I

believe in asset-based development, which means

that I am loath to itemize deficits and problems without putting at least as much

emphasis on the assets that any human community or nation possesses as

the basis for its own development. I am certain that Africa has tremendous assets:

cultural, social, and natural. Unfortunately, I lack the detailed knowledge necessary

to list the main ones. In lieu of an asset inventory, we ought to pay attention

to the following gaps or problems on the occasion of President Bush’s African

tour:

• life expectancy at birth: Sierra Leone = 34.5 years; USA = 77.1

  years

• adult literacy rate: Niger = 16.5%; Estonia = 98.8%
• population

  earning less than $1/day: Ethiopia = 81.9%; USA = 0% (reported)

• probability

  at birth of not surviving to age 40: Mozambique, 56%; Japan = 7.5%

• population

  without access to improved water source: Ethiopia, 76%; USA = 0%

• physicians/100,000

  people: Mali = 1; Italy = 567

• health spending/capita: Guinea-Bissau =

  $12; USA = $4,499

• undernourished people: Burundi = 69% of population;

  USA = 0% (reported)

• percent of adults with HIV/AIDS: Zambia = 21.52%;

  USA 0.16%

• official development aid received, per capita: Dem. Rep. of

  Congo = $5; Israel = $172.4 (The new European Union members get more aid than

  Israel, but their assistance comes with club membership in the EU.)

All

these statistics come from the "Human

Development Indicators" section of the United Nations Development Programme’s

Human Development Report 2003.

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I have been approached

by a publisher about the idea of writing a popular guide to politics for new voters,

in time for the 2004 campaign season. I don’t know if this idea will come to pass,

but it’s interesting.

Perhaps the "ideal citizen" would make an

independent and informed judgment about each issue and also each candidate, and

then vote accordingly. But none of us has the time or energy to do this. Instead,

we use shortcuts to make our voting choices. The most common shortcut, I believe,

is to choose a political identity for oneself: for example, "liberal"

or "conservative," or something somewhat more complicated, like "pro-choice

conservative" or "social liberal/fiscal conservative." We then

learn how to identify the candidates who fit this label, based on clues in their

rhetoric and a few issues that serve as proxies. If we are better-than-average

citizens, then we choose an ideology in a provisional way, trying to stay open-minded

and to understand the merits of alternative views. But we still use ideology as

a cue. CIRCLE surveys show that people

who cannot place themselves on an ideological scale or identify the differences

between Democrats and Republicans also do not vote.

Thus I may propose

to write a book that begins with a quiz, designed to identify the reader’s starting

ideology or political identity. If a reader chooses "don’t know" as

an answer to any question, he or she will be sent to pages in the book that introduce

the relevant issue. Once the reader has completed the quiz and identified a provisional

ideology, the rest of the book will help him or her to (a) think critically about

the pros and cons of this ideology and (b) learn how to identify candidates who

espouse it.

It’s been a bad day for blogging—many long meetings. One meeting

concerned the possibility of creating a blog for the geographical community of

Prince George’s County, with many hand-picked regular contributors who would generate

frequent postings about the local arts scene. In the process of investigating

this idea, a colleague discovered the DC

Metro Blog Map.

A report for Washington: I know many Democrats, and they all

seem highly pessimistic about 2004. They think that Karl Rove is a genius,

that Bush will coast to re-election because of the Iraq war, that Republicans

have enormous advantages in money and media support, that the country

is moving rightward, that the Democratic leadership is weak and divided—in

short, that we are headed for a landslide.

I dislike political prognostication and am generally not good at it.

(It seems to me that the important question is not who will win,

but what policies we should want to prevail.) Nevertheless, I cannot resist

observing that the future is completely unpredictable and that a Democrat

could be the one to win by a landslide in ’04. The economy will need

to improve quickly to get above the level that usually re-elects presidents

(3% annual growth). Surveys show very little support for the Bush economic

strategy if it is separated from his personal popularity. The stimulative

effects of the new budget are likely to be small, and the expected postwar

bounce has been modest. Iraq represents a genuine victory right now, which

no one should gainsay—but unfortunately for all of us, it could still

easily turn into a momentous disaster. Cutbacks at the state level are

going to remain a huge issue, and state leaders will have justifiable

reasons to blame Washington. If governors start accusing Bush of cutting

taxes at their expense, it could create a serious political problem for

him. (The $20 billion in aid to states that Congress just passed may inoculate

Bush against charges that he abandoned the states, so it very lucky for

him.) The Republicans are planning to use Sept. 11 politically, even choosing

New York City for their convention—a strategy that will backfire

if New Yorkers effectively protest the way that they have been mistreated

since 2001. (Or if, God forbid, we are attacked again.) The demographic

trends in states like Florida point the Democrats’ way, and they start

with a 2000 base that was bigger than Bush’s. The absence of serious third-party

competition from the left will help too. Even the media may be neutralized

if reporters shift, pack-like, from adulating Bush to criticizing him

once his popularity starts to slip for other reasons.

In short, this is a nonpartisan blog, but I wouldn’t bet a lot of money

on a Republican victory, even if I were a Republican.

According to Amos Elon’s review of Queen Noor’s autobiography in

The New York Review of Books (May 29, p. 7), the Queen once suggested

to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife that it would

be good if Israeli textbooks stopped spreading the "propaganda"

that Palestine in the 1940s was "a land with no people for a people

with no land."

"What do you mean?" Mrs. Netanhayu replied. "When the

Jews came to this area, there were no Arabs here. They came to find work

when we built cities. There was nothing here before that."

I find this retroactive erasure of a population truly chilling. (Mid

East Web, while obviously not an impartial source, provides plausible

statistics on the demographics of British Palestine.)