My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: It Was Okay

Since I’ve started reviewing books, I’ve been trying to force myself to review a book based on what it’s meant to be rather than on what I wish it was. After all, that’s the only way to be fair to the author. So it was with this book. I was hoping for a narrative of the life of Andrew Jackson. Instead, I got an analysis of the man and the times he lived in. I was annoyed at first but I forced myself to evaluate it fairly. I think I’m glad that I did.

The title of this book was deliberately chosen. Jackson was an orphan who felt alone much of his life. In reaction to that (as the book makes clear), he valued family highly and would go to any length to protect and defend family. For Jackson, the nation was but an extension of his own family. He loved his country and would go to any length (including invading Florida, risking war with France, evicting the Indian tribes, and suppressing free speech) to protect and defend it. He was very much the “American Lion”, defending his pride.

Meacham’s intent with this book was not to exhaustively document Jackson’s life. Nor was it even to exhaustively document Jackson’s years as President. Instead, Meacham drew on newly available letters and papers to sketch a potrait of Jackson’s personal life and his relationships with his closest friends and family members.

While this approach has some advantages in humanizing “The General”, it also has some downfalls. Meacham does provide a thumbnail sketch of Jackson’s early years and his path to the White House. Regrettably, I feel that it’s cursory enough that it fails to fully setup the drama that was to follow.

For instance, I was really hoping for a look at the actual events of Jackson’s life. For instance, how did he campaign for the Presidency? How did Presidential campaigns work, day to day, during the early 1800′s? The book just glossed right over those details, mentioning only that Jackson won or lost a given election.

This became important when you consider that a central battle of the first two years of Jackson’s presidency involved Major Eaton, the Secretary of War. Jackson staked his entire Presidency on the question of whether or not people around him were loyal to Major Eaton. Eventually, the entire Cabinet was sacked over the question: the first time that had happened in American history.

I spent much of this portion of the book wondering why Jackson was being so incredibly loyal to Eaton. I later grew to realize that Eaton had been quite a central figure in Jackson’s earlier life and in winning the Presidency. Because Meacham passed over those years so quickly, I failed to understand (until much later) just how important Major Eaton was to General Jackson.

This flaw weakened the book, in my opinion.

I did learn quite a bit from this book (and may write more later on my impressions of Jackson and his age) but I felt that it would have benefited from more detail and more background information, both about Jackson and about the age Jackson lived in.

Over the next two months, Garfield was subjected to repeated probing of the wound with unsterile fingers and instruments, non-aseptic incisions to drain abscesses, and other invasive procedures in an effort to locate the bullet, which was, in fact, located harmlessly in fatty tissue behind the pancreas. Eventually, the original three-inch deep wound was converted to a twenty-inch long contaminated, purulent gash stretching from the president’s ribs to his groin.

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The era didn’t start well. The mid-1970s were a dead period. Then suddenly, from 1977 to 1978, new private capital devoted to venture capital increased by 15 times, to $570 million in 1978 from $39 million the year before.

In 1977, public underwritings of firms with a net worth of less than $5 million amounted to a meager $75 million. By 1980 that figure was $822 million, as Michael K. Evans, founder of Chase Econometrics, points out. The venture-capital boom continued down the decades, serving computing, technology, biotech and many other areas.

But what caused this boom? Three policy changes. The first was a [capital gains] tax cut for which this newspaper campaigned. …

A second policy change came in pension law. …

A third factor, and one that ensured the boom would continue, was a law … [that] clarified murky intellectual property rights so that universities and professors, especially, knew they owned their own ideas and could sell them. …

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Carl Haub, senior demographer at the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C., has estimated that 106 billion humans have been born since Homo sapiens appeared about 50,000 years ago. That means that the richest one percent in history includes 1.06 billion people. There are currently 6.2 billion humans alive, leaving approximately 100 billion who have died. Who among the dead was rich by today’s standards? Not many. Royalty, popes, presidents, dictators, large landholders, and the occasional wealthy industrialist, such as Andrew Carnegie and Leland Stanford, were certainly rich. All told, it is difficult to imagine more than 20 million of these people since ancient Egyptian times. This leaves 1.04 billion wealthy alive today, or 17% of the world’s population.

The poor in the United States, by contrast, live on up to $23.50 a day. Except for the few hundred thousand who are homeless, the Americans whom the U.S. government defines as poor live exceptionally rich lives. In most ways, their lives are better than those of kings and queens just 200 years ago. Consider the quality and quantity of our food, clothing, refrigerators, televisions, washing machines, stereo systems, and automobiles. King Louis XIV of France had a greenhouse so he could eat oranges. The poor in this country can eat an orange every day, regardless of season. King Edward III of England could summon the royal musicians to play music. The poor in this country have a wide variety of music at their command, 24 hours a day, played note-perfect every time. Edward III lived in a dark, smelly, cold castle. Even the worst houses in this country are more comfortable and have electric lights, too. Care to live without showers and flush toilets? The kings of England and France had to. Next time you see a Shakespeare play in which kings and princes cavort, remember that royalty in Shakespeare’s day had rotten teeth, terrible breath, and body odor that would make you keel over.

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We can strengthen our defense of liberty if we remember to keep in mind those who are struggling to make ends meet. What makes our Constitution such an extraordinary document is that, in making the United States the freest civilization in history, the Founders guaranteed that it would become the most prosperous as well. The American system of limited government, low taxes, sound money and the rule of law has done more to help the poor than any other economic system ever designed.

I want to talk today in particular about the last of those – the rule of law, which is absolutely essential to all the other benefits of our system, to the prosperity and freedom of our country, and to the well being of all Americans, especially the most vulnerable.

What is the rule of law? When the Declaration of Independence cited as justification “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” the Founders were channeling Aristotle, who wrote that the rule of law in principle means that, quote, “God and intellect alone rule.”

Aristotle defined the law as “intellect without appetite,” by which he meant justice untainted by the self-interest of those in power.

The great difficulty we encounter in striving to meet Aristotle’s ideal was best summed up by James Madison: “if men were angels, no government would be necessary. And if angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

But, as Madison reminded us, men are no angels, and government is “administered by men over men.” Grounded in a proper understanding of human nature, our Founders tackled this challenge head-on with a brilliant Constitution and a healthy separation of powers, binding all men to the same set of laws and preventing any one man or group of men from gaining enough power to declare themselves above the law.

Do read the whole thing.

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And he began to talk—and talk and talk for what must have been nearly three hours. I’ve never told anyone the specifics of what he said that night, not even my wife or closest friends. I did not make notes later and have only my memory. In the journalism world, off the record is off the record. But I have repeatedly described the hours as “amazing,” “remarkable,” “stunning.”

President Bush—and he was, no doubt, by then a real president—talked expansively about Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, China, Korea, Russia. He talked about his reelection strategies, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, WMD and how he still believed they would be found, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Vladimir Putin. He talked about his aides and how tough their lives were, the long hours and stress and time away from their families, about how difficult it was for his daughters. He said that compared with everyone around a president, the president had the easiest job. He was the same confident, brash man I had met years ago, but I no longer sensed any hint of the old anger or the need for self-aggrandizement.

As he talked, I even thought about an old Saturday Night Live skit in which an amiable, bumbling President Ronald Reagan, played by Phil Hartman, goes behind closed doors to suddenly become a masterful operator in total charge at the White House. The transformation in Bush was that stunning to me.

On the other hand, I still dislike President Bush’s assumption that everyone else should bow and scrape before powerful men.

As it turned out, I did see George W. soon again after the encounter on his father’s Cigarette boat. After my story ran in The Washington Post Magazine, the vice president invited my family over to lunch and horseshoes at his official residence, on the grounds of the U. S. Naval Observatory. The vice president had actually called twice to invite us over, but on both occasions, our schedules hadn’t meshed. After the second invite, George W. called my house.

“Walt, my dad is vice president of the United States,” I remember him saying with a touch of irritation. “When he calls and invites you to lunch, you come to lunch.”

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Taking old World War II photos, Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov carefully photoshops them over more recent shots to make the past come alive. Not only do we get to experience places like Berlin, Prague, and Vienna in ways we could have never imagined, more importantly, we are able to appreciate our shared history in a whole new and unbelievably meaningful way.

Really, really cool.

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If one person quit (or died), someone else could easily step in and take over the job without noticeably slowing production. Workers were largely powerless because management could easily replace individual employees. This left each, individual, employee with almost no leverage. The only way that a threat to stop working meant anything is if every employee made the threat simultaneously. Even that threat was largely meaningless unless an employer could be prevented from just bringing in replacement workers en-masse.

In this kind of environment, a union made a lot of sense. It gave largely indistinguishable workers a way to band together and make management take notice of them. It gave them bargaining power, to fight for safer working conditions and better treatment. It gave them the leverage to end abusive practices like the company store.

During this period, workers were like cogs in a vast, industrial machine. Individually, they were interchangeable, easily replaceable, and mostly ignored. Ultimately, the factory machines (or the mine itself) were far more important or valuable than the individual worker was. But together, they had a voice and could force management to pay attention to them. In this environment, unions were a useful tool.

In a union company, it was important that the job get done. It wasn’t really important who did that job. But we no longer live in that environment.

We live in a dynamic economy where factories provide fewer and fewer jobs even as factory output increases. The factory “worker” is changing from interchangeable employees to interchangeable robots. The true factory workers need to have unique, valuable skills. They need to be able to watch the factory floor, constantly looking for problems and creating solutions. The worker is more valuable than the machines he watches over. They can be replaced with a purchase order to the manufacturer. His knowledge and skills can’t be replaced so easily.

We live in a dynamic economy where knowledge matters. A lot. A good teacher isn’t just a replaceable cog in a machine. He or she knows how to construct a lesson plan, knows how to grade papers fairly, knows the subject matter backwards and forwards, knows how to motivate students, knows how to communicate with parents, and more. A good teacher is valuable and hard to find.

We live in a dynamic economy where the best worker is the one who can learn the most and do more than one task well. We live in a dynamic economy where what you can do today isn’t nearly as important as what you’ll be able to do tomorrow. We live in a dynamic economy where individual creativity and initiative far outweigh the ability to follow rote orders or do the exact same thing day after day, year after year.

In a modern company, it’s still important that the job get done. But it’s far more important who does the job. The employee’s unique knowledge, skills, and input are crucial to the success of the company. The employee is hired to make decisions, to look at a problem, see a solution, and then implement the solution. The employee is hired to work independently and confidently, using his brain as the ultimate tool. This is the environment we live in now.

Unions are ill suited to this environment. Union collective bargaining agreements are written for last century’s economy. Union contracts treat employees as replaceable cogs in a machine.

Take, for example, the contract for Madison Teachers Incorporated. Pages 10-15 of the 2009-2011 contract lay out the pay scale for teachers. The entire section assumes that one teacher with a given set of qualifications and credentials is just as good as another teacher with the same set of qualifications and credentials.

No allowance is made for differences in the amount of time that teachers put into the job each day. No allowance is made for the enthusiasm or creative thinking that each teacher brings to the job. No allowance is made for, well, anything that makes a good teacher a good teacher. As far as the contract is concerned, you could take away Mr. Smith and replace him with Ms. Jones and absolutely nothing would have changed.

Instead of valuing flexibility, creativity, and employee knowledge, a union values employee longevity. The employee that has been around the longest, that has the most invested in the union, that has the most clout in the union is favored over the younger employee. That holds true even when the older employee is contributing little to the organization and the younger employee is contributing much to the organization. It doesn’t matter. When the time comes for layoffs, the younger employee goes and the tenured, long-time employee stays. This, of course, does wonders for the work effort and morale of the younger employees.

Unions also restrict the ability of the employer to reward and retain the most valuable employees. Union contracts reward every employee the same, based on classification. When it comes time for raises, everyone in the unit gets the same raise regardless of their individual value to the organization. In any organization there are a few great employees who provide much of the creativity and drive. There are a lot of good employees who do their jobs well. And there are always a few bad employees who either don’t do their job well or who can’t be relied upon to make good decisions and execute tasks properly.

An organization should have the freedom to reward the top performers appropriately, giving them little reason to leave for greener pastures. And the organization should have the freedom to fire the low performers and seek out new hires who might be able to contribute more. Union contracts forbid this kind of personnel management and leave departments unable to retain their top performers while they’re also unable to shed their dead weight.

Worse still, the union contract locks in a specific set of work conditions and job responsibilities. It gives employers very little flexibility to deal with changing conditions and changing needs. Before any change can occur, the employer must first convince the employees that the change is necessary and desirable.

For workers who are used to working a specific way (and have grown comfortable in that), that’s a very tough sell. If large changes are needed, it can be practically impossible to convince the employees to change. The employer is stuck with a workforce that won’t adapt to new needs and that it can’t replace. That’s a recipe for stagnation and, eventually, death.

Unions are, quite understandably, opposed to any changes that might lead to the elimination of any jobs. Unions exist to protect workers and to ensure that no jobs are ever destroyed. Unions can (and do!) prevent employers from switching to more efficient processes and more efficient technology.

The union mindset would ensure that every car still came with a buggy whip holder and a buggy whip. Sure, they’re useless. But the alternative would mean that buggy whip makers would be unemployed and a union wouldn’t be able to allow that. Don’t believe me? Then why did railroads pay “firemen” to ride in the cab of diesel locomotives, 50 years after diesel engines replaced coal engines?

No, unions are ill suited to the modern work environment. Where the economy requires flexibility, unions offer rigidity. Where the economy requires creativity, unions offer only cog-like employees. Where the economy values unique skills and contributions, the union values longevity.

An organization full of union employees is an organization that is quickly headed for the trash heap of history.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book caught my eye because I knew very little about Tony Blair. I knew he was the Prime Minister in Britain. I knew he was the leader of the Labour Party and a big government, big spending progressive. I knew he was President Bush’s staunchest ally in the war on terror. And, that’s about it. I really didn’t know anything about what he actually tried to accomplish in Britain or why. I didn’t know anything about who he was or what he made him tick. And, after reading Decision Points, I was interested in his perspective on the events of the past decade.

Although long, this book was an enjoyable read. Blair writes with a light, conversational style that I really enjoyed reading. It could be a little distracting at times, as he would occasionally take a rabbit trail into the past. It was usually apparent when he did so, but I got confused about the timing of events a few times. That was a minor complaint as the style generally contributed greatly to the tone of the book.

As I read, I discovered that Tony Blair has a wonderful sense of humour. That’s matched with a very contemplative approach to life. For example, he recounted several times how stressed out he would get before a big speech, spending his time constantly writing and rewriting his text. He compared this to President Bush who was amazingly laconic before most speeches and never seemed to worry about the message or the delivery. (Some might say that those contrasting approaches showed up in the quality of speeches that each man gave.)

This book is exactly what it says on the cover: a story about the journey Blair took during his political life. It’s partly a history of the events of the past 30 years and partly a recounting of the decisions and actions that formed Blair’s own evolving outlook on life and politics. After reading the book, I came away thoroughly convinced that I would like Tony Blair as a person, even if I felt compelled to oppose many of his policies.

As to policies, I won’t spend a whole lot of time critiquing them. Blair and I are on different ends of the political spectrum, when it comes to the question of how involved and active government should be. It’s not really worth belabouring the point of all of the different ways in which we do disagree.

I was greatly impressed by Blair’s perception of the ways in which traditional big government liberalism and socialism is highly unsuited to our modern economic system and dynamic society. Blair clearly saw what was wrong with the Labour Party and with the government’s highly centralised approach to decision making. He saw that people were used to choice and used to firing incompetent providers in the private section. And he saw that the government’s provision of services wasn’t coming close to what people now expected. As a result, he spent his entire political career trying to reform the delivery and provision of government services. While I don’t agree with his solutions, I was very happy with his overall critiques of government services.

This comes across clearly in his definition of what it means to be a progressive.

First, what makes you a progressive? I would say: belief in social justice, i.e. using the power of society as a whole to bring opportunity, prosperity and hope to those without it; to do so not just within our national boundaries but outside of them; to judge our societies by the condition of the weak as much as the strong; to stand up at all times for the principle that all human beings are of equal worth, irrespective of race, religion, gender (I would add of sexuality) or ability; and never to forget and always to strive for those at the bottom, the poorest, the most disadvantaged, the ones others forget. Notice these are all values, not policies. They may beget policies.

… Third, there is a new divide in politics which transcends traditional left and right. It is what I call “open vs. closed.” Some right-wingers are free-traders, others aren’t. Likewise with the left. On both sides, some are pro-immigration, others anti-. Some favour an interventionist foreign policy; others don’t. Some see globalisation and the emergence of China, India and others as a threat; some as an opportunity. There is a common link to the free trade, pro-immigration (controlled, of course) interventionist and pro-globalisation political positions, but it is “open vs. closed,” not “left vs. right.” I believe progressives should be the champions of the open position, which is not only correct but also a winning position, as Bill Clinton showed conclusively. However, it is a huge and important dividing line in modern politics.

I would agree with this definition and, by it, I think I could call myself a progressive. I would place myself on the “open” side of his dividing line. I think Blair and I would merely (merely!) disagree on the policies that this definition begat.

I very much enjoyed this book as a look into the mind and growth of Tony Blair. It did exactly what a good political memoir should: it helped me to understand who he is, why he made the decisions he did, and how he grew as a result of his time in politics. Now that I’ve read it, I’m strongly rooting for him to have success in the Middle East peace process and I wish him well in his post prime ministerial career.

To fix the cost problem, Medicare in 1992 began using the “resource based relative value system” (RBRVS), a way of evaluating doctors based on factors such as education, effort and specialized training. But the system didn’t consider factors such as outcomes, quality of service, severity or demand.

Today most insurance companies use the Medicare RBRVS because it is perceived as objective. As a result of RBRVS, specialists—especially those who perform a lot of procedures—do extremely well. Primary-care doctors do not.

In short, this is one of the major problems of a third-party payment system. Doctors aren’t evaluated and paid by patients based on how good they are, how popular they are, or how effective they are. Instead, someone other than the patient judges a doctor’s value and pays him according to a strict pay scale. Doctors have little to no ability to raise or lower prices or to set one price for a bundle of services.

This third party payment system sharply limits the way doctors can compete for patients or appeal to patients for business. It also sharply limits the ability of the patient to reward the doctor for good service or punish the doctor for poor service. When that kind of feedback is eliminated, is it any wonder that we spend more time waiting in clinic waiting rooms than we do actually seeing the doctor? Or that the doctor can often seem more interested in hustling us out the door instead of listening to our medical history?

Our doctors do not work for us, they work for the insurance companies. And that’s a big problem with third-party payment for medical care.

Obamacare delenda est