Marty Manley on economics, politics, technology, and culture

Archive for January, 2008

Man from A Place Called Phoenix

Bill Clinton famously campaigned as a man from A Place Called Hope. More impressive, perhaps, is the man from a place called Phoenix. Recall that the capital of Arizona is named for the mythical bird that manages to ignite itself at the end of its life, reduce itself to ashes, and arise young and reborn. [...]

The Shrinking of a Former President

Bill Clinton is a slimeball. Like Bob Reich, I say this with more sadness than anger. He has been race-baiting Obama – continually reframing the election to be about race. Witness his unprompted comparison of Obama’s victory in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson’s. Clinton is good at reframing debates while appearing not to. It’s easy [...]

Feeling Threatened by New Jersey? Or Alabama?

I’m a sucker for analogies and for oddball maps like this. Here we have US states renamed as countries of comparable economic size. Among other things, the map illustrates just how large the GDP of the US economy is (bigger than the next four largest countries combined: Japan, Germany, China, and the UK). Tip: Marginal [...]

Steve Jobs — Again

For Steve Jobs, it is clearly not sufficient to be the leading innovator of the age — his products must be so hot that  they define cool for the entire planet. The figures boggle the mind: six years after launch 110 million iPods now play 4 billion songs. 200 days after launch, 1 million iPhones [...]

Mapping the Republican Party

A recent essay by Michael Tomasky in the New York Review of Books inspired me to draw the following chart. It isn’t perfect, but I think it helps illustrate the fault lines in the Republican Party and clarifies why no candidate is likely to have an easy time getting nominated. The chart is an imperfect [...]

The Future of the House of Clinton

The Clintons simply didn’t believe it was possible, so they ignored the threat until it was very late. Worse, when finally they saw it, they had few options. They were beaten in Iowa not by a policy difference that they could defend — Clinton and Obama don’t disagree on anything. They were not being badly [...]

Revolution in Iowa

Click here for a narrated photo album of the trip. ————————————————————————————— Where but America can a politician with no obvious advantages apart from being well-organized, energetic, thoughtful, and eloquent go from unknown to political powerhouse in a few short years? A race with more than a dozen candidates is now focused on Barack Obama and [...]

The 2008 Iowa Caucuses

Click here for a narrated photo album of the trip. ————————————————————————————— At Thanksgiving over turkey I realized that the 2008 Iowa caucuses were going to be such an incredible political showdown that I had to go out and see it for myself. Both parties are hosting their most open Presidential primaries in memory — no [...]