Noah asks in his post whether one could trust a Randian banker.

By coincidence, I read Noah’s post on John Allison while I was in the middle of reading Donald Luskin’s through-the-looking-glass book on the characters that allegedly either contributed to or didn’t contribute to the financial crisis: I Am John Galt. It has a whole chapter on Mr. Allison and his leadership at BB&T, and how his Objectivist philosophy informed its policies.

It’s a fascinating tale, actually: Mr. Allison actually went through and rewrote the corporate policies and training programs of BB&T to conform to the ideas of Ayn Rand, while also keeping the vast amount of non-atheists working at the company on board. As a Whittaker Chambers fan, I’m frightened, but as someone studying for a Professional in Human Resources certification, I’m deeply impressed with the trick he pulled off.

And quite honestly, it didn’t hurt the bank. It made it very stodgy. BB&T didn’t go deep into subprime, so it wasn’t in a bad financial position when the crisis hit. When the government took its mandatory share of the company after the TARP, that was when Allison resigned and left.

Now, as to what he said about the GSEs: he was making a general point that Fannie and Freddie were bad actors in the mortgage market, and Goolsbee then made the limited point that they weren’t responsible for a majority of the subprime market. He made the debating mistake at that point of directly contradicting Goolsbee, and one can easily point to a McClatchy editorial that says otherwise (as Noah does).

However, the McClatchy story’s headline (Private sector loans, not Fannie or Freddie, triggered crisis) makes little sense. The whole point of Fannie and Freddie is to buy private sector loans. One can legitimately argue that, whether or not the loans they bought were technically subprime, the ones they bought must not have been very good, considering that they went into conservatorship.

And Austan Goolsbee’s point is valid, but it’s limited. For one thing, there were two kinds of non-prime loans being made: subprime, and alt-A (which is below prime, but above subprime.). The GSEs went more deeply into the latter than they did the former. Secondly, Goolsbee didn’t define his time horizon. Generally, people who argue for the GSEs talk about the numbers from 2001-2008. People who argue against talk about where the GSEs total portfolio stood in 2007 (when the mortgage market started to melt down). The people who argue for the GSEs say they were trying to keep up with private-label mortgage securitizers, and the people who argue against say that the securitizers were trying to keep up with the GSEs. There is actually room for a legitimate difference of opinion here.

At least I think there is.

After watching the Herman Cain-Newt Gingrich debate last night, I got to thinking (as I’m sure you did as well): What would Agatha Christie’s great detective, Hercule Poirot, think of the last week in news, and the Mystery of Who Tipped Off the Cain Story? What follows is what I think he would say…

Let us go back to the beginning.

Not to the beginning of the week–no!–to when this story truly began. When Gingrich’s campaign nearly imploded as his staffers resigned en masse.

Now it was obvious on the surface why this happened: Perry could pay, Gingrich would not. Less obvious was that this fact: Perry was using Gingrich as a cats-paw all along, to feel on how a Southern politician would do in the presidential primary. Which is why he allowed his lieutenants to join the campaign in the first place.

All very clever, BUT. One thing that Perry did not notice was that two people could play at that game. And Gingrich had his own unwitting cats-paw in the race as well. And that was…

Herman Cain. Yes, Mr. Cain is a fellow Georgian, and one that turned the National Restaurant Association into a loyal ally of the Gingrich Congress during his tenure there. Was this all a coincidence?

So everything was in place. Gingrich knew that Cain would shine in the primaries in a way that Rick Perry–and alas, he–could not, thus preventing the three man race from becoming a two-man race between Romney and Perry. Perry’s own weaknesses will then weigh him down and Cain will rise. So much for Perry.

But what to do about Cain? Simple. Step one. Have a two man debate scheduled for a Saturday in early November. It’d be good if it was hosted by a Texas group: it will get Cain off the trail even more, and be another swipe at Perry at the same time. Step two (and this is the hard part): make sure that there is something–anything–weighing down Cain by the time that debate rolls around.

But what?

Suddenly, an old conversation with Cain is remembered by Gingrich, about some minor trouble Cain was having the office around 1999…

I have no questions to ask for the GOP debates because I don’t believe that questions (plural) should be asked at debates.

Ever since the Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960, the USA has believed that debates are events where the rivals stand on stage next to each other and answer standard press-conference questions from the “moderator”. This is completely wrong. The point of a debate is that you answer the rival, not the moderator. That’s what should distinguish the event from what we see on the Sunday shows every morning.

The modern way of moderating is: The moderator places himself in the middle, his back towards the audience, and gives cues. I want to see the candidates take the cues from each other, as representatives of their factions.

The way an actual debate works is: The moderator gives a brief opening statement (which is optional: the Lincoln-Douglas debates weren’t moderated at all), introduces the topic (there is only one, although it’s sufficiently broad that tangents aren’t allowed), and then keeps his trap shut and enforces the prearranged time limits.

So. The only question (singular) on the table in a primary is “How are you going to win the general election, lead the Republicans to victory in the midterms of 2014, win re-election in 2016, and change government for the better in the process?”

Let’s hear it.

The whole debt-ceiling imbroglio is being resolved at last, so hopefully we can all get back to debating the national issues that matter the most.  Issues like improving the municipal infrastructure of the richest counties in the United States.

To be specific: David wrote recently about his frustration with Northern Virginia not agreeing to spend a few extra hundred million dollars to make Dulles Airport slightly less horrible for Washingtonians than it currently is.

It’s hard to be objective about Dulles Airport when, like me, you’ve lived very nearly next door to it since you were five years old.  Its location may be inconvenient to those who live in the city but it’s been awfully convenient to me, and isn’t that what matters?

(Also, Dulles has in fact put a lot of time and effort over my lifetime trying to get better despite itself.  The hideous “mobile lounges” that ferried passengers at 2.3 miles an hour to midfield are mostly gone and replaced with state-of-the-art trains.  Also… well, that’s all I can name, but still.)

26 miles is indeed a long way to get to the closest massive international airport, though.  If you are a Washingtonian and need someone to blame for that, blame Dwight David Eisenhower, who personally chose the location in 1958, over the top of Willard, Virginia (which now exists only as the name of a road).  Keep in mind that Dulles was chartered by an act of Congress in 1950.  It’s not easy to pick a location for an airport.

So, why won’t Northern Virginia be nice and agree to send Metro underground and into the terminal? Simple: In 2008, Democratic Governor Tim Kaine agreed to transfer authority over the Dulles Toll Road, one of the most important and expensive roads in the area, from the Virginia Department of Transportation to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), in exchange for their agreement to build rail out to Dulles Airport.  And how would they fund such a thing? By taking future toll hikes, and via the magic of the bond market, teleporting the money into the present.

Simple! Except the politics of doing that are pretty nasty.  MWAA is essentially funding the convenience of people who live in the city with the cash money of daily commuters who live in the suburbs.  They can only keep that kind of deal going up to a point. That point happened to be two hundred yards from the Dulles terminal.

Is there any way out of this? Sure.  I’d do two things: First, I’d have the MWAA sell the Toll Road to the private company that owns the Greenway, the even more expensive toll road that goes from the airport to Leesburg (full disclosure: I live in Leesburg and think that the rates for the Toll Road would go up and the rates for the Greenway would go down, at least temporarily, if that were to happen).  Secondly, I’d make sure that current plans allow for the future possibility of having one stop outside the terminal, and one stop inside — and, if the inside stop were ever to happen I’d charge a usurious exit fare for that inside stop.  Who would possibly oppose that?

MWAA can only do so much, of course: Dulles will still sit where it sits, and people will continue to curse the incorrect name as they make the trek down the Access Road.  To solve that problem, we can do what Bob Dole suggested in 1990 and change the name to Eisenhower International Airport.  Whether he suggested the change to honor one of the great men of the 20th century, as a wry commentary on a perennial Washington complaint, or both, I’ll leave that determination up to you.

That’s one way to look at it! But it’s more complicated than that, and to understand why, you have to go back to the beginning.

Let’s keep in mind, amid the huzzahs, that Joe Lieberman came into power because conservatives in Connecticut couldn’t countenance a liberal Republican, Lowell Weicker, for six more years.  The Democrats will end up holding down that seat for 24 years, with conservatives’ blessings, and mostly because Lieberman held to one single aspect of conservative doctrine, foreign policy, when Weicker, admittedly, held to almost none.

And let’s also admit that Lieberman wasn’t perfectly consistent on foreign policy, either; North Korea comes to mind.

And finally, let’s not forget Lieberman’s behavior on the trail as a vice-presidential candidate in 2000, when every position he took against the Democratic consensus seemed to disappear when a shot at the ring came around.

So: was it worth it? Think about it: Weicker is still alive.  Assuming we could have possibly kept him in the fold (as unlikely as that may have been): would another Republican Senate seat have come in handy at any point in the last 28 years? After 2000, perhaps? After 2006? Would the 2000 election have looked different if Lieberman wasn’t running for vice-president? Would it have been better or worse for Republicans?

Considering what may have happened differently if Weicker continued in the party after 1988, is probably approximately as far a limb as one can go out on, if one were to make the case for Republican pragmatist absolutism.  But, it’s something to consider, as a soft, dissonant note, as we reflect on the end of perhaps the most unlikely political story of the post-Reagan era.

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David Cameron should take the opportunity to shut down the Chilcot inquiry.  While that may not be possible, he should at the very least encourage them to wrap up their fine work, submit their report, thank them, and be done with it.  Having Blair return for a further round of questioning is nonsense.

Some things bug me, and one of them is ill-defined “commissions” and “inquiries” which attempt to run the country from the outside and through the conduit of the press, when they manifestly don’t have the authority to do so.

What the left really wants is to try Tony Blair for war crimes, but since they can’t do that, they’ll just keep calling him back for as long as they can get away with it.  It’s like a consolation prize.

Thomas J. Marier blogs at Going Noble.  Follow him on Twitter.

For your edification, I give you Bill Donohue leading protests against the Empire State Building NOT lighting up in blue and white for Mother Teresa’s birthday centenary.

One week from today, on August 26, the Catholic League is holding a rally to protest the decision by officials from the Empire State Building not to light the towers blue and white on the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa’s birthday. The rally will feature speakers who are Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Hindu and Muslim, as well as celebrities and government officials from both parties.

The rally begins at 6:00 p.m. Please enter at 34th Street and 6th Avenue, and remember to wear blue and white.

Just like with the mosque controversy (and the cross controversy in Poland) the protest goes a bit deeper than simple opposition to a decision made by a property owner.  Nobody denies that the owner of the Empire State Building has the right to deny a request to light up his building a particular color.

Still, you’d think that the person who owns the Empire State Building would have the civic responsibility to explain why an honor given to the communist Chinese can’t be extended to someone loved and respected by millions on her centenary.

Bill Donohue is loud and annoying, but he doesn’t own the Empire State Building.  You’d think this’d be an opportunity to be the bigger man.

The planned protest hearkens back to the controversies of the ’90s that Bill Donohue first got publicity for: most notably, the “Sensation” exhibition.  It’s about the perception that traditional religion, Imam Rauf excepted, does not exactly have the blessing of the ruling class these days.

And more importantly it’s about the reaction to the reaction, which is inevitably — I don’t know, kind of condescending?

Rudy Giuliani, despite his differences with the Church, managed these sorts of symbolic culture clashes quite well, from a political perspective.  At least he did it better than Mike Bloomberg’s strategy of publicly shaming all who disagree with his zoning decisions and food preferences, most of whom left New York City for warmer climes long ago.

The culture wars won’t be wished away.  They are a part of American democracy.  Can Republican politicians besotted with fiscal austerity still get on the right side of them? Do they care?

Can anyone else play this game at all?

Crutchy: But you can’t let ‘em beat you, right Jack? That’s what you always said.
Jack Kelly: We was beat when we was born.

A bit of context: the question is important to Ezra Klein (and Matt Yglesias) for a few reasons.  First, they want Democrats to do more deficit spending, because the economy is bad and what we’ve done so far hasn’t worked.

Second, they want the Democrats to admit that the earlier stimulus would have worked better if they weren’t constrained by deficit fears.

Third, the concern they think is holding moderate Democrats back is a fear of Republican challengers using the deficit issue against them.  But, if Republicans are perceived as hypocrites on the matter, hopefully it would mitigate that effect.  Thankfully for them, there is plenty of evidence that Republicans are hypocrites on the matter, as was detailed by Yglesias in his post.

And yet, it’s not working.

That being said, there was a time that Republicans cared more about the deficit than they did in the Bush and Reagan years.  It was called, “The Gingrich Years.”

You might remember how that worked out.  Exhibit A:

Gingrich did two quite interesting things that indicate that conservatives, at least at the time, cared about the deficit: he led a shutdown of the government, and negotiated the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.

You cannot say that he didn’t pay a price for that: Gingrich was rightly blamed for the government shutdown, which was perceived as bad governance rather than hardball politics.  (The Balanced Budget Act was overshadowed at the time by… other matters, shall we say, and it took a few years to work, or at least seemed to, for a time.) Long story short, conservative Republicans lost in 1996, lost in 1998, and turned to a leader that, for all his faults, would avoid being portrayed as Uncle Scrooge on the cover of Time.  The rest is history.

Is there a lesson in this for liberal Democrats? I don’t know.  But, happily, I’m not in the business of giving liberal Democrats advice.  So, it’s up to them.

1) By a bunch of the more esoteric measures (“net new votes gained”, etc.), David Cameron did a pretty okay job, considering.

2) The glaring opportunity left for the Conservatives is to increase their share of the popular vote.  The anti-Cameron Tories (including the ones on our side of the pond editing magazines and such) are wrong about a lot of things, but they are right that that was the weakness.

3) Increasing the vote share is going to require either raiding Labour voters, or LibDem voters.  Cameron has maxed out on conservative voters and newer voters.

4) Since the governing alliance is going to be with the LibDems, then it’s the lightly-affiliated Labour voter that’ll have to be targeted next time around.

5) So the question that I’m asking when it comes to the Labour vote: why wasn’t Cameron able to make hay out of Gordon Brown’s “bigoted woman” comment?

No, I don’t mean doing like John McCain mentioning Joe the Plumber 18,000 times.  David Cameron wouldn’t have had to mention Gillian Duffy’s name at all.  In fact, I don’t think he needed to talk about Gillian Duffy’s concern — immigration — more than he did.  But was there some way to indicate better that the Conservatives needed and deserved Gillian Duffy’s vote? Because if Cameron wanted to get from 36% to 39%, I think he did.

Gordon Brown sent her flowers; did David Cameron? Will he do so next time?