Tom Keane

Obama 2.0 — the art of the deal

In a negotiation, you’ll rarely get a better deal than the one you first ask for. If you’re selling your company and set a price of $1 million, you likely won’t get higher. And if you’re a possible buyer and offer $500,000, you probably won’t be paying less. There’s room in between — indeed, both buyer and seller probably expect that — but that comes later, not at the beginning. And one other thing as well: when you ask for that price of $1 million, never simultaneously say, “But that’s negotiable.” Doing so only shows weakness. It ensures you’ll never get full price — or anything close to it.

A good negotiator, in short, has to be tough. Most people would rather be well-liked — toughness makes them looks extreme and inflexible. But if you believe in what you’re selling, toughness is also the best shot you’ll have of getting a deal done and getting what you want.

In his first four years as president, Barack Obama was not such a negotiator. His second term looks to be quite different.

Obama’s inaugural address four years ago was all about compromise and finding common ground, an almost willful denial of the very real differences between the parties. Albeit artfully worded, it was, in other words, little more than, “But that’s negotiable.” The wolves pounced.

Last Monday’s inaugural address may have contained some nice words about unity and equality, but those were sheep’s clothing for a second-term president who seems to have grown fangs. A few hours after the speech — as gowns, tuxes and limos flooded D.C.’s streets — Republicans weren’t feeling the love. Many stayed away, others muttered under their breath, and most just generally felt aggrieved.

Perhaps they had some right to be offended. Obama’s shot at Mitt Romney and “takers” did appear especially out of place for a speech ostensibly about bringing America together. But I think for the most part their real problem is that Obama 2.0 no longer seems a patsy.

One could see this shift shortly after the election, as the Jan. 1 fiscal cliff loomed. In the summer of 2011, as the entire world was panicking over raising the US debt ceiling, Obama was actively seeking some sort of “grand bargain,” desperately eager to make tradeoffs to get an agreement. All that desperation did was get him a lousy deal.

This time around, he stood toe-to-toe with Republicans even as the new year approached, daring them to let taxes rise on everyone. The result seemed to surprise even the White House: minimal spending cuts coupled with a boost in tax rates for the rich. And now, as a new deadline looms for increasing the debt ceiling, Obama has yet again presented a hard, unyielding position, demanding the GOP unilaterally cave on the issue. Again, surprisingly, he may already have extracted at least a partial victory, securing at least a three-month reprieve.

In his inaugural, Obama kept up with this newfound willingness to push for what he wants, vowing to protect the usual litany of Democratic social welfare programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. However, it’s three other topics — same-sex marriage, immigration, and gun control — that have put the GOP on the defensive. There’s good reason for that: They threaten to marginalize the party with the young (who support gay rights), Hispanics (the fastest growing ethnic group), and parents of young children (what a turnabout to see the GOP on the wrong side of the public safety).

Obama may not win all of these battles — or even any of them. But the more pugnacious president who kicks off his second term is no longer the pushover so desperate for bipartisanship and goodwill that his opposition can easily run him over.

This new steeliness will doubtless cause some hand-wringing by those who think Obama is now contributing to political divisiveness rather than resolving it. Perhaps, but a negotiation should be judged on its outcome, not on the fireworks that accompany it. At a minimum, Obama’s new mettle will gain him more respect from his opponents. It may even make him a more effective and productive president.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on January 27, 2013.

Lance Armstrong and the art of lying

I’ve always believed Lance Armstrong and now that he’s come clean, I think he might be lying. We’re in a world of shadows here, like a good spy novel — think John le Carré — where nothing is as it seems. And as in those novels, deception is not merely a plot device but deeply, morally corrosive. I can forgive his use of performance-enhancing drugs, but the lying is much harder to pardon.

Whispers of fraud have followed the Tour de France cyclist with every extraordinary win. Armstrong flatly denied the allegations — actually, he did far more than deny. He denounced them, loudly and vociferously. He became an anti-doping crusader of sorts, speaking proudly of the 600-plus drug tests he had passed. In one extraordinary piece of hubris, in 2004 he sued a British newspaper that had printed allegations about his drug use, winning a settlement and getting an abject apology.

Even as the claims grew louder and louder, I believed him. When former teammates made their own accusations, I thought how sad it was to see such misplaced jealousy. When the US Anti-Doping Agency stripped Armstrong of his titles last summer and banned him for life, it seemed like officialdom run amok.

I was wrong. Granted, I’m a bit gullible. I also thought for years that Bounty really was the quicker picker-upper. And I’m still surprised when, having held some M&Ms for awhile, I open my hand and see they have, in fact, melted.

But I also understand there are different kinds of lies. Puffery from an advertiser is to be expected. And most of us have learned over the years that honesty bluntly voiced — whether it be about personal comportment or the intelligence of our acquaintances’ children — can actually be cruel. It can also quickly leave us friendless.

But the case with Armstrong is far different from such trivial or well-intentioned untruths. In some ways, he was only the latest of many: author James Frey, financier Bernie Madoff, and President Bill Clinton quickly come to mind. Like theirs, his lies, compounded by the breadth of his deception, his fame, and the vehemence of his denials, cut to the heart of what he presented himself to be. Indeed, even now I don’t know what to believe. Is Armstrong admitting to using drugs not because he actually took them but simply as a tactic to put the allegations behind him? It wouldn’t surprise me.

Liars and lies are all around us and the question, I suppose, is what are we to do about it?

Most of us conduct our lives under a presumption of trust. We think the folks we meet and interact with are who they say they are, we believe they are sincere in what they do, and we rely upon all of that. We’re not blind in this, but it is a starting point. It would be a sad, cynical world to live the opposite, to presume the worst of people, not the best.

That’s changing, though, and I see it happening to me. I now assume that e-mails I receive — whether ads pitching new products or those passed on by friends detailing some governmental outrage — are false. More disturbingly, I also now assume that those who approach me on the street are lying as well. Whether it’s a sob story about needing a dollar to fetch one’s car in the tow lot (“I left my wallet inside”) or some far-too-peppy kid with a clipboard hawking “Save the Children,” I figure they’re all scams. Why? Because from experience I’ve learned that almost all of them are. One or two might be true, but the effort of sorting those out is too much.

Lance Armstrong is the latest such experience. Is he an exception or the rule?

There is the sad story last week of Manti Te’o, the star linebacker for Notre Dame whose girlfriend — met online — suddenly and tragically died of leukemia. It appears the whole thing was an elaborate hoax allegedly perpetrated on Te’o. If so, one wonders whether he can ever trust again. Thanks to Armstrong, one wonders whether the rest of us can as well. We are all — to get back to le Carré — Smiley’s people.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on January 20, 2013.

Pay more to go faster? Horrors!

Proposals for tolled fast lanes on Route 3 are being denounced as “Lexus lanes”: People with money would take the faster journey on the privately built lanes, while those of modest means would be stuck with a free but slower commute on the existing highway. It would be — horrors — a two-tier transportation system.

Actually, we already have a two-tier system. It’s called the MBTA. If you want free, you can walk. But if you want to get somewhere more quickly, you pay. The walk from Government Center to Copley Square is about 25 minutes, says Google Maps. Take the Green Line, however, and it’s just 6 minutes at a cost of $2. Or you can take a short walk to the 55 bus; getting to Copley this way takes about 12 minutes and costs $1.50.

Saab subways! Bentley buses! What an outrage!

In fact, the notion that people should pay for faster and more convenient transportation is commonplace. The Mass. Pike is an obvious example. Sure, you can get from Boston to Worcester for free by taking Route 9, but it’ll take you at least 67 minutes. Travel the Pike and it’s just 41 minutes — and $3.60. Expensive? Yes. But lots of folks — not just the rich — use it all the time.

The same is true for other kinds of transit. Trains are more expensive than cars; planes are more expensive than trains. We’re willing to pay more because one mode is faster than the other.

So why should things be different on a horrible stretch of roadway from Braintree to Norwell? They shouldn’t be. If people want to pay more for a quicker trip, then by all means let them. That’s the way markets work.

Toll roads have been around since colonial times, but the practicalities and expense of collecting fees made them rare. And toll gates created traffic jams of their own. Technology has now come to the rescue. With transponders and automatic vehicle identification readers (which don’t require cars to slow down), what was once only imagined is increasingly now in place.

The most recent example is in Washington, D.C. The Capital Beltway, the equivalent of our Route 128, has in recent years been a traffic nightmare nearly 24 hours a day; spend some time riding on it, and you’d never complain about Boston traffic again. But in November, construction finally ended on Washington’s own set of Lexus lanes — or, as officials prefer to call them, express lanes. The new lanes parallel the existing Beltway. They’re free to carpoolers of three or more, but otherwise there’s a fee. Toll prices — displayed at each entrance — change dynamically depending on traffic volume. They range from a low of 20 cents a mile up to $1.25 or even more. There is no cap. The goal is to keep prices just high enough so that traffic flows at a pace of 55 miles per hour or more.

Now open, it appears motorists of all income levels are taking advantage of the new roads, and they’re seeing a dramatic reduction in the length of their formerly arduous commutes. Indeed, the biggest complaint is that the express lanes are only on the Virginia side of the Beltway. Maryland, foolishly, didn’t participate.

Are tolls unfair? Hardly. In fact, the fairness complaint cuts the other way. What is unfair is that, because roads are paid collectively through taxes, motorists don’t directly pay the cost of their own commute. Except for gas and perhaps parking, everything else seems free, creating the illusion that driving is cheaper than other modes of travel. If that weren’t the case, many would doubtless use carpools or switch to public transit. That’s why Lexus lanes — which impose costs on drivers — are seen as an environmentally more responsible approach to road building. And in any event, even those who don’t want to pay a toll benefit from Lexus lanes, which siphon off some traffic, making the non-toll road less crowded.

Another point in favor of tolled roads: Because money is to be made, much of the financing can come from private sources. That’s what happened in D.C. with its $2 billion project — something taxpayers never would have coughed up — and the same is proposed for the new lanes along Route 3.

Route 3 is a mess in need of a fix. Express lanes are a smart solution politicians, taxpayers, and commuters should all embrace.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on January 13, 2013.

What will 2013 bring?

As science and technology change in unforeseeable ways, so too will we

When does the new year stop being the new year? Like many of you, I expect, past Januaries would find me accidentally writing the prior year’s date on checks, correspondence, and the like. The benefit of those errors was that, usually within 30 days or so, they forced me finally to adjust to the notion that a year had passed and we were firmly in the next.

Except that I no longer write checks. Rather, I use my bank’s online service, which automatically generates and dispatches payments. Entering the wrong year is close to impossible. The same goes with correspondence. E-mail is internally dated. And when I write a letter, the date-completion function on my word processor offers up the day’s date even as I begin to type. All I have to do is press “enter.”

And so, once more, technology has ripped my world asunder.

As we begin 2013, things may not seem all that different from 2012. New Year’s is an artificial marker, after all. Our lives in truth pass more seamlessly, punctuated by births and deaths, graduations and weddings, jobs and retirement. It’s change, yes, but the kind of change we expect. So too the larger world: The economy will bump along, better than before, but not markedly so. We’ll have more angst over national budgets and continued squabbles in Washington. There will be a US senatorial election (an annual affair, it now appears) and a mayoral one to boot. All predictable, even if the precise outcomes are unknown.

But one thing is not predictable: science and technology. It is those — the unique products of the human mind — that are not only unforeseeable, but whose impact can radically remake our lives.

It’s happened many times before. The light bulb effectively did away with the night. The automobile altered the landscape of the country, letting people live and work in different places. The airplane, in turn, altered the landscape of the world, knitting it together. Air conditioning immunized us from the environment. Radio and television made news, music, and entertainment ubiquitous. The computer transformed the way everyone worked, while the Internet transformed the way we shared knowledge.

The pace now seems to be accelerating. As innovation has piled on innovation, old and comfortable ways of doing things are rapidly ending. Paper books are almost obsolete. So too, libraries. Travel agents, real estate agents, investment brokers — intermediaries of almost every kind — are disappearing. Thanks to my GPS, I no longer ask for directions (although curiously, while I am never lost, I’m also less certain about where I am). Bar bets are increasingly pointless — the answer is so quickly at one’s fingertips that the disagreement doesn’t have time to escalate to a wager.

Facebook was conceived in 2004. Today, over a billion use it; for many, it’s an indispensable part of their daily lives.

America is the nation of invention, the home of disruptive, world-altering technologies which in turn propel a rapid, almost breathless sense of change. It’s fair to say that almost nothing we do today is unaffected by innovations from just the last few years.

That change brings a lot of uncertainty, but it also makes at least one thing increasingly more certain: The level of creative tumult out there is now so high that something will happen in 2013 — perhaps in a big way, perhaps small — to transform again how we live.

Innovations in robotics and 3-D printing may fundamentally alter the US economy, making us once again the manufacturing center of the world. Advances in desalinization could mean unlimited supplies of fresh water (good riddance to low-flow showers!). Improvements in carbon sequestration could solve the problem of global climate change. Developments in battery technology might do the same, dramatically reducing the need for internal combustion engines. Continued progress in our ability to manipulate DNA could wipe out a major disease or eliminate birth defects.

Or the next big thing could be something as yet unimagined. Whatever it is, 2013 will be different from 2012. The daily stuff of our lives, once more, will change. It’s a prospect both scary and exciting.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on January 6, 2013.