Financial Times Europe - 09.11.2019 - 10.11.2019

9 November/10 November 2019 ★ FT Weekend 9

Opinion

3 Modi must position India as a real

alternative to China

Labour laws make it hard to attract global

companies, writesDuvvuri Subbarao

Top reads at FT.com/opinion

3 How older women are taking risks and

trying to change the world

‘Phase three’ of life can also be phase free,

writesAnne-Marie Slaughter

with two children, he is a keenendur-

ance runner and triathlete.

As a prosecutor, his best-known case

was securing a conviction against Rich-

ard Miller, a former FBI agent accused of

espionage.Ms Pelosi must be hoping his

prowess will pay off in this instance too.

She has taken the unusual step of having

the inquiry spearheaded by Mr Schiff’s

intelligence committee, rather than by

judiciary, which is the usual route.

Some, however, complain he is focusing

too narrowly on “Ukrainegate” at the

expense of Robert Mueller’s report into

alleged Russian collusion in the 2016

presidential election.

Until now, most of the hearings have

been held in private — in the basement

Capitol Hill “sensitive compartmented

intelligence facility” or SCIF (another

opportunity for Schiffian word play).

On Wednesday, Mr Trump’s impeach-

ment will finally hit the prime time.

Lights. Camera. Schiff!

The writer is the FT’s US national editor

at Watergate, and did much else besides.

Mr Trump is alleged to have held up

$391m of foreign aid in while demand-

ing Ukraine investigated Joe Biden, one

of his possible 2020 opponents.

Mr Schiff’s role will be to bring out

what happened through questioning of

his star witnesses, starting with Bill Tay-

lor, the acting US ambassador in Kyiv.

“Adam has precisely the kind of no-

drama, find-the-facts prosecutorial

style the country needs at this

moment,” says Rahm Emanuel, a

former congressional colleague.

Mr Schiff spent his early years in Mas-

sachusetts,then attended Stanford Uni-

versity as an undergraduate. Married,

perjury over his sexual liaison with

Monica Lewinsky and obstruction of

justice. Mr Trump’s ratings have never

topped 50 per cent.

Once an aspiring screenwriter, Mr

Schiff partly owes his political career to

the Clinton impeachment saga. A year

after the president was acquitted, Mr

Schiff unseated James Rogan, another of

the Clinton trial managers, on the basis

that the Republicans had over-reached.

Seen by critics as a fishing expedition

into Mr Clinton’s sex life, the charge

sheet — that he covered up his impropri-

eties — was further devalued when first

Newt Gingrich, the Republican House

speaker, and his planned successor,

Robert Livingston, were exposed as hav-

ing committed adultery and resigned.

The gravity of the potential charges

against Mr Trump is far closer to Water-

gate, when Mr Nixon was alleged to have

carried out dirty tricks to boost his re-

election prospects and obstructed jus-

tice to conceal them. Nixon’s henchmen

burgled the Democratic party’s offices

T

he quickest way to provoke

an angry tweet from US

President Donald Trump

nowadays is forAdam

Schiff o appear on cablet

TV. As the chair of the House intelli-

gence committee, the California law-

maker is leading the impeachment

inquiry into Mr Trump. With public

hearings due to start on Wednesday,

“Shifty Schiff”, as Mr Trump calls him,

is likely to turn into a household name.

The way Mr Schiff, who is effectively

chief lieutenant to Nancy Pelosi, the

Democratic Speaker, conducts the

impeachment proceedings could well

shape any Senate trial that would follow.

US history suggests there is a right

way to go about it and a wrong one.

Today’s context is radically different to

the last two impeachment processes —

against Richard Nixon in 1974 and Bill

Clinton in 1998.Only four Republicans

voted against the Democratic plan to

open impeachment inquiries against

Nixon, a Republican president. In 1998,

31 Democrats voted with the Republi-

can majority to open hearings against

Mr Clinton. Last week, precisely zero

Republicans voted with Democrats to

begin the process against Mr Trump.

This is as good a yardstick as any of

Washington’s by now almostcomplete

polarisation.

Mr Schiff thus faces something his

predecessors were spared: constant

demonisation. Dubbed a “traitor” by Mr

Trump (treason is a capital offence), the

59-year-old former Los Angeles prose-

cutor is derided by the conservative

media as a deep state operative presid-

ing over a “witch hunt”. Trump support-

ershave claimed, without evidence, that

Mr Schiff induced the CIA whistle-

blower to file the complaint that flagged

up the infamous July 25 call between Mr

Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart,

VolodymyrZelensky. That in turn trig-

gered the impeachment hearings.

History suggests that television

remains the key to Mr Schiff’s success.

The 1974 impeachment hearings were

led by Peter Rodino, chair of the House

judiciary committee. His task had been

made easier by the earlier Senate Water-

gate hearings, in which John Dean, the

former White House counsel, turned

star witness against his former boss. The

May 1973 proceedings, which were cov-

ered live by all the networks,shifted

American opinion on the scandal. A

major turning point came when

Howard Baker, a Republican senator,

asked: “What did the president know

and when did he know it?”

It is hard to imagine, say, Lindsey Gra-

ham, today’s Republican Senate judici-

ary chair, posing a similar question. Ear-

lier this week Mr Graham said: “You all

hate Trump... I’m not buying into

Schiff running a legitimate process over

there. This is a political vendetta.”

As it happens, Mr Graham was one of

the 13 Republican House members who

served as “managers” of Mr Clinton’s

Senate trial in early 1999. That process

ended in acquittal and boosted Mr Clin-

ton’s popularity. His approval ratings

peaked at 73 per cent as the House voted

on two articles of impeachment —

Person in the news Adam Schiff|

The impresario

of impeachment

All eyes will be on the

former prosecutor as

proceedings against

Donald Trump go public,

writes dward LuceE

Charges against the US

president are far closer

in gravity to Watergate

than Clinton

T

he children’s television

showSesame Street ele-c

brates its 50th birthday this

week. I know my favourite

character should be Count

von Count, who shares myfondness for

numbers. But I’ve always hada soft spot

for Mr Snuffleupagus, Big Bird’s best

friend. Mr Snuffy was thought by every

adult on Sesame Street to be imaginary

despite being as real as Elmo. It’s a good

joke: Mr Snuffy, a strange anteater-

mammoth hybrid, is colossal. How

could the adults not notice him?

After the gag had run for 14 years, the

adults finally realised that Mr Snuffle-

upagus was real, and apologised to Big

Bird for doubting him. This was a

weighty decision:Sesame Street’s writers

were concerned about child abuse, and

reflected that it might be unwise to por-

tray the adults as endlessly disbelieving

what the childlike Big Bird told them.

This was typically painstaking behav-

iour from a show that has always had

ambitious ideas about helping children.

In 1967, a former TV producer named

Joan Ganz Cooney rote a reportw or thef

Carnegie Corporation titled “The Poten-

tial Uses of Television in Pre-school

Education”. She made the case that care-

fully crafted television could “foster

intellectual and cultural development

in pre-schoolers”. Two years later, her

vision became reality, in theChildren’s

Television Workshop andSesame Street.

It was a radical idea: just a few years

earlier, Marshall McLuhan had infa-

mously argued that “the medium is the

message”. It seemed natural enough to

many that television was an inherently

superficial medium with, therefore, a

superficial message. By contrast,Sesame

Streetwas a bet that good television

could make a real difference to chil-

dren’s readiness for school, particularly

for those starved of other opportunities

to learn. Not only would it help them to

read and count, but it would be racially

integrated. Over the years it would

tackle issues including death, divorce,

autism, infertility, adoption and HIV.

Researchers swarmed all overSesame

Street, trying to figure out whether it

actually worked. This wasn’t as easy as

one might think.One early study, con-

ducted by Samuel Ball and Gerry Ann

Bogatz, aimed at a conventional experi-

ment: some families, chosen at random,

would be encouraged to sit preschoolers

in front of this brand new show, while a

control group of other families would

receive no ncouragement.e

The problem was thatSesame Street

became so popular, so quickly, that it

became hard to distinguish between the

two groups; everyone was watching.

Nevertheless, the study authors did the

best they could. They found that chil-

dren who watched moreSesame Street

learnt more, and that “in terms of its

own stated goals,Sesame Street as inw

general highly successful”. Perhaps the

message is the message after all.

Yet it is hard to be sure about causa-

tion. DidSesame Streethelp kids learn?

Or was the programme attractive to

children who were already flourishing?

A recent study by two economists,

Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine,

approaches the problem from a

different angle. Professors Kearney and

Levine noted that in the early years of

Sesame Street, some geographical areas

simply couldn’t receive the broadcast

signals that carried the show.

Two-thirds of US children could

watch the show, and many did, but one-

third could not. Based on this accidental

experiment, Profs Kearney and Levine

concluded that the children who had

lived in a region whereSesame Street asw

available were less likely to fall behind

at school. The effect was about as large

as attending the US Head Start early

childhood education programme —

impressive, given that TV is so cheap.

The benefits were particularly large for

children who lived in deprived areas.

It is hard to read about this study

without being reminded thatSesame

Street as born in a very different worldw

— one where children receivedSesame

Street ia UHF broadcast, rather thanv

watchingBaby Sharkon YouTube,

where a version produced by the South

Korean media brand Pinkfong has

nearly 4bn views.

Like the Children’s Television Work-

shop 50 years ago, Pinkfong has lofty

educational goals: its videos are sup-

posed to teach English to Korean

children. It has more than twice as many

YouTube subscribers as esame StreetS ,

whichstruggled financially n recenti

years before cutting a deal with HBO.

But the vast, cosmopolitan and mys-

terious world of toddler YouTube seems

unlikely to deliver the same educational

benefits to children asSesame Street,

which was continually tweaked to help

children learn ather than being relent-r

lessly optimised for the clicks. As Alexis

Madrigalobserved in a long report no

toddler YouTube, the viralvideos tend

to be fast-paced and full of superfluous

details. These features may attract the

attention of preschoolers, but educa-

tional experts think they are unhelpful.

I’m an optimist. Online video could

surely be even more educational than

Sesame Street, given its ability to be

interactive and to gather data on an

individual child’s progress. But it would

have to be carefully designed and tested,

in the same way thatSesame Street as.w

An educational revolution doesn’t

happen by accident.

[email protected]

How ‘Sesame Street’ set a

gold standard in education

Did the show help children

learn? Or was it attractive

to children who were

already flourishing?

Tim

Harford

The undercover

economist

W

hen Martin Luther

arrived at the Diet of

Wo r m s i n 1 5 2 1 t o

defend his Protestant

ideas in front of het

Catholichierarchy, a guard whispered

to him: “Little monk, it is an arduous

path you are taking.” The same thought

may occur to Olaf Scholz, Germany’s

finance minister, as he tries to convince

his country’s political and financial

establishment, not to mention other

eurozone governments, of the merits of

theplan he unveiled this weekfor com-

pleting Europe’s banking union.

The lack of a comprehensive union,

including common deposit insurance, is

one of the ulnerabilities that could bev

exposed if the 9-nation eurozone 1 expe-

riences urmoil of the kind that almostt

destroyed Europe’s currency union in

2010-12. For the past seven years, how-

ever, efforts to set up common deposit

insurance have met a wall of resistance

from northern Europeans, suspicious of

being lured into forking out billions for

their southern neighbours.

What explains Mr Scholz’s initiative

and will it lead to anything? The answers

lie in Germany’s unruly domestic poli-

tics, its leaders’ gradual reassessment of

the nation’sstanding and the broader

problemsof EU integration.

Building a more effective, closely

united Europe has never presented a

bigger challenge. Disputes abound over

asylum policy, enlargement into the

Balkans, the EU’s next long-term budget

and much else. Trade wars and a choppy

world economy point to difficulties

ahead. Next time — unlike during the

eurozone’s existential crisis — the Euro-

pean Central Bank’s unconventional

monetary measures might not be

enough to save the day.

As Mr Scholz recognises, this rovidesp

a compelling argument for prompt

action to strengthen the eurozone’s

defences, starting with common deposit

insurance.His proposals are limited,

consisting not of a fully mutualised

scheme, but of a reinsurance mecha-

nism in which EU funds would be

deployed once national guarantees had

run out. Moreover, he appears to stipu-

late conditions for German participa-

tion, such as stricterregulation of

banks’ ownership of sovereign bonds

and a common corporate tax base —

unacceptable to some eurozone govern-

ments. Nonetheless Mr Scholz’s plan is

unquestionably a bolder German initia-

tive han anyt in recent years.

One reason for its appearance lies in

emerging concern in Berlin about

friendships on the international, espe-

cially European, stage. German rela-

tions with the USare at a postwar low.

Brexit, detaching the UK from Europe,

will turn it into a hard-nosed competi-

tor, German strategists suspect.

Emmanuel Macron, France’s president,

does not disguise his impatience with

tepid German responses to his propos-

als for overcoming the EU’s troubles.

The desire to build bridges, and to dis-

play a more positive attitude towards

eurozone integration, was illustrated in

Germany’s recent choice of Isabel

Schnabel as its next representative on

the ECB’s executive board. Unlike most

German economists, not to mention

politicians, she has avoided demonising

the ECB as a wrecker of German central

banking principles and a thief of ordi-

nary Germans’ bank savings.

Mr Scholz’s banking union plan fits

the pattern. His ideas do not go far

enoughfor Italy, but can be seen as an

attempt to send a constructive signal to

the less Eurosceptic government that

came to power n September. It might bei

more awkward to deal with Matteo Sal-

vini, the hard-right former deputy pre-

mier aiting in the wings.w

However, this is far from the whole

story. Mr Scholz did not make his pro-

posal on behalf of the erman govern-G

ment, a coalition between his Social

Democrats and Chancellor Angela Mer-

kel’s Christian Democrats. Nor did he

consult in advance with CDU financial

experts, who soon aired doubts. Coali-

tion quarrels could yet doom his initia-

tive to the same swift death that befell a

proposal he made last year for an EU

unemployment insurance scheme.

The manner in which Mr Scholz

unveiled his plan resembles the way

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Ger-

many’s defence minister, CDU leader

and Ms Merkel’s preferred successor,

floated an idea or a multinational secu-f

rity zone in yria. She did not consultS

with government colleagues, either.

Meanwhile, an article byHeiko Maas,

SPD foreign minister, n the 30tho

Scholz did not make his

proposal after consulting

his coalition partners. CDU

experts soon aired doubts

anniversary of German unification

thanked Mikhail Gorbachev, the former

Soviet leader, and other Europeans for

their support. He f ailed to mention the

US, in 1990 he most helpful of thet big

powers. The overall impression is one of

absent consultation, proposals from one

government party attacked by the

other, and no firm guidance from the

top — that is to say, Ms Merkel. Small

wonder that Norbert Röttgen, chairman

of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs com-

mittee, described Germany s “com-a

pletely paralysed, held captive by a

quarrelling, zombie coalition”.

Mr Scholz’s plan has many promising

features. But the German coalitionis

fractious, focused on a post-Merkel

future and unsettled by recent bad elec-

tion results. Progress on European

banking union isalmost certain to

remain slow, a hostage to the next Bun-

destag elections in 2021, and to the

instincts and outlook of the next Ger-

man government.

[email protected]

Germany’s eurozone gambit could meet a swift death

EUROPE

Tony

Barber

NOVEMBER 9 2019 Section:Features Time: 11/20198/ - 17:45 User:nicola.davison Page Name:COMMENT USA, Part,Page,Edition:USA , 9, 1