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Published on Leave a comment on Beyond Hillary and Obama

Dartmouth student David Imamura writes an interesting column in The Dartmouth today:

The most qualified Democratic candidate for president of the United States will be coming to Dartmouth today. And odds are you've never heard of him.

Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M., has a resume second to none. He served in the U.S. Congress for 15 years. He was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Clinton. And, for the final three years of the Clinton presidency, he was the secretary of energy. After Clinton left office, Richardson returned home to New Mexico, where he was recently reelected to office with a record 69 percent of the vote -- the widest margin in New Mexico's history.

Richardson's credentials speak for themselves. While governor of New Mexico, he has been repeatedly called upon by the State Department to negotiate on behalf of the United States around the globe. A few months ago, he brokered a cease-fire in Darfur. When talks with North Korea broke down over North Korea's development of nuclear weapons, Richardson got them back on track. He has received wide acclaim for negotiating the release of American prisoners in Cuba, Iraq and North Korea. His diplomatic skill has led him to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on four separate occasions.

At home, Bill Richardson's accomplishments have been equally incredible. He has followed a centrist course in government, economically conservative but socially liberal. As governor of New Mexico, he balanced the state budget while cutting taxes for the middle class and increasing funding for education. He eliminated over $200 million of bureaucratic inefficiencies. His statewide energy policy has made New Mexico one of the few states that meet the requirements of the 1997 Kyoto Treaty. During his time in office, the New Mexican economy has been revitalized with the creation of 84,000 new jobs, many of which have been in high-tech industries. All the while, he has been a strong social progressive, pushing New Mexico to legalize civil unions while Democrats in other states have done nothing.

More than any other candidate, Bill Richardson has the experience necessary for the presidency of the United States.

But how can he win?

David goes on to provide a number of reasons, the third of which is:

Third, Richardson is the only Democratic governor in the race. Since 1960, 40 senators have run for president. And since 1960, no senator has ever moved into the White House. Go figure.

Back in October, I tried to 'figure' it this way:

There has been no one since JFK to move from the Senate to the Presidency. Every President since has either been a current or former Vice President or a governor. In this era, there needs to be some record of achievement (of whatever quality) in the executive branch of a government in order to campaign successfully for President. Look at John Kerry's bid for President in 2004--three terms in the Senate and essentially nothing to show for it during the campaign.

Candidates who have not had recent executive experience in government haven't made compelling candidates. In the current environment, we might regard a successful record as a chief executive at some level of government as a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for being elected to the Presidency.

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Published on 1 Comment on More Laffer Curve Laughers

Via Greg Mankiw, we find this National Review interview of Senator McCain by Ramesh Ponnuru. Greg refers us to this part of the Q&A (by far the worst on economic issues):

Ponnuru: If you could get the Democrats to agree, or at least to come to the table on entitlements or on tax simplification, are those circumstances under which you’d be willing to accept a tax increase?

Sen. McCain: No; no.

PONNURU: No circumstances?

Sen. McCain: No. None. None. Tax cuts, starting with Kennedy, as we all know, increase revenues. So what’s the argument for increasing taxes? If you get the opposite effect out of tax cuts?

Greg suggests two appropriate follow-up questions for McCain:

1. If you think the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts increased revenue, why did you vote against them?

2. If you think tax cuts increase revenue, why advocate spending restraint? Can't we pay for new spending programs with more tax cuts?

As Greg has announced that he's an economic advisor to Governor Romney, I'll be very curious to hear Romney's response to a direct question about the circumstances under which he would be willing to increase taxes if he's elected President.

The question that I would like to have answered by any policy maker who voted for the tax cuts and believes that they have increased revenues is:

Why did you make them so small?

Published on Leave a comment on Investment Advice for Presidential Candidates

The latest New York Times headline about Barack Obama's financial investments has the candidate claiming that they did not present a conflict of interest. From what I can tell, there is no ethical problem here. The problem is that Senator Obama should have a better stockbroker. Or, better yet, he should have no stockbroker.

If I were seeking or holding political office, I would not put my financial assets in a blind trust. I would never want to put myself in a position of having to claim, as Obama is now doing, "At no point did I know what stocks were held. And at no point did I direct how those stocks were invested." This is terrible language for a candidate to have to say. It combines the phrasing of a legal technicality with the shifting of blame to an employee. The speculative investments also present the candidate as taking advantage of opportunities that are not available to ordinary folks. This is not the image that a candidate wants to present.

Compare that with a candidate who does not establish a blind trust--no abdication of responsibility, no suggestion that someone else is working in secrecy on his or her behalf. With no blind trust, the candidate shouldn't hold individual stocks, to avoid any suggestion of favoritism. Instead, the candidate can put all stock investments in a low-cost, broadly based index fund, like this one. Now, the candidate is setting an example that all American savers can follow. The candidate is also not playing favorites among companies. He or she does well when every company listed on a major exchange does well.

That's a much better strategy, particularly since the get-rich-quick element of politics can always come later, on the lecture circuit or the book tour.

Published on Leave a comment on And the Award for Folly Goes To …

... House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who is quoted in Jonathan Weisman's inappropriately titled "House Rebukes Bush on Iraq" as follows:

Some liberals and conservatives dismissed the House resolution as merely a symbolic gesture and said that Democratic leaders should have resorted to binding legislation if they were serious about stopping the troop buildup. But House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said that Bush would have vetoed such a bill, with no possibility of an override. The nonbinding resolution is not dependent on the president's signature.

"What the president cannot veto is the opinion of the Congress of the United States, the judgment of the Congress of the United States, the counsel of the Congress of the United States," Hoyer added, pounding on a lectern after the vote. "Let us hope that the commander in chief hears this counsel."

For those of you wondering whether you took the same eighth-grade social studies class as Representative Hoyer, binding legislation that the President vetoes is a much more substantive event than a nonbinding resolution that doesn't make it to his desk.

A close runner-up in this weekend's contest is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is quoted as follows:

Democrats in the Senate face a similar political dynamic. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said yesterday that most Republicans will block a debate on the House-passed resolution until they are guaranteed a vote on a resolution opposing any effort to cut off funding for the war. He predicted that Democrats will muster nowhere near the 60 votes they would need today to move to a debate on the resolution opposing additional troop deployments.

Many Republicans will not bother to show up in the rare Saturday session. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) will be campaigning for president in Iowa. A Democratic counterpart, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), will be campaigning in South Carolina.

Democratic aides said that will only mean another round of newspaper headlines proclaiming that Republicans are blocking a debate on the war.

"Let us be clear," Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said, "anyone voting 'no' tomorrow is voting to give the president a green light to escalate the war.

So voting "no" on a nonbinding resolution (or the decision to have a vote on a nonbinding resolution) gives the President a green light? For those of you trying to figure out the rules of the road, voting "yes" on a binding resolution to authorize the funding for the additional troops is the green light. What has been happening on Capitol Hill this week is analogous to the yellow "Slow Children" sign that you sometimes see on the side of the road.

Published on Leave a comment on Yet Another Reason Why I’d Never Make It in the “News” Business

This week, the House of Representatives chose to use about three days of its precious time discussing the following nonbinding resolution:

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring) that —

(1) Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq; and

(2) Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on Jan. 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.

The choice to spend three days on this was made from a long list of things the House could have been doing, whether about the war in Iraq or other pressing matters.

I choose to take them at their word, and the word they used was "disapproves." When I read about the event in the New York Times this morning, I saw the following:

A sharply divided House of Representatives passed a resolution on Friday formally repudiating President Bush’s decision to send more than 20,000 new combat troops to Iraq.

The rare wartime rebuke to the commander in chief — an act that is not binding, but that carries symbolic significance — was approved 246-to-182, with 17 Republicans breaking ranks to join all but two Democrats in supporting the resolution.

I don't see where the words "repudiating" and "rebuke" are supported in the text of the resolution. In order for a disapproval to qualify as a rebuke, it has to be sharp or stern. This nonbinding resolution is neither. In order for a statement to repudiate, it must reject something. A nonbinding resolution rejects nothing. The troop surge is no less feasible for the President now than it was three days ago.

Opponents of the President's plan to add more combat troops may wish that House members would have actually repudiated or rebuked, but in a nonbinding resolution that uses only the word "disapproves," they clearly did not in their formal capacity as legislators.

House members have said many things to a largely empty chamber during the preceding three days, but we don't elect them to make speeches. We elect them to legislate. They have not done so, and were I a journalist, I would have written it that way in the opening paragraphs of my report.

Published on Leave a comment on Leadership in Politics and Academia

I thought this column by Frank Rich today was pretty good in the way it quotes Barack Obama and discusses his candidacy:

But at least one rap against him [Obama] can promptly be laid to rest: his lack of experience. If time in the United States Senate is what counts for presidential seasoning, maybe his two years’ worth is already too much. Better he get out now, before there’s another embarrassing nonvote on a nonbinding measure about what will soon be a four-year-old war.

That's absolutely right. Experience means more than marking time in a position that other people envy. It means developing leadership capacity and a track record of taking responsibility for decisions. That's why, in the realm of presidential candidacies, a few years as governor of any state can trump decades in the Senate. Obama is later quoted in the article as saying, "They don't want experience, they want judgment." Given what typically passes for "experience" in this context, that's true as well.

Also this week, we learn that Harvard will soon have a new president. The Harvard Crimson reported that Professor Drew Gilpin Faust, a Civil War scholar who currently leads the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, is slated to be approved by the Board of Overseers today. I wish her the very best of luck and hope for good things from my alma mater under her leadership.

Some of the reactions to her appointment surprised me. Consider these quotes from a Washington Post article:

Sheldon Hackney, who was president of Penn from 1981 to 1993 while Faust was a teacher there, said Faust was not only a great educator but always displayed sound judgment and was well-respected by her peers.

"She will be really good for Harvard," he said. "There is no big significant change that you can make in the university for which you don't need faculty support, and she will be able to get that."

Some educators said the choice of Faust was a surprise because she does not have extensive administrative experience. That was probably a plus, said George Washington University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg.

"They didn't want anybody with administrative experience," he said. "They wanted an inspirational leader, a political symbol, a decent person that everybody could feel good about to help them do what the presidents do best."

I'll go along with Hackney (and Obama) that sound judgment is more important than any particular administrative experience. But I don't see how he can assert that "she will be able to get faculty support." Tenured faculty at Harvard (or Hackney's Penn or my Dartmouth) are deeply entrenched in their positions, particularly on matters related to resource allocation. This was the biggest challenge facing Summers as he sought to position Harvard for the next century, and it will be Faust's as well. What's the evidence that she will be able to get faculty support for major initiatives, in which some will be winners and some will be losers, if not prior administrative experience in which she's done so on a smaller scale?

It is also impossible to believe that the presidential search committee really behaved the way Trachtenberg suggests. That warm glow that's being described--everyone feels good so they'll help her accomplish her goals--will vanish the moment this "inspirational leader, political symbol, a[nd] decent person" tries to tell one group of faculty that, in the allocation of resources across departments, their department will get less because other departments are more deserving.

Published on Leave a comment on And So It Begins Again, Again

Recently, I blogged about the early beginning to the 2008 election season here in New Hampshire and, in another post, suggested that my location here reflected the state's ability to provide me with amenities that suit me relatively better than they do other folks, who choose to live elsewhere.

If Moveon.org is going to run this ad in New Hampshire during primetime a full year before the New Hampshire primary, then maybe I blogged too soon.

Published on Leave a comment on And So It Begins Again

This news generated some ambivalence when I learned about it this weekend:

WASHINGTON -- New Hampshire's two leading news organizations will partner with CNN to host two presidential debates in April, executives with the three media companies announced Friday.

CNN, WMUR and The New Hampshire Union Leader will hold the back-to-back debates on April 4 and 5, the first such events to be held of the 2008 presidential campaign. CNN's Wolf Blitzer will moderate the debates with questions coming from WMUR's Scott Spradling and Union-Leader's John DiStaso. WMUR's Jennifer Vaughn will be moderating questions from the audience. The debate will be televised live nationally on CNN and throughout New Hampshire on WMUR.

"We are thrilled to provide our viewers with the information to make the most informed decision possible when they are voting in their presidential primaries or caucusing," said CNN/U.S. president Jon Klein.

I'm thrilled, too, in the following way. These organizations have considerable experience and expertise in hosting primary events. They run a good show, so conditional on there being events, I'm glad they are in charge. But I would be just as thrilled (and maybe a bit more) if we could start the big events later in the process. I see two pitfalls of starting so early.

First, one of the things that's so interesting about the New Hampshire primary is how much it depends on retail politics--small venues with each of the candidates away from the intense media spotlight of television. I think the process actually helps develop the candidates for the national stage. It is the best justification for continuing to afford the state such a prominent role in the national process of electing the next President. If we put the candidates on television so soon, we select for the naturally telegenic before letting the process of retail politics do its good work, and we undermine the unique aspect of the New Hampshire primary.

Second, why do we have to spend such a long time on an active campaign for the Presidency? There are about 9 and 19 months between the first week of April 2007 and the 2008 New Hampshire primary and general election, respectively. What would we lose by just waiting until the fall before turning up the media spotlight? Not too much, really. What would we gain? Maybe six months of the media spotlight focused on the people actually governing in Washington.

Published on Leave a comment on Post-Election Observations

Just a few observations from the past couple of days:

1) Where is Howard Dean?

I haven't been glued to my television lately, but I didn't see much of the DNC Chairman in the Democrats' post-election celebrations.

2) Some politics is very local

I was surprised by the Democrats' gains in the state governments. For example, in my home state of New Hampshire, the Democrats gained control of both chambers of the legislature, in addition to the two Congressional seats. Other states experienced similar shifts. This may have large ramifications in the years to come, as the state legislatures are the training ground for many candidates to federal office and play an often partisan role in redistricting.

3) Being on the winning team

During the Presidential primaries, I absolutely hate to hear phrases like, "we should vote for this candidate because he is 'electable,'" as if what other people think should change the way we vote. That's a recipe for herd behavior and a very fragile outcome. The whole point of an election is to aggregate individual preferences. Not revealing your own preference defeats the purpose.

But, from a purely self-interested point of view, I think that the prospect of Democratic majorities in Congress does lead people to want to vote for Democrats in their own districts. Consider New Hampshire: if the voters had stuck with Bass and Bradley rather than Hodes and Shea-Porter, we would have two representatives in the minority rather than the majority. Given the advantages (through committee assignments and leadership, primarily) conferred on the majority party, there is some logic to "going with the herd" here.

4) Intra-party battles

Via Powerline, I am directed to Tony Blankley's column about how the various factions within each party will now do battle and to this "Dear Colleague" letter by Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, offering himself as the new minority leader. Here's the key excerpt:

I am running for Republican leader, because I believe that we did not just lose our Majority-we lost our way. We are in the wilderness because we walked away from the limited government principles that minted the Republican Congress. But there is a way out. "The way out of the wilderness," author Mark Helprin wrote, "is the truth; recognizing it, stating it, defending it, living by it." Here is the truth as I see it.

After 1994, we were a Majority committed to a balanced federal budget, entitlement reform and the principles of a limited federal government. We delivered on balanced federal budgets, welfare reform and responded to a national emergency with defense spending, homeland security and tax cuts that put our economy back on its feet.

However, in recent years, to the chagrin of millions of Republicans, our Majority also voted to expand the federal government's role in education by nearly 100% and created the largest new entitlement in 40 years. We also pursued domestic spending policies that created record deficits, national debt and earmark spending that has embarrassed us and caused many Americans to question our commitment to fiscal responsibility.

This was not in the Contract with America.

Our opponents will say that the American people rejected our Republican vision. I say the American people did not quit on the Contract with America, we did. In so doing, we severed the bonds of trust between our party and millions of our most ardent supporters.

For a Republican, it's hard to argue with that.