So for the most part I try to avoid the generic partisan controversies like this Ayers business. For the most part both sides in the debate (even when one side is totally correct) tend to generate more heat than light and there is rarely anything useful of substance to be said. However, the more I hear the McCain campaign and it’s supporters harping about Obama’s relationship to Ayers the angrier I get. Not that I care that much about the McCain campaign exaggerating the facts to serve their political ends. Every candidate for a major office has to do this and I try and avoid falling into the trap of being outraged at the other guy’s misrepresentations while thinking those of my own canidate are no big deal.

What bothers me about this Ayers business is that even if Obama and Ayers got together for dinner once a week we shouldn’t be criticizing Obama for treating someone with a checkered past like a human being. For all the Christian rhetoric one hears the Republican party use you might think it would occur to them that forgiving sinners is a virtue. No one is suggesting Ayers has done anything but virtuous scholarship and charity work for the past 20 years so why shouldn’t Obama overlook his prior bad acts and make the Christian gesture of giving Ayers a second chance?

I suspect the people pushing this attack on Obama would agree that forgiving sinners is a virtue but would try to differentiate this case based on the lack of an (sufficient?) apology from Ayers about his behavior in the 60s. But does anyone really believe that the right way to treat someone who acted badly in their youth is to alienate them until they accept your judgments about their culpability? Is that really a better way to behave than making it clear you don’t approve of their past behavior but overlooking it and treating them like a (imperfect) human being? Do the pro-lifers who buy into this Ayers criticism really think it’s wrong to be friends with anyone who had an abortion as a teenager until they admit to having done murder?

Besides, if we didn’t look past people’s idiotic moral beliefs on a daily basis we wouldn’t get anywhere. Surely we don’t think Obama is obligated to give the loony philosophy prof who, despite being a total pacifist himself, thinks the members of the weather underground may have been morally justified in their actions. So how could it be that when the loony prof and the former radical are the same person it suddenly becomes immoral to associate with them?

Alright, so those making the Ayers critique might grant that as a private citizen it’s appropriate to overlook Ayers past but that as a candidate for public office Obama needs to hew to a higher standard. But this argument only works if you think it’s merely acceptable, though undesirable, to overlook someone’s past bad acts. If you believe that it’s actually a virtue to be kind and friendly even to those who have behaved poorly then as a candidate for public office Obama should set a good example and, if anything, be more willing to interact with Ayers. Christ, I understand the McCain campaign is desperate for material to use against Obama but do they really have to suggest that it’s unacceptable to forgive others and interact with them despite their (major) imperfections?

If you watched so much as one event during this summer’s Olympics you probably heard about the extensive efforts to catch athletes using performance enhancing drugs. Now certainly using steroids, HGH or any other pharmaceutical training aids is cheating and the athletes who use them ought to be stripped of their awards. However, just because something is against the rules doesn’t mean if should be against the rules. So while we ought to chastise cheating athletes who surreptitiously take performance enhancing substances to give them an advantage over their rule abiding competitors does it make sense to have rules against doping in the first place? I think serious consideration reveals the answer is no. Regulations on the type of doping, bans on acute intoxication during competition and other reasonable restrictions make sense but the blanket rule against doping harms both sports and medicine.

In NASCAR (auto racing) the rules often impose a fair number of restrictions on the sort of car that can be driven in a race. When better car designs began pushing races to faster speeds restrictor plates and other design features were mandated to keep the sport (relatively) safe. Thus the rules act to prevent excessive risks to drivers but absent particular reasons to ban or require a practice they allow the teams to modify their cars as they see fit. The net result of this not only maintains the excitement of competitive racing it also encourages engineering advances that bring benefits to society at large. My vision would be something similar for medical enhancement. The rules would ban particularly risky/harmful medications while putting the substantial enthusiasm and advertising money available in sports to generate medical advances. Thus to justify the outright ban on doping one must be able to cite some harm the policy causes that outweighs this benefit as well as the entertainment value of seeing athletes perform even more incredible feets.

The standard objection to allowing doping is that it would make new records and achievements meaningless since modern athletes would be competing with the assistance of chemical compounds while the past greats had no such help (or maybe they weren’t caught). However, most of the emotional force of these arguments is really based on a misconception about how doping works. Somehow people imagine that they could just pop some steroids and go compete in olympic weightlifting next summer but this is simply not true. Sure doping can help athletes become stronger faster, recover from injury quicker and so forth but it doesn’t substitute for the insane dedication and time spent practicing. Moreover, since all the serious competitors will be doping it will still come down to the same factors it always has: luck, dedication, talent etc..

So putting aside the idea that somehow the striving and hunger to win that we love about sports would become irrelevant how much sense does this objection make? Not much really. The idea that somehow modern athletes and those of days past had comparable tools is pure fantasy. Take someone with the same amount of ‘natural’ talent and let them train using techniques from the 50s and modern techniques and their isn’t much of a question about who will win the event. Just the fact that modern athletes grew up with all the benefits of modern medicine and nutritional knowledge is enough to give them a huge leg up over the competitors of a generation ago. As if this wasn’t enough advances in equipment design certainly contribute to world records. The new seamless Speedo swimsuits supposedly shaved a significant amount off race times but that didn’t make watching Phelps compete any less exciting. Maybe you could avoid things like the new speedo swimsuits but even changes like using deeper pools can change race times.

Another common argument is that sports are somehow supposed to push the limits of human performance and that if doping was allowed we would no longer be seeing what the ‘natural’ human body could achieve. However, modern athletes already don’t reflect what a ‘natural’ human could achieve. These athletes were given antibiotics to recover from sickness as children, broken bones were set and they were generally kept in better physical shape than the people of just several generations ago. Moreover, there is simply no principled line that can be drawn between doping and the scientific analysis used to select appropriate vitamins and nutrients for athletes. Trying to insist on a no doping rule for athletes will become even more ridiculous as we develop compounds for the general public that make them more fit and healthy without the need for unpleasant time in the gym.

The final and last objection is that somehow doping would pose too great a risk to the athletes or they would no longer provide good role models for children. Given that we allow sports like NASCAR and let girls start training for gymnastics at super young ages this extreme concern about athlete health seems a bit disingenuous. Moreover, as I pointed out above these risks can be reduced and often these doping compounds can be used to speed recovery from injury. Given the potential medical benefits to society at large shouldn’t we try and only retreat to a total ban when we find that it’s impossible to retain a reasonable degree of safety. Moreover, by reducing the risks from surreptitious doping it may also make many athletes safer. The role model argument is outright circular. The only reason to think kids ought to believe that the managed use of medications under a doctor’s supervision for athletic training is wrong is because we’ve decided that’s it’s wrong. Sure we don’t want high school kids to use steroids so they don’t feel like a dweeb but that’s no more of an argument against the professional managed use of enhancing medications than the fact that we don’t want kids to speed is an argument that NASCAR should impose a 60mph speed limit.