San Francisco Chronicle Interview

This is a video of the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle interviewing Barack Obama. The last five minutes are really really good.

He talks about how the problem with the American political system right now is that politicians are not necessarily rewarded for doing good for the nation, emotionally as well as financially. When they stand up to big money, most of their constituents don't know anyway, and then big money funds someone else to run against them and they get voted down. This is something that came up in the studies of Chinese local governments, too. In the towns and villages where leaders of the community were involved with the local government in praising them and giving them moral standing when they do things for the village, those villages did really well. They had the best roads, best schools, etc. In the villages where they don't get moral standing for doing things, those villages were run the worst. And it did not matter whether the village was rich or poor. This is something that Obama gets and nobody else does.