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Published on Leave a comment on Rhetoric Reality Check

If, contrary to experience, you opened up Paul Krugman's New York Times column (excerpted here by Mark Thoma) expecting economic insights, you will be quite disappointed once again. His thesis today is summed up in the statement:

Arguably, the current state of the Republican Party is such that only extreme narcissists have a chance of getting nominated.

I suppose a lot of things are "arguable," like whether Governor Mike Huckabee, who is both one of the least narcissistic people walking the Earth and the runner-up in this weekend's Iowa Straw Poll of Republican candidates, has a chance of getting nominated. But this is just Krugman being Krugman. What caught my eye was the next statement:

To be a serious presidential contender, after all, you have to be a fairly smart guy — and nobody has accused either Mr. Romney or Mr. Giuliani of being stupid.

Really? What Presidential primary contest is he watching? Here's what Google has to say on the matter:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=romney+stupid

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=giuliani+stupid

Much of the political commentary surrounding the election will, in some way or another, be the political fringes on the right and the left calling some candidates stupid; that is, when the rhetoric does not rise to the level of calling them "extreme narcissists" in major media outlets.

Published on Leave a comment on Rove and Mythology

From the WSJ editorial with Paul Gigot, in which Karl Rove announced his departure from his current position as Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House:

"I'm a myth. There's the Mark of Rove," he says, with a bemused air. "I read about some of the things I'm supposed to have done, and I have to try not to laugh." He says the real target is Mr. Bush, whom many Democrats have never accepted as a legitimate president and "never will."

When I was at CEA, I was in perhaps a dozen meetings where Karl Rove was also present. I never spoke to him personally--I was more in the role of observer at those meetings. I took two things away from those meetings. First, when Rove was in the room, you had better be on mission. He would have no hesitancy at all in asking anyone the direct question, "What have you done to advance the President's agenda today?" He'd be expecting a lengthy and comprehensive reply, and you'd feel like a moron if you didn't have one for him. Second, and it's worth keeping in mind that I would only be at such a meeting if much of the content were economics (as opposed to national security or some other policy), I never heard him take the wrong side of an argument based on the economics.

That said, there is quite a bit of myth in Rove's interview. Gigot's editorial comments around the quotes from Rove are right on the money:

Mr. Rove also makes a spirited defense of this president's policy legacy, sometimes more convincingly than others. On foreign affairs, he predicts that at least two parts of the Bush Doctrine will live on: The policy that if you harbor a terrorist, you are as culpable as the terrorist; and pre-emption. "There may be a debate about degree," he says, "but it's going to be hard for any president to reverse that."

He's less persuasive on Medicare, where he insists that market reforms and health savings accounts are building a "critical mass" of popular support that will make them unrepealable. Yet Democrats are even now trying to kill Medicare Advantage, blocked only by the promise of a veto. If Mrs. Clinton wins in 2008, the Medicare drug expansion may prove to have been all spending and no reform.

He also insists that Social Security reform was worth the failed effort, and that Mr. Bush's ideas will be adopted inevitably by some future president. I ask if, given Mr. Bush's falling approval ratings in 2005 due to Iraq, he shouldn't have pushed for something less ambitious. Not a chance. "You cannot advance on the fronts you want to advance if you're playing mini-ball," he says, once again sounding like Mr. Bush.

Medicare Part D was a betrayal of conservatism. Conservatives are supposed to see fiscal responsibility as their friend, precisely because the need to pay for what the government does should constrain the overall size of that government. This Administration let go of fiscal responsibility early in its first term and has been undermined by its absence ever since. (With the current budget target, weak as it is, we are essentially in a pay-as-you-go situation, so it's not quite so bad.)

The President's attempt at Social Security reform was the first casualty. The reason to reform Social Security is its long-term fiscal imbalance. The President understood that, even if his rhetoric was at times hyperbolic or misleading. The President lost all credibility on using that as a motivation for reform when he decided that the short-term non-entitlement budget imbalances "don't matter" and when he passed a Medicare expansion whose unfunded obligations were larger than those in Social Security. That was contradiction number one. (Read more here.)

Contradiction number two came from the President's statements that he wanted to "strengthen" the system. It is reasonable to believe that strengthening an entitlement program means putting more resources into it. There was no plan put forward by the Administration, even in the form of a trial balloon, that tried to strengthen the system with new resources. That doesn't mean the proposals were bad ideas, but it does mean that the honest description of what his plans do is to pare back projected future spending so that it is balanced by projected future revenues. The President's intentions here were both conservative and (to use Rove's word) ambitious. They just weren't presented coherently, and so they got nowhere.

This notion that the President's legacy on matters of fiscal policy--which will be written by historians (and bloggers!) that Rove can't spin--will be anything but a severe and harsh critique is what I consider the Myth of Rove.

Published on Leave a comment on YouTube is the One in the One-Two Punch

All things considered, I rate this debate as highly as any of the other Democratic debates, largely because the YouTube questions did not come from a member of the media. It may have been just The Wisdom of Crowds generating better questions, but the format conferred two advantages. First, candidates were under more pressure to address the specific question being asked to a greater extent than in prior debates. Being dismissive of Anderson Cooper doesn't cost a candidate anything, but being dismissive of "ordinary" Americans wouldn't score any points. So the video asks, and the moderator can follow up. Second, it is easier for Anderson Cooper to cut off debate on a stupid question from a YouTube video than (under the traditional format) if he had asked it himself.

From my own vantage point, I thought that, as in previous debates, Senator Clinton entered as the frontrunner and didn't lose any ground to her principal challengers (Obama and Edwards). It will be interesting to see when (or if) Senator Obama starts to draw sharper comparisons in order to close the gap. Of the remaining candidates, I thought Senator Biden made a good showing, particularly on questions related to foreign policy that played to his considerable experience.

Published on Leave a comment on How Important Is Experience in the Primary?

I have been wondering how I should evaluate the credentials of the top three Democratic contenders for the nomination in 2008. Here are two options:

1) Taken together, Senators Clinton, Edwards, and Obama have 0 years worth of experience as chief executives of any substantial political entity.

2) Taken together, Senators Clinton, Edwards, and Obama have 15 years worth of experience in the Senate.

I think this race should be more wide open than it appears to be. In particular, on #1, Governor (or Representative or Ambassador or Secretary) Richardson should be doing much better. On #2, Senator Biden, who has served over 24 years, should be doing much better.

So why doesn't experience--where they should have it or where they happen to have it--count for more in the race so far?

Published on Leave a comment on The Natural State Wins Two Debates

From my vantage point, it looked like Arkansas was the big winner in the two presidential primary debates at Saint Anselm College this week.

Among the Democrats, Senator Clinton took control of much of the affair--refusing to answer inane questions is very presidential, particularly when all of your rivals fall in line behind you. As well, every time she asserted that the group was in agreement, she made it tougher for the others to gain ground on her. Very shrewd, very ... Clintonian.

Among the Republicans, it was harder to sort out who won and who lost. My libertarian leanings make me predisposed to like Congressman Paul, but he didn't come across as composed as he did in the prior debate and he suffered from a very bizarre side camera angle at times. My conservative leanings make me predisposed to like someone other than Rudy McRomney, who all fail the ideological test for various reasons. It's pretty clear that person is Governor Huckabee. It doesn't hurt that his book, From Hope to Higher Ground,is very well written, and that he actually has a solid record of achievement as the governor of Arkansas. (For more on this idea, see this earlier post.) He visited the Rockefeller Center on Sunday evening, and he absolutely charmed the 75 or so people who attended the event.

And the Governor did very well in the debate. If you don't believe me, take a look at these real-time evaluations by a focus group of debate-watchers over at MessageJury.

Published on Leave a comment on Dartmouth Welcomes Barack Obama

Today, the College Democrats and the Rockefeller Center co-sponsored an appearance by Senator Barack Obama at Dartmouth. Here's a picture of him addressing the crowd in the courtyard outside the Center.

Some estimates put the crowd at 5-6,000. That was my unscientific estimate as well from my vantage point underneath that flag. I saw what was in the picture below, a crowd that could likely have been arranged in about 60 rows of 100 people each.

There was nothing surprising about his remarks if you have heard him speak before. His line on the war in Iraq is, "We need to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in." On the domestic side, he covered the big three of health care, education, and the environment in a way that didn't seem to be different from other Democrats I've heard. Nothing on immigration as I recall.

In the press conference that followed, the questions were split between specific issues (mostly the war) and the process of the campaign. On the latter, it seemed as if the press wanted him to comment unduly on current polls, such as these, in which he is trailing Senator Clinton. He answered them politely. I think he should have used the Fight Club defense: The first rule of a campaign is, "Don't Talk About the Campaign." Talk about the issues. Talk about people.

On a personal level, he seemed both gracious and attentive, despite what is already a grueling schedule. I think he will continue to grow as a candidate, in just the way we would hope from retail politics in New Hampshire. I stand by what I wrote in these two earlier posts. There's only one poll that matters in the end.

UPDATES: An example of the press coverage of his appearance, in this post by John McCormick of the Chicago Tribune. The article in the campus newspaper here. Video of the event is being posted. This link is to YouTube search results. Here's a short clip that shows his appeal--none of his rivals are as compelling on this issue.

Published on Leave a comment on What Did Ron Paul Say?

From the Spin Room after last night's GOP "debate" in South Carolina, Byron York captures Ron Paul's reaction:

For a man who had just grabbed the spotlight in a nationally televised presidential debate, Ron Paul seemed a little, well, defensive. A few minutes after the debate ended here at the University of South Carolina, Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas, ventured into the Spin Room to talk to reporters, only to find that they wanted to know whether he really blamed the United States for the September 11 terrorist attacks.

“Who did that?” Paul snapped. “Who blamed America?”

“Well, your critics felt that you did.” “No, I blamed bad policy over 50 years that leads to anti-Americanism,” Paul said. “That’s little bit different from saying ‘blame America.’ Don’t put those words in my mouth.”

“But the policies were bad American policies?”

“We’ve had an interventionist foreign policy for 50 years that has come back to haunt us,” Paul continued. “So that’s not ‘Blame America’ — that’s demagoguing, distorting issues…That’s deceitful to say those kinds of things.”

James Joyner at OTB has the best commentary I've seen on this issue in this post. I'm not surprised at Paul's reaction to the spin, and I think the "American Idol" format is in part responsible, even though this one flowed better than the last. If this were really a "debate," Paul's point should be debated, not dismissed.

Published on Leave a comment on Where’s Your Brain?

If you ever wondered whether there was a place in the online world where the use of Google was prohibited, I have a candidate for you. How else would we politely explain Matt Stoller's post at MyDD, "Where's Your Core?" in which he refers to Jeff Liebman as a "Cato-infused nut?"

At issue is Jeff's position as one of Barack Obama's top economic advisors and his status as a co-author of the LMS plan to reform Social Security. Stoller quotes a Bloomberg article as follows:

Liebman, an expert on Social Security, isn't easily pigeon- holed either. He has supported partial privatization of the government-run retirement system, an idea that's anathema to many Democrats and bears a similarity to a proposal for personal investment accounts that Bush promoted, then dropped in 2005.

``Liebman has been to open to private accounts and most people in town would say he's a moderate supporter of them,'' said Michael Tanner, a Social Security expert at the Cato Institute in Washington, a research organization in Washington that advocates free markets and often backs Republicans.

In a 2005 policy paper Liebman, along with Andrew Samwick of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and Maya MacGuineas, a former aide to Senator John McCain, advocated a mix of benefit cuts, tax increases and mandatory personal accounts to shore up the system, which will begin paying more in benefits than it takes in through taxes by 2017 under current actuarial estimates.

Obama has called Social Security's problems ``real but manageable'' and has pledged to preserve what he's called the ``essential character'' of the pension program.

If they allowed the use of Google at MyDD, then Stoller might have typed in "jeffrey liebman" "social security" and hit return. The first link would be to this description of the LMS plan, the first paragraph of which is:

The three of us – former aides to President Clinton, Senator McCain, and President Bush – did an experiment to see if we could develop a reform plan that we could all support. The Liebman-MacGuineas-Samwick (LMS) plan demonstrates the types of compromises that can help policy makers from across the political spectrum agree on a Social Security reform plan. The plan achieves sustainable solvency through progressive changes to taxes and benefits, introduces mandatory personal accounts, and specifies important details that are often left unaddressed in other reform plans. The plan also illustrates that a compromise plan can contain sensible but politically unpopular options (such as raising retirement ages or mandating that account balances be converted to annuities upon retirement) -- options that could realistically emerge from a bipartisan negotiating process, but which are rarely contained in reform proposals put out by Democrats or Republicans alone because of the political risk they present.

It's hard to see what's so inflammatory about that. If I had to guess, it's either "bipartisan negotiating," "compromise plan," or "personal accounts." Let's give Mr. Stoller the benefit of the doubt and assume he understands that the first two are essential to getting any substantive public policy implemented. So it must be those "personal accounts."

Where oh where could Mr. Stoller find the answer to his conundrum of how a top advisor to Senator Obama could support such things? This is where that Google thing helps again. Mr. Stoller could click on the second link in the search, in which he would find the following excerpt from an interview with Jeff:

Q: Why are personal retirement accounts such an important element to the Social Security system as we move forward?

Liebman: The benefit of having personal retirement accounts in the plan is that if we’re going to spread the burden across generations and start putting some extra revenue into the system now, we need to have a way to save that money so that it doesn’t get diverted to other purposes, as the current Social Security surplus often does. If you bring in new revenue but put all of the net new revenue into personal retirement accounts, then you have a way to spread the burden across even current workers in terms of making extra contributions today, but to do so in a way that you can really be sure is going to be contributing to people’s retirement incomes in the future.

Yes, that's a very sinister explanation--you cannot reliably prefund without personal accounts. If Mr. Stoller would like to take the opposite position--that, for example, President Bush's budget policies have not spent the Social Security surpluses during his time in office--he's welcome to do so.

I don't know how Senator Obama would fare as President, but it seems pretty clear that he's better off with Liebman as an advisor than Stoller as a supporter. As I wrote regarding some earlier criticism of the LMS plan, "If you fancy yourself a liberal, and if your coalition doesn't extend far enough to the right to include Jeff Liebman, then you have relegated yourself to political irrelevance."

Normally, this is the part of the post where I would suggest that we raise some money to help Mr. Stoller afford a decent search engine. But search engines are free and improving the quality of the posts at MyDD may be impossible. Making progress against Cystic Fibrosis is neither. The pledge drive is still on. You can support our team at Great Strides or make donations directly to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in honor of Mother's Day.

Published on Leave a comment on A Game Show Rather than a Political Forum

I watched the Republican "debate" last evening. For what it's worth, I thought Tommy Thompson gave one of the best answers (on making Iraq more of a legitimate federal system) and one of the worst answers (on not opposing an employer firing an employee for being gay) of the evening. Overall, I think Captain Ed's summary at the NRO symposium was on the mark:

I think the first question we have to answer is “How did MSNBC do?” Answer: Poorly. This presidential debate resembled a game show rather than a political forum. We had three moderators, one of whom insisted on rambling all over the stage to ask questions from the online audience. Those questions made the MTV “Boxers or briefs?” question seem thoughtful and relevant at times. One bright light apparently expected an answer to “What do you dislike most about America?” Lightning-round queries by Matthews left the candidates understandably frustrated when complex questions left no time for good answers. The format also made for uneven candidate participation; we heard less from Rudy Giuliani than we did from Ron Paul.

Mitt Romney had the best night. Calm, warm, thoughtful, and engaging, he looked and sounded like a serious presidential candidate. John McCain and Giuliani didn’t do themselves any favors, and at times did some damage, but managed to rally back to adequacy. Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee, and Duncan Hunter made cases as real candidates, while Sam Brownback didn’t quite get over that hump. Tom Tancredo showed no depth outside of immigration. The two embarrassments were Tommy Thompson and Ron Paul. Thompson’s takeaway was that he doesn’t oppose firing people for being gay, while Ron Paul’s was his insistence on answering every question with a discourse on the original intent of the Constitution. Both of them should understand their roles as the GOP’s Crazy Uncle Bobs and return to the attic forthwith.

If Fred Thompson can manage to skip the rest of these debates until the primaries, he might become the consensus Republican nominee. He may have actually won this debate simply by forcing the others to endure this one without him.

I stand by my earlier post on how unhelpful these events with so much time left to go before the election.

Published on Leave a comment on Governor Richardson at Dartmouth

Today's issue of The Dartmouth includes a story on Bill Richardson's speech last evening. There's not a whole lot in the story to that would reach out and pull me across the political aisle, but that's true of all of his primary competitors as well. And who knows what choices I'll have next year? I can say at this point that I approve of his sense of humor:

Despite his experience, Richardson continues to lag in the polls with his numbers fluctuating in the single digits. His campaign has raised $6 million, a figure dwarfed by the $26 million and $25 million of presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., respectively.

Richardson, however, remains optimistic.

"Money doesn't vote; it's people. It's issues and voters."

Richardson points to the steady gain he has been making in the polls.

"I was under the margin of error when I started." Richardson joked. "Now we're up to 6 percent. We're third in Minnesota. I called my staff and said how come I'm third, I haven't been there, and they said 'That's why your [sic] third.'"