Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

Paul Krugman has a dead-hit column in today’s NY Times about the “pundit delusion,” or, “the belief that the stuff of daily political reporting—who won the news cycle, who had the snappiest comeback—actually matters.”

I suspect that this delusion extends to all political reporters and their editors, not just pundits. It’s a hubris that comes from being so deep in the woods you have forgotten what the sky looks like. You start thinking that everyone in America knows what is in the financial regulatory bill (or that there was one at all) and what Vice President Biden said on the Sunday shows and where Obama ate coconut ice cream. Worst of all, you start thinking that you the pundit can explain everything that happens in politics through tidy linear narratives, particularly in hindsight.

It’s the same kind of know-it-all-ism we see in business reporting (“Stocks are up slightly due to reports of higher than expected retail profits—and possibly due to a new rainbow spotted in the sky over Manhattan. Or any one of a million other complex and sometimes irrational reasons that we cannot actually identify with any level of confidence.”) 

In fact, as Krugman notes, most Americans care a lot about the economy, but they are not very well-informed on the details of the stimulus package—and most pundits are not able to identify causality in the world whizzing by around them.

But the delusion is powerful—and contagious, as Krugman writes: “This delusion is, of course, most prevalent among pundits themselves, but it’s also widespread among political operatives. And I’d argue that susceptibility to the pundit delusion is part of the Obama administration’s problem.”

I have listened to many well-meaning administration staffers lament the media obsession with insider games and horse races. But then these very same men (and I say that simply because they are almost always men) frantically react to every twitch and craving of the deluded, answering their calls, emails and Tweets with the same shared breathlessness.

In their defense, it’s hard to know what to ignore and what to attack, since the delusions can, on rare occasions, spread to the voting masses. So they feed the cycle, complaining bitterly all the way to the mad house.

For myself, I am happy to be on the sidelines of this particular insanity. Since 2009, I have been lucky enough to only write when I have something to say, and I often do not. I confess that on most days, I have nothing valuable to add to the cacophony. And instead I look up at the big open sky and thank God.

You know you inhabit a strange corner of the world when you turn up to the office to find a mass mailing from a place called, BioSeal Systems. “Open Now! Disaster Response Temporary Morgue Planning...Sample Enclosed.”

Sample enclosed?

I had to know more. I didn’t even take off my sunglasses. Just opened it right up. Appears to be some kind of sealing wrap for dead bodies, complete with portable heat-sealing equipment.

“The only human remains containment solution that can be stored for 49 years without deterioration in performance.” There is a picture of a very serious looking nurse, a doctor and and some guy in a suit standing over what appears to be a body—all wrapped up.

Now this is actually a real thing. I have been at conferences with entire tracks dedicated to the logistics of setting up morgues in disaster zones. It’s not an easy matter. The people on those tracks look cold sober, like they have shed every last delusion about the world.

But I guess I’m not there yet. I still haven’t opened the sample. Maybe after lunch.

Perhaps because of politicians like Democratic Congressman David Obey of Wisconsin, who last night convinced his fellow members of Congress to pass a bill that would snatch back money already promised to education reform incentives like the Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition.

Why would Obey do such a thing? Particularly when his own state is gunning for Race to the Top funding? Wisconsin’s June 2010 application, signed by the state’s governor and superintendent, makes it clear that this money is vital to the kids in Obey’s state:

“The status quo is not acceptable. Race to the Top provides an unprecedented opportunity to expand successful state and local reform efforts to effect systemic change and increase education innovation. The State’s reform agenda will increase overall student achievement, close the achievement gaps, increase high school graduation rates, prepare students for college and careers, and build the capacity, human capital, to make the State’s reforms sustainable.”

So why would a Democratic congressman pull $800 million dollars away from a program that may turn out to be the most effective use of federal education funds in a generation? A program that is (relatively speaking) tiny, but has already incentivized more than a dozen states to change their laws and regulations and reform their schools before a single dime has been spent?

Obey says he wants this money to help bail out teachers whose jobs are in jeopardy due to the recession. But anyone who thinks this is about saving teachers’ jobs is being misled. Obey could get the money to protect teachers’ jobs elsewhere (Obama officials have given him specific alternative offsets within the budget to find this money.). He is just choosing not to. He has indicated before that he does not support reform efforts, and he is using the recession as an excuse to slow Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s momentum.

Let’s be clear. If Congress wants to save teachers’ jobs, they could do it a million different ways—including cutting existing budget fat like the $8.8 million Exchanges with Historic Whaling and Trading Partners program (with thanks to Alyson Klein at Education Week):

That program “supports culturally based educational activities, internships, apprenticeship programs and exchanges for Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, children, and families of Massachusetts, and any federally recognized Indian tribe in Mississippi.”

To defend his actions, Obey likes to revert to gee-whiz metaphors: “When a ship is sinking, you don’t worry about redesigning a room, you worry about keeping it afloat.” Here’s the problem: this ship has been sinking for a very long time. It is not “afloat” for millions of kids around the country. For them, postponing teacher layoffs (which only imperil some 2-5% of teachers anyway) is like redesigning the room. Race to the Top is not perfect. But it is the closest thing we have to a life boat.

Two years ago, I wrote an essay in TIME about the radical genius of creating a cabinet-level position to manage volunteers in California, America’s Disaster Laboratory. Today, we have more big news coming out of the lab.

Secretary Karen Baker, the woman who got that job on Gov. Schwarzenegger’s cabinet, is introducing the nation’s first Disaster Corps—a squad of 1,000 elite, well-trained volunteers who can can be deployed to disaster sites as soon as they are needed (without waiting for the soul-killing bureaucratic sign-offs that so often delay volunteer efforts after big calamities.)

“We needed to develop the Navy Seals of volunteers,” Baker says. OK, first of all, it takes some chutzpah to put the words “Navy Seal” and “volunteer” in the same sentence. Baker can pull it off only because she has actual power—the kind almost none of her peers across the country can claim. When I greeted her as “Secretary Baker” on the phone the other day, she laughed and said, “Call me Karen, or I’ll kill you.” But she (and by association all volunteers in the state) have experienced a surge in credibility since she got the cabinet post. “All of a sudden all phone calls are returned,” she says. “Instantly.” (Seven months after Schwarzenegger created the cabinet post, Gov. David Paterson did the same thing in New York.)

For two years, Baker has worked on creating the Disaster Corps. “We needed to up the game,” she says. Why?  Because California is crowded with volunteers (one quarter of the population volunteers in some way.) But too few of them have the training, the experience, or, crucially, the trust of the authorities. “Everyone will say, ‘Yeah, we love volunteers.’ But the truth is, they don’t often use them because they don’t know what they’re getting.”

The new Disaster Corps will be made up of citizens who have received Department of Justice/FBI background checks and First Aid/CPR training, at a minimum. Many will have special skills (like language fluency or law enforcement experience) that make them particularly valuable for certain kinds of crises. They will be drawn from existing volunteer outfits like Citizen Corps, which means they will have worker’s compensation coverage already—an important pre-requisite for higher-risk disaster sites. The Corps will be supported by five local coordinators, full-time staffers in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, and San Francisco counties.

The idea is to make it easier for the people in charge to find, trust and deploy volunteer assets when they need them. As part of the project, Baker’s office is also creating a large new database that everyone can access with critical information about which volunteers (from all organizations across the state, not just Disaster Corps) are available to do what. “Often in government, they know what the problems are but not what resources are available to them privately.” And Baker has set up mutual aid agreements so that volunteers can work across different counties. Not very sexy, but very important. All of this has been done with private and federal dollars, which is a good thing given that Baker’s state has no dollars.

So why did it take two years? “That was not what I’d expected,” she admits. “But we needed to get buy-in.” Baker held over 30 meetings throughout the state to convince people at the top (fire chiefs, police chiefs, emergency managers) and people at the bottom (volunteers who were used to the status quo) that Disaster Corps would be a good idea.  The Corps should be fully stood up by this fall. It will be interesting to watch what happens when disaster strikes, as it always does in California.

I talked to Nightline for this segment on heroism yesterday, and it reminded me of just how slippery the concept is. The show features Richard Camp, a man who was at his local bank when a gunman came in and tried to rob the place. The video from the surveillance cameras is pretty remarkable. You can see how Camp is trying to make up his mind: should he remain passive or should he try to stop the man? Meanwhile, watch what most of the other customers did: as the perpetrator, wearing a motorcycle helmet, waved his gun around, the other customers went about their business. One man sips his coffee while another couple fills out a loan application.

Now, it’s possible that some of them literally did not see or hear anything to suggest a problem. But I would guess that some of them were in a position to notice something amiss—and their brains talked them out of it. That is the most common mistake that people make in life-or-death situations. They are very slow to accept that something dangerous is happening. There are good reasons for this: the brain works by fitting everything that happens into patterns for what has happened before. So you will find yourself trying to normalize what you are seeing—to shoehorn it into one of the patterns in your head for what normally happens. We are slow to recognize exceptions.

Richard Camp did not have that luxury, since the man threatened him directly. And Camp did not get stuck in disbelief. As you can see in the segment, he waited several minutes, and then jumped the guy—sustaining a gunshot wound to the leg. Another customer then helped subdue the robber. Camp was declared a hero and is recovering from his injury.

Since then, lawyers have gotten involved, and Camp has filed suit against the bank. (See this Los Angeles Times piece for more.) I wish I could say this is uncommon, but it is not. Survivors often complain that the authorities tasked with protecting them—or at least thanking them—let them down in some way after the incident. And companies, also reeling from the initial crisis, frequently do not know how to best respond to the complicated needs of survivors. It is heartbreaking how quickly goodwill can evaporate.

Anyway, no one can say if the robber would have left the bank without firing his weapon had Camp not intervened. No one will know if the robber would’ve gone on to rob more banks and put more people in danger. But it seems like Camp thought through his options and decided to take responsibility for the safety of himself and others. I commend him for his courage.