The Captured Perspective

Richard Florida’s article in this March’s Atlantic is an interesting take on the variety of ways of ways US cities will be hit by the current economic crisis.  Starting with the example of New York, Florida suggests that despite the prevalence of these financial institutions, NYC should be hit relatively less hard than other more homogenous cities hard given the diversity of industries it contains (finance, art, high technology, etc.).

Florida’s argument rests on two assumptions.  First, cities with greater industry diversity are less likely to be hit hard given economic recessions.  This is akin to a portfolio argument where diversity lowers risk as you no longer bank (literally)  on one industry doing well (finance for example).  The problems with cities more likely to struggle, such as Detroit, is that they drove (literally) too hard into one industry (automotive).   In these cities, when things go well, they go exceptionally well.  It’s easy to forget that for a time Detroit was considered the Paris of the West for its architectural beauty and economic prosperity.  But, when they go poorly, the world comes crashing down.  For Detroit, unemployment rates are currently over 10%, its major industry players are at risk of bankruptcy, and it has some of the nations highest violent crime statistics.

The second assumption is much more interesting.  Summarizing the research on urban development, Florida writes:

Although the specialization identified by Adam Smith creates powerful efficiency gains… the jostling of many different professions and different types of people, all in a dense environment, is an essential spur to innovation—to the creation of things that are truly new. And innovation, in the long run, is what keeps cities vital and relevant.

What this means is that cities are not just portfolios that emerge segmented for risk, but also social entities that respond positively to this differentiation with increased generativity.  Cities are not only portfolios, but also social entities where diverse individuals interacting results in additional benefits for the growth of that city, over and above the lower risk of economic failure.  In this way, a city might best be conceived a social portfolio.

What you have in a city like Detroit (or unfortunately, many mid-major Midwestern cities, St. Louis included) is a poor social portfolio- resulting from a significant lack of industry diversity, and a lack of concentrated interaction among any diversity. Taken together, these cities are both at higher risk of collapse given the right conditions, and a lower ‘risk’ of growth and innovation.

In tracing out policy recommendations, Florida argues for a decreasing emphasis on homeownership (so people are more fluid in living, moving, changing work), and an increased social commitment to urban over suburban living for its resulting intermingling of ideas. He concludes that these changes will help many cities — thought not beyond repair —  produce generative communities of entrepreneurship.

I can see how some people would look at Florida’s article and only see another articulation of the benefits of growth. While I resonate with critiques of growth for growth’s sake (see Georgetown political theorist Patrick Deneen for one such take), the growth Florida speaks of is in many ways refreshing to me for its emphasis on creation and individuality.

For example, while Deneen does not explicitly take this as his primary critical stance, one powerful argument against capitalism is that it often results in self-alienation for the worker, a stance articulated poignantly in Marx’s earlier work.*  Essentially, Marx argued that as individuals lose control of their work, they lose control of their lives.  This seems like a fair point, and it underlies many of the contemporary critiques of capitalism in popular culture. Take the recent award winning film “Revolutionary Road.”  In this film, we see how work transforms Frank Wheeler from a dreamer, and “the most interesting person” that his wife April ever met, into the corporate cog, all in the pursuit of being first rate, or more appropriately, a fear of being anything less.

But is the creative class growth of Richard Florida easily categorized as something alienating, or might it be best seen as artistic in form?  Might it not be argued, as Florida made the case on NPR’s ‘On Point’ a few nights ago, that this current economic crisis presents opportunities to ‘reset’ the economy into more creative pursuits– things more internally differentiated and away from the process of alienation for workers.  Perhaps that is the flip side of the coin in this recession; While there will be inevitably be a drop-off of many traditional jobs, perhaps those spots will be filled with creative pursuits in both the for and not-for-profit sectors, and consequently, at least for some, a movement away from work as a form of personal alienation.

*- Though not explicit in Deneen’s work, this assumption of capitalism’s alienation seems to underlie many such critiques, especially when the behavioral recommendations often involve greater community investment, closer involvement with customers, small-business approach, captured imaginatively in many of Wendell Berry’s novels.

Democracy is being overlooked in the field of international development. Take a look at the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG); strengthening democratic institutions is simply not a priority. Not that this list is the end-all-be-all, it simply represents an important trend. As discussed in this recent NY Times article by Peter Baker, even President Obama has not yet made democracy abroad a top priority.

We could invest billions in education, health, gender equity, and other important initiatives, but without a foundation of accountable and responsive democratic government, funds may be spent inefficiently and used to maintain corrupt (and mostly ineffective) structures of resource distribution. In my estimate, democracy one of the most powerful forces for social good in the world and is being entirely underutilized.

My guess is that democracy is being undervalued for two main reasons. First, large international organizations like the UN, World Bank, World Vision, etc. attempt to be apolitical and categorically nonpartisan in their work. In many developing countries, working for free and fair elections is essentially the same as working against the regime in power,  thus being perceived as partisan behavior.

Second, the severe degree of need in the developing world seems to legitimize a myopic strategy for change. When making choices about allocating scarce resources, it’s difficult for nonprofit/international organizations to invest in long-term democratic transformation in the midst of the “urgency of now.” When given the choice, they will ensure that bellies are full before working toward contested and inclusive elections. This is despite the fact that, in the long run, a well-functioning democracy may be a far better mechanism for filling bellies.

To optimize the efforts of global philanthropy, we ought to make democratization a priority among donors, NGOs, and intergovernmental organizations working in the field of development. We must  invest more seriously in building the civil and political societies of fledgling democracies if we are to move beyond the aid ineffectiveness that has plagued the efforts of the West for the past 50 years.

Paul Farmer with an AIDS patient

This past weekend, I finished the book “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” Tracy Kidder’s biography of Paul Farmer and his work to start the public health organization Partners in Health (PIH). Farmer’s life is radically different from my own, stradled between Boston and Haiti (among other places), working with some of the sickest people in the world, all the while exposing himself to a variety of unfamiliar (to us) and uncomfortable (for everyone) conditions.  But these lived priorities reflect what Farmer refers to as committment to “the long defeat.” As Farmer suggests:

I have fought the long defeat and brought other people on to fight the long defeat, and I’m not going to stop because we keep losing. Now I actually think sometimes we may win. I don’t dislike victory…. We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it’s not worth it. So you fight the long defeat.

Farmer goes onto contrast this approach with that of the WLs (white liberals) when he says:

I love WLs, love ’em to death. They’re on our side. . . . But WLs think all the world’s problems can be fixed without any cost to themselves. We don’t believe that. There’s a lot to be said for sacrifice, remorse, even pity. It’s what separates us from roaches.

And that is the tension for the reader of Kidder’s book, and Farmer’s life more generally.  I find myself jointly inspired by Farmer’s approach, but feel incapable of making that kind of radical life change.  A choice like this requires significant sacrifices, and sacrifices of things that are not inherently bad (e.g. stable family life, security, safety).  And so, faced with this tension, my own tendency is to fall into the WL category, inspired towards giving, evangelizing for the book or the man, while still not doing much in way of a radical life change. To be honest, I don’t know what the ‘right’ approach is here, but it is just as hard to forget Farmer’s story as it is to live it, and any attempt at middle ground feels but tenuously stable.

**- The title of the post is translated from a group of Haitians in response to what it is like when Farmer is away from the hospital

Ross Douthat, in a characteristically smart post, takes on the existence of an empirically-driven, ideological-free policy (what Chait suggests is the basis of liberalism):

But this is one of the many, many cases where the Chait thesis breaks down, because of course the empirical conclusions that undergird the pell-mell rush to spend as much money as possible are eminently contestable, and the contest tends to break down along, well, ideological lines. So smart liberals are more likely to find the Keynesian model persuasive (and crack jokes about the need for“Keynesian reeducation camps” to get the voting public on board), smart libertarians and conservatives are more likely to raise doubts about its track record – and the question of which comes first, the ideology or the empirical analysis, is essentially unanswerable. Some people are Keynesians because they find the case for stimulus persuasive, presumably; some people find the evidence for Keynesianism persuasive because they’re liberals, and thus predisposed to support government spending in general; and many people fall somewhere in between. And the same goes on the other side: I like to think that I’m interested in evidence-based policymaking, but I’m sure that I wouldn’t find Tyler Cowen and Greg Mankiw’s stimulus skepticism half so persuasive if I weren’t already predisposed to tilt against trillion-dollar boosts to big government. In either case, where you place the burden of proof - about the stimulus, or about any government intervention to come – depends on the philosophical premises you start with. 

This argument that policies will seem more plausible to the extent that we already buy into certain base assumptions is important.  This is not to say that our beliefs/ policy perspectives are non-rational… but it does underscore the point that it may be difficult to come to some type of coherent foundation that we can all agree on, and argue from. Here, Will Wilkinson has some interesting things to say about disagreements among economists (and by extension, social scientists more generally):

When I see Delong more or less indiscriminately trashing everyone at Chicago, or Krugman trashing Barro, etc., what doesn’t arise in my mind is a sense that some of these guys really know what they’re talking about while some of them are idiots. What arises in my mind is the strong suspicion that economic theory, as it is practiced and taught at the world’s leading institutions, is so far from consensus on certain fundamental questions that it is basically useless for adjudicating many profoundly important debates about economic policy. 

While I think Wilkinson is taking a overly hard line approach here, he does make some points worth noting. Specifically, that it is nearly impossible to remove the ambiguity around these debates, and, going back to Douthat’s earlier point, that disagreement often emerges from different fundamenetal starting points that are not easily amenable to comparison.  

It isn’t difficult to move from these points to make a compelling case for what is inherently misguided in the current approaches for bipartisanship, as demonstrated in the economic stimulus debates thus far.  The argument for bipartisanship is based on an assumption that neither party has it correct in its entirity (agreed), and that the way to reach the best agreement is to blend a set of policies into a centerist position (disagreed).  When two sides have different assumption sets, middle ground often becomes a cafeteria style meshing of policy pulled together with a side of ’scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ mentality. Rather than attempting to find mutual overlap in positions, it often becomes policy building through satisfying mutual interests built up over years of politicking.  

So, is this just a reality of politics? Is it true that, as Mark Twain writes,  ”in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s”? On many days, I tend to be a bit Twainian, but let me try to sketch out an alternative path to ‘bipartisanship’ based on overlapping consensus, humility, experimentation and adjustment.  By overlapping consensus, I mean that it is possible for individuals with fundamentally different starting assumptions to find common ground where the premises flowing from their assumptions converge (for a more systematic and philosophically compelling case for this approach, see Charles Taylor’s argument here). By humility, I mean an acknowledgment that disagreements– often, but not always– rest more on different worldviews than differing levels of accuracy (e.g. different interpretation of facts more so than facts v. falsity). And finally, experimentation and adjustment in the sense of explicit attempts at policy married with adjusment as more information confirms or disconfirms the original case on which it was founded.  

How would this work in policy? I have no idea! And that is why I am an unemployeed PhD student blogging the case to a few internet browsers rather than a Brookings expert powerpointing to a room full of congress-people! But, let’s try it by considering Derek’s earlier piece on the educational stimulus.  Surely a place of overlapping consensus can be found on this issue- perhaps the importance of education, and the necessity but non-sufficiency of proper facilities for this end.  While disagreements will arise on the financial need, source, and control for achieving these end (e.g. localized v. centralized control in allocating funding), there should be a way to realize that the other side at least raises some valid points (e.g. that significant funds may be wasted with bureaucratic centralized control, or that the failure to centralize control may result in underfunding of the most needy areas).  Finally, while a policy must be chosen that commits to a certain political ideology, I would argue that it can be constructed in a way that attempts to deal with the potential weaknesses of this approach, coupled with reevaluation and adjustment based on active monitoring of the earlier acknowledged potential problems in this approach.  On the educational issue, given the power of a demoncratically controlled house, senate, and white house, this will naturally become a set of ed-policies rooted in a significantly amount of centrally raised funding, but perhaps enacted with a blend of localized and national control, kept in check with points of policy reevaluation over time. 

Is this a perfect solution? No.  Is there a better way to do ‘bipartisanship’? I am not so sure…

At long last I am forcing myself to push law books, legal clinic obligations, family visits, weekend trips to Chicago, Phoenix, Naples, etc., trepidation, and fear of the unknown (or unskilled) out of the way to commence my inaugural blog post. Not to mention that the anticipated removal as a future contributor by Peter was just minutes away.

Luckily, facebook has once again saved the day. Instead of rolling my eyes at yet another Forward…well, “forwarded” in my direction, I honestly felt this one had merit. Douglas Quenqua of the New York Times even wrote about it on February 4^th. He explains,

Here’s how it works: friends send you an e-mail message (or, on Facebook, “tag” you in a note posted to their profile) with 25 heartfelt observations about themselves — like “I named my son after a man I’ve never met” or “I once paid good money to see Whitesnake in concert” — along with instructions for you to follow suit. You are then expected to gin up your own clever list and foist it upon 25 people, including the friend who asked for it in the first place.

Unlike the chain letters of yesteryear, no money changes hands and no one is threatened with apocalyptic bad luck for refusing to comply. Yet the practice has spread so far and so fast that a Google search for “25 Random Things About Me” yields 35,700 pages of results, almost all of which seem to have been created in the last two weeks…. On Facebook, the apparent epicenter of the craze, nearly five million notes on people’s profiles have been created in the last week, and many of them are lists of ‘25 Random Things’.

Therefore, I am proud to bring to you…”25 Random Things About Me”. Hopefully we have that many readers.

1. I legally changed my name from Stephanie to Stessie when I was 18. And NO, I was not a teenage rebel. My mother was my attorney and encouraged me to permanently change it. Too bad Jourdie took the “unique name” introduction.

2. If I didn’t attend 7 years of post high school to become a lawyer, I would have loved to be a photographer or a travel planner. I still do both, but just for fun.

3. I absolutely love to travel and feel that it is the best way to expand your mind and challenge your opinions. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to 5 continents, 27 countries, and 42 states. I’d like to see the remaining 2, 168, and 6 respectively.

4. Some of my Dad’s extended family think I am unpatriotic because I like to travel so much. They also worship Rush Limbaugh. Enough said.

5. My childhood dream was to become an actress. I tried out for various local plays and in one performance was silent for 3 hours culminating in a dramatic scene where I drown in a fountain. Tragically, my child actress career came to a halt when I was asked to dye my hair brown for the part of Molly in the production “Annie”. I was so terrified at the age of 6 that my hair would never grow blonde again that I refused to take the part and abruptly ended my aspirations of becoming a star.

6. I may have not become a star, but I have experienced really random encounters with some famous individuals. Dancing with Heath Ledger in Australia, taking shots with Josh Hartnett at a Des Moines bar, asking Maria Shriver about her kids at Saks, and discussing scuba diving with Janet Reno on a plane are the highlights. Surprisingly, they are just people.

7. I have reoccurring dreams of my teeth falling out. An online dream interpreter (www.dreamhawk.com) suggests a loss, change, or death in my life. I am “rooting” for change.

8. One of my favorite movies is “The Man from Snowy River”. It was shot in Australia in 1982 (the year I was born) and Jim Craig may have been the reason I studied abroad in Perth, Australia my sophomore year in college.

9. The most amazing sporting event I have ever attended was a 2006 World Cup football (soccer) game in Munich. I’ve never seen such vivacity, patriotism, dedication, and equality among countries for a single sport. It definitely puts American sporting events to shame, except swimming of course.

10. I have a really big and close-knit family. I was embarrassed at the age of 13 when my mom told me she was pregnant with #5 because I had one of the largest families in town. I’m definitely ashamed of that bratty teenage girl in the 90’s because my family means more to me than anything in this world–even more than chocolate covered raisins!

11. My family has a problem with staying up all night when we are all together and thus being exhausted the next day. The act has been coined a “Bill Family Sit-around” and most mortals just can’t hang.

12. My family is also notorious for missing flights. The number fits on more than two hands. Miraculously, we have never paid for a subsequent flight and often enjoy our “extended stay” in various cities.

13. I would live on the West Coast if it wasn’t for my proximity to family and friends in the Midwest. The beauty of the landscape and general respect for the environment and varying cultures found in places like Portland, Seattle, and San Diego are extremely attractive to me. But the tradeoff is ultimately worth giving that dream up. Hopefully, I can always travel to these places.

14. My mom is my very best friend (there are close seconds). I can tell her pretty much anything.

15. I hate to admit it but I am a crier. Movie previews, stress, and a dirty look can sometimes set me off, even when I’m not that sad. I blame my mom.

16. I love dive bars. There is usually no one to impress and the ambiance is always a treat. And who doesn’t like Natty Light on tap for $1?

17. I am obsessed with hummus and could put it on just about anything. If they ever find out that the chickpea causes a fatal disease, I wouldn’t last long.

18. I am a quasi Boy Scout. Somehow I convinced the BSA to let me tag along on the high adventure trips in high school. Dog sledding and sleeping in a snow hut, canoeing, and learning to scuba dive for over a week were all made possible by the BSA.

19. I often get really angry that humans are destroying this planet by polluting, paving paradise for a parking lot, and overpopulating the earth (who needs quintuplets…seriously!?!) Saying that, I know I am a hypocrite who could do more to decrease my carbon footprint and I do want to have my own children someday.

20. I find that the more I learn the more I don’t know the answer. Hopefully I am not the only one who feels this way.

21. I use the thesaurus religiously. I honestly believe it earned me a few A’s in college.

22. I shamefully love sleeping in until 10 or 11 a.m. Especially in the rain. Sometimes I will set the alarm much earlier than necessary just to enjoy falling back asleep.

23. I love being surprised but I can’t stand not knowing what it is. I’m afraid of heights but I love flying, the tops of tall buildings, and sky diving. I want to become a lawyer but hate arguing. I’m basically a walking contradiction.

24. I have great respect for both of my grandfathers. One escaped the Holocaust as a child growing up in Austria and one was the kindest and least judgmental person I have ever met.

25. When Peter asked me to contribute to “The Captured Perspective” I was both apprehensive and excited. My goal is to contribute one blog posting per month, but once June and July BAR prep roll around I maystick to Constitutional Law topics or become MIA. But feel free to hit the real bars with me on August 1^st.

And there we have it. Twenty-five facts I deemed interesting and pertinent to learning about me, Stessie Bill. Or I could be like most others according to Quenqua who use this activity as “…a creative way to indulge in social networking without coming off as needy or shamelessly self-absorbed.” You may disagree.

Last week I attended a reading by three-time Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky at the Art Institute of Chicago. I must say that I am a total rookie when it comes to poetry. It takes all of my attention and energy to even read a poem, let alone understand one.

If you think reading poems is difficult, imagine listening to them while trying to retain even an ounce of coherence. Pinsky however did not seem concerned with whether the audience correctly decoded the meaning of his words. On the contrary, Pinsky argues, “Poetry does not begin with understanding, but with attraction- like love or hunger for food.” He not only read us his poems, but taught us to listen, arguing that the medium of real poetry is ultimately, and simply, breath.

Playing by his own rules, I fell in love with this very short poem entitled “ABC” in which he uses, in order, every letter of the alphabet:

His delivery is earnest yet playful, immediately compelling while not stifling the imagination. I cannot say much more than that without overstepping my bounds as a self-proclaimed poetry weakling.

During Q&A I wanted to ask him about his politics. I hoped to catch a glimpse of some radical new vision for society or whatever. However, when asked about such things, he humbly commented that he is not an expert on politics and won’t use his position to pretend that he is one; his aim is to master the English language.

In Robert Pinsky I found a man full of depth, passion, and humility in a field of literature that has always pushed me away with its pretense and inaccessibility. I am grateful to have seen him and encourage you to check out his Favorite Poem Project, which landed him the position of Poet Laureate for three years straight.

(I retitled this post, per the note I left in the comments. The old title didn’t zing the way I intended.)

So, I was just reading about the economic stimulus package that the “Democratic leadership and two centrist Republicans”  agreed to on Friday afternoon. Two Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania can now be tagged as anti-education and anti-kids. I don’t follow either of these two senators particularly closely, but it is clear that neither of them have the best interests of our nation’s children at heart, or undestand the point of an economic stimulus bill (spend money!). According to the same article as above, their negotiations with Democrats to get that 60 vote fillibuster-proof majority means the final bill will ”cut nearly $20 billion proposed for school construction [and] $1 billion for the early childhood program Head Start.”

Just because I didn’t want to jump the gun, and because I know firsthand how bad some of our schools are (after teaching in New York City 2005-2007), I wanted to make sure the school construction section of the bill wasn’t outrageous. It isn’t. Here’s are a few key items in the version of H.R.1 that we sent from the house to the senate:

• repairing, replacing, or installing roofs (water dripping on our kids? no problem – build character!)
• repairing, replacing, or installing heating, ventilation, air conditioning systems (until you’ve tried to teach a class of fourth graders division while the air conditioning is on full blast and it is still 85 degrees in the classroom, you don’t understand how crucial this measure is for our kids)
• bringing public schools into compliance with fire, health, and safety codes (yeah, obviously THAT would be a bad idea…)
• modifications necessary to make public school facilities accessible to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (how can they be so cruel?)
• asbestos or polychlorinated biphenyls abatement or removal from public school facilities; implementation of measures designed to reduce or eliminate human exposure to lead-based paint hazards (don’t worry kids, you’re young enough that all those nasty chemicals won’t hurt you. or something like that.)
• upgrading or installing educational technology infrastructure (we all know that technology is for rich kids. quit whining.)
• modernization, renovation, or repair of science and engineering laboratory facilities, libraries, and career and technical education facilities (this is cearly a bad idea for our kids and the economy. What do YOU think would happen if we suddenly spent a bunch of money on expensive stuff? Obviously the kids would break it.)
• other modernization, renovation, or repair of public school facilities to–
  • (A) improve teachers’ ability to teach and students’ ability to learn;
  • (B) ensure the health and safety of students and staff;
  • (C) make them more energy efficient; or
  • (D) reduce class size
  • (I’m reduced to tears. The Collins and Specter are truly evil.)

There’s more, and some of it sucks, like the American-made-only rule about steel, but some of it is good, like a rule that none of the funds can be used for contruction of athletic facilities that will charge admission to the general public. Overall, it’s really good, and I’m angry that it is being tossed. It is good for kids and good for the economy. When did economic stimulus turn into not spending money? And when do we do spend money, spend it on rich bankers so that they can throw parties? Do they think this money is going to end up sitting in teacher’s closets? What happens when you spend money? It stimulates the economy! I understand why Obama (via Rahm) said it would be okay to drop this section, because we can fight the education fight another day, and win, but the fierce urgency of now isn’t just for our economgy, it is for our kids. The fact that they are also cutting $1 billion for Head Start is upsetting. Where do they think that money goes? Into the economy! For our kids who are youngest and most vulnerable! It is upsetting that two Republican senators can hold the entire Democratic party and this economic stimulus plan hostage to the tune $21 billion dollars that is for kids. The headline should be “Collins and Specter Deny Children $21 Billion in LifeEconomic Stimulus.”

Conor Friedersdorf’s recent post on the death of local coverage in the LA Times highlights the role of journalism in the unearthing stories and acting as a check on local corruption. He argues that ‘the death of the California section, and the erosion of the editorial staff, poses daunting problems for local governance in Southern California,” and goes onto highlight one such example where local (well funded, well trained) reporting unearthed a public financing scandal. Friedersdorf asks whether bloggers will be able to make up for the hole left by the disappearing of the ‘California sections’ of the world.  Comparing the journalist who uncovered the relevant story (Marosi) with a lampshape maker (Figueora) trying to do the same, Conor writes:

A newspaper reporter has the time a lampshade maker doesn’t to go down to city hall during business hours; if the City Clerk wants to charge for photocopies, the reporter can expense it to the newspaper, whereas the lampshade maker pays out of pocket; should the City Clerk refuses to hand over the documents, the reporter can have an attorney at the newspaper draft a convincing letter, and write an article in the newspaper hammering the city for breaking the law; should the city clerk dally further, the reporter can have an LA Timesattorney sue the city, and write another scathing story; and if the lawsuit drags on, he can stick it out, though that is seldom necessary, because when your legal adversary is correct on the merits, buys ink by the barrel, and demonstrates a willingness to stick things out, you rarely put them to the test.

Friedersdorf rightly highlights the disparity between the journalist’s already-in-place network of resources in a formal news organization, with those of a blogger acting on his/her own. But what if journalism followed a more open-source model, something akin to what wikipedia does for encyclopedia (like a modified version of wikinews, see criticisms for potential ways forward).

Great final in the Australian Open yesterday… Nadal over Federer in 5.  Makes me wonder whether Federer will ever beat Nadal again.  He seems to have some type of mental block against the Spaniard.

In honor of their great rivaly, I’ve linked to a profile of Federer and Nadal’s 2006 Wimbledon final written by the late David Foster Wallace, best known for his 1996 novel “Infinite Jest.” The article is only secondarily about the match, and primarily about the ‘spiritual experience’ of watching Federer command a tennis court.  Kind of brings you back…  

Here he is on Roger:

A top athlete’s beauty is next to impossible to describe directly. Or to evoke. Federer’s forehand is a great liquid whip, his backhand a one-hander that he can drive flat, load with topspin, or slice — the slice with such snap that the ball turns shapes in the air and skids on the grass to maybe ankle height. His serve has world-class pace and a degree of placement and variety no one else comes close to; the service motion is lithe and uneccentric, distinctive (on TV) only in a certain eel-like all-body snap at the moment of impact. His anticipation and court sense are otherworldly, and his footwork is the best in the game — as a child, he was also a soccer prodigy. All this is true, and yet none of it really explains anything or evokes the experience of watching this man play. Of witnessing, firsthand, the beauty and genius of his game. You more have to come at the aesthetic stuff obliquely, to talk around it, or — as Aquinas did with his own ineffable subject — to try to define it in terms of what it is not. 

The whole article is fantastic, and well worth the read!