status. Ms. Ghilarducci -- who apparently cannot sleep at night knowing that somewhere, someone is not paying taxes on some of their income -- claims that this tax exemption costs the federal government $80 billion in lost revenue each year. (Just for context, this figure represents about 2.5 percent of the current federal budget.)

But more important than the added tax revenue, the Ghilarducci plan would "guarantee" an after-inflation return of 3 percent on workers' accounts, to guard against plummets in the stock market, such as the current one that's got so many workers nervous about their pensions and 401(k)'s these days. In a comment that deserves serious consideration for "Most Fatuous Statement of the Century," Ghilarducci notes that, "These last three weeks people are learning their 401(k) plans can go down." Who knew!

So, rather than allowing workers to choose whether and to what degree to participate in a company-sponsored retirement plan, and in the case of 401(k)'s, to choose what type and risk-level of assets to invest in, Teresa Ghilarducci would like to make that choice for you. Or rather, she'd like to abolish choice and turn your retirement fate over to the Social Security Administration. To make good on that guaranteed 3 percent return her plan promises, the government would invest workers' money in the only asset that can plausibly guarantee any level of return: government bonds!

So what sets this particular know-it-all economist apart from all the other self-proclaimed geniuses who would like to be running our lives? Well, in this case, a federal audience. George Miller of California and Jim McDermott of Washington, both Democrats in the House of Representatives, invited Ms. Ghilarducci to pitch her plan to their respective committees, and apparently they both like what they heard. McDermott's press secretary said the idea "Certainly is intriguing." No legislation is pending, but with both houses of Congress and the presidency all but certain to be in Democratic hands this January, there's really no need to rush.

And just think of it! Hundreds of millions of workers becoming more dependent on the federal government for their basic quality of life! Trillions of dollars currently locked up in pensions and 401(k)'s that will suddenly become available to finance the trillion-dollar annual deficits the government is expected to run starting next year! What isn't there for a big-government liberal to love?

To be sure, the last couple of months have served as a wake-up call to anyone who thought that investing in the stock market is a can't-miss proposition. Unfortunately, this is leading quite a few people to the very worst conclusion; namely, that the unavoidable risk that comes with any aspect of human existence serves as a justification to banish risk by government fiat, and that personal responsibility is trumped by promises of security.

"What people want from their pensions is guaranteed income for life,"Ghilarducci says. Actually, there is no end to what people probably want. As my favorite high school teacher taught me long ago, economics is the study of allocating finite resources among infinite desires. Unfortunately, modern liberalism has degenerated into the business of denying the former by pandering to the latter.



Post script: I employed a 401(k) calculator to determine whether a 25-year-old worker with zero savings and an income of $50,000 per year would be better off with a guaranteed return of 3 percent above inflation or the average stock market return of 7 percent above inflation, aided by the standard 50 percent match that most companies offer on employees' first 6 percent of income. The score after 35 years: $859,086.47 for the 401(k) and $286,927.89 for Ms. Ghilarducci.

Airbrushing a Crisis

"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."
~Eric Blair, aka George Orwell

I don't believe I'm going out on a limb in saying that there are at present a number of troubling and unsettling currents permeating the media and the national consciousness in general. Read any newspaper, watch any news program, or talk to anybody even remotely abreast of current events, and you're likely to encounter a competing host of negative sentiments: unease, or perhaps outright fear, over the state of our teetering economy and still-falling stock markets; apprehension about the upcoming presidential election and what the outcome will mean for all of us; and in general, a certain dread as to what the immediate and distant future will bring to a country that already believes itself to be on the wrong track. And marching in lockstep with the advancing malaise comes a growing interest in blame: blame for our present woes, and the parties who deserve it.

Liberal politicians and influential opinion-shapers didn't have to look very far for the villain responsible for failing banks and plunging 401(k) portfolios. Free-market capitalism has been caught red-handed, they announce;all those misguided theories about deregulated markets and laissez-faire economics have delivered us unto the brink of disaster and now deserve the intellectual equivalent of euthanasia. Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post makes the case for the prosecution with as much self-assured rectitude as the most zealous Marxist: "What exactly do economic conservatives believe now that their god is dead? What's become of the glories of privatized Social Security? Of the merits of 401(k)s vs. defined-benefit pensions?"

His prose might border on the florid, but Meyerson is representative of the entire political Left, which has already delivered a guilty verdict in the case against capitalism. Wealthy Wall Street hucksters, the popular narrative runs, spent years trafficking in shoddy mortgage-backed investments they either didn't understood, or understood to be junk, eager only to cash in before the bottom fell out. And now, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down a tidy 6,000 points or so since last year, the bottom has well and truly fallen out. The agreed-upon catalyst in this version of the story -- the recent collapse of the housing market -- was all that was required to bring the whole shaky edifice down.

It all makes for compelling op-ed pieces, and it almost certainly guarantees that the liberal intelligentsia's political champion will ascend to the presidency this fall, but something is missing. Lost in all the recriminations over who's to blame and the ominous rumbles about nationalizing banks is a question that isn't being asked. Why exactly did the housing market, which had been red-hot for so many years, start to crater recently? And why were there so many of these so-called "toxic" mortgage-backed securities for Wall Street vandals to dabble in? The answer calls the popular narrative vilifying capitalism into question, and might spread the blame around a bit more evenly.

In 1999, long before anyone had heard of "collateralized debt obligations" or "asset-backed securities" or any of the other wreckage that litters today's financial landscape, The New York Times printed a brief article that today sounds stunning, and even chilling, in its prediction of things to come. It's short, it's comprehensible, and I implore anyone interested in understanding today's crisis to read it.

The upshot: that government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac deliberately steered billions of dollars in mortgage financing to risky borrowers, with potentially ruinous implications: "In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's." And one Peter Wallison, of the unabashedly free-market American Enterprise Institute, anticipated the consequences with remarkably acuity: ''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us ... If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.'' Nine years later, Fannie and Freddie failed, the government had to bail them out, and taxpayers are left with the bill.

I offer this quick trip back in time not as a categorical refutation of the charges that unchecked, capitalist greed is at the root of all our troubles, but simply as a reason to stop and think. Anyone who tries to sell you a quick and easy explanation of an economic recession or a financial crisis, with well-defined villains and heroes, is offering a false bill of goods. Times such as these call for honest historical inquiry into the roots of the problem, not political witch trials seeking scapegoats. A decade ago, at least a few prescient observers saw the seeds of today's crisis taking root, and they discerned the unmistakable influence of government at work in the sewing. Consider this the next time you hear some demagogue of the Left try to take ownership of the past while doling out damnation in the present.

Turn On, Tune In, Bail Out

I started this blog principally because I figured it would allow me to pontificate on a wide range of subjects, unfettered by any sort of self-avowed focus or specialty. But now I'm worried that it's rapidly devolving into a simple vehicle for defaming Thomas Friedman of The New York Times opinion page. I swear, when I started out, I had a broader, more diverse mission in mind. But the man leaves me little choice.

Writing in today's Times, Friedman does an absolutely brilliant job of distilling all the myth, posturing and outright stupidity swirling around the ongoing financial crisis into one compact, easy-to-read trope on the need for a massive government bailout of Wall Street. By all means, read his argument in its entirety. But here's all you really need to hear:

"I’ve been frightened for my country only a few times in my life: In 1962, when, even as a boy of 9, I followed the tension of the Cuban missile crisis; in 1963, with the assassination of J.F.K.; on Sept. 11, 2001; and on Monday, when the House Republicans brought down the bipartisan rescue package.

"But this moment is the scariest of all for me because the previous three were all driven by real or potential attacks on the U.S. system by outsiders. This time, we are doing it to ourselves. This time, it’s our own failure to regulate our own financial system and to legislate the proper remedy that is doing us in."

In recent weeks, I've heard much foolishness and scare-mongering spouted about the current credit freeze-up and the concomitant panic on Wall Street, but for sheer idiocy, Mr. Friedman takes the cake. In what appears to be utter seriousness, he announces that the Cuban missile crisis, the JFK assassination and September 11 all pale in comparison to the recent convulsions in the financial sector. Just as a quick history refresher, he is talking about, respectively, the closest we ever came to full-scale war with a nuclear super-power, the public murder of the leader of the free world, and an unprecedented terrorist attack that killed 3,000 people and changed our way of life.

In case you were seeking anecdotal evidence of this country's staggering intellectual decline, look no further. That a man who could say something so patently stupid is paid to write a weekly column for the most prestigious newspaper in the country speaks volumes. But I wasn't looking for proof of what I already know, that Thomas Friedman is a boob. I read his column regularly, out of a certain morbid fascination, so he can no longer surprise me. I highlight his piece only because it provides such an excellent example of everything wrong with the popular analysis of the "crisis" on Wall Street, and with the solution to that crisis being championed by a political elite that claims to know what's best for the economy.

For the sake of context, here's the condensed version of how we supposedly came to the brink of this financial Waterloo, and the remedy we're told we must enact: Over the past several years, various banks and other financial institutions invested huge amounts of money in new-fangled assets consisting of many home mortgages "bundled" together. They turned out to be a risky investment, but because the government failed to regulate the buying and selling of these assets, an investment bubble was permitted to grow, and when the housing market started going south a couple years ago, the bubble burst. So now we must allow the government to spend $700 billion buying up those risky investments so banks will regain the confidence to start lending again. If we fail to do this, we risk a complete halt to lending, which will send the economy into a deep recession.

But some people aren't convinced of the veracity of this narrative, as evidenced by the House of Representatives' vote against the bailout this past Monday, which evoked shrieks from Thomas Friedman's ilk, accusing the House Republicans that voted against the bill of betraying the country in its time of great need (but not the House Democrats who voted against, curiously). Dissenting Republicans said, in effect, that they simply cannot spend this massive sum of public money on a bailout for a financial industry that did so much to bring on its own destruction, and that government has no authority to influence the economy on this scale. Two days later, I'm still waiting to hear a cogent, rational refutation of this argument.

Instead, all I hear is grand-standing and more fear-mongering from backers of the bailout, who scream ever louder that failing to act will bring about a second Great Depression. For evidence, they point to Monday's collapse in the stock market, which immediately followed the no-vote in the House. How's that for specious reasoning? "We promised markets that we'd fix this mess for them, and then we didn't fix it, and the markets dropped! That's why we have to fix the mess!"

This is the best example yet of what economists call "moral hazard," the notion that if you provide individuals or companies with the incentive to behave badly, they will do so. By announcing that the government can and will fix this huge mess, banks and other firms can shunt all responsibility onto the government. Rather than absorb losses, declare bankruptcy or sell out to solvent institutions, they can simply wait around for the government to cure their financial problems. With a blank check in the offing, none of them will resume normal lending until that check clears, and so the self-fulfilling prophecy of a crisis comes to fruition.

Such counter-productive incentives have motivated every stage of this ongoing situation, from the creation of two government-backed entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- designed to encourage loans to many people who shouldn't have qualified for them -- to the absurdly low interest rates the Federal Reserve fostered after the last recession to encourage more lending than was healthy, to previous government bailouts of individual firms, which sent the message that if you incur big losses, the feds will take the hit for you. To make a long story short: If you encourage individuals and companies to borrow and lend more money than they have, you will eventually provoke a lending crisis.

But as Thomas Friedman makes abundantly clear, the past doesn't matter. Don't ask how we got to this situation in the first place; don't ask whether a really big bailout will succeed where smaller ones simply made the situation worse; and don't question the assumption that the present problem is always the worst problem ever. Simply yell your nostrums louder, and keep scaring people with doomsday predictions until you get your way.

As every high school civics student knows, it's illegal to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. But there are no such restrictions on doing it from the editorial pages of an august newspaper.

When Green Means "Stop"

In case my humble little blog happens to be inaugurating your return to the Internet after a very long coma, I have a heads-up for you: There's a presidential election in less than six weeks. For everyone else, this is probably not news, considering the permanent news cycle the modern media operates on to feed Americans' insatiable appetite for political punditry. And if you've so much as glanced at a newspaper, a political talk show or any of the three billion Web sites where jerks like me profess to have something important to say, you already can sense that this election promises to be close, hard-fought and nasty. True believers on the left have turned the Obama campaign into a cult following while his detractors hate him enough to rally around former beauty pageant runner-up Sarah Palin, the anti-Obama if ever there was one, as our country takes another step down the dark path of complete political polarization.

But is all the divisiveness really justified? Are the two candidates so night-and-day, so black-and-white that battle lines must be drawn all across our fractured union? Because at least on one issue, Obama and McCain share a great deal of common ground: the trifling little flap over global warming.

While they differ on certain details, Obama and McCain both favor implementation of a cap-and-trade system to gradually reduce U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases to levels consistent with what scientists claim are necessary to ward off the specter of global warming. (In a cap-and-trade regimen, the "right" to emit greenhouse gases is effectively rationed, and over time, the rations become smaller, requiring increasing cuts in emissions.) So whoever wins in November, it's a safe bet that there's going to be a radical overhaul of how our energy sector supplies the electricity that does so much to distinguish our society from the Stone Age.

Which ought to cause everyone a fair amount of concern, because it's already apparent how difficult this green remedy will be to implement, for the very simple reason that clean energy does not grow on trees, so the more of it we are required to produce, the greater the challenge will become. In an excellent piece of reporting today, The New York Times runs down the major reasons why coal, the dirtiest fuel for power plants and the biggest single cause of CO2 emissions in this country, is so central to our present economy, and why so few viable alternatives to coal are available. Nuclear plants? No emissions, but expensive and time-consuming to build. Oil? Too expensive to compete with coal, not especially green. Natural gas? Much cleaner, but in short supply.

So one might be forgiven for celebrating a little bit at the news that lots of utility companies and venture capitalists are rushing to build power plants that turn free, abundant sunshine into clean electricity. In the very next article on this page, The Times reports the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has received applications to build enough solar power plants to replace 70 (!) coal-burning plants across the country, particularly in southern California. If you're looking for a solution to the climate crisis that environmentalists have been scaring us with for years, this looks like a pretty good one: a renewable energy source with no emissions and builders lining up to get cracking. Huzzah!

But wait. I don't know if The Times deliberately places these stories side by side for the sake of irony, but there's a sickening amount of it. Because the real story of these solar saviors is the tremendous opposition to them being mounted by local environmentalist groups who fear that, among other ecological calamities, the Mojave ground squirrel and the desert tortoise might be displaced by all the mirrors and photo-voltaic cells.

Let that sink in for a moment. Amid the deafening clamor for solutions to what is being billed as a crisis that could do incalculable damage to the entire globe, a crisis that has sufficiently galvanized public opinion that both presidential candidates call for sweeping solutions, a tiny little cadre of the environmentalist movement is saying, "Not on my jojoba farm, and not if the Mojave ground squirrel and I have anything to say about it." In response to state regulators and utilities who are desperate to find energy sources to meet California's stringent renewable energy quotas, these squirrel activists want to keep "big solar" out, presumably so they can continue communing with the Earth Spirit in their unspoiled desert Eden.

Their solution? Build little solar panels somewhere else, on someone else's roof, through government subsidies paid for by someone else. (The Times notes, in excellent "just the facts, ma'am" style, that it will take a century for small, inefficient rooftop solar panels to provide enough electricity to meet the state's renewable quota coming up in 2010.) It's almost comical, except that this little farce in the desert serves as an excellent harbinger of just how acrimonious cap-and-trade might turn out, in no small part because certain elements of the green movement are completely intolerant of any human activity that sullies any small corner of the world's ecosystem. These high priests of the biosphere have effectively decreed that energy must be clean and have zero impact on all the species and habitats they hold dear. Any proposal that falls short of this lofty standard is rejected on the grounds of sacrilege.

And lest I start to sound like a villain in a "Captain Planet" episode, I ought to mention that I have no particular beef with the Mojave ground squirrels, and that I'd rather they go on about their squirrelish affairs in peace. But I see no reason why they can't, considering that companies that lease acres in the desert for erecting solar panels have to purchase three times as much acreage for conservation purposes. I ask only that certain environmentalists get serious about this looming climate crisis they dread so much, and recognize that the solution they've championed is going to be costly for everyone. Physics only offers us a limited array of solutions to combat global warming, and they all come with a price tag. Even the Mojave ground squirrel needs to pitch in.

Safety First! (And Last, and Always)

I realize that it's become almost a cliche to bemoan the machinations of safety nazis, those crusading do-gooders who wish to see every action, substance or thought deemed unhealthy or dangerous banned by government fiat. Serious social commentators and stand-up comedians alike have been seizing on nanny-state rules like mandatory bike helmets and the hysteria over second-hand smoke for years, and it's become a tired routine. Meanwhile, the protect-yourself-from-yourself movement advances apace. The freedom to smoke a cigarette in a bar is rapidly disappearing, and in places like New York City, mentally sound, responsible adults can no longer choose whether to eat food cooked with trans fats, because the city has thoughtfully made the choice for them by banning trans fats in all restaurants.

That being said, a new call to further suppress individual freedom in the name of safety has recently come to my attention, quite by chance. It is neither a genuinely new nor different idea; sadly, it's only too representative of the creeping mindset that people must be coerced into doing what's best for them. I highlight it only because it provides such an astonishingly frank glimpse into a philosophical quagmire afflicting modern society, and its logical consequences.

In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, Kent Sepkowitz illustrates why medical professionals should not be permitted to make transportation policy. If you're the impatient type, allow me to summarize his argument: Thousands of people die in automobile accidents every year, and many of those accidents are the result of speeding, and since motorists continue to speed in spite of preventive measures like speeding tickets, new cars should be physically prevented from exceeding 75 miles per hour by the installation of speed-governing technology.

Of course, one could write for pages about possible flaws in the soundness and validity of this argument. One could, for instance, point out that in Germany, the rate of vehicle fatalities on the notorious autobahn (much of which has no speed limit), as measured in deaths per billion kilometers driven, is substantially lower than on other German roads with slower traffic speeds. Or one could note that in 2007, Utah and Vermont recorded the exact same number of deaths per 100 million miles driven (1.11), despite the fact that Utah's highway speed limit is 75 mph, whereas Vermonters are limited to 65 mph. Or one could simply pose a hypothetical question: Which is more dangerous, driving 60 mph on a quiet residential street where the posted limit is 25, or driving 80 mph on a deserted interstate highway?

These are all reasonable technical objections, but they all miss the point, because none reveals the philosophical problem with Sepkowitz's proposal. To argue about the empirical evidence is to concede that government mandates are an acceptable substitute for individual responsibility. Driving a motor vehicle, whether limited by a speed governor or not, will always be a potentially dangerous activity, and there is no end to the ways in which an irresponsible person can kill himself and others while doing it. To argue that individual human beings cannot be trusted to sufficiently value their own lives, and therefore must be physically restrained from endangering themselves, exhibits condescension bordering on outright contempt for humanity's capacity to make free and rational choices.

Some people will inevitably make the wrong choices; drive for an hour on any major highway and I guarantee you'll see someone driving like a maniac, imperiling his own life and the lives of those around him. But there are only two ways to interpret this observation. You can conclude that human beings are fallible creatures who sometimes do very stupid things, accept that this is part of the human condition, and strive to avoid those poor choices in your own life. Or you can draw the Kent Sepkowitz conclusion: that because some human beings will make poor choices and do stupid things, choice must be revoked by law.

Of course, adopting the latter conclusion carries certain logical requirements. If, for instance, overly fast cars must be taken away from drivers who cannot be trusted to drive them safely, then a whole range of dangerous actions should also succumb to the same standard. Off the top of my head, I can think of quite a few obvious hazards we must not permit people to run: smoking (any where at any time), drinking (too much potential for excessive consumption), contact sports and mountain biking (too many broken bones if not enjoyed safely), motorcycles (too little utilitarian value to balance the physical risks), sky-diving and bungee-jumping (for obvious reasons). It's a long and disparate list of perils, united only by the common trait that, if conducted recklessly, they can all lead to death.

Where does it end? Honestly, I have no idea. But when you adopt the tautological position that the objective of life is first and foremost to preserve and extend life, this is the road you find yourself going down. Presumably at no more than 75 mph.

A Bridge Too Far

As if the presidential campaign hasn't dragged on long enough already, polarizing a divided country and exhausting anyone who cares about more important stuff (like, for instance, the start of the NFL regular season tonight), Sarah Palin's nomination for vice president has flung yet more fuel on the mindless partisan fire. And yet, her sudden elevation to national prominence serves a useful purpose by illustrating something that I'm sure neither party intended or appreciates: In the campaign for the modern presidency, "experience" does not necessarily qualify anyone for the presidency.

Obama supporters, weary after months of defending a presidential candidate with a scant few years in office as a do-nothing senator, are visibly relieved to be able to point fingers at Alaska's new governor and former beauty pageant runner-up and clamor "Well what about her?" If that's the best they've got -- that their opponent's running mate is about as politically green as their presidential candidate -- then the Obama camp is pushing on a string. Nobody who hasn't already made up his or her mind to vote for Obama is going to buy this ridiculous lowest-common-denominator tack.

But rather than wade into the comically vicious argument over whether Barack Obama's experience as a "community organizer" outweighs Sarah Palin's experience as the mayor of a town of fewer than 10,000 residents, I'll simply cut to the chase. No amount of experience can ever prepare any human being to be President of the United States in the year 2009, because the government that president will preside over has grown well beyond the bounds of its founders' intent, or the ability of any one person to direct. No one takes the oath of office and hits the ground running on the first day. At best, they're quick learners who can keep mistakes to a minimum and remember their fallible human nature.

However, you will not hear such prosaic realism from either campaign. Modern politics is plagued by the cherished belief that, in theory, government is almost Jovian in its ability to solve societal problems and make people happy. Almost no one, Republican or Democrat, has the humility to acknowledge that this isn't so. So modern politics is reduced to a maddening, endless squabble over what type and how much government will deliver us to the promised land of civil bliss. George Bush believes that with the proper mix of shock-and-awe firepower and "nation-building," hotbeds of radical Islam can be converted into solid-citizen democracies that love America. Hillary Clinton believes that if she just stays up late enough crunching the numbers, she can keep everyone in America healthy and insured. More ambiguously, Barack Obama seems to believe that he can ordain a new American economy powered by not-yet-existent-but-soon clean energy sources.

Whatever the particular issue, those in power tend to make the same fatal mistake: They wrongly assume that, with just a little more power, they really can cut this or that Gordian knot, and in the process, cement their legacy in the pantheon of great leaders. So they all try to tell average voters they have the "experience" to wield the awesome power the federal government already possesses. And consider the far-reaching extent of that power. The American president has the greatest say in disposing of trillions of tax dollars each year. The American president can enact spending and regulatory policies that throw sand in the gears of the global economy. The American president can launch wars that cost thousands of lives, with or without justification.

So exactly what sort of experience prepares you for the closest any one human can come to playing God? No other role even comes within an order of magnitude of the influence the president exerts. Even prominent senators such as McCain and Biden, who've strode the corridors of power in Washington for decades, are utter pikers compared to whoever occupies the Oval Office. The leap from any previous position to president cannot be measured, in years of "experience" or any other metric. To ascend to the presidency is to go off the charts.

But don't tell that to the professional wonks trying to shape this election, for whom this is largely a pissing contest over who's got more bullet points on his presidential resume. They start with the assumption that government really can cure all our ills, and thus conclude there must be a "right man (or woman)" for the job, and then work backward from that conclusion to arrive, conveniently, at their party's ticket. It is not exactly forbidden to suggest that government is not the answer, but only because you need not forbid an idea that no one holds.

Trig-Induced

Let me just say from the outset that this post is almost certainly futile and pointless. But I feel compelled to write it anyway.

Tonight, I watched Alaska governor Sarah Palin accept the Republican nomination for vice president. I watched because, like everyone else, I don't really know much about her, except that, unlike most presidential elections, her presence on the ticket might really decide the outcome. Even if the office of vice presidency isn't any more significant than a warm pitcher of spit, it'll be monumental if she ends up playing king-maker.

But about two minutes into her speech, my interest in her was eclipsed by an arresting image on screen, when she introduced her infant son, Trig, who was born with Down Syndrome. I am generally no more moved by other people's babies than the next young man is, but this particular one really made me sit up and take note, for two reasons. First, asleep in his father's arms, he looked as innocent and peaceful as any other sleeping baby. And second, only about one in five unborn children diagnosed with Down Syndrome is permitted to come into existence in this age of genetic diagnosis. The other 80 percent are aborted.

I am by no means a pro-life crusader. I have been fairly ambivalent about abortion for most of my adult life, and I try at all costs to avoid the running argument over its moral validity, largely because the vitriol that any objection to abortion-on-demand arouses in self-described feminists has often cowed me into silence. I simply don't want to bring that sort of wrath down on my head for daring to inject a "Well, maybe..." into a discussion, because there is no room for maybes.

Notable female figures on the political left are almost unanimous in their scorn for Sarah Palin, and it's no secret why. NOW Chairwoman Kim Gandy is quite representative in her dismissal: "Gov. Palin may be the second woman vice-presidential candidate on a major party ticket, but she is not the right woman. Sadly, she is a woman who opposes women's rights, just like John McCain." You simply have to realize that "women's rights" is equivalent to legal abortion.

But seeing that baby, blessedly oblivious to the incredible hoopla surrounding him, I couldn't help thinking, "Why the hell shouldn't he exist?"

It's a question that deserves an answer. The pro-choice arguments usually deal with the health of the mother, or the severe physical, emotional and financial burdens that child birth indisputably place on the mother. But when four-fifths of unborn babies who exhibit a fairly moderate disability are deemed unworthy of continued existence, another factor is clearly at work. Are people with Down Syndrome so irredeemably defective or undesirable that society is better off without them? And if so, what other defects should disqualify a baby from being born? Is this not, as George Will suggested in a 2005 Washington Post column, "eugenics by abortion"?

I pose these questions not to suggest that abortion ought to be outlawed, but simply to express a long-frustrated desire: That we as a society might be able to debate the issue without being shouted down by the zero-sum zealots, on either side, who label any questioning of their position as the foulest heresy. After seeing Trig Palin and realizing how atypical his existence is, I'd simply like to have a more thoughtful, open debate. One in which both sides come with the attitude that perhaps they don't necessarily own the moral high ground and won't hurl invective at each other for disagreeing. Wouldn't our country be better off for it?