by Alex Evans | Sep 24, 2008 | North America
Steve Benen made me laugh with his take on McCain’s decision to ‘suspend’ his campaign and seek a postponement of Friday’s debate:
I’ve never even heard of a presidential candidate acting in such a reckless, compulsive, and ultimately haphazard fashion. McCain just decided to “suspend” campaign activities? This rivals picking Sarah Palin for the ticket on the list of desperation moves.
McCain spoke at some length yesterday about the nature of the economic crisis, and what he’d like to see happen. But at the time, it apparently never occurred to him to get actually get involved in the process. That is, until today.
The Republican nomination has apparently gone to some kind of man-child who believes stunts and gimmicks are the way to the White House. It is nothing short of breathtaking to see someone so manifestly unserious seek the highest office in the land.
See also his later post speculating on why McCain may have taken the decision…
by Richard Gowan | Sep 24, 2008 | North America, Off topic
In New York, Sarah Palin found something to talk about with Hamid Karzai:
While being photographed, they could be overheard discussing the Afghan leader’s son, who was born in January 2007. “What’s his name?” Palin asked.
“Mirwais,” Karzai said. “Mirwais, which means the light of the house.”
“Oh, nice,” said Palin, who was seen patting her heart and smiling.
There you go: a statesperson speaks. But I am disappointed that Palin did not build on this diplomatic opening by describing how she named her own five kids. A name-by-name analysis is here, but let’s go straight to Number 5:
Trig Paxson Van Palin is the couple’s youngest child and second son. According to the governor’s spokesperson Sharon Leighow in a statement made shortly after the baby’s birth, Trig is Norse and means “true” and “brave victory.” Paxson is a region in Alaska the couple favors. Van is a nod to the rock group Van Halen; before Trig’s birth, his mother had joked about naming her son Van Palin after the band.
I’d like to see Karzai top that. But if Palin told him that she wants to see victory in Afghanistan, he may have thought she just meant bringing Trig along for a trip.
by Alex Evans | Sep 24, 2008 | Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, Influence and networks
Over at the UN in New York, where it’s the annual jamboree that is the General Assembly, Nicolas Sarkozy has been calling on world leaders to hold a summit later this year on building a “regulated capitalism”. Four thoughts:
1) if this summit were to go ahead, it would mark the continuation of a trend towards head of state / government level summits on specific issues (as opposed to gatherings that cover a whole range of foreign policy issues, like the G8 or the Security Council). Earlier this year heads of government turned out in force for the FAO food summit; last year, Ban Ki-moon got a good turn out for his high level event on climate change at the UN.
But there’s only value in getting heads engaged if a) their involvement is needed in order to join up the dots between different areas of ministerial or department responsibility within their goverments (e.g. cross-sectoral bargaining that involves energy, climate and trade all at once), or b) their political clout is needed to forge a deal. I’m not sure that either of those conditions applies here – in which case, wouldn’t it make more sense to leave such a summit to finance ministers?
2) Sarkozy also said at a press conference yesterday that “we cannot wait any longer to turn the G8 into the G13 or G14, and to bring in China, India, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil”. Interesting to see this idea reviving; the scale of the current crisis (‘perfect storm’ etc.) might appear to militate in favour. But as ever, the big questions are less over who would be around the table and more about what it would do, how it would work and – above all – whether it would be any more effective than the G8 (which hasn’t achieved very much lately). More on this in a paper I wrote on new global leaders’ forums a while back.
3) While Sarkozy knows he wants a summit, it’s also clear that – so far – he doesn’t have any specific proposals for multilateral action. You can bet this will cause a frisson or two at Number 10, given that Gordon Brown does have a set of proposals for international financial reform, but so far lacks a coalition to push them. There might be potential for France and the UK to team up quite effectively here, not least given that Sarkozy will have recognised that without at least one major financial centre involved front and centre, his idea’s dead in the water (n.b in that regard that Sarkozy mooted London as a possible venue for the summit, along with NYC, Paris and Brussels).
4) Whether Brown’s proposals are the right ones to deal with the current crisis is, of course, a separate question. Looking at them again, the main impression is of the lack of specificity: calling for a “common approach to handling major global market disruptions”, a “clearer, more authoritative watchdog” or “common principles, shared analyses and information and collaborative management of crises” is all very well, but if there was ever a case of the devil being in the detail, this is it. (As for his calls for a global early warning system for financial crisis – by all means, but is now really the time to be thinking about that?)
It’s good to see that someone’s asking the big questions about long term prevention and looking to facilitate a serious high level conversation about where we go from here, and the UK should certainly get involved and think seriously about offering to host. But it’s way too soon to be thinking about shared operating systems or even shared platforms at this point: the key tasks now are a) to put out the immediate fire and then b) to build up shared awareness of what’s happened, why, and what we want to achieve as we consider a new financial architecture.
(For explanation of shared operating systems, platforms and awareness, see here.)
by Charlie Edwards | Sep 24, 2008 | Off topic
As reported elsewhere: Jurors have retraced the final steps of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, including visiting the Tube station where he was shot dead by police. Posters displayed along the platform include the following for ‘Righteous Kill’, a film starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.
by Richard Gowan | Sep 23, 2008 | North America, Off topic
In a new twist in our occasional series of the fashion and gadget choices of the powerful, we are pleased to note that Mr Kissinger gives pride of place to a picture of himself with John Paul II. Look, right by his armchair:
