Hail the conquering hero - Sir Edmund Hillary

“Tall poppy syndrome” is an expression that is unique to Australia and New Zealand. In essence it refers to a successful person who is criticized because they are seen by others as being presumptuous, seeking undeserved attention or status. Both Aussies and Kiwis are culturally inclined to disdain the successful hero who basks too publicly in being in the spotlight. Sir Edmund Hillary, who along with his Sherpa guide Tonzing Norgay was the first human to reach the summit of Mt. Everest in 1953, died this past Friday at the age of 88 and could never have been called a tall poppy despite his amazing achievement. It’s difficult today, with ascents of Everest available to wealthy thrill seekers, as Jon Krakauer described in his book, Into the Wild, to really feel as the world did back then that Sir Ed’s accomplishment was a feat that was on par with Lindbergh’s flying the Atlantic solo. And the two were so similar in their temperament and in the way they accepted their adulation and fame afterwards. They both felt uncomfortable in the public spotlight. One of the many anecdotes about Hillary that were recounted this weekend in the New Zealand Dominion Post is one from an Air New Zealand employee who upon seeing Sir Ed waiting in an airport line offered him the use of a VIP lounge only to be told that he didn’t mind standing like everyone else. Lindbergh and Hillary were more at home in continuing their pursuits of adventure. Just as Lindbergh remained a life long flyer Hillary continued with explorations, such as in 1958 when he became the first man to fully traverse the continent of Antarctica while crossing over the South Pole, in 1960 when he returned to Nepal to search for the mythical yeti and in 1985 when along with Neil Armstrong he landed an airplane at both the South and North Poles.

Edmund Hillary was so acclaimed and idolized in his home country that he was the only living person, besides the Queen of England, to have his portrait on the currency (Five dollar bill). His “aw shucks I’m just a regular guy” attitude was genuine and in being the antithesis of the tall poppy, he was quintessentially Kiwi.

Barack Obama - A man for this season

The results of Thursday’s Iowa caucuses for the U.S. 2008 Presidential election was big news here in the New Zealand press and was well covered by the television media that people here watch, including CNN International, SKY News and the BBC. Huckabees’ victory over Romney despite being outspent 20 to 1 was of particular interest because of the controversy over a proposed campaign law here that would put strict limits on campaign spending and electioneering. But the news about America that has been getting consistent coverage here for the last few months is about the retrenchment of the American consumer in the face of decreased home equity, the aftershocks of a tighter credit market in the wake of billions of dollars of non-performing mortgage debt held by the big financial service firms and banks and the possibility of a serious recession. When I was living in the U.S. I remember hearing from time to time about how critical consumer spending was to the U.S. economy. Now that I’m living abroad I’m getting a better sense of the importance of that consumer to the world economy at large. A few weeks ago I watched a BBC news segment with some talking heads discussing the U.S. economy and trying to read the latest foreboding statistics about holiday spending to see if Americans would continue to hold up as the pillars of the global economy that they are. This was a full half hours worth of worry. It struck me at that point that there are many people outside of the U.S. who may be more troubled then we are that Americans can no longer continue to spend like sailors after having exhausted all of their available credit and that it will help to send the world into a serious economic slump. The U.S. is New Zealand’s number 2 trading customer after Australia so that the state of the U.S. market is a very valid concern here. I worry about the impact of bad economic news for my friends and family back in the States but also for myself and others here in New Zealand because Oceania will not be sheltered from the economic storm in the U.S. It’s really a case of the U.S. catching a cold and New Zealand coming down with a fever.

I’m not hearing enough from the Republican or Democratic candidates about the absurdity of Americans indefinitely spending more than they earn on imported products to sustain the U.S. and other world economies. Like any pyramid or shell game there is a day of reckoning that will have to be faced and I don’t think that that realization has escaped the minds of any American with even a modicum of intelligence. Despite a U.S. dollar that has dropped continuously for the last two years there is still a huge imbalance in U.S. trade with the Pacific Rim nations. Couple that with a national debt that since the start of the Bush administration in 2001 has reached nine trillion dollars (and that figure hasn’t fully factored in the cost of our Iraq folly), reduced if not negative economic growth this year and you would think that that would persuade any rationally minded candidate not to work on getting elected in 2008 and assume the responsibility of making those bad numbers disappear. None of the Democratic challengers if elected will stay the course with current fiscal policy but I don’t think that they or their opponents have the wherewithal to easily transform the country from a nation of spendthrifts to one of careful savers and not also cause serious economic disruption in the process. It’s as if all those goods from China are like some drug and we need to be careful about a withdrawal that is too abrupt. All of the Republican candidates such as McCain, Thompson and Romney will do pretty much the same as we’ve had for the past seven years. Huckabee is somewhat of an exception. His plan to replace our income tax with a national sales tax of 23% will certainly depress spending (and make predictions of a possible economic downturn into a certain reality) but it is absurdly regressive and will not do anything to reduce the current federal debt. Mike Huckabee and John Edwards have both been tagged as populists but the history of populism in the U.S. as a political movement and in electing populist candidates to the White House should not provide them with much in the way of optimism for their success.

I predicted a few weeks ago that Senator Kay Hutchison of Texas will get the number 2 slot on the Republican ticket and I’m still sticking to that prediction. As a woman she will help the Republicans defend against any Obama-Clinton, Clinton-Obama combination that is sure to result and the charges that the GOP slate is just another bunch of wealthy white men. Reading the tea leaves on who will get the Presidential nomination is more difficult even after Iowa and especially for the Republicans. I’m still not inclined to count Romney and his well funded campaign down for the count. The Iowa caucus has not proved to be a must win in recent elections for successful candidates. I think that many Republicans will start to rally for Romney because he’s really all they’ve got. Thompson is running a campaign as if sleepwalking, Giulani will never get the nomination because he really is a pro-choice liberal under all of the tough post 9/11 swagger and I don’t see any momentum for Huckabee for the reasons mentioned earlier. That leaves John McCain. I’ve always been amazed at the animosity of the Republican Right with McCain, a genuine war hero and a Senator who has solid conservative credentials with a ACU rating of 82%. That’s one of a number of reasons that I have for my belief that the Republican party has been taken over by extremists and why I continue to be a lifelong Democrat.

Although I am pessimistic about the ability of the Democrats to make the changes in governing that Americans are clamouring for, according to public opinion polls (the ones that show that the majority of Americans believe that their country is on the wrong track), I will vote for whoever gets the nomination. Ideally that will not be Hillary Clinton. I’ve only supported Clinton in the past because of the way she has put the Right in an absolute tizzy since she emerged on the public scene. I shudder to think of the number of trees that have been felled to produce the paper for all of the Hillary hating and ranting books that have been published since 1992. My thoughts have always been that anyone who is the recipient of such absurd ire from the Rush-Sean-Bill and Ann crowd must be doing something right. Sort of the enemy of my enemies must be my friend logic. But since she became Senator in 2000 I join many in dismay over her blatant political expediency and her attempts to assuage the right by voting for an unfair to debtors and big bank friendly bankruptcy bill in 2003 and most importantly of all, the Iraqi war authorization of 2002. The latter measure is one of the best reasons I can think of for supporting Barrack Obama, the only major candidate who opposed our going to war from the outset. The speech that he gave to an anti-war rally in Chicago on October 26, 2002 that this would be a “dumb war” is magnificent in its elegant simplicity in naming the reasons why this would be a mistake and chilling to read for his dead on accuracy in the predication that we would find ourselves involved in a quagmire. His candidacy would throw off the Republican attack machine whose offence has probably been predicated on the belief that a Clinton candidacy would be a sure thing. I’m less troubled by the criticism that his proposed policies are uncertain and vague. Look at FDR’s 1932 campaign and there’s little to find in his campaign that gives any hint of the New Deal. Also the criticism that he is short on experience is laughable. George Bush had six years as Governor of Texas before he became president. Obama will soon have four years as U.S. Senator. Best to keep this in mind: Abraham Lincoln’s only national experience before the White House was a largely unsuccessful single term as Illinois Congressman and he was never governor. Andrew Sullivan has written an excellent article in the December 2007 issue of Atlantic monthly of why he thinks Obama will be ultimately successful at becoming our first African-American president. As a Generation-Xer he won’t be dragged into the cultural wars that we have fought for almost 20 years over Vietnam. His frank admission that he smoked pot in college will not be the point of derision it was for the non-inhaling Bill Clinton.

There were really two statistics about the Iowa caucus that are astounding. One of those was that more Democrats than Republicans turned out in a red state to vote and the other is the impressive number of young voters who chose Obama over Clinton. If Clinton loses New Hampshire on Tuesday it will certainly be the coup de grace for her candidacy. I hope so.