Presidential Debate 2012: Round 1

The first presidential debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama was last night. This morning, most media spun the event as a big win for Romney.  I read statements describing Obama as ‘bored’, ‘disengaged’, ‘unprepared’, ‘uninformed’,  Tom Brokaw (not known for his conservative bias) went as far to say if Romney had delivered a performance as bad as Obama, the race would be over. 

I watched the first half of the debate, and then turned it off because I thought Romney was going down in flames.  What did I miss?  I went back and watched the replay again to find out. I still don’t see it. Romney stumbled into a few opportunities to clarify his positions, which some apparently feel was a first. But I just didn’t see the ‘trouncing’ that the media seems to be characterizing this as. To me, Obama came across as confident in his plans, proud of his positions, and determined to paint Romney as a rich guy that only wanted to help rich people, and a guy with big headlines and no substance.  He didn’t stumble over his words, didn’t appear defensive, didn’t appear ‘outraged’ over being challenged the way he is being painted by his opponents.  So what did everyone else see that I didn’t?

Upon further examination, I did notice a feature of the debate that may have been a factor.  Applause was not allowed. No big showy ovations of support (ala the State of the Union address under any president), no laugh tracks, no hand-picked attentive models casting pre-calculated levels of pensiveness and nodding knowingly at the appropriate times.  TV executives spend a lot of time architecting a televised event to convey the emotions they want to solicit. For performers, they show you beautiful people in the front 2 rows, dancing and having the best time of their lives.  For athletic contests, we see sexy cheerleaders and over-the-top fans that will dye their hair, skin and clothes to show that this is the most important event of their lives. And for dramas, of course, they pay millions to experts to get the lighting, camera angles, mood music and ‘extras’ to usher in the exact emotion we the viewers are supposed to be feeling. 

But this was raw monologue. Contrast it to the party conventions we saw last month, in which delegates gushed uninhibitedly at every syllable uttered by their respective saviors.  Policies haven’t changed, but they don’t come across the same when you don’t have adoring throngs to convince people how profound your ideas are, how sharp your wit is, and how lofty your intellect has become.   It’s like seeing models without their makeup.  Maybe that was the X factor of this debate. If so, Romney better have something else prepared for the next one because it won’t be new next time.

Harnessed Lightening

Anyone who watched Monday Night Football on September 24^th and stayed until the (extremely) bitter end witnessed perhaps the worst officiating call in NFL history.  Trailing by 5, 4^th down, no time left on the clock, the Seattle Seahawks quarterback tossed a Hail Mary pass into the left corner of the end zone and hoped for the best. They got more than they hoped for, or could even imagine.  Green Bay’s M.D. Jennings leapt into the air and caught the ball, pulling it to his chest over Seattle’s receiver Golden Tate. Tate got his hands on the ball and they fell to the ground together, wrestling for possession.  The refs ran over to the play, looked at each other, and then one official signaled touchdown, giving Seattle a 13-12 win.  An extra point would be added to make the official score 14-12. To even the most casual observer, the Seattle receiver did not have possession of the ball, and the touchdown should not have counted.  Countless replays from every available angle confirmed this, but the call was allowed to stand and was even defended the next day by the NFL office.

I am not a huge Green Bay fan. I didn’t have money on the game, I don’t participate in any fantasy football leagues, and it’s no skin off my nose who won the game. But it’s tough to watch a team get cheated out of a win because of a bad call, and even tougher to watch the bad call be upheld for no reason other than the league’s need to save face. The NFL’s regular officials have been on strike since the beginning of the year for who-knows-what, and the NFL has been using ‘replacement officials’ throughout the preseason and for the first 3 weeks of this year.  Under-skilled commentators desperate to feign insight to otherwise boring games have tried hard to make the ‘replacement officials’ a storyline, pointing out every missed call or botched penalty as a pox on an otherwise excellent contest of judgement calls and split second decisions. 

And lord knows we’ve never had a controversial call with regular NFL officials in past years. 

But just how bad are these phony refs?  Let’s see:  With 16 games a week, 4 weeks of preseason and 3 weeks of regular season, we’ve had 112 games with these replacement officials. At an average of 130 plays per game (a conservative estimate), we’ve had a little more than 14, 500 plays run.  Let’s say they got 99% of them correct. That leaves 145 plays that are suspect.  And it only takes 5 or 6 to make a halftime video samples reel to show how ‘incompetent’ the officials are. Do you do your job perfectly 99% of the time?  Do quarterbacks make 99% of their passes?  Do linemen get their assignments right 99% of the time?  How bad do you have to be to be ‘bad’?

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not defending the blown call on MNF. It was terrible, it was reversible, and unlike other mistakes with regular or replacement officials, it directly cost a team a win.  But it is being used as an excuse to condemn all replacement officials as incompetent, blundering, idiots who don’t know a yard line from a sky line.  The fact is that fans don’t have an objective standard for comparing this year’s officials to previous years. Nor are they interested in defining one. They are just mad as hell and want something to be done.  We will see how long the NFL takes to reinstate the regular officials in response to fan demands. 

Frankly, I don’t care much about the game. But I find fascinating the power of a single isolated event to incite public opinion - maybe even a public movement- that it does not necessarily merit. An obscure, cheaply made video about Muslims is used to justify attacks against US embassies around the world. I seriously doubt the protesters in Libya saw the video. Even if they did, how would it justify attacking the US Ambassador? Nobody cares. It’s not about rationale or reason; it’s about providing a vent for rage.   

Whether they are cheated cheeseheads, jilted jihadists, oppressed minorities, or threatened conservatives, the collective power of an angry mob is an awesome force to be reckoned with. Harnessed lightening. And what a powerful force it can be to move mountains if one is clever enough to spot the opportunity, skilled enough to steer it, and wise enough to know how to use it.

The Other Reason April 15th is Memorable

Most of us in the US know April 15^th as tax day, the day when federal and state personal income taxes are due.  But starting in 2004 major league baseball declared that on April 15 of each year, every player in every game wears number 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson, the Texas oil baron who sacrificed fame and fortune to be the first black professional baseball player. No, wait – he was a research chemist working on a vaccine for leukemia.  No, that’s not it either… perhaps he was a concert pianist and composer who gave up his career for the social advancement of his race? 

Well, actually none of those is accurate.  Jackie Robinson was just a good athlete who was the first black offered money to play baseball.  He wasn’t necessarily better than all other black players before him, it wasn’t that he sacrificed some greater calling to prove a point about race, it wasn’t that he organized a march on Washington, refused to give up his seat on the bus, or risked being thrown in jail to be a historic champion of civil rights.  He just agreed to live the dream of tens of thousands of other kids who wished they could get paid for playing a game they loved. 

So why do we need a Jackie Robinson day?  What was the selfless and heroic act he represented that blazed the way for all future black athletes?  Well, racism was definitely strong in major league baseball in the 1940s. No official rule existed that banned blacks from joining the league, but no team had been willing to sign black players despite their demonstrated success in the Negro league.   For sure, Mr. Robinson would face resistance from fans, players, media, and maybe even his own teammates for invading a ‘white sport’.   But let’s not forget, he wasn’t picking up garbage or shining shoes, he was playing baseball for money.  I have no quarrel with Jackie Robinson; by all accounts he was a great player, a great teammate, and never folded to the temptation of lashing out at his antagonists. 

Let’s be honest, who had the most to lose when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers?  A strong case could be made for Branch Ricky, a white business manager who took the risk to break ranks with the fellow owners and league officials by signing a black man. But you probably never heard of Branch Ricky¸ even though he is recognized as the innovator of the major league farm system, for signing the first Hispanic player, for encouraging the expansion of the league by adding new teams, and for instituting the use of baseball helmets.  Rickey was quoted as saying "I may not be able to do something about racism in every field, but I can sure do something about it in baseball."        

But Rickey’s ambitions put him at odds with many others in baseball management. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a judge, opposed Rickey’s proposal for a farm system, thinking it would ruin the existing minor leagues. But his perseverance ensured the survival of the farm system, along with many other beneficial changes to baseball including spring training facilities, batting cages, pitching machines and new statistical measurements for measuring effectiveness. Ricky’s gamble on Jackie Robinson paid off with Robinson wining Rookie of the Year honors and his Dodgers going to the World Series. 

Yet Rickey paid the price for making his enemies. He was forced out of the Dodgers organization and faced resentment from other team owners and management.  So if we define heroes as those who do something selfless on behalf of others, who is the real hero who broke the color barrier of major league baseball?   Shouldn’t we have a Branch Ricky day?  

But that’s not how racism works.  Black racists need to take every opportunity to remind America how underprivileged and oppressed blacks are, and how white people owe them for the crimes of the past. And white people, trying to assuage a conscience of guilt for not having their own history of oppression, jump on board to 'atone for the sins' of a generation they neither created or supported. Soon to be released is the movie "42", which will again enshrine Jackie Robinson as the champion of civil rights- the 'David' who slayed the white 'Goliaths' of race.  Expect Oscar nominations, no matter how bad the acting or directing actually is. 

   

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if next year on Jackie Robinson day, if one of the dozens of players interviewed would depart from the script of “Jackie breaking the color barrier” and give some credit to Branch Ricky for making it possible?  And even more refreshing will be the day when we stop treating black accomplishments like something unnatural and unexpected and instead treat them as ordinary members of the human race. 

Occupy Something (just not your mind)

The Occupy crowds have been in the news for a couple months now. What started at Occupy Wall Street has spread to cities across America, most notably Occupy Oakland. Having to drive through Oakland to get to work for the past 4+ years, I can attest that no part of the city is known for its ‘fat cats’, who live and work in luxury while the 99% of the population suffers. So why Oakland? Well, that’s where professional protestors are readily available. It’s next door to Berkeley, which is the birthplace of free speech marches and ant-government protests. Not much is required to gin up a reason to protest. A stroll down Telegraph Avenue on any given weekend will reveal numerous opportunities to buy buttons, T-shirts, bumper stickers and even tattoos to shout out the whole gamut of causes, from legalizing pot to promoting communism to freeing so-called political prisoners you’ve never heard of. Protesting is the only activity that gives these people meaning.

They’re like that thirty-something guy living at home in his parent’s basement. He can passionately rail against society and government for their unfairness but is content to abdicate his personal responsibilities for food and shelter to others. He wants to have the car available for his use, but doesn’t want to pay for the maintenance or registration. He wants the hospital, police and firemen to be there for him, but feels someone else should pay. He wants to excuse his personal situation by blaming it on the cruelty of our social structure, the greed of others, or more popularly – the failure of government to provide for him. We all realize that a society made of these people cannot succeed. But somehow they seem to the rest of us owe them something. Victims get passes, the rest of us have to make our own way. Maybe that’s why we have so many victims in our society, and why we have so many government programs that keep them that way.

Steve Jobs – Not Just a Visionary

By now, even people living in caves know that Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, died of cancer. Few men in our time have left as large an impact on the commercial or technological world. The iPod forever changed the way we listen to music, the iPhone changed the way we communicate, and the iPad is yet another innovation in portable computing. All this is on top of the MacOS, which defined the way we interact with personal computers.

A few months back, some of my colleagues and I were sitting around waiting for a plane, and I posed the question: “Can you think of another single person who is so single-handedly responsible for their company’s success?” We were, of course, talking about major companies of $1B or more. A few names came up; Henry Ford, John Rockefeller, Bill Gates... but not a many. Larry Ellison is flamboyant and arrogant, but he’s not really an innovator. Richard Branson is adventuresome and eclectic, but also not an innovator.

Every eulogy we read about Jobs centers around the word ‘Innovation’, and nobody can deny this. But Jobs’ greatest skill was not his vision or creativity. Truth be told, the world - and especially the Silicon Valley – are full of good ideas. Billions of venture capitalists’ dollars go to entrepreneurs with great ideas. Few reach the kind of success Apple has, but not because their ideas are bad. The ability to turn a good idea into reality on a global scale is a far rarer gift than creativity. For many innovators, arrogance is their Achilles heel. Once they get a few million dollars, they morph from hungry innovators to the wealthy upper class they have idolized for so long. Maybe the most common flaw many founders face is the failure to recognize their own limitations. The skills needed to earn a company its first $10M are rarely the same as those needed to get to $200M, and those are different still from the skills required to manage $1B. Great ideas are nice. The ability to turn them into reality is a rare gift indeed.