The Wall Street Journal - 30.07.2019

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, July 30, 2019 |A

The Battle of the Microwave

I

was born too late to wit-
ness many of history’s
greatest battles of wits:
David vs. Goliath, Hannibal vs.
Scipio Africanus, Patton vs.
Rommel. But I did have the
good fortune to observe first-
hand one epic struggle, the
Battle of the Microwave, pit-
ting the Odyssean wiliness of
two men—my father and my
younger brother, Jack—
against each other.
Recall what a game-changer
the microwave once was. Food
that previously took an eter-
nity to heat was rendered pip-
ing hot and delicious in sec-
onds. No idle standing and
stirring, either, only a Pavlov-
ian timer-ding announcing
ambrosia. It was the internet
of my 1980s childhood.
My dad, however, was an
inveterate late adopter of
technology, no matter how

promising. As late as 1985, our

home still operated without a

microwave. VHS, cordless

phone, you name it—the old

man waited as long as possi-

ble to upgrade. He was partic-

ularly fond of the “perfectly

good” line of argument: Why

buy a microwave when we

have a perfectly good stove?

Dad enjoyed this verbal

jousting for many reasons.

Best case, he’d ward off a pur-

chase; worst case, prices

would come down as we de-

bated. Even if he ultimately

gave in, dollars spent tomor-

row were preferable to those

forked over today. He taught

his children about supply, de-

mand and the time value of

money. Win-win, by his lights.

While future historians may

disagree with dad’s overall

strategy, the tactics were un-

deniably clever. What the big

guy didn’t anticipate in 1985

was his younger son’s equally

shrewd countermeasure on his

13th birthday.

“I’ve thought about it,”

Jack parried as the big day

neared, “and decided I want a

microwave.” The speed with

which dad hit the bid con-

firmed he’d fallen for the feint.

Sure enough, Jack got a mi-

crowave on his birthday. It’s

what my brother did next that

put him in the pantheon of

master tacticians. He marched

the giant box upstairs. “Where

are you going?” dad asked

with uncharacteristic timidity.

“To my room,” Jack an-

swered firmly. “With my mi-

crowave.”

Dad hadn’t banked on Jack

keeping the family microwave

anywhere other than the

kitchen. He probably could

have pulled rank with “my

house, my rules” logic, but

didn’t. I think deep down, dad

was impressed by Jack’s

moxie and, deeper still, sur-

prised how badly he’d been

outflanked. He honored the

arrangement.

I still laugh when I think of

the months that followed, of

everyone traipsing upstairs to

prepare ravioli from a can in

Jack’s bedroom. It might have

continued that way, but after a

few months the carpets were

caked with sauce and the up-

stairs stank. Only then did

Jack consent to the micro-

wave’s move to the kitchen,

achieving armistice, but never

surrender, in the Battle of the

Microwave.

Mr. Kerrigan is an attorney

in Charlotte, N.C.

By Mike Kerrigan

At 13, my brother beat

my father in an epic

domestic conflict.

OPINION

“My genera-
tion saw this
country elect
its first black
president and
then turn
around and
elect a racist
to the White
House—and
we ought to
call that what
it is.” So thundered Pete Butt-
igieg in an address Friday to
the National Urban League.
These days a Democrat
throwing the R-word at Donald
Trump elicits more yawns than
headlines. What makes the
South Bend, Ind., mayor’s ac-
cusation worth noting is that
he’s throwing this stone from
inside a glass house.
To start with, Mr. Buttigieg
appears to have even lower
black support than the presi-
dent he calls racist. In the 2016
election, Mr. Trump received
8% of the African-American
vote, according to exit polls.
More recently, even after the
House passed a resolution con-
demning him for racism, a Hill-
HarrisX poll reported President
Trump enjoying 13% approval
among black voters.
These are low numbers
compared with most Demo-
crats. But Mr. Buttigieg can
only envy them. A CNN poll re-
leased earlier this month re-
ported Mayor Pete has 0% Af-
rican-American support.
It’s going to be hard for him
to improve much, if only be-
cause back in South Bend ac-
tivists are playing the race
card against him at the same

Mayor Pete Has a Race Problem

time he’s trying to play it

against Mr. Trump. Among the

complaints is that Mr. Butt-

igieg fired the city’s first black

police chief and saw the per-

centage of black police officers

cut in half on his watch.

These complaints went na-

tional after a Father’s Day

shooting in which a white

South Bend police officer shot

and killed a 54-year-old black

male he said was coming at

him with a knife. At a protest

following the shooting, an Af-

rican-American woman asked

the mayor if he’s a racist. An-

other demanded to know if he

believes black lives matter.

Mr. Buttigieg is surely not a

racist. But his failures are real.

The biggest is that South Bend

remains a much more violent

city than he pretends.

He’s only made matters

worse by trying to pander to

the activist crowd, apologizing

for failing to diversify the po-

lice and talking up problems of

“structural racism.” The cops

see this as throwing them un-

der the bus. The local Frater-

nal Order of Police says that

when Mr. Buttigieg makes

“disparaging remarks such as

‘All Police work and all of

American life takes place in

the shadow of racism,’ ” he is

doing so “solely for his politi-

cal gain and not the health of

the city he serves.”

The unpleasant reality is

that Mayor Buttigieg’s remarks

also take place in the context

of a still too-violent South

Bend. Take murder. In the two

years before Mr. Buttigieg took

office, 2010 and 2011, there

were only six and nine mur-

ders in South Bend, a city of

100,000. The count jumped to

18 in his first year as mayor,

dropped to nine the following

year, but then jumped back up.

In 2018, 20 people were

murdered. On Monday, the

South Bend Tribune reported

that though rape and robbery

are down this year, aggravated

assault is up 38% and shoot-

ings have “spiked.” “It’s like

the O.K. Corral out here,” one

resident told the paper.

Shouldn’t someone be

pressing Mr. Buttigieg about

this record? After all, unlike

the other Democrats bidding

for the nomination, he’s been

running on the idea that a

mayor’s experience is exactly

what the country needs. The

goal, he likes to say, is for

Washington to start “looking

more like our best-run cities

and towns and not the other

way around.”

Unfortunately, not many

Americans would want their

crime rates looking like South

Bend’s. No doubt that includes

the law-abiding African-Ameri-

can residents of the city who

suffer disproportionately from

the shootings and violence.

None of this is helping Mr.

Buttigieg make the case for

himself to African-Americans.

Politico even notes that in his

run for re-election as mayor in

2015, Mr. Buttigieg lost support

in the heavily black parts of

town. Hence the increasing

notes of desperation: accusing

Mr. Trump of being a racist,

telling the editorial board of

the Des Moines Register that

“white supremacy” could be

“the lurking issue that ends this

country,” traveling to Chicago

to wrap himself around Jesse

Jackson, announcing an ambi-

tious reparations package—

named for black abolitionist

Frederick Douglass—that

ranges from more spending on

health care to a fund for black

entrepreneurs to carving out a

state called “New Columbia”

from the District of Columbia

that would have the highest

proportion of black voters.

Unfortunately for Mr. Butt-

igieg, whatever he may do or

propose, the activists back in

South Bend now hold him hos-

tage to bad headlines and TV

footage, using protests to

bring attention back to his

troubles with African-Ameri-

cans. Even though the mayor

will no doubt make sure he’s

out of town that day, the Black

Lives Matter sit-in planned for

Aug. 3 will likely prove one of

these events.

The bigger question is, how

long before some moderator at

a Democratic debate asks Mr.

Buttigieg the obvious question:

Can his party retake the White

House with a candidate who

has even lower black support

than Donald Trump?

Write to [email protected].

Buttigieg has even

less black support

than the president he

calls a racist.

MAIN
STREET
By William
McGurn

Russian and
Chinese mili-
tary aircraft
probed South
Korean and
Japanese air
defenses last
week, leading
the South Ko-
reans to fire
more than
300 warning
shots before the intruders
departed.
This was just the latest
manifestation of a deepening
alliance between Russia and
China. James Dobbins, How-
ard Shatz and Ali Wyne de-
scribed the emerging align-
ment in an April essay in the
Diplomat. In 2016, Russia dis-
placed Saudi Arabia as China’s
largest source of imported oil.
In 2017, the two countries held
their first joint naval exercise
in the Baltic Sea. In June
2018, Xi Jinping called Vladi-
mir Putin “my best, most inti-
mate friend,” and later that
year Chinese forces partici-
pated in the largest military
exercise on Russian soil since
1981.
The departing director of
national intelligence, Dan
Coats, says the two Eurasian
supergiants are as close as
they were in the 1950s. From
Venezuela to Syria to Serbia,
they are working to frustrate
the West. They are also in-
creasingly cooperating in sub-
Saharan Africa and have found
ways to reduce their competi-
tion in Central Asia.
Many analysts discounted
the prospects for deep Sino-
Russian coordination. Mr. Pu-
tin’s overarching foreign pol-
icy objective has long been to
build up Russia as an indepen-

Why Russia and China Are Joining Forces

dent great power between Eu-

rope and China; a close alli-

ance with a rising China

works against this goal. Ten-

sions along their lengthy bor-

der, commercial rivalries, and

Russian suspicion of Chinese

designs on its Far Eastern ter-

ritories tend to drive the two

countries apart. Given Russia’s

slow decline and China’s rapid

rise, some expected Russia

would support Western efforts

to balance China rather than

undermine them.

Instead Moscow seems to

have concluded that the door

to the West is closed. The Eu-

ropean Union is too weak, too

indecisive and too liberal to

serve as a strategic partner

for Mr. Putin’s Russia. Presi-

dent Trump is too mercurial

and Congress too hostile for

the U.S. to meet Russia’s

needs. That leaves a stark

choice between an alliance

with China and isolation.

There is another factor

driving Moscow and Beijing

together. The circus atmo-

sphere of the Trump presi-

dency sometimes obscures

this, but the past few years

have witnessed a marked in-

crease in American power.

Washington’s reach is expand-

ing, its ability to enforce its

will on others has grown, and

it has become more willing

and able to use its power dis-

ruptively. Moreover, as recent

protests in Moscow and Hong

Kong demonstrate, liberal

ideas still have the power to

challenge the world’s auto-

crats. Russia and China have

decided to work together

more closely in large part be-

cause both countries are more

worried about the U.S.

Intelligent people disagree

about the wisdom of the

Trump administration’s Iran

policy, and success is far from

certain—but as a demonstra-

tion of American power, the

economic isolation of a major

oil producer in the teeth of

stiff European, Chinese and

Russian opposition is an ex-

traordinary spectacle. To Rus-

sia—another major oil pro-

ducer dependent on trade

with the West that has felt the

bite of American sanctions—it

is terrifying.

Three factors contribute to

this surge in American power.

First, the success of fracking

and related technologies to-

gether with the increased use

of renewable energy in the

West makes world energy

markets more resilient. Oil

prices are stable and rela-

tively low even though Iran

and Venezuela have essen-

tially been forced out of the

market.

Second, the growing so-

phistication of information

technology means that U.S.

authorities can track complex

transactions and enforce sec-

ondary sanctions to an un-

precedented degree. European

governments have been

shocked to discover that they

cannot protect national com-

panies wishing to do business

with Iran from American law.

Moscow and Beijing cannot

help but notice that these

tools could one day be turned

against them.

The third factor is Mr.

Trump. By using trade and

tariffs as weapons in unre-

lated negotiations, the presi-

dent has increased America’s

clout. European efforts to re-

sist U.S. sanctions on Iran, for

example, must be carried out

in the shadow cast by Mr.

Trump’s threats to impose

massive tariffs on key Euro-

pean products on vaguely de-

fined “national security”

grounds.

Mr. Trump’s critics argue

that Washington can’t afford

to alienate longtime allies as

adversaries coalesce against

the U.S. They also warn that

the institutions that con-

strained great-power competi-

tion are decaying at an accel-

erating pace. And businesses

around the world need the

kind of policy predictability

that Trump-era diplomacy is

steadily eroding.

True enough, and worry-

ing—but the new world disor-

der has deeper causes than

Mr. Trump. There are two ris-

ing great powers in the world

today—not just one—and the

U.S. as well as China is devel-

oping a more expansive view

of its interests as its power

grows.

China has responded to the

newly competitive interna-

tional situation by deepening

its relationship with a strate-

gic partner. Combine the jos-

tling ambitions of two rising

world powers with the disrup-

tive economic, military and

cultural consequences of the

information revolution, and

the causes of our distemper

are easier to understand if

not, unfortunately, to resolve.

The past few years

have witnessed a

marked increase

in American power.

GLOBAL
VIEW
By Walter
Russell Mead

A Matter

Of Degree

The College Dropout Scandal

By David Kirp

(Oxford, 175 pages, $24.95)

BOOKSHELF| By Naomi Schaefer Riley

H

ow much is a college degree worth? There are many

ways to answer that question—the additional lifetime

earnings, the mind-opening courses, the contacts with

fellow alumni. But here’s a harder question: How much is

somecollege attendance worth? The answer, unfortunately,

is almost nothing. As David Kirp notes in “The College

Dropout Scandal,” “the contention that college is the engine

of social mobility is false advertising for the 34 million

Americans over twenty-five...whohavesome college

credits but dropped out before receiving a diploma.” What is

more, many such students “are worse off economically than

if they hadn’t started college,” thanks to the money they’ve

spent on tuition, not to mention the opportunity cost of the

wages they’ve foregone.

When it comes to the “dropout scandal” there is plenty of

blame to go around. One can start with high schools that

don’t teach the skills children

need to get a good job but

instead encourage all students

to go to college—even if they

don’t have the ability or

inclination. There is the

federally funded financial-aid

system that encourages

colleges to keep raising prices—

making higher education ever

more out of reach for poor or

working-class kids. And there

are the colleges themselves—

particularly the larger public

schools: They don’t offer students

much guidance about which

courses to take or how to finish a

degree in a reasonable amount of time.

Mr. Kirp, a professor at the University of California at

Berkeley, rather than rehearse these perennial problems,

helpfully focuses on success stories. Schools like the University

of Central Florida and Valencia College (both based in Orlando,

Fla.), LongBeach State (in California), and City University of

New York are using technology, pedagogy and psychology to

see that working-class, minority and first-generation students

not only attend college but—more important—finish it.

Take Georgia State, which has increased its graduation

rate to 54% from roughly 33% in 15 years. “Rather than

blaming the students,” one of its administrators tells Mr.

Kirp, “we took a hard look in the mirror.” The first step was

studying the data. Like other large schools, Georgia State can

now monitor grades in particular introductory classes and

see that students who do badly are much more likely to drop

out of school than seek help. The college’s response has been

to offer academic support, like individual tutoring, before a

bad grade has even been sent to the registrar—or steer

students in more productive directions. To take one example,

Georgia State changed its policies so students who aimed to

enter the school’s challenging nursing program wouldn’t have

to wait until their junior year to find out whether they were

qualified to do so. Freshman courses in algebra and

chemistry signaled aptitude early on, allowing time for

students to pick a more appropriate major if need be.

The schools that Mr. Kirp profiles are intervening much

more in student lives—from required visits with advisers to

electronic nudges reminding students to fill out paperwork

and meet deadlines. A greater effort is being made to line up

jobs that fit into class schedules—these are usually kids who

must work as they go to school—and to help students

navigate personal struggles.

Some of the solutions, though, are simply a return to what

higher education used to be. At CUNY’s Start program, for

kids who come from weak academic backgrounds, students

must attend class 25 hours a week, more than twice the

average. And Start students are assigned a specific

curriculum, one that is designed to help them catch up in all

their subjects. This kind of prescriptive rigor is a far cry

from the laissez-faire approach to college in which

administrators hand students a doorstop-size catalog (if it

were printed out) and suggest they follow their dreams.

Faculty members at various colleges have complained

that, to help a cohort of students who might otherwise drop

out, they are being asked to adopt a teaching style or a

curriculum that has the effect of lowering standards. Mr.

Kirp believes, by contrast, that standards aren’t the problem:

Poor and minority students are leaving college, he argues,

because they don’t have confidence in themselves and feel

alone; they need a little extra help and some different

teaching techniques—e.g., collaborating, debating possible

solutions in STEM classes, explaining how topics are

relevant to post-college careers—to make up for more than a

decade of poor schooling.

The truth no doubt lies somewhere in between. Surely

many ill-prepared students could benefit from reminders

about deadlines or pre-emptive tutoring or a classroom

structure that is more encouraging and less intimidating.

But some students are so unready for college coursework

that all the good will and remedial effort in the world won’t

make a difference: They will continue to drop out.

Mr. Kirp doesn’t let inevitably mixed results stand in the

way of boosterism. One administrator, he says, “led the

charge” for reform, “and his point-person...possessedthe

know-how, the passion and the tenacity to turn aspiration

into fact.” At times, he makes assertions that are widely

contested by the available data—like the claim that “half of

all college students struggle with food insecurity.” Or the

claim that grades do a better job than SATs of predicting

how students will fare in college. Meanwhile, his chapter on

how minority students at elite institutions feel out of place

seems, well, out of place. Whatever such students feel, their

plight is miles away from that of the Georgia State student

who can’t manage a long commute, a job, child care and

preparation for an upcoming chemistry test.

We can argue about whose fault it is that so many

students are unprepared for college. Ultimately, though, as

Mr. Kirp’s illuminating analysis suggests: If a school admits

them, it should do more to help them earn a degree,

whatever it’s worth.

Ms. Riley, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise

Institute, is the author of “The Faculty Lounges” and “God

on the Quad.”

Some schools have made student success

their top priority and are finding effective,

hands-on ways to increase graduation rates.