Probability and morality in healthcare reform

This morning Democracy in America has a great post on Obamacare, highlighting the folly (in European eyes) of approaching healthcare as an insurance problem.

An insurance premium is basically calculated by multiplying the payout in case an event takes place by the probability that the event takes place. Crucially, and obviously, the payout is conditional on having purchased  protection. If a flood takes away my house I will be reimbursed only if I have purchased flood insurance, otherwise I will sleep outdoor. If I damage my car I will be paid to repair it only if I have insurance, otherwise I'll walk.

Healthcare (in America, where it is treated insurance-like) is different: emergency care is not withheld subject of having insurance. Despite Europeans believing that uninsured Americans are left dying in the streets, emergency care has to be administered, everything on top is not, but the basics are offered. Afterwards a patient is billed and if uninsured he/she will pay the potentially large sum up to his/her abilities which could include personal bankruptcy. Awful but better than death.

This is the fundamental difference, I am saved even if I have not paid. In finance the difference between buying an option or the underlying is that in the first case the capital is protected, hence the upfront premium. This applies also to standard insurance as well (where instead of capital we have the thing we want to protect, i.e. a car, a house, etc.) but not to health insurance. When it comes to health in America, the capital (our life) is protected anyway irrespective of our having health insurance.

The article points out that as Obamacare stands, the incentive/penalty for young, healthy people is not enough to push them towards buying insurance (and thus contributing to the overall expense) and a bigger carrot/stick is needed. Of course the ultimate stick would be saying, if you do not have health insurance you will not be treated at all, you will be left dying. Morally impossible one has to admit.

Ah, the irony ...

The same people who were up in arms against the government trampling individual freedoms when it came to gun control, do not seem to mind in the case of the trial of the Boston bomber. 

It won't add anything ....

... to the unsolvable debate. But this is one of the most interesting and well put things I have read on the subject of gun control. An interesting excerpt:

Mr Garrison and his ilk among CSOPA seem gripped by two common fallacies. The first is the belief that county sheriffs can violate federal laws that they happen to disagree with, and can deny federal officers the right to enforce federal law in their counties. This is simply hogwash. It is true that as a local law officer Mr Garrison will not be required to enforce federal laws, but neither can he violate them just because he happens to believe they are unconstitutional. As for keeping federal officers out, well, the South has tried that a couple of times before. It did not end well.
The second is a misguided notion that the second amendment is the best and surest constitutional protection against tyranny. As Conor Friedersdorf sagely noted, the Bill of Rights offers much more effective and less costly checks on government power. There is the fourth amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure; the fifth amendment, which guarantees due process; the sixth amendment, which establishes fair trials; and so on. When these rights were hollowed out during the war on terror—by acts of Congress, the courts and even through executive orders—where was the outrage from those who see tyranny in every gun law?
The second amendment has a lizard-brain appeal: it is sexier to imagine yourself a lone soldier for justice defending your loved ones against an oppressive, tyrannical government than it is to imagine yourself protesting warrantless wiretapping. Mr Garrison approvingly cites a letter written by another sheriff, which states: "We must not allow, nor shall we tolerate, the actions of criminals, no matter how heinous the crimes, to prompt politicians to enact laws that will infringe upon the liberties of responsible citizens who have broken no laws." Stirring words, and entirely unobjectionable. I wonder if he had the same response to the Patriot Act.

The only thing one can add are the immortal words of the Onion. 

When in doubt, sue

As usual America finds the solution by pointing to the fundamental problem.

Gingrich's comments does more for inequality than the whole of Wall Street

Mitt Romney, like Kerry before him, is paying the price for speaking another language next to English.

This attack on education not only shows desperation in Newt Gingrich (with a large dose of cheek for someone who does not stop referring to himself as a man of culture, a historian) but I believe contributes more to America's inequality than the whole of Wall Street. (Forgive my hyperbole but few things are more repellent than attacks on intellectual "elitism").

America has the best universities in the world, it produces the greatest scientists, it has some of the world's best publications; its intellectual elite is on par, if not above, that of any other country. As for the rest of the country, bar a certain isolation from the outside world, it is more or less comparable to the "rest" in any other country. What differentiates America is a certain, recent, liking (comparable perhaps to France's mythical attachment to the countryside) of anti-intellectualism, folksy wisdom and an education that is all but informal.

This is a slippery slope (can this great evil as well be attributed to Nixon and his dark manoeuvrings?) and the wedge between the two can only become larger; comments like Gingrich's make things only more difficult. America's intellectual elite will become even more unapproachable and possibly a little more secretly self loathing (universities on both sides of the Atlantic are full of Americans being more "European" than the Europeans not to be confused with the "rest"). The rest will become even more proud in their ignorance and intellectual isolationism. I usually don't like Michael Moore but I agree that Bush, by glorifying being a C-student, made being a C-student as if it were the best possible achievement.

Are we surprised that Americans actually believe in America's exceptionalism?

Piu' che la legge, pote' lo yield

To all those claiming that capital markets are wild places that serve no constructive purpose, I reply, look at Berlusconi. As I write this I am not sure if he will ever come back, but the markets managed with merciless strength to dislodge someone that had up to now played the legal system like a fiddle. As much as we we hope for the absolute fairness and objectivity of the law, there is nothing as objective as a two way price.

Could this be a sensible future?

From the NY times

With only 960 residents and a handful of roads, this tiny hilltop village in the arid, sulfurous hills of southern Sicily does not appear to have major traffic problems. But that does not prevent it from having one full-time traffic officer — and eight auxiliaries.

The auxiliaries, who earn a respectable 800 euros a month, or $1,100, to work 20 hours a week, are among about 64 Comitini residents employed by the town, the product of an entrenched jobs-for-votes system pervasive in Italian politics at all levels

“Jobs like these have kept this city alive,” said Caterina Valenti, 41, an auxiliary in a neat blue uniform as she sat recently with two colleagues, all on duty, drinking coffee in the town’s bar on a hot afternoon. “You see, here we are at the bar, we support the economy this way.”

Maybe this is the future of declining developed nations. All this talk about austerity seems to forget that not everyone welcomes competition, not everyone has an inner entrepreneur that is waiting to be woken up; some people (and I am inclined to say that it is a sizable minority if not a small majority) simply want to work a little, without stress, and only with the goal of being paid enough to live.

If you are someone working for example in manufacturing in the West and see your fairly good job disappear somewhere else, you might reply, I don't want to be retrained to be a software engineer or something else, I don't want to move somewhere to struggle to find a job, I want things to be as easy as they were before. Of course the reply is, keep dreaming, but what can a government really do? Of course all western governments would love to have a population like Hong Kong; ready to put up with a hard life without complaining and without expecting much with the hope one day of setting up a winning business venture. Unfortunately the average seems to be closer to those who find a definite benefit pension a standard.

What can one do? Unless you can expel all the undesirable (which are most of the times the natives and not the immigrants), those who refute to compete, something must be done. These people must be taken care somehow either with unemployment benefits or public housing or even through prison should they turn to crime. They will not disappear.

So, isn't the model of Comitini suddenly attractive? Clearly the traffic wardens' salaries are not for the work done but to keep them employed and to keep the town employed. I am of course against government jobs being too nice, i.e. definite benefit pension, unsackable, etc., but if you have an amount of money to spend on taking care of that part of your population which could not cope with a fully competing society, would you rather spend it to create the bitter environment of public housing and prisons or to create the pleasant one of a small Sicilian town's coffee bar?

In defence of the British tabloid

Who would have thought that I would write one day a post with such a title ?

I have been living two years in Washington and during several cumulative hours spent queuing at supermarkets cashiers, I have had time to form an opinion about the local tabloids. Despite my deep hatred for their British counterparts, I have to admit that comparing them to the American ones is a bit like comparing P. G. Wodehouse to Danielle Steel or, and this will lead me to the next point, Bach to Stockhausen. The very strict libel laws in Britain mean that a tabloid needs to exercise great care in balancing a sensationalist message that might hint at outrageous things, with the need of not saying things which are actually untrue. In America, where one can say more or less whatever one wishes, we learned that Prince William forbade his father from inviting the latter's gay lover to the royal wedding. Neither publication appeals to me but at least I admire the skill required to publish a tabloid in Britain. (And I am not talking about phone hacking.)

I cannot recall one in particular at the moment but one has also to admit that some of the puns in tabloid headlines are quite clever.

As the Economist keeps reminding readers, in Britain journalism is a trade not a profession which means that there is a less status/snobbery associated with it. Contrary to what an outsider might think I believe that in a journalist's resume an early stint at a tabloid not only is not a handicap but it is probably a strength.

Having said that I am glad they are getting a little rap on the knuckles right now.

Gender free baby and giving liberals a bad name

Those who follow this blog would agree that Joe the Plumber would confidently classify me as belonging to the liberal elite. And yet when I read things like these I feel a warm fuzzy feeling towards Sarah Palin and the evangelical right. The idea of raising three kids that way, including the third supposedly gender free, is for me no better than not believing in evolution. When the left wonders what happened to the right they should look at the idiots in their own backyard.

The silver lightning

Lexington is pessimistic. I want to believe that in what looks like a very dark moment of the peace process there is an element of hope. One could say that it's darkest before dawn or something about the end of the beginning, in any case I cannot believe that things will continue like this.

Netanyahu felt confident of the backing of two elements in American society (leaving the traditional Jewish lobby aside), the evangelical/conservative masses who consider being not-pro-Israel tantamount to being un-American and the Republican establishment who believe, with a thinking worthy of a 1930s Bolshevik, that beating Obama is worth seeing one's own president humiliated at home.

The fate of the first group is linked to the fate of the Republican party in general and it is hard to predict: ten years from now we'll have more or less of the Joe the Plummer/Palin phenomenon? As far as the second is concerned I want to believe that once the political establishment snaps away from the pre-electoral frenzy they will all agree that one does not treat the President (and the US by extension) that way and get away with it.

Why Atlas Shrugged won't be the Tea Party's Passion

Atlas shrugged is not a masterpiece and yet is a great and unique book. It is a weird book. It has many flaws (too long, repeated messages, at times wooden dialogues, etc.). It has some amazing moments. I like to think of it as I think of Brahms's first piano concerto: weird, gangly, awkward, many times out of place and yet at moment you stop and say "wow, this guy is going to go far!". The good thing for Brahms is that he went on to write the second, Ayn Rand did not.

The greatness of the book is that it is beautifully written propaganda and I am not being sarcastic. Kipling managed to write masterpieces praising the British Empires, Ayn Rand managed to write a great book praising without reserve the liberal (in the true, non-American sense of the word) spirit. It is true that the book loses itself here and there, but when it's on focus it has an immense power. What is even more amazing is that Atlas shrugged managed to be considered a masterpiece in a literary world that (although here I am speaking from a European experience) usually is dominated by the left.

I have not seen the movie, I have heard mixed reviews. Instinctively I would say that this is the typical book that would lend itself to a great cinematic version: it has a strong simple message and the book itself could do with a trimming. What I am commenting on is something I have seen mentioned a while ago: hordes of Tea Party activists booking cinemas in block the same way as church goers did with Mel Gibson's Passion.

I have my doubts. Christian faith is one of the most complex subjects the human mind can tackle, far more than economics. Yet faith has a very simple and clear distinction between what is abstract and what is practical, between what is on earth and what is elsewhere. Moreover christian fundamentalists all agree with Mel Gibson's movie's message. When it comes to the Tea Party and Atlas Shrugged I am not so sure things would be so clear. First of all the Tea Party movements (thankfully and it is a praise to its dynamism) lacks the homogeneity of the christian evangelist movement, second I am not sure they would agree with Ayn Rand's message (despite the fact that many think they do). Tea Party activists asking to "Stay away from my Social Security!"? Do you even think there is room in Rand's world for social security (of the entitlement type we are used to)? Tea Party activists raging against "death panels" (implying "when I am on Medicare I want to be able so spend as much as I want")? Have you read Rand's contempt for this sort of whining? Have you forgotten what she thinks of the statements " ... to each according to his need ..."?

Why the Economist is the greatest publication in the world

It is no secret what the Economist thinks of private and public sector unions. The fact that despite that the Economist would publish an article in memory of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire praising, in a way, the birth of unionized labour and labour laws is another example of a great, fair and balanced publication.

The last cry of the middle class

A bit homesick and longing for some London footage I have been avidly following the student protests over the news.

Am I the only one noticing how everyone interviewed on camera seems to have a suspiciously plummy accent? Even allowing for the fact that the most articulated and educated protesters are the one most likely to get interviewed and that maybe some journalists are worried of approaching less polished ones still they seemed the only one they could get their hands on. I don't know if I should make allowance for this because on the other hand it would be a good scoop for a journalist to get on camera a barely comprehensible student from East Ham.

My point is the same that I have been making for a while, the ones that are going to lose from all this are the middle classes (in the English sense, i.e. the relatively well off) not the poor they claim to speak for. That class of people (perfectly described in Millenium People by Ballard) that is squeezed between the poor and the people (nowadays made mainly of bankers and Russians) who can send their kids to a good public school without thinking twice about the cost. The people who send their kids to University because it is the thing to do, but who take for granted that it should be free because otherwise it would be a considerable expense.

The poor's situation is different. No one seems to realize (or state openly) that the real cost of a University education to someone who does not consider it as the natural thing to do is not only the tuition fees (and the living expenses) but the missed income one would get from being employed. Someone taking the conscious decision (in this situation) to get a degree will not be put off by a further tuition fee. I can hear "but it is an enormous amount!". I hope that you know what I mean. If you are someone who considers University as a natural part of your life completely severed from any financial calculations, obviously 9000 pounds seem a lot, if you are someone who made a cool headed decision to treat a degree as an investment with a clear business plan, then 9000 it will be just a different cost.

I always like to compare the rage of the middle classes over tuition fees to my own rage over air travel. 25 years ago one could travel economy and arrive 40 mins before departure with only one or two people at the check in; one could find Boeing 747 with barely 20 people in coach cabin (when is the last time you had even only one empty seat next to you?). One could travel in economy (leaving aside the guilt about pollution and waste) with some of the comfort one can only find in business now. Not being able to afford business class when I travel on my own, I feel angry at the world, at low cost airlines that have pushed everyone to cut costs, at the yobs that now scoot around Europe when in the past they would have at most traveled by bus to Ibiza and in general at how things have changed. Basically I expect something without having to pay for it. Just like the middle classes expect to get a university education without having to pay for it.

Another image from The road past Mandalay by John Masters. He was in the 30s a British officer coming from a long line of Indian British officers. Not wealthy but considering a certain position in the world as a given (like the present day protesters): on his way back from American, he is short of cash and on the boat he cannot buy first class tickets, settling for second class. On the first evening without thinking twice he is entering the first class bar when the doorman stops him. John Masters looks at him shocked, I am a British officer, of course I should be allowed to enter, my ticket type should not matter. Unfortunately it was an American ship, where things work differently ...

As The Economist said a while ago, these elections will signal the end of the era of the free stuff and contrary to popular belief it will not be the poorest to suffer the most.

The exceptionally incredible

I followed a link from Lexington's notebook which brought me to the Daily Dish. Very interesting, if sad.

As far as the incident itself I thought when I heard it the first time that Obama was being not only very tactful, but extremely mature. Finally someone who speaks like a grown up. Andrew Sullivan's post is as usual very well written, what I find a bit upsetting is that he focuses too much on proving Obama's detractors wrong rather than showing what, by putting America's exceptional nature in perspective, a mature answer he gave.

My main point is however the shock at this paragraph from Jonah Goldberg

This reminded me of the wonderful scene in Pixar's "The Incredibles," in which the mom says "everyone's special" and her son replies, "Which is another way of saying no one is."

I am amazed. If we think carefully, as an example we are seeing brought to the table a (pseudo-)similar situation involving superheroes (animated ones to top it off). I cannot help feeling this is only the most explicit manifestation of a nation of little boys saying, superheroes exist, superheroes exist and there is one supernation and it's us. No wonder Obama's maturity is a bit lost on them.

"Don't ask don't tell" is a problem only because Americans chose to turn it into one

Americans don't do subtle. The expression wearing your heart on your sleeve for Americans applies to everything, everything has to be worn on the outside, including your religion, your private life and people think your are weird if you don't. When Tony Blair was asked why he would not talk more about his faith he replied "I don't want people to think I am a nutter." This very British approach would be lost on Americans. If you are religious you have to tell everyone, if you breastfeed you have to do it in the middle of a crowded restaurant so that everyone knows, if you don't drink or smoke you have to lecture everyone about it. This brings us to gays in the army.

I always thought "Don't ask don't tell" was an intelligent and pragmatic solution to a thorny issue. You don't judge my private life, I don't rub it in your face. Let us be realistic, soldiers are not among the most enlightened people around, there is a very strong chance that quite a few of them are homophobic. Is our goal really to reeducate a whole class of people which are already doing a difficult job, on the benefits of progress and a liberal mind?

One might argue this is unacceptable, society has to move forward, one should not condone intolerance and bigotry. The argument would continue saying that otherwise one would say that desegregation should not have happened since the feelings of Southern whites might have been hurt. It is different, segregation applied to a person's entire life, we are not advocating "Don't ask don't tell" as a blanket policy everywhere, only in very specific circumstances of a very specific and unique job, a job that affects a tiny percentage of the population.

I see a similarity in saying, I have the right to walk in the most dangerous part of town in the middle of the night, dressed in bright yellow with 100 dollar bills pinned on my jacket and come out safely. Considering this statement ridiculous does it mean that we condone crime? Certainly not, we just say that one has to be realistic. The state does its bit by trying to protect normal citizens going around their business, the citizen does his bit by not being stupid with the above request. "Don't ask don't tell" was a way of being pragmatic and a reminder of how Clinton could be a great politician.

Leaving all reasoning aside, I have another feeling. Advocates of the ban talk about "The right of men and women to serve their country .... ". My feeling is that gay men and women who really want to serve their country they do it keeping their private life private, advocates of the ban are just troublemakers who want to make a statement. I am always doubtful of decisions made with an argument that at the end boils down to "Why not?".

The bitter after taste of the Kerviel affair

Behind the ferocity with which the French population treated the women who had slept with Germans after the war, one could see the frustration of men who wished had done something but instead cowardly stayed on the side.

I cannot but see something similar in the sad affair of Jerome Kerviel. First of all the punishment. What does it mean to make him pay the entire sum he lost, reducing him to a life of bankruptcy? It really looks like the shortsighted thinking of the housewife "he lost (stole) all this money and he has to pay it back". It does not work like that. If one accepts a certain system (and the French broadly speaking they do) one accepts that Jerome Kerviel was not playing with his own money and yes, even if he lost it, he has not to pay it back from his own pocket. A reckless container ship captain will be punished but will never be made to pay for the replacement of the container ship he lost.

I hate what the Italians call "dietrologia" (more or a less a penchant for conspiracy theories) but I wholly agree that someone else must have know and kept quiet when things were going well. It is unbelievable that he was made to bear the brunt of the punishment all by himself. Where is the officer spirit? A superior should always be punished and it is this responsibility that should justify a superior's role, authority and rewards. Nowhere this is better expressed than in the support the troops offer to their major in the Bridge over the River Kwai. There was only finger pointing where there should have been hand wringing. The pointing was done in only one direction.

And finally something else which is only a feeling, but I feel it strongly. BNP and SocGen are outstanding institutions and world class players. Having said that they are no Goldman or Morgan Stanley, when the going was good they played second fiddle to the American giants which means that rewards and compensation were dished out accordingly. Was everyone balancing this with the supposedly warmer working environment (of which I am not even sure) of a European bank? I doubt, there must have been some resentment. It seems to me that the punishment of Jerome Kerviel is a way of venting this frustration. Shaving a woman's head is easier than shooting a German.

Immigration, the bully and the nerd

I strongly suggest viewing this lecture from Bryan Caplan and I suggest, although it is a bit long, to view it in full.

After watching it I had the same reaction I had when I finished Caplan's book "The myth of the rational voter": excitement and sadness. Excitement that someone had finally written in a clear and brilliant way things I had thought and felt, sadness that the outcome will be absolutely useless. In a way it is the direction America is moving towards: we tend to gravitate towards people and publications (even areas, isn't there a neighborhood of Ron Paul supporters?) we have almost everything in common and we become mutually incomprehensible with the rest.

I found the lecture very witty and I enjoyed it enormously, but being an arrogant and condescending person myself, it took me a while to realize that the tone sometimes was a bit too much. We all (all of us?) agree that NY and North Dakota are not really on the same cultural plane, but is there a need to sneer saying this? I wished that the lecture had been given in a tone to convince the "others" not to rally people who more or less already share your views.

There is something more I got out of it and I will have a go at a bit of pop psychology. More than once Caplan attacks high school drop outs and more than once (or maybe just once) he mentions the high school bully. One cannot help thinking hearing this that the whole lecture, the whole being smart, Caplan's whole position in life is one big revenge against the high school bully. What I said about the arrogant/condescending bit I say it here as well, I fully understand and share. I used to love that scene in Broadcast News when during the flashback into William Hurt's character's past, he tells the school bully, I'll show you one day, of something along the lines. I understand, but are the people that need to be convinced of Caplan's ideas about immigration going to be so understanding? I doubt. Caplan says, jokingly, that his role is to stand outside society and judge, he might be right, he is not a politician after all, but it is sad that such great ideas cannot be put to more constructive use.

The problem is that the Big Three are building exactly what the customer wants

I am still not sure whether I think it is a good idea to bail out the Big Three, probably at the end the choice will be a political one and it will be a yes. However I thought about some points raised during the hearing and I think that the whole issue is at the heart of the changing landscape of the american and world economy.

Rick Wagoner said that because of the credit crisis customers were not able to keep up with the financing rates to purchase a new car. For a non-american this statement seems a bit strange: Wagoner did not say they have not enough cash, he said they cannot keep up with the payments. This means that debt is taken for granted, it is a fact of life. Of course under a financial point of view debt in not necessarily evil, it can make sense if your investment returns more than servicing the debt.

A quote often thrown around is the one by Adam Smith saying that we should often compare the common sense in which we conduct family finances to the one we should apply to managing the finances of a country. All this however should be taken carefully since a family's credit rating can change more dramatically than a country's and it is harder to restore. Of course Europeans do not understand up to which point a car for an American is a necessity almost as much as a house is to us: we would not raise objections to being in debt to purchase a home. However this does not really matter.

The Big Three have been accused during the hearing of building cars that are not suited to the customer. This is not true. The problem is that they have been doing the opposite. They have been building large, comfortable cars that cost a lot less compared to the competition: who does not like to drive a gorgeous SUV, sitting like a king while the Monument Valley rolls in front of one's eyes and petrol is at 2 dollars a gallon? American enjoy what car buyers in Europe only see in commercials. This could not last forever: the problem is with the customer. One cannot have everything, something has to give in this picture, be it the size of the car, the price, the price of petrol ... (fortunately not the landscape). Finance has been deleveraging for a while, the american consumer needs to deleverage his/her expectations and the American manufacturing industry has to follow accordingly.

For a long time America has been the land of plenty and probably few things have represented this (and the contrast to the rest of the rich world) as much as its cars. Things unfortunately have to change. I wish for America's sake, and for all those who look at the United States as an almost magical place to move to one day, that the abundance was not only fruit of the large leverage at which personal finances were in debt. Debt is not evil and a healthy relation to it is a positive thing: it is a matter of size, just like the cars.

Upfront payment for the TARP

These days bankers are wearing cone hats and it is almost impossible to say anything in their defence. Even if you think that something might be said, it is extremely political incorrect to do so. It is far from my intention to defend the excesses and mistakes of the financial industry, but a little calculation could be interesting. Let us assume that the financial industry as a whole paid for the past ten years $ 100bn each year in bonuses. This is a conservative figure considering the Goldman Sachs alone paid $ 16bn last year: since it is conservative we can assume that everyone paid an average 40% income tax on that amount. Compounded at an average interest rate the total amount exceeds $ 500bn. It is not difficult to argue that financial professionals are a very small burden for the state since for many things such as education, health, transportation, welfare, etc. they go private. Even if this number is too large and the actual one is somewhat smaller, it still covers a considerable share of the TARP fund amount. All this is to mitigate the public outrage at the industry making a mess and then asking the taxpayer to bear the burden: a lot of it was paid upfront by the industry members themselves.

The dream: McCain running mate of a Democrat.

I am going to write it now to see whether in three months time I’ll be able to say “I said so”. Wouldn’t it be great if John McCain were Hilary Clinton’s running mate? Four years ago when the papers basically asked McCain to be Kerry’s running mate I thought it was a shame that he did not accept: I now realize that he was extremely wise in refusing. My wanting someone else than Bush clouded my judgment towards a politician that one could not define other than mediocre; to tie himself to someone like that would have ended his political career with a whimper. McCain knows that running on a bipartisan ticket can only be attempted once.

Now things are different. To start with, McCain is getting a little old and if one aims at an eight year stint at the White House, realistically this is his last chance. Moreover McCain is too clever for the electorate (so much so that sometime he tries desperately to appear a little more idiotic by doing things like singing “Bomb, bomb Iran”) and he needs to team with someone that has a bit more political clout. Teaming with Hilary Clinton would be a chance of doing so and at the same time pair up with an extremely clever person.

To be honest if McCain were vice president one could even afford a president less experienced than Hilary Clinton, what about an Obama-McCain ticket? Certainly more human. In all cases, if McCain accepted to run as vice president of a Democrat it would show that not all is lost for those two precious creatures, liberalism and intelligence, so rare on the political scene.