Obama’s Energy Misleadership Part Two

(continued from last week’s blog)

In his February 27 weekly address, Obama acknowledged “pain at the pump” as gas marches toward $4 per gallon, and went on to say this:

Now, some politicians always see this as a political opportunity. And since it’s an election year, they’re already dusting off their three-point plans for $2 gas. I’ll save you the suspense: Step one is drill, step two is drill, and step three is keep drilling. We hear the same thing every year.

Well the American people aren’t stupid. You know that’s not a plan – especially since we’re already drilling. It’s a bumper sticker. It’s not a strategy to solve our energy challenge. It’s a strategy to get politicians through an election.

Drilling isn't a plan?

Obama has auctioned off only half the number of leases during his administration compared to the previous Democrat administration of Bill Clinton. With gas prices rising, he continues to restrict federal lands to oil and gas production calling drilling a “bumper sticker solution.”  In 2008, when President Bush lifted the executive drilling moratorium that applied to most of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), the price of oil immediately dropped more than $9 per barrel.  Since oil is a globally traded commodity, markets closely follow the decisions of policymakers to determine what future supply will look like. Did a $9 per barrel price drop make opening the OCS for drilling a “bumper sticker solution”?

Nevertheless, Candidate Obama dismissed the Bush move, saying "it would merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for 30 years. Offshore drilling," Obama said, "would not lower gas prices today, it would not lower gas prices next year and it would not lower gas prices five years from now." And yet, prices came down.

In the first weeks of his administration, almost before he had even had time to get his Oval Office desk arranged, President Obama canceled Bush’s opening of OCS.  Choking off production on federal land was always a priority of Obama from the moment of his swearing in.

Obama continued.

You know there are no quick fixes to this problem, and you know we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices. If we’re going to take control of our energy future and avoid these gas price spikes down the line, then we need a sustained, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy – oil, gas, wind, solar, nuclear, biofuels, and more. We need to keep developing the technology that allows us to use less oil in our cars and trucks; in our buildings and plants. That’s the strategy we’re pursuing, and that’s the only real solution to this challenge.

Rather than go full bore on the one asset in which we clearly have world superiority – fossil fuels – Obama considers wind, solar, and bio-fuels as viable energy sources. Why make using less oil in our cars, trucks, and buildings with the abundance of energy we already have?

Obama’s fixation on green energy lost the American taxpayer a half-billion dollars in the Solyndra boondoggle. [See my blog It's Not Easy Being Green, September 24, 2011]. Ignoring the disastrous $40,000 Volt, he is still calling for a million electric cars by 2014 and further calling for fuel economy standards that will take decades to impact consumption due to the number of cars now on the road.

Gas prices are up 93% since Obama took office, giving us a glimpse of just how well the green energy approach works Supported by decades of subsidies, wind power today provides only 1% of our electricity compared with 49% from coal, 22% from natural gas, 19% from nuclear power and 7% from hydroelectric. Wind turbines generally operate at an efficiency of only 20% compared with 85% for coal, gas and nuclear power plants.

So, Obama blabs on …

Now, we absolutely need safe, responsible oil production here in America. That’s why under my Administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years. In 2010, our dependence on foreign oil was under 50% for the first time in more than a decade. And while there are no short-term silver bullets when it comes to gas prices, I’ve directed my administration to look for every single area where we can make an impact and help consumers in the months ahead, from permitting to delivery bottlenecks to what’s going on in the oil markets.

Permitting? When he has denied more permits than the last five presidents?

And yeah, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years. Obama had nothing to do with it. As I noted last week, improvements in fracking and the increased production on private land explains the increase. Production on federal land has decreased because it’s hamstrung by prohibitions and regulations. Only 2.2% of federal offshore land is currently leased for production. The 10 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic Wildlife Reserve would require leasing 2,000 out of 19 million acres. Obama refused.

Obama rescinded 77 oil and gas lease permits in Utah and has held up production on others in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming – called the Persia of the Plains – which holds over 1.5 trillion barrels of oil, the largest oil shale deposit in the world!

Leases in the US western states on federal property are down 44% and permits for new well drilling are down 39% since Obama took office according to the American Petroleum Institute.

As if this weren’t enough, Obama in January refused to allow Canada’s Keystone XL pipeline to cross our shared border and provide oil to refineries in Texas. The XL pipeline would have had the capacity to move 830,000 barrels of oil per day – including oil produced in North Dakota and Montana – to Texas. It would have provided 20,000 direct jobs and possibly hundreds of thousands indirect jobs to build this $7 billion private project in a time of record Obama unemployment.

In another tip of the hat to environmental radicals, Obama claimed he didn't have time to evaluate the XL pipeline – an odd statement since the request has been around since September 2008, almost four months before he became president. He was able to cancel the Bush OCS drilling permits within a week of taking office and he pushed through a massive stimulus bill within the first month of taking office, but he had no time to study the XL pipeline in a time of over 9% unemployment.

Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi covered Obama’s back by saying the pipeline had no value to the US. Remarkable. "This oil was always destined for overseas,” she said. “It's just a question of whether it leaves Canada by way of Canada, or it leaves Canada by way of the United States." This airhead doesn’t grasp the fact that the refiners at the end of this pipeline don’t export crude oil, they export its high value petro-products and create a lot of jobs in the process.

Finishing up his speech, Obama concluded:

But over the long term, an all-of-the-above energy strategy means we have to do more. It means we have to make some choices.

Here’s one example. Right now, four billion of your tax dollars subsidize the oil industry every year. Four billion dollars.

Imagine that. Maybe some of you are listening to this in your car right now, pulling into a gas station to fill up. As you watch those numbers rise, know that oil company profits have never been higher. Yet somehow, Congress is still giving those same companies another four billion dollars of your money. That’s outrageous. It’s inexcusable. And it has to stop.

A century of subsidies to the oil companies is long enough. It’s time to end taxpayer giveaways to an industry that’s never been more profitable, and use that money to reduce our deficit and double-down on a clean energy industry that’s never been more promising. Because of the investments we’ve already made, the use of wind and solar energy in this country has nearly doubled – and thousands of Americans have jobs because of it. And because we put in place the toughest fuel economy standards in history, our cars will average nearly 55 miles per gallon by the middle of the next decade – something that, over time, will save the typical family more than $8,000 at the pump. Now Congress needs to keep that momentum going by renewing the clean energy tax credits that will lead to more jobs and less dependence on foreign oil.

It’s hard to know where to start with this bit of demagoguery.

Here’s a guy who has run trillion dollar deficits every year he’s been in office and he’s fuming over four billion dollars in oil company subsidies. Here is a guy who wasted $500 million taxpayer dollars on just one of his green energy projects, Solyndra, not to mention all of the other subsidized green projects that have done nothing to compete viably against fossil fuels.

Obama’s attack on tax “subsidies” for oil companies reveals his real agenda. Subsidies for oil companies have always served as an incentive for oil companies -- like copyrights and patents -- to take the risks associated with exploration and production and to expand the nation’s access to energy. The oil companies pay the highest effective tax rates of any American industry when special federal and sales taxes at the pump are taken into account.  Eliminating subsidies would single out oil companies for punitive taxing which would reduce the incentive to engage in exploration risks.

In his State of the Union address this past January, Obama had this to say about his energy policy:

Over the last three years, we've opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and tonight, I'm directing my administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources. Right now -- right now -- American oil production is the highest that it's been in eight years. That's right -- eight years. Not only that -- last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past 16 years.

As I’ve already said in this blog, Obama had nothing to do with increased oil production.

When he said, "I’m directing my administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil-and-gas resources," to undiscerning ears that sounds like Obama is finally getting on the right side of the domestic energy issue. But the operative word in his announcement is “potential.”

Let me explain. Last year the Interior Department severely restricted the number of places where leases would be sold. No drilling on the Atlantic coast, for example. No drilling in most places. Drilling would only be allowed in these severely restricted places and Obama is restricting offshore drilling to 75% of these places. It’s like saying, “of the 100 places you could drill if you had a choice, Interior has limited drilling to one place and I’m opening up 75% of that one place for drilling.” It’s a shell game.

Even then, it’s an empty offer. Offshore drill rigs cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build. If they aren’t drilling and pumping oil, they can’t be used for sunbathing. Therefore, when Obama shut down all drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater explosion, the owners of those idle rigs were losing millions of dollars each month. Predictably, they moved them to Brazil, the coast of Africa, and other locations at great expense just to get them back into production.

When Obama allows Gulf drilling – if ever and assuming he remains the President, which I hope not – those rigs won’t be rushing back to the Gulf until their contracts are over. Moreover, it is more profitable for them to stay where they are if there is work nearby than to move them again at great expense, measured in millions of dollars. As long as Obama is the President with his known bias against fossil fuels, no rig owner will return to the Gulf and risk another shutdown.

The Gulf of Mexico is a parking lot of rigs waiting to go elsewhere. Of 51 platforms there now, only 21 are under contract and only 15 actually drilling, a utilization of only 4%. The utilization in rest of the world is 83% and in Europe and the Mediterranean it’s 96%. Fourteen rigs have left the Gulf during the past two years and more are scheduled to leave soon. The Gulf provides 30% of our domestic production. With reduced production equipment, this will impact energy independence and gas prices. Obama’s policies have probably wrecked the Gulf economy for decades. And when I say Obama’s offer is an empty one, it’s because he can offer to open areas for drilling when there are no rigs to do it!

As if that weren’t enough, many of our refineries are under economic pressure. Unlike rigs, they can’t move. If they can’t be profitable they shut down and the work force scatters. But high crude costs, more exacting fuel standards, environment regulations, and foreign competition are taking their toll on our older refineries. Two will close this summer in Pennsylvania. Since 2008 the Northeast has been losing refinery capacity. When these two close, the total will be 700,000 barrels less per day going to market.

In January, Hess announced it would close its refinery operation in the Virgin Islands. This facility is a large supplier of gasoline, heating oil, and jet fuel to the Northeast.

The East coast had 12 refineries in 2010 in the middle of the Obama administration. Now there are eight. The global refining system can take up the slack, but unfortunately they are in the wrong places – outside of the US where they don’t hire Americans or help our economy.

If the Gulf Coast refineries could expand access to Canadian crude, they could become world-class with a competitive advantage in the world. Their production of low-cost natural gas combined with currently installed processing technologies would put US refiners in a strong position to expand their access to markets throughout the Western hemisphere and into Europe. By canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, Obama essentially killed this opportunity.

But wait! There’s more.

The EPA is finalizing rules that would require drill rigs to capture natural gas emissions rather than burning them off as you might have seen in photographs. As I mentioned near the beginning of last week’s blog, production of oil and gas on private and state properties have been beyond the regulatory reach of Obama who only had the authority to restrict use of federal lands. If successful, this would be the first time the EPA has tried to regulate energy production on private and state land under the heavy hand of the Clean Air Act. Once again the administration has tried to disguise its agenda by saying the capture rule will pay for itself since the captured gas could be sold. But the industry, which makes its living by knowing such things, says the cost of capturing emissions will far outweigh the economic value.

The EPA also plans to implement “Tier 3” standards for vehicles and gasoline. This would increase the cost of gasoline by 25 cents per gallon, increase the price of cars, and shut down as many as seven more refineries, decreasing gasoline supplies from domestic refineries by 15%. Other punitive EPA regulations will further reduce gasoline supplies.

So far the opponents of fracking on the Left have not been able to make the case that it contaminates ground water. Researchers, notably those at the University of Texas, have proven that fracking procedures are not a harm to drinking water. But the EPA has been drawn into an investigation of the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas, the Permian Basin in Texas where the feds seek to protect an endangered lizard, and the Bakken Shale in North Dakota. Combined, private and state land drilling in these areas now make up about 40% of the nation's land-based oil output. And they are beyond the federal government’s reach. But if the EPA can make the case for contamination, it can reach into drilling operations on private and state lands and shut down the principal technology that has made recovery so productive – fracking – and thereby further reduce domestic oil and gas production.

And there you have it. Either Obama is incompetent in solving America’s energy problems or, since he is allegedly the smartest person to hold the office, he knows precisely what he is doing and is pandering to radical environmentalism to accomplish his vision of a transformed America reliant on green energy.

There’s no arguing that affordable energy is the lifeblood of a strong economy. The abundant supplies of energy reserves in North America are our best hope for creating jobs, reviving our economy, and becoming once again the world’s leader in energy production – fully independent of foreign sources. Yet these possibilities are increasingly blocked by the interference and growing burden of heavy-handed government regulatory agencies. This has made the people’s property an ideological hostage and caused a 40-year decline in energy production.

The American people deserve better. Whether they believe that will be revealed this November.

Obama’s Energy Misleadership

Oil had been seeping to the surface of the ground in an area of northwestern Pennsylvania since the Seneca Iroquois occupied the region. They used if for medicinal purpose, which the white settlers did also as they gradually displaced the original occupants.

Among them was Samuel Kier whose oil supply exceeded demand so he began looking for alternate uses to medicinal applications. He sent samples of the stuff to Professor James Booth who was a chemist at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, a primitive research organization named after Benjamin Franklin, the colonial era scientist and inventor. Booth cooked the samples in a still and discovered its by-product was suitable for lighting. He provided this information to Kier, who in a short time was able to create a still and a lamp to burn this early form of kerosene.

The product came to the attention of a New York lawyer in the 1850s who arranged financial backing to commercialize the venture, since the competitive artificial light sources of the time were whale oil and candles. Edwin Drake was hired to drill a well – a curious choice since his entire work experience was in railroading. But Drake was all too attracted to the annual salary of $1,000 and the opportunity to be the general manager of whatever outcome the venture produced. By sheer dumb luck, he walked the fields surrounding the village – by then called Titusville – and picked among the puddles of oil in the fields the only spot where oil would be found at a shallow depth.

Since water continued to fill the hole as Drake and his helpers drilled, they came up with another fortuitous idea – using a white oak log to drive a cast iron pipe casing into the hole which prevented the aquifer from filling the drill hole. On Saturday, August 27, 1859 work had stopped at 69 feet and everyone expected they would have to drill another hundred or so feet to find oil. The next morning, the casing was filled with oil. The news spread quickly and opportunists moved in to lease nearby properties and start drilling operations. The oil was pumped out using the same hand-operated device that was employed to pump water from wells. The gooey substance was then poured into barrels and carted off to distilleries by teamsters.

About 4,500 barrels of oil were recovered from that field in 1859, and by 1862, in the middle of the Civil War, production had reached three million barrels. The petroleum industry was born. Fortunes were made by almost everyone in oil – except Drake who had neither patented his techniques nor controlled production by buying or leasing the surrounding land. Imposing business management and controls on the nascent industry would come from John D. Rockefeller in the 1870s with the formation of his Standard Oil Company. Drake would die in poverty.

Since 1859, America has been on the verge of depleting its supply of fossil fuels several times, if you believe federal government predictions.

The Bureau of Mines said in 1914 that our oil reserves would be gone by 1924. They weren’t, so in 1939 the Interior Department said oil reserves would be depleted by 1952. They weren’t, even though we had fought World War II, so in 1951 the Interior Department tried again and said we would run out of oil in 13 years – in 1964. Wrong again. Then in 1970 the world’s “proven” oil reserves were estimated to be 612 billion barrels. Unfortunately, 767 billion barrels of consumption later, there was still an estimated 1.2 trillion barrels in the ground. The Middle East oil embargo struck as did the pathetic picture of Jimmy Carter in 1977 forecasting in a televised speech that we would use up all of the world’s oil reserves by the end of the 1980s. But by 2006 almost 700 billion barrels had been pumped and proven reserves were then estimated at 1.2 trillion barrels.

When an apocalyptic preacher predicts a date for the end of the world, he’s called a kook. When a political flake predicts a date for the end of oil, he’s called an environmental conservationist. Both hate to see the world march on past their doom dates.

The reason that “proven” reserves become unproven by the evidence of consumption is that the technology for finding reserves is constantly improving – so there is more there than thought when less sophisticated tools were used in the past. Additionally, the technology for retrieving fossil fuels is constantly improving so some reserves were not counted in the past because the cost of getting it out of the ground exceeded its value in the market. With better retrieval techniques, we can go back and recover fuels the old tools could not, and we can count them in the reserve inventory. Therefore, in 1980 the US had an estimated 30 billion barrels of reserves. Thirty years later, we had consumed almost 80 billion barrels and still had more in the ground than the original estimate.

Despite record rates of consumption, with the advent of industrialism around the world, especially in China and India, world oil reserves are 15 times greater than they were in 1948 when records began to be kept. World coal reserves have increased 75% in the last 20 years and world gas reserves have increased 400% in the last 30 years. At the present levels of consumption, the world has 45 years of known retrievable oil in the ground, 63 years of gas, and 230 years of coal.

Proven or known reserves are “proven” because their volume has been verified by sophisticated sampling, often in anticipation of recovery – i.e. wells are being drilled or soon will be drilled. Potential reserves are “potential” because they are not scheduled for immediate recovery, therefore less sophisticated sampling has been done to map their exact volume but the amount of reserves is generally well known. The potential world reserves of oil at present consumption rates will supply the next 114 years, whereas gas will supply 200 years, and coal, 1,884 years.

Possible reserves are called “possible” because the likelihood of finding fossil fuel in their underlying geology is high but few drill cores have been sunk because recovery is far back in the production queue.

This distinction in “proven” versus “potential” versus “possible” is important to understand because one of the statistics Obama likes to trot out is that America has 2% of the world’s reserves but consumes 20% of the world’s consumption, ergo domestic drilling is a fool’s errand. Not true, and since he’s the smartest president to hold the office, he probably knows that or ought to know that.

Here’s vanilla vintage Obama in campaign-speak at the University of Miami last month:

So what does this mean for America? It means that anyone who tells you we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re talking about — or isn’t telling you the truth. The United States consumes more than a fifth of the world’s oil. But we only have 2% of the world’s oil reserves. That means we can’t just rely on fossil fuels from the last century.

Isn’t telling the truth? Let’s talk about truth in oil. There are 400 billion barrels of crude in US reserves that could be recovered today using existing drilling technologies, according to the US Department of Energy – for those living in Palm Beach county Florida, that Department is part of the Obama administration. A Rand Corporation study found that the Green River Formation in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado hold about 800 billion barrels of oil shale in "technically recoverable" reserves, which means these reserves are recoverable with existing technology. Green River holds more than triple the known reserves of Saudi Arabia. When you add the two, the US has 1.2 trillion barrels of technically recoverable oil, according to the Institute for Energy Research. But there’s more. The possible US reserves are estimated at 2.3 trillion barrels. The truth is the US is awash in oil as this figure clearly shows.

Obama’s “2% of the world’s oil reserves” refers only to 22 billion barrels of proven reserves which are essentially in production now. It ignores potential and possible reserves. That’s like saying I only have $5.25 in money, meaning that’s what’s in my pocket. But that ignores the hundreds of dollars I might have in bank accounts and the thousands in untapped potential credit. Now who’s telling the truth?

The US, Canada, and Mexico – presumably friendly neighbors – possess oil reserves that exceed all of the oil that has been consumed in the world since the first well in Titusville was drilled over 150 years ago. Saudi Arabia has about 260 billion barrels of reserves. Stated differently, at present consumption levels, North America has 250 years of oil reserves. It has 175 years of natural gas reserves, more than Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkmenistan – combined. And coal? North America has enough coal to generate electricity for 500 years – more than Russia, China, Australia, India, and Ukraine combined.

So what’s the flap about the US being so energy-dependent on oil imports from countries, most of which don’t like us? It’s called radical environmentalism – the ideology that pits humans versus the planet and believes in the long run that the planet would be better off without humans or at least without their messy ways.

Perhaps you’ve seen the Nissan LEAF television commercial which show short clips of people doing everyday things – brushing their teeth, using their coffeemaker and microwave, using their cell phone, turning on their computers – except all of the devices are gasoline-powered and belch out smoke and soot when they are turned on. Then a background voice asks what if everything ran on gas. The camera quickly cuts to a green leafy street and we see a man walking up to his car. He pulls the charging plug out of an efficient tony vehicle revealing that what appeared to be a parking meter was in fact a charging outlet. The commercial ends with the contra question, “… then again, what if everything didn’t [run on gas]?

Innovation for the planet, the commercial claims – a great car for a green planet. You can see the commercial here.

Notice the subliminal imagery of the belching smog and its equally subliminal connection to human health. The beautiful lie, however, is that electricity must be generated. We can’t dig it out of the ground or snatch it out of the air. And 86% of our electric power is generated by facilities whose motive power is oil or coal. The equally beautiful lie is that we live in an “either-or” world. We can have this or that but not both. The world of radical environmentalist has no “ands” in it – no this and that. It’s inconceivable to them, for example, that we could drill in the Arctic Wildlife Reserve and recovery the oil reserves there without disturbing the environment or the wild life there.

Despite all of the environmental roadblocks that were thrown in the way of achieving energy independence – whose chief patron is currently in the White House – this country managed to achieve a milestone last year. We were a net exporter of petroleum products. How? Two ways.

First, most of the production occurred on private land rather than federal land, euphemistically called “public” lands. Second, the widespread use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has made recovery more productive in terms of cost and yield. Fracking has been used for 60 years, but it is getting increasingly sophisticated in allowing energy companies to drill horizontally and recover gas and oil from up to a mile from the well. It involves pumping millions of gallons of water and sand to break open rocks, tapping energy-rich shale formations that were irrecoverable or overlooked in the days of conventional drilling. Using the fracking methodology in over one million wells, the energy industry has recovered seven billion barrels of oil and 600 trillion cubic feet of natural gas with no harm to the environment.

The other reason for achieving last year’s milestone is that the Obama administration has no control over private and state lands where there are substantial oil and gas deposits. A side-by-side comparison of oil and gas production on private versus federal land shows that since Obama took office, oil production has decreased on federal property while it has increased on private and state property. The increase in the latter offset the decrease in the former. Fracking helped make private and state land production more effective and that helped the country become a net exporter of petro-products last year.

States like North Dakota and Pennsylvania contain large deposits of oil-rich shale which also included locked-in gas reservoirs. These are known as the Marcellus and Bakken deposits. North Dakota will produce 16 million barrels of oil this year thanks to the pro-energy policies of its government. The Heritage Foundation reported that drilling in North Dakota is growing at a record pace, making North Dakota “the poster child for what can happen when we unleash free enterprise and allow states to develop and commercialize their resources.” North Dakota unemployment is 3.4% – the lowest in the country.

Because of its energy economy, North Dakota hiring and wages are causing a mass migration to the state by people in search of jobs. There a person can make $15 an hour serving tacos, $25 an hour waiting tables and $80,000 a year driving a truck. Under the surface of North Dakota lies the Bakken formation, estimated to have reserves of between 4 billion and 24 billion barrels of oil. So unless energy prices collapse, the state’s economy will remain strong for years.

Watford City is located near the center of the Bakken formation. Normally there are 3,000 permanent residents. Now there are 6,500. Most are looking for oil field jobs which pay an average of $70,000 and with overtime, up to $100,000. Jobs in the local economy are having to pay more just to hold on to their staff. For example, entry level jobs in grocery stores, convenience stores and banks are paying $12 an hour. Housing is booming, as is the public infrastructure needed to support the population boom, paying those who do this kind of work wages they haven’t seen in years.

The economies of Alaska, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Texas are not far behind. Their common denominator with North Dakota is energy production.

This boom is not likely to be reproduced on federal property where about 70% of our country’s known oil shale exists. The federal land deposits contain five times the amount of oil in the Saudi reserves. In a free market, these reserves would be the first recovered because of their high quality. But the Obama administration has closed most of the land to drilling on the ludicrous assertion that shale oil has not been proven technically and commercially viable. Say that with a straight face.

Assuming open access to federal lands were possible, all of the federal regulations applied to oil and gas development simply make it more expensive than producing on state or private land. Yet Obama’s chief of the Bureau of Land Management, in recent testimony before Congress, stated that it is considering making recovery on federal land even more expensive. Onshore production royalty rates are to be increased 50% -- a curious move when Obama recently “promised” the American people that he “would do everything in my power” to bring gasoline prices down. 

The proof of the pudding is in the eating so let’s sample a little Obama pudding – next week.

Stay tuned.

“…I have Israel's back”

After Muhammad, the founder of Islam, died in 632 A.D. there was a dispute over who should succeed him. The secular leadership (Caliphate) of Islam was given to Muhammad’s father-in-law, although many believed it should have passed to his purportedly chosen successor and son-in-law Ali. Those who chose to follow Ali called themselves Shia Ali – or “Partisans of Ali” – whose shortened form is Shiite.

Ali did in fact become the fourth Caliph, but among Shiites he is considered to be the first Imam or spiritual leader and was believed to be endowed with infallibility. Ali was murdered and thereafter eleven generations of Imams descended from him. Curiously, each of these Imams were also killed either by poison or murder except the 12th. Upon each Imam’s death his role and title passed to his son in hereditary succession. However, the 12th Imam was five years of age when the title passed to him, and while he was not murdered, he did disappear in 872 A.D. Shiites believe he has never died. Since his disappearance, they believe he has been living in the “occultation” – an eschatological belief among Shiites that the 12th Imam will reappear when Allah decides and will come in the form of a messiah-like figure called the Mahdi. Upon his reappearance, the 12th Imam al-Mahdi will rule the world for a certain number of years, during which he will establish Islam as the global religion and restore peace. Jesus will be a subordinate ruler at his side and this will continue until the Judgment Day arrives. 

Shiites make up 15% of all Muslims, but 90% of Iranians are Shiite and 80% are Twelvers – i.e. believers in 12th Imam eschatology. Twelvers believe that the 12th Imam currently directs the lives of chosen ones. The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a Twelver as is his mentor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, father of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, was also a Twelver.

When Ahmadinejad spoke before the UN in 2005, shortly after becoming Iran’s president, he ended his address with a prayer calling for the return of the Mahdi – the 12^th Imam. In a later meeting with a senior conservative ayatollah, he was filmed speaking about that UN address. That film circulated within Iran as a DVD and was on the Internet where a copy was made and broadcast by the Public Broadcasting System in December 2005. A translation of Ahmadinejad’s remarks reveals his belief that he is one of the chosen ones and thus is being guided by the 12^th Imam:

On the last day when I was speaking before the assembly, one of our group told me that when I started to say "In the name of God the almighty and merciful," he saw a light around me, and I was placed inside this aura. I felt it myself.

I felt the atmosphere suddenly change, and for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. When I say they didn't bat an eyelid, I'm not exaggerating because I was looking at them. And they were rapt.

It seemed as if a hand was holding them there and had opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic republic.

In speeches within Iran since his presidency, Ahmadinejad has said that the main mission of the Islamic Revolution is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, which Twelvers believe will happen in a worldwide apocalypse of catastrophic proportion – i.e. war, economic chaos, and social upheaval. The Twelvers believe that it is their duty to hasten the return of the Mahdi by creating the apocalyptic chaos. This is the prism though which we must listen and understand the rhetoric of Iran’s anti-American and anti-Israel threats.

Throughout the Cold War years, the US and Soviet relied on mutually assured destruction to deter a nuclear war between them. Whichever side launched a nuclear attack could be assured that the other side would get enough nuclear missiles in the air to accomplish mutual destruction. Although Israel has several hundred nuclear missiles that would surely spearhead a retaliatory response to an Iranian nuclear attack, mutually assured destruction does not deter Iran. Its leaders and the proponents of its nuclear weaponry are not intimidated by a nuclear response from Israel or the US because nuclear war would pave the way for the return of the 12^th Imam.

Obviously, then, the time to strike Iran is before it is able to retaliate – before it has nuclear weaponry. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, certainly knows that. His Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, has publicly warned that Iran will soon enter a “zone of immunity” in which foreign attack will be futile. Iran is furiously excavating the interior of mountainous over-cover – hardly the act of a nation interested in peaceful uses of nuclear energy as it often claims. “Attacks” by unknown sources have so far relied on computer bugs, explosions, and the assassination of four scientists working in Iran’s nuclear program. These interventions have delayed nuclear progress but not crippled it.

Last week, Netanyahu visited the US to meet with Obama. He no doubt hoped he could persuade the President that further threatening rhetoric by either of them was fruitless. Warnings, sanctions, and diplomacy haven’t worked and aren’t likely to work because Iran’s leaders believe that the American people don’t want another war after Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet without a line in the sand there is nothing that will give the Iranian leadership pause about the risk of continuing their program. When President Bush invaded Iraq and warned them that they were next, Iran suspended their program. This president doesn’t worry them.

But Netanyahu’s hope that meeting with Obama would focus on an honest assessment of the growing threat of a nuclear Iran was delusional. For Obama it was just another whistle stop in his reelection campaign.

The invitation for a White House meeting had been extended a month earlier when representatives of the administration traveled to Israel to discuss Iran and try to persuade Israel from acting unilaterally. When Netanyahu arrived on American soil hoping he could get Obama to ratchet up his resolve, what he found was Obama’s public relations spin machine running wide open. Obama was determined he would not take another drubbing like the one Netanyahu gave him last May. (See my blog Netanyahu Scores; Obama Bombs, May 28, 2011).

Before meeting with Netanyahu, Obama was scheduled to speak to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Therefore in full campaign mode, he invited AIPAC officials to a White House visit before the speech to complain that he wasn’t getting credit for all of the pro-Israel initiatives he’d instigated. Moreover, the White House spin machine had arranged an unprecedented 45-minute meeting for Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic magazine – notably a pro-Democrat journal – to interview the President. Predictably, it consisted mostly of softball questions. Read the interview for yourself. It’s online.

The pressure Obama applied to Netanyahu last May to move back to the 1967 borders cost him Jewish support, and with the election just nine months away, he is scrambling to win back Jewish voters and donors.  His comments to the AIPAC audience of 13,000 were intended to show what a friend of Israel he is. Yet as he took the stage, he was initially met with a lukewarm reception by the audience. Among many things, he asserted that as president, “I have provided critical funding to deploy the Iron Dome system that has intercepted rockets that might have hit homes and hospitals and schools [along the Lebanese border.]” This is untrue; Congress funded the Iron Dome system under the leadership of Senator Mark Kirk during the Bush administration.

The Obama speech was filled with the usually-abundant usage of the personal pronoun “I” along with untruths and half-truths. But refuting them one by one is not my aim in this blog. The speech was an appeal to Jewish Americans. Whether Obama succeeded in winning them back depends on his audience’s command of the facts.

The meeting between Obama and Netanyahu followed the Sunday speech – a speech in which Obama made not one laudatory remark about his guest on the following day. Not one. And yet he was effusive in his comments about Shimon Peres who holds the largely ceremonial office of Israel’s President and accompanied the Netanyahu legation

Obama and Netanyahu clearly don’t like each other. An open microphone recently caught Obama’s sentiments in a meeting with France’s President Sarkozy: “I can’t stand Netanyahu,” Sarkozy said, “he’s a liar.” “You’re tired of him,” Obama complained, “what about me? I have to deal with him every day.”

In Jeffrey Goldberg’s well-publicized interview, he asked Obama, “Are you friends? Do you talk about things other than business?” Obama’s response is revealing:

You know, the truth of the matter is, both of us have so much on our plates that there's not always a lot of time to have discussions beyond business. Having said that, what I think is absolutely true is that the prime minister and I come out of different political traditions. This is one of the few times in the history of US-Israeli relations where you have a government from the right in Israel at the same time you have a center-left government in the United States, and so I think what happens then is that a lot of political interpretations of our relationship get projected onto this.

One recent political interpretation didn’t need much interpreting. At a conference last month in Tunis, Hillary Clinton, Obama’s Secretary of State, was asked by a Tunisian student why Obama panders to “Zionist lobbies.” Fair question, she said, and added that during an election season "a lot of things are said in political campaigns that should not bear a lot of attention." Does that mean politicians lie in order to get votes? Can the pro-Israel proclamations from a politician running for reelection be trusted? And why didn’t Clinton dispute the premise of the student’s question?

In his interview for The Atlantic, Goldberg asked Obama, “Do you think [the Iranian leaders] are messianic? Listen to Obama’s response:

I think it's entirely legitimate to say that this is a regime that does not share our worldview or our values. I do think, and this is what General Dempsey was probably referring to, that as we look at how they operate and the decisions they've made over the past three decades, that they care about the regime's survival. They're sensitive to the opinions of the people and they are troubled by the isolation[sanctions] that they're experiencing.

Does Obama really think a fanatical end-of-the-world eschatology is a worldview? That our differences are just their “values” versus ours? Does he really believe that the Iranian leaders care one whit about the survival of their regime if it brings the return of the 12^th Imam? Does he really believe that Iran’s leaders are “sensitive to the opinions of the people” – some of which are dying in their putrid jails? America is confronted with maniacs in Iran and we have a president who is lost in space!

As Netanyahu watches the nuclear clock tick down in Iran, he has to be concerned with how reliable an ally he has in Obama during an election year – or afterward, for that matter. Since Obama needs the Jewish vote he can say things like "There should not be a shred of doubt by now: When the chips are down, I have Israel's back," as he did in his AIPAC speech. Will a reelected Obama make the same assertion?

If Israel doubts that Obama will take the tacitly promised military action when sanctions and diplomacy fail – and they will surely fail – Israeli leaders have two options. They can accept a nuclear Iran, which means other countries in the Middle East will also “go nuclear” and that would likely be the end of Israel in the neighborhood. Or Israel could go it alone and strike as it did against Iraq and Syria. Regardless of the success of an Iranian attack, it would roil the Middle East and spike gas prices – not good for an incumbent in an election year.

If Israel goes it alone, Obama is caught in a bind. In his AIPAC speech he acknowledged Israel’s right to defend itself. He could hardly then take a stand against Israel’s actions, and he would be hard-pressed to deny help to Israel if he was asked. Yet he would not give Netanyahu the “red line” he wanted – i.e. a clear set of conditions that Iran could not misinterpret as the military option trigger. After all, it’s an election year and Team Obama seems more focused on deterring Israel than stopping Iran’s march toward a nuclear bomb. That message should have been loud and clear to Netanyahu. I think it was.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Eyal Gabbai, the former director general of the Israeli Prime Minister's office, said Netanyahu's meeting with Obama "will be the last time they can speak face-to-face before a decision is taken.” What does that mean?

Is Israel poised to strike? Would it strike only nuclear weapon facilities, some of which are target-hardened? Would it target Iran’s unprotected electrical grid and infrastructure, paralyzing its economy? Both?

If Israel were to succeed in destroying critical weapon-making assets, they would be rebuilt. No doubt Russia and China would help in the effort. Even if Iran’s program is set back for years, it won’t be set back permanently. The only thing that would bring about a permanent solution is regime change.

Moreover, there are an estimated 200,000 missiles in the countries surrounding Israel – in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran and those in the hands of Hamas in Gaza. An attack on Iran would surely bring those missiles raining down on Israel. The war would therefore widen to include those countries. China and Russia would at least be Iran’s allies in the conflagration as arms suppliers. The US could not sit on the sidelines when its only ally in the Middle East is under such an attack.

Given the risk of counter-attack and understanding Iran’s apocalyptic 12^th Imam theology, why would Israel limit its objective to disabling nuclear facilities when regime change is the only permanent solution – assuming there is a solution short of mutually assured destruction? Israel’s destruction is virtually assured if Iran gets a bomb. Why would the Israeli leaders wait on a dithering president in a reelection campaign whose loyalty to the historic relationship between our two countries is suspect?

What Obama succeeded in accomplishing in his meeting with Netanyahu last week was to convince the Prime Minister that whatever America’s ally in the Middle East decides to do, Obama will know nothing about it until it’s underway.

James Q. Wilson’s Broken Windows

The era of the 1960s was marked by an unpopular war in Vietnam, social unrest in the country, and an increasing crime rate in the cities. Although Barry Goldwater made crime an issue in the 1964 presidential campaign, Lyndon Johnson, who was running to hold on to the presidency he assumed after the Kennedy assassination, declared crime to be a state issue. The federal government didn’t have the power – nor should it have – to fight crime, candidate Johnson said.

And yet 47 years ago this week, President Johnson, in a pontifical message to Congress, announced the formation of a federal Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. It would be composed, he wrote, of “men and women of distinction who share my belief that we need to know far more about the prevention and control of crime.” With typical Johnsonian hubris, he declared:

No agency of government has ever in our history undertaken to probe so fully and deeply into the problems of crime in our nation. I do not underestimate the difficulty of the assignment. But the very difficulty which these problems present and the staggering cost of inaction make it imperative that this task be undertaken.

Two years later the commission had consumed the efforts of 19 commissioners, 63 staff members, 175 consultants, and “hundreds” of advisers according to the Summary of its report entitled The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society. Like the work product of most federal government commissions, the recommendations of this one were little more than platitudes, clichés, and slogans which were not actionable, measurable, or related to crime prevention. Very little of the Commission’s work was analytical – i.e. translating data into meanings. Instead, expert opinion replaced an analysis of hard facts. And a good deal of that was in the form of “feel good” theories about the root causes of criminal behavior – poverty, racism, broken homes, poor education – and unproven assertions, such as the ineffectiveness of incarceration as a crime deterrent. That last argument has always been a puzzle to me, since incarcerated criminals are obviously deterred from preying on society.

The flaws in the Commission’s report did not escape the notice of a young Harvard political scientist – the Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Government – James Q. Wilson. Professor Wilson’s expertise was public administration, most notably criminality. He was far brighter than anyone on the Commission or the incumbent in the White House. Writing in the Fall 1967 edition of The Public Interest (which today is National Affairs) Dr. Wilson mused:

Despite the widespread popular concern with "crime in the streets," the report of the President's Crime Commission … is not likely to be a best-seller. In this, it will be no different from the report of most other blue-ribbon commissions, and for the same reasons: it offers no "solution" to the problem and it provides no convenient answers to the question of what we might do short of solving it.

His article continued:

That famous but anonymous person – the "reasonable man" or the "intelligent layman" – would, I suppose, have some rather obvious questions about crime in America. He would want to know how much crime there is, whether there is more or less today than twenty years ago, what could be done to reduce or prevent it, and how criminals could best be handled to reduce the chance of their causing more mischief. In getting the answers to those questions, he would expect to be told whether we need more policemen; whether foot patrolmen are (as he supposes) better than motorized officers; whether the laws should not be changed to make arrests and interrogations easier for the police; whether the probation and parole system is working and, if it is not or if the issue is in doubt, whether "tougher sentences" should be handed out; how much police "brutality" there is and what can be done about it; whether capital punishment is of value; and how we can get rid of the drug addicts. These, at least, are the subjects of most editorial and political speeches on the subject of crime … [yet] the reader will have to search diligently for answers to these questions [in the Commission’s report.]  

Out of the 200 recommendations produced by the labors of the Commission, Wilson complained, only six were about making the streets safer. In contrast, 25 were devoted to assuring that the criminal was treated fairly by the police and courts. More than a few recommendations focused on rehabilitating the criminal while in the detention system. Some recommendations were mental mush like “hire better people, pay higher salaries, require more training, collect more information.” Of this burlesque of real thinking, Wilson wrote:

The lay reader might respond, "yes, of course, but what do we do tomorrow morning that will reduce the chance of my wife having her purse snatched by some punk on the way to the supermarket?" Not much, it appears.

My purpose here is not to revisit the shortcomings of a musty government report, but rather to reveal the brilliant mind and thought of James Q. Wilson who died last week from leukemia. His grasp of what the Commission should have produced versus what it did produce is classic Wilson. Last month the American Enterprise Institute gathered to honor his intellect by establishing the James Q. Wilson Chair in American Politics and Culture. Arthur Brooks, the President of the AEI, assured the audience that future occupants of the Chair would “share Jim’s commitment to the highest standards of empirical research …” – standards visibly lacking in the Johnson Commission’s findings.

Following encomiums by George Will and Charles Murray, no intellectual pygmies themselves, Jim Wilson took the podium to a standing ovation, recalling that last time everyone stood up while he was in a room was in recognition of an archbishop who standing behind him. His acceptance speech was devoted to the rationale for the AEI, which he concluded by saying:

… if you do good research on how the world really works, if you have the right data and the right assumptions, and you make the right arguments, and (even) if you do this in a nonpartisan and objective way, it will lead in the great majority of cases to conservative conclusions, because good research amplifies that the world operates, when it operates successfully, on principles that conservatives embrace. It reinforces our commitment to free enterprise, personal freedom, and military strength.

Yes, Jim Wilson was a conservative thinker, but he was not an ideologue. The arguments displayed in the sweep of his oeuvre – criminality, education, welfare, human character, and morality among them – were anchored in hard data, solid facts, and evidence-driven experience because those qualities were required to comprehend the complex and often unpredictable real world in which his ideas produced policies. In an interview years ago he contrasted ideology and sound thinking:

I know my political ideas affect what I write, but I’ve tried to follow the facts wherever they land. Every topic I’ve written about begins as a question. How do police departments behave? Why do bureaucracies function the way they do? What moral intuitions do people have? How do courts make their decisions? What do blacks want from the political system? I can honestly say I didn’t know the answers to those questions when I began looking into them.

Perhaps nowhere among his written work is sound thinking more evident than the article for which he is best known – “Broken Windows” – which appeared in the March 1982 edition of The Atlantic magazine. It is online and well worth reading.

Wilson had observed that the role of police gradually changed over time from maintaining order to fighting crime. This shift had begun in the early 1960s when the crime wave coincided with social unrest of that era, but Johnson’s “war on crime” gave the role transformation its impetus and even accelerated it. All of the strategies of the Johnson Commission and other schools of thought about policing failed because they overlooked an obvious fact – any behavior that is tolerated provides an incentive for it to be repeated – often on a larger scale. As Wilson expressed it “one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.” Negative behaviors that are not confronted cause “disorderly streets” which leads to more disorderly behavior until community breaks down.

Wilson did not reach this conclusion in the vacuum of his research cube. He and his co-author, George L. Kelling, walked the streets with beat cops and rode in the cruisers with motorized patrols so that they could see with their own eyes the evidence that led them to conclude that criminals take their clues from the community’s tolerance for disorder. If drunks are only permitted to drink on side streets from containers in bags, the thoroughfares and intersections will remain clear for the community to use. A drunk who passes out on a main sidewalk is hustled off to jail for disorderly conduct. He is not allowed to sleep it off on the sidewalk. Gang meetings, drug dealings, and rowdy commotions are broken up. Graffiti is quickly removed. Broken windows are repaired. If these things are done, the streets are safe. If they are not done, disorder escalates.

Only by their personal observation were Wilson and Kelling able to see and understand that motorized patrolling was not as effective as walking a beat – contradicting “conventional wisdom.” These were black neighborhoods and the police were white. A police officer on foot cannot separate himself from the street people. He is accessible to talk to them and to be talked to by them. Police officers in cars are more likely to roll down the windows to talk with people than to get out of the car. There are many reasons to be seen talking to an officer on foot, whereas, walking up to a marked patrol car and speaking to its occupants through a window can earn the sobriquet “fink.”

When there is order on the streets, the community has a sense of ownership and self-policing. A purse-snatcher is more likely to be reported promptly and even identified. This kind of neighborhood behavior is rooted in a time before policing became an occupation. Protection against crime, fires, and animals was a community responsibility and was staffed by rotating volunteers. With the advent of police forces, neighborhoods began to think that protection was not their responsibility and the community suffered for it.

Community ownership also suffered with the advent of mobility. If the streets become intolerably disorderly, those who could afford it moved out. Unattached adults moved in. Abandoned property was damaged or destroyed. Criminal activity took over the streets. In a time before people had the option or means to move out of a community, they stayed and fought to preserve its values and safety. Disorderly behavior was not permitted in an immobile society and communities were more cohesive because of their intolerance.

But aggressive policing runs counter to the ideology of the liberal left for whom tolerance is a virtue. Against that mindset, Wilson made this compelling argument in “Broken Windows:”

This wish to "decriminalize" disreputable behavior that "harms no one" – and thus remove the ultimate sanction the police can employ to maintain neighborhood order – is, we think, a mistake. Arresting a single drunk or a single vagrant who has harmed no identifiable person seems unjust, and in a sense it is. But failing to do anything about a score of drunks or a hundred vagrants may destroy an entire community. A particular rule that seems to make sense in the individual case makes no sense when it is made a universal rule and applied to all cases. It makes no sense because it fails to take into account the connection between one broken window left untended and a thousand broken windows.

“Broken Windows” describes an experiment that confirmed its theoretical foundation. A car with its hood up and no license tag was purposely left on a street in the Bronx and a similar car was left on a street in Palo Alto, California. The Bronx car was set upon within ten minutes by a family – a father, mother, and a young son – who stole its radiator and battery. Within 24 hours everything of value had been taken, followed by random destruction of the car – windows were broken, upholstery was ripped, and parts were torn off. Most of the “vandals” were well-dressed white people in a black neighborhood.

The Palo Alto car fared better. It was essentially ignored for more than a week. Therefore, the researcher smashed the windshield with a sledgehammer. Within hours, the car was completely destroyed and overturned – again by well-dressed white people who otherwise acted quite respectably.

Like Johnson’s failed wars on poverty and racial discrimination, his war on crime also failed because it was ideologically rooted rather than grounded in experimentation, observation, and more experimentation, thereby yielding facts about how these things worked. But in 1994 Rudy Giuliani was elected Mayor of New York City and he appointed William Bratton as Police Commissioner. Both men were enlightened enough to admit that “crime fighting” was a failed policing strategy and that it was time to tack the crime wave differently. Policing would be done in accordance with the “Broken Windows” theory. The murder rate fell from 14.5 per 100,000 residents in 1990 to just 4.8 by 2002 when Giuliani left office – an astonishing reduction of two-thirds. Robberies, home break-ins, car theft all fell by similar amounts. As other municipalities adopted “Broken Windows,” they got similar results. Maintaining orderly streets won out over fighting crime.

Giuliani and Bratton took heat from the media and the left, which called their program an assault against the squeegee men. Squeegee men confronted motorists who had stopped at a light and cleaned their windshields, often without permission. Then they aggressively demanded payment. It was a shakedown racket that had been tolerated in the past. In time, motorists by-passed the area and its economy suffered. When squeegee men were no longer tolerated by the police – and they couldn’t move to another neighborhood because there was intolerance there also – the practice ceased and the neighborhood economy revived.

Wilson’s insightful intellect was not confined urban policy. Among the eulogies published upon news of his death was one in the Wall Street Journal entitled “James Q. Wilson in His Own Words.” It printed excerpts from his writings over the years. My favorite, "A Cure for Selfishness," was published in the Journal originally on March 26, 1997:

Perhaps the most powerful antidote to unfettered selfishness is property rights. If we are grazing cattle, we will conserve the land if we own it. If we are catching lobsters off the Maine coast, we can restrict over-fishing by allocating space to groups who informally "own" each space. If we want to conserve elephants, we should let people own the elephants. If we wish to water our rice in Bali, we do better if each village has ownership in a part of the water. If we want to conserve our country's oil reserves, we do better if the reserves are owned by firms than if the government "controls" the whole deposit.

The sheer common sense of his argument here is unimpeachable. Yet it runs counter to government policy which confiscates natural resources and holds them hostage to political ideology.

Wilson’s books and essay compilations are not well-known among mainstream readers. But they are gems of well-thought arguments. On Character is a collection of character essays and a good starting point for a new Wilson reader. But just as provocative is American Politics, Then & Now: And Other Essays or The Moral Sense, whose reviewer called it “the most significant reflection on this matter since Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments.” Book reviews can’t get more effusive than that.

Wilson’s academic career was enviable. After leaving Harvard in 1987, he was the James Collins Professor of Management and Public Policy at UCLA until 1997, and from 1998 to 2008 he was the Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University. In 2009 he became Distinguished Scholar in Boston College’s Department of Public Science and its first Senior Fellow at the College’s Gloria and Charles Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy.

Wilson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush, the Bradley Prize from the Bradley Foundation, and a lifetime achievement award by the American Political Science Association.

In a memoriam published the day after he died, Arthur Brooks recalled their first meeting when Wilson appeared unannounced at Brooks’ Ph.D. dissertation defense. Brooks confessed that his dissertation could “surely compete for the most tiresome dissertation of all time.” Moreover, observing its length, one of Brooks’ thesis advisers deemed it “a refutation of the axiom that brevity is the soul of wit.”

Brooks, whose area of scholarship was also social science, was taken aback that someone as esteemed in their field as Wilson would care to hear him wax eloquent on the demand strategies for symphony orchestras. Only years later did he understand, as he came to know him better, that Jim Wilson was interested in everything. Life for him “was like a roadside curio shop, full of hidden and unrecognized intellectual treasures.”

Most of our neighborhoods are safer today because of an article written 30 years ago by James Q. Wilson, and those of us who engage in research and analysis in our careers could learn much from his probing intellect. For these gifts we owe him a debt of gratitude.