What Michelle Obama Should Know

Last week, Michelle Obama, while campaigning for her husband in the Wisconsin primary, said: “Let me tell you, for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am proud of my country.”

Many columns have been written about what she really meant, and why her comments don’t matter anyway because she is only Senator Obama’s wife. The “only a wife” defense is ridiculous. While happy marriages frequently unite individuals with different personalities or preferences, they rarely unite individuals for long with different fundamental values. In any case, Michelle has been an active advisor in her husband’s campaign; and her views, especially given Senator Obama’s lack of a track record, are not to be dismissed lightly.

Later in that same speech, Michelle Obama said: “I see people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues and it makes me proud.”

The level of hubris and ignorance reflected Mrs. Obama’s speech is startling, but it represents nothing new in American politics. The idea that Americans have had nothing to unify them until Senator Obama came along is ridiculous. Throughout the centuries, shared beliefs in fundamental principles have united the American people and have made the American experiment unique in history.

The first unifying principle is the idea of liberty for all. Consider Thomas Jefferson’s transcendent words:

We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

No other country in the history of the world has been founded on the idea that liberty is an innate right of all human beings and it is not granted to them by any government on earth. One does not have to study history for too long to see the terrible consequences of the idea that rights and privileges are granted to you by whoever is ruling over you. Hundreds of millions of people in the 20^th century alone were slaughtered because the core belief in the idea of liberty for all was not widespread. Even today, this belief is not widespread.

Today, many societies are still organized around the principle of supremacy of the tribe rather than around the principle of liberty for all. In such countries, many feel justified in slaughtering their own countrymen because they are from a different tribe.

The second principle that Americans have been united around is the idea of a “melting pot.”  A “melting pot” can be successful only when everybody is united around the first principle of liberty for all. So moved were they by this principle of liberty for all that millions of new immigrants wept when they first spotted the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. At the base of the Statue are inscribed Emma Lazarus’s immortal words:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

I am proud of the American experiment. We have made many mistakes and continue to do so. In the end, those mistakes may cause this experiment in liberty to fail. If it does, it will be because many Americans are ignorant of our founding principles.

I am no jingoistic patriot, and I feel no anger about Michelle Obama’s words. I am saddened, however, because I know her words reflect the sentiment shared by many. I am saddened because I have little doubt that neither her husband nor John McCain share—or understand—the great founding, transcendent principles that have united Americans for so long.

Michelle Obama you are wrong; Americans are not united around the ad-hoc positions advocated by your husband. The only thing Barack Obama’s positions have in common is that he is advocating them. How can there be unity around a message with no principles behind them?

“I Have Never Given Away More Than I Got Back”

Consider this situation: You have just returned home from a supermarket; when you unload your groceries, you realize that a $25 package of fresh fish, tonight’s dinner, is not in your bags. You check your receipt, and indeed, you had paid for the fish. Further imagine that early the next morning, you are leaving on a three-week trip. If you shopped at most supermarkets, you might decide that there is not much to do about the missing fish.

Recently, our family was in this situation. Fortunately for us, the supermarket was Wegmans. Wegmans is a family-owned chain of 71 stores. Their average store is three times the size of a typical supermarket. They offer everything you’d find at a traditional supermarket as well as offerings that you would typically find only at Whole Foods.

I went online to Wegmans’ site and sent them an e-mail explaining our situation with the fish. I expected to get back an e-mail encouraging us to go to the store with our receipt after returning from our trip. The e-mail I did receive was a pleasant surprise: a Wegmans’ customer service representative apologized for the mistake and promised to send us a gift card for the sum of $50. The extra $25 represented Wegmans’ way of compensating us for our inconvenience. When we returned from our trip, we did indeed find the gift card and a note of apology from the local store manager.

Wow, now that is customer service! That kind of sincere customer service can’t be faked. Superior service can only be achieved when the customer service representatives are being treated as well by management as management expects them to treat customers.

Wegmans consistently ranks at the top, or close to the top, of Fortune’s list of best places to work. Salaries are higher at Wegmans than at other supermarket chains; and over the past twenty year, the company has paid out more than $50 million dollars in college scholarships to its employees. Wegmans spends generously on employee training and eschews rigid hierarchies that prevent the training from being used effectively.

According to Fortune “Wegmans’ labor costs run between 15% and 17% of sales, compared with 12% for most supermarkets. As a consequence its annual turnover rate for full-time employees is just 6%, a fraction of the 19% figure for grocery chains with a similar number of stores.”

And how about profitability? Again, according to Fortune’s estimates, Wegmans’ “operating margins are about 7.5%, double what the big four grocers earn and higher even than hot natural-foods purveyor Whole Foods. Its sales per square foot are 50% higher than the $9.29 industry average.”

Consumer loyalty to Wegmans is fierce. Many of its customers will drive long distances to shop at one of their stores. The loyalty of Wegmans’ customers is in part due to Wegmans’ loyalty to their employees. Treating employees well leads to treating customers well. Their former president Robert Wegman who passed in 2006 said, when referring to his generous treatment of his employees: “I have never given away more than I got back.”

In Robert’s wisdom, we hear an echo of one aspect of the perennial spiritual wisdom—giving and receiving are one in the same. If we offer kindness, caring, and a generous spirit, that is what we will receive. The values that Wegmans embodies are timeless; yet because most want to receive before they give, they are not easily implemented. In today’s competitive world, there are lessons in the perennial spiritual wisdom that many companies would be wise to learn.

Clemens and Clinton: The Ending of an Era

At first glance, the following two news events seem to have nothing in common:

Event 1: This Wednesday, the Congressional steroid hearings will feature the testimony of Roger Clemens. Over the weekend, in advance of those hearings, Rusty Hardin, the lead lawyer of Roger Clemens, made the following statement referring to steroid investigator and special agent, Jeff Novitzky. Hardin said “I can tell you this: If he ever messes with Roger, Roger will eat his lunch.” Referring to Henry Waxman, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Hardin said, “You have a chairman who is going down the tubes because his own committee doesn’t support what he is doing.”

Event 2: With momentum shifting to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton replaced her campaign manager, Patti Doyle, with her former chief of staff in the White House, Maggie Williams. Let me refresh your memory about Maggie Williams. In the words of Arianna Huffington, William gave “contortionist testimony” to Congress in her service to Mrs. Clinton. In addition, she was suspected of obstruction of justice for removing sealed Whitewater and Travelgate files after the 1993 death of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster. Williams racked up of over $300,000 in personal legal bills for her conduct as chief of staff.

As Huffington observed about Williams in 1997, she entered the White House as an idealist, “But at some moment during Clinton’s first term, the mission shifted from saving the country to saving the first couple.”

The conduct of Roger Clemens is disturbingly familiar to the conduct of the Clintons.

When it comes to denials, Roger Clemens’s claim that he did not use steroids is about as believable as Bill Clinton’s 1998 claim (aided and abetted by Mrs. Clinton) that he didn’t perjure himself. Both are using the same strategy—lie, use personality to charm the press and the public, hire high priced lawyers to intimidate witnesses, and hire public relations experts to convince us that they themselves are the aggrieved parties.

Unfortunately for Roger Clemens and Mrs. Clinton, years have gone by—economically, 2008 is not the 1990s. In 1990s the stock market was still rising, the housing bubble was just in its formative stage, gas prices were around a $1.00 a gallon, the second war in Iraq had not yet begun, and America was deep in denial. Today, all but the very wealthy are feeling troubled about America’s economic future.

What does economics have to do with the likelihood that Roger Clemens’s theater of the absurd denials will succeed? The answer is everything. Use the socioeconomic theories developed by Robert Prechter as your lens. According to Prechter, a positive social mood causes stocks and other financial instruments to go up in value, while a negative social mood causes the reverse. Not only that, but social mood is related to trends in popular culture, in war and peace, and in other social and economic indicators.

When the social mood is waning the public is much more likely to be less tolerant of those who cheat. Their attitude is we’re miserable and here is a culprit to blame for it. When the social mood is waxing, as it was in the 1990’s, the attitude is more like let’s not do anything to upset the “good times.” Unfortunately for Clemens and Mrs. Clinton, the social mood, by all indicators, is currently waning. For Clemens, the outcome of this waning social mood is that the public is restless and less likely to be tolerant of his bullying.

I sincerely feel for Roger Clemens, Rusty Hardin, and Hillary Clinton—they are playing difficult parts in this great game of life. They are really not to blame. They are manifesting failing ideas—that winning is everything, that integrity doesn’t matter, and that “spin” will bail you out. An era is ending; yet, they are playing their parts the only way they know how. They are like character actors who find that there is no longer any demand for the only type of character that they know how to play.

Predictions are always difficult. Expect the unexpected, but understand that the social mood gives us a guide. Right now, look for Clemens to be investigated by a grand jury and for Barack Obama to be the Democratic nominee for president.

The Fault is Not in Our Stars

In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Cassius speaks to Brutus and says this about Caesar:

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Cassius is arguing that since he and Brutus were born equal to Caesar, they should not have to bow to Caesar. Recognizing that “the fault is not in our stars” gives us a pointer to understand why it is that people seek a Caesar in the first place—It is because when things inevitability go wrong, they will have someone to blame. That is easier than taking responsibility to be “masters of their fates.”

As the current economic crisis just begins to unfold, it is inevitable the public psychology will go through several stages: The first stage is denial—the situation is not really that bad and the Fed or some politicians will fix things. The next stage is blaming some politicians, while longing for the good old days under another politician. The corollary of this is hoping for a return to good times in the future when “so and so” gets into office. But, for a lasting economic recovery, we must enter the stage of public willingness to see that collectively we have chosen “dishonorable graves.”

Consider the case of Bill Clinton—arguably one of the most corrupt men to ever hold the office of president. What is disheartening is the number of people who long for a return the “great days” of the Clinton presidency. What they are longing for is a return to the days when the excesses of the credit bubbles were still building but were not yet visible.

Let me bring to your attention, not a litany of Clinton’s old scandals but a recent scandal reported by The New York Times. The former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan has suffered for 19 years under the tyrannical leadership of Nursultan Nazarbayev. According to London’s Sunday Independent, Nazarbayev “has been accused of overseeing one of the most nepotistic, ruthless and corrupt regimes in central Asia.” Nazarbayev is believed to have stolen at least $1 billion dollars of his countries oil revenue.

Given all of this, Nazarbayev would be one of the last people that you would chose to head an organization to monitor elections and promote democracy. Yet according to the New York Times, Bill Clinton is an enthusiastic promoter of just such a post for Nazarbayev:

Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.

Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton.

Upon landing on the first stop of a three-country philanthropic tour, the two men were whisked off to share a sumptuous midnight banquet with Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stranglehold on the country has all but quashed political dissent.

Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader’s bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy.

According to the Times, Bill Clinton’s support paid off. Within two days, Frank Giustra had his elusive deal, and he turned his “unknown shell company into one of the world’s largest producers of uranium.”

And what was in it for Bill Clinton? Giustra has given or pledged $131.3 million dollars to the William J. Clinton Foundation.

Although this story has appeared in The New York Times it has been largely ignored by other traditional media outlets. No, there is no cover-up. The public simply doesn’t care to know. As long we don’t know, we believe the fault is in the stars.

It may be true that the current batch of presidential candidates is less corrupt than Bill Clinton. It is certainly true that none but Ron Paul has an inkling about what we as a people have to do to restore America’s prosperity. America’s decline is not in the stars—it is in our choices.