Meeting Fareed Zakaria

On Tuesday May 27th, The Commonwealth Club of California's guest speaker was Fareed Zakaria, speaking to the audience about his new book "The Post-American World". The event was held at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco and those who live in Northern California know that the Club's events are later broadcast on National Public Radio's KQED station. I had been invited to the talk by a family friend who had an extra ticket and I was curious enough about Zakaria and his new work to be eager to attend in person.

I have found Zakaria's comments on George Stephanopoulos's Sunday morning show to be frequently insightful even if a bit timid in straying from the mainstream foreign policy establishment. He seems to have a genuinely global understanding of US foreign policy challenges but sometimes seems to strain to keep his views in check to avoid being tagged as an "international" intellectual instead of an Amercian one. (I sympathize with this natural propensity of an immigrant to seek whole hearted acceptance of a host country's elite). Also, I was impressed by his 2003 book "The Future of Freedom" in which he argues that constitutional liberalism must precede electoral democracy and that nations lacking a rule of law will inevitably end up as illiberal democracies. This squares with my own long held belief that durable democratic regimes can only be built on a constitutional rule of law and convinces me even more that the lawyer's movement in Pakistan demonstrated powerfully the country's potential to be a functioning democracy.

The main theme of "The Post-American World" (contrary to the title) is not a simplistic view of imperial America's decline. It is not another in a line of now forgotten tomes from the 80's about the Asian takeover of America (with China & India now substituted for 80's Japan). Instead Zakaria argues that the story of the 21st century is the "rise of the rest" even as America maintains significant advantages in competing with these new powers for wealth and influence. His advice to Amercan governments and people seems to be to embrace and learn to adapt and thrive in this new world rather than resist it and vainly hope for the preservation of a vanishing status quo. Zakaria's talk on his new book was an overview of this thesis peppered with anecdotes illustrating his views. He is an engaging speaker and entertained the audience with his suave wit.

After the talk there was a book signing and a long line formed in front of the podium so people could get their books personalized. After approaching him I told him how often I get asked if I am related to him (which I am not) because of our shared last name. He was very gracious and remarkably down to earth and made small talk (some of it in Urdu) for a couple of minutes showing curiosity about my vocation and the Pakistani background. He said "Khuda Hafiz" and as I walked away looking at the personalized signature in the book I was pleasantly surprised to see that below his signature he had added the inscription, "P.S. We're practically related".

Campaigning for Obama

February 5th is Super Tuesday when 24 states, including California, will vote or caucus in the Democratic primary. I am supporting Barack Obama in this primary and would like to see him as the party's nominee against the Republicans in November. My reasons are simple: he is an inspirational figure with a preternatural ability to motivate people, has demonstrated independence and excellent judgment in opposing the Iraq war from the very beginning and possesses a healthy intelligence, policy acumen and intellectual curiosity necessary for the job. The historic prospect of an African-American President of the United States of America is also an important contributing factor. He does not have many years of experience in Washington but Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times has laid out the best argument on why this is not as important as is commonly believed(his lack of executive experience would be a more valid criticism). He made a blunder by sounding naively hawkish on Pakistan several months ago but demonstrated sound temperament by learning from the criticism that inevitably followed and fine tuned his views.

Julie is a mother of one of my daughter's schoolfriends and is a Palo Alto neighborhood precinct captain for Obama. Knowing that I had already cast my absentee ballot for Obama she called me last night to ask if I would be interested in volunteering for the campaign and doing some door to door canvassing. I agreed and this morning, along with another volunteer, walked the streets of Palo Alto. In our hands we had a printed list of targeted registered Democratic and Independent voters. Our job was to try to get people to vote on Tuesday but also to understand their leaning and indicate them on our list. This would help identify probable Obama voters for volunteers managing the phone banks on election day. They could then call these people on Tuesday to get them to vote or even drive them to the polling stations if required. It was an interesting experience as knocking on the doors of strangers is never pleasant but it was made easier by the camaraderie of the volunteers and because many of the people we talked to had either already voted for Obama or were strongly leaning toward him. It will be interesting to see where the race stands after "Tsunami Tuesday" but it already seems clear that unless there is a highly unexpected result, the Democratic race will continue for several more weeks.

Confirmation hearing circus

In the March 13th issue of The New Yorker, Janet Malcolm has an essay on the recent confirmation hearings of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. For Supreme court watchers these hearings have become a subject of significant angst. There are suggestions that these proceedings have become such an elaborate but worthless spectacle that they should be scrapped entirely and that confirmations should directly proceed to Senate for a vote.

Janet Malcolm's essay is relatively ho-hum with a somewhat whining tone of partisan indignation. It does not manage to be particualrly illuminating; a bit of a disappointment as I expect greater insight from a practicing psychoanlayst and the writer of the wonderful collection of essays "The Purloined Clinic". However, there are flashes of thought provoking ideas:

An excerpt:

Roberts was much given to affirming his fealty to "the rule of law." He said, "Somebody asked me ... 'Are you going to be on the side of the little guy?' And you obviously want to give an immediate answer, but, as you reflect on it, if the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy is going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy's going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution." The cases that are the glory of the Supreme Court history are the cases where the little guy won; the cases that are its shame are those where he lost. The Constitution doesn't say who should win. Nine people do.

The Roberts era begins

In Gonzalez vs. Oregon today, the Supreme Court upheld the Oregon physician assisted suicide law in a 6-3 decision with Roberts, Scalia and Thomas dissenting.

There were a few interesting features of today's decision that begin to sketch the contours of the court's Roberts era. If Alito was already on the bench the vote count would have been 5-4 making Kennedy the central swing vote in this decision. Dahlia Lithwick in Slate paints a convincing picture of Kennedy's critical position at the center of this court.

Despite Roberts' vote in this case (joining Scalia's dissent) his views on federalism remain unknown. Is he likely to follow Rehnquist's lead by more often seeming to set limits on congressional authority or will his commitment to federalism principles be more selective like Scalia? Ann Althouse makes some interesting points about the case on her blog.

"It's quite interesting that the majority is made up of everyone who voted in favor of congressional power in the medicial marijuana case, plus O'Connor and minus Scalia. That means only O'Connor took the strong federalism position in both cases. And only Scalia sided with the government in both cases"