Policy Versus Politics, Revisited

This fall, I wrote about policy versus politics in the context of Ted Kennedy’s body of work. Health care events of the past few weeks have reaffirmed many of my conclusions. From the left flank, many prominent bloggers and pundits have taken vastly different stances on whether the current Senate health care bill is worth supporting. Let’s take a look at a one sample question from a 20-question back and forth on the current bill among Nate Silver from FiveThirtyEight, Markos Moulitsas from Daily Kos, and Jon Walker from Firedoglake. You can read all twenty questions here.

After reading all 20 questions and responses, along with other arguments all over the Web, it becomes clear that this is largely a politics versus policy debate. For an additional example from the politics camp, here’s ex-Hollywood producer turned left-wing blogger Jane Hamsher with her own ten reasons to defeat the bill. Her main conclusion is as follows:

The Senate bill isn’t a “starter home,” it’s a sink hole. It needs to die so something else can take its place. It doesn’t matter whether people are on the right or the left — once they understand the con job that’s about to be foisted on them, they agree. That’s why Harry Reid and President Obama are trying to jam it through as fast as they can, before people get wise. So email the list to your friends and family, tweet it and spread the word.

In the policy camp, here’s an example with health care wonk Ezra Klein answering one of Hamsher’s claims (his full 10 answers to Hamsher can be viewed here):

5) Paid for by taxes on the middle class insurance plan you have right now through your employer, causing them to cut back benefits and increase co-pays.

“You” probably don’t have these plans, which are tilted towards the rich, not the middle class. Your plan probably doesn’t cost more than $23,000 a year. And if it does, the only part that gets taxed is the part in excess of $23,000 a year. The average family health-care plan costs about $13,500 — almost a full $10,000 less than the plans this policy taxes. If we don’t manage to slow the growth in health-care costs, this policy will, over time, hit plans that are less generous. But economists consider the excise tax, which functions as a tax on insurers who let premiums grow too quickly, one of the most effective cost-control mechanisms in the bill.

There’s an equity aspect here, too: The problem with the excise tax is that it doesn’t go far enough. All plans should be fully taxable. This policy begins to chip at the edges of one of the most regressive elements of our system: Health benefits, which are mostly given to better-off workers, are protected from taxes, while income isn’t. A worker at Wal-Mart with no health benefits sees his entire paycheck taxed. If that worker goes to buy insurance on his own, the money he uses to buy it is taxed. A worker at Goldman Sachs with a $40,000 health-care plan is getting $40,000 of his paycheck tax-free. It’s wildly regressive, and not something that liberals should support.

Of course, the main reason for political opposition to the bill from the left is associated with the demise of the public option. While the public option would have been a small step forward in providing more competition in certain markets, its merits were largely overemphasized for political reasons. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the public option passed by the House of Representatives would have covered approximately 6 million or 2% of the 282 million Americans under the 65 years old. The CBO also estimated that this version of the public option would have had higher premiums for consumers, since it would likely have had severe adverse selection, attracting sicker patients on average. A single payer or robust public option would have obviously done more to control costs, but those options were never serious policy options even if President Obama had had the backroom negotiation skills of Lyndon Johnson. In whole, the proposed Medicare expansion would have covered even fewer people than the public option passed by the House.

For many on the left, this was, of course, never about the policy implications of the public option. Rather, the whole debate has been largely about the politics of the public option and what it meant for left-wing morale. After being steamrolled from 2003 to 2007 by a GOP trifecta, the left understandably wanted revenge. The public option was seen as a first step toward the eventual goal of single payer. While the public option would have been a good addition for policy wonks who care about cost control, in reality it was a very small part of the overall bill and the lack of a public option does not necessarily do anything more to preclude future moves toward single payer. (Admittedly, however, the Medicare expansion was perhaps more of a legitimate move toward single payer. Perhaps this should have been the goal of the left from the beginning?)

More importantly, the debate over the public option largely misses the point. The public option, Medicare expansion, and anything else up to and including single payer do not necessarily by themselves do anything to control costs in the long run. Yes, in the short run, they likely do eliminate some excess administrative costs. However, in the long run they do nothing to control runaway increases in costs that, subsides or not, will end up bankrupting the public, the government, or both. Coverage reforms by definition only involve what individuals are covered or not covered by what type of insurance; nothing more, nothing less. Real cost reforms go beyond this to reforming how care is paid for.

Unfortunately, Washington has historically viewed payment reform in the context of payment cuts. This of course leads to limiting of payments but does little to control costs. Real reform that actually bends the proverbial cost curve involves changing incentives and how providers are paid in ways that encourage collaboration, cost control, risk sharing, and sensible evidenced-based rationing. Yes, despite what Sarah Palin may be tweeting, the United States already rations care, largely by socioeconomic status, age, existence of a preexisting condition, and different knowledge levels about how to navigate the insurance appeal process. Rationing by evidence-based effective care and paying for quality instead of quantity are two needed long-term solutions. The Senate and House bills tiptoe in this direction with various demonstration projects. While at first glance, this is too little and too slow, respected health care writer, clinician, and wonk, Dr. Atul Gawande, takes the opposite viewpoint in his latest New Yorker article about how the Senate bill would potentially contain costs.

Another aspect of reform that largely has been forgotten in the political battles over the public option is access, which goes far beyond coverage. Simply insuring individuals does not ensure that there are a sufficient number of providers to care for these newly insured. This is especially true in many rural areas where there is already a severe shortage of primary care providers. Again, here, the Senate and House bills move in the right direction (e.g., payment incentives for primary care and general surgeons who practice in underserved areas), but probably don’t go quite far enough.

Senate vs. House vs. Status Quo

After digesting all of this from a policy standpoint, I would give the Senate and House bills and the status quo the following scores:

Senate:
Coverage: A-
Access: C+
Cost Control: C
Overall: B-

House:
Coverage: A-
Access: C+
Cost Control: C+
Overall: B/B-

Status Quo:
Coverage: C-
Access: D
Cost Control: D+
Overall: D+

Compared to the current system, the bills that have passed each house of Congress achieve much improvement over the status quo, and there is little overall difference between the House and Senate bills.  Both bills will achieve monumental improvements over the status quo in the area of coverage, adding more than 30 million individuals to the ranks of the insured.  Both bills will make more modest gains in the areas of access and cost control. With that said, thousand of lives could be affected at the margins, and it is important for policy wonks and politicos alike to continue to put pressure on Congress to produce the best bill out of conference. However, considering previous attempts at health care reform over the past 60 years, the current political environment, and the arcane Senate filibuster rules, it is outright naive to assume anything better than a “B/B-” was achievable in the first place. Considering the status quo, those who demand that the current bills be killed in favor of the status quo and the faint hope of a better bill are clearly deciding to put politics over policy. Such political calculations matter little to the estimated 45,000 Americans who die each year due to lack of insurance coverage.

Any views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of any organizations that the author is in any way affiliated with.

Review of Capitalism: A Love Story

Michael Moore’s latest documentary is of course anything but a love story. From the first seconds of the film to well into the last reel, Moore pulls no punches. As is usual for a Moore film, sob stories are intermixed with sobering visuals and powerful factoids. One moment we are witnessing a girl sobbing over her dead mother and the money Wal-Mart made off of her death (more on that later), and the next moment we are looking at what looks like a PowerPoint presentation showing us how the middle class has been deteriorating over the past few decades.

Criticize Michael Moore all you want, but this film clearly demonstrates countless hours of research. While many, including myself, don’t agree with how Moore interprets some of his research, his data is very sound. Moore also does a wonderful job interviewing famous and not-so-famous individuals. For someone that does a lot of qualitative interviewing, I respect his ability to conduct such high quality interviews no matter how many takes he may have had to get it right. There are several memorable takeaways from this film including how derivatives are extremely complicated, dead peasant insurance is  immoral, and FDR would have rolled over laughing in his chair (ROLIHC?) if he heard people calling Obama a socialist.

On derivatives, Moore does a nice job of demonstrating how industry insiders who made fortunes off of these fuzzy devices can’t even begin to explain them. As one insider who couldn’t put derivatives into words put it, “you could put a derivative on anything.” After satisfactorily demonstrating how screwed up capitalism has been over the past few decades, Moore then comes to a fairly odd solution to this problem. Instead of saying that communism or socialism was the answer to a failed system of capitalism, Moore posits that –surprise–wait for it–democracy is the answer. All plugs aside, he might just as well have offered off demockracy as the solution.

First of all, offering a political system as the answer to our economic problems seems like a bit of a cop out to me. In addition, he offers a political system that we’ve never even had in this country. Technically speaking, we live in a republic, not a democracy. While Moore is 100% right in his critique of the abuses and the absolute failure of unchecked, unregulated capitalism in recent years, I expected a more nuanced solution from someone of his supposed intellect. There is no one right answer here. One could argue for a little more regulation under the same basic system, fundamental changes in regulation in the same system, or even a move to more of a redistributive system. Those, at least, would have been largely economic arguments that would have forced one to defend his or her version of utopia against the status quo and other available alternatives.  Instead, Moore essentially says that world peace is the solution to our health care problems. Who can be against world peace? Democracy? What was the problem again?

On dead peasant insurance, Moore brings up an issue so unscrupulous and  immoral that millions of Americans undoubtedly shook their heads in disbelief that they had never heard of this before (I was one of them). In a nutshell, dead peasant insurance is the insider name for insurance policies that companies take out on young largely lower-level employees (hence peasants) that name the company (and not the families of the employee) as the beneficiary if the employee is to die (hence dead) while in their employment. Essentially, the company earns money the more seemingly healthy young employees die prematurely in a given year. While in many ways this type of policy may be fundamentally no different than many other mechanisms that companies use to diversify risk (derivatives?), the utter lack of transparency around these policies make us all rightfully assume the worst. The interesting thing is that Moore shows evidence that these policies aren’t limited to one sector or to a bunch of fly-by-night companies, but rather are seemingly pervasive among many blue-chip corporations. If anything comes of this movie, it will hopefully be pressure on corporations and other companies to at the very least be transparent about these seemingly gross bets. If they’re not as bad as they seem, fine, open up your books. Sunlight is always the best disinfective.

Finally, the film ends on a poignant note showing us FDR’s 1944 fireside chat where he proposed a second bill of rights that was largely economic in nature:

As shown in the video above, these rights included:

1. The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation.
2. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.
3. The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living.
4. The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad.
5. The right of every family to a decent home.
6. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
7. The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.
8. The right to a good education.

While a few of these may be a bit antiquated, on the whole they seem like largely “reasonable rights,” most of which have yet to be achieved. Above all, this speech is a clarion call to those who are proud to call themselves liberals or progressives. In this light, it seems ridiculous that anyone call the current President, who has yet to be bold enough on any of these issues, anything more extreme than a moderate. The movie also reminds us that despite being extremely popular with the majority of the populace, FDR was a big threat and thus largely hated by much of the top 1% of this country and many of those who believed that they were destined to be in the top 1% someday. Despite the triangulation of recent Democratic presidents, FDR realized that people hating you was a pretty good indication that you were actually getting something done. In fact, FDR makes this final argument of the film better than Moore could have ever made it himself. For that, I give Moore credit.

Kennedy: Policy Over Politics

Over the last two weeks, I’ve heard countless arguments about what the death of Ted Kennedy means to everything from health care to bipartisanship to the legacy of the New Deal to overall themes of leadership and compromise in Washington. At least in the mainstream media, there has been little nuanced introspection and examination of the what his legislative accomplishments may teach us about the policy dilemmas of the current day. Rather, most commentary, like virtually everything else on the airwaves during the congressional recess, has been dominated by political opportunists and windbag journalists who know of little outside of the rules of thumb that they have been taught in their elite circles. As I think about all of this, I myself ponder what Ted Kennedy’s real legacy may be for the substantive policy debates in months and years ahead

Outside of the man, his family, and close friends, most of us cannot begin to know for sure what Ted Kennedy himself would think. Instead, let’s take a look at his life of policy work through our own unique lens. By understanding this legacy, we can better frame our own ideas about the current situation and what may be the way forward.

Policy Lessons: Liberal Lion or Man of Compromise?

Of course, like all of us, Ted Kennedy’s life was anything but perfect. From the privileged youngest son of Camelot and playboy philanderer to the elder statesman who became a champion of the working class, Ted Kennedy lived an interesting life indeed. Most of us probably know the beginning and end of this story, along with several chapters in-between. However, what I believe is most instructive are the policy and legislative lessons of the period post-1980, after Kennedy’s presidential ambitions were slammed shut for good.

It was during this latter stage of his career that Ted Kennedy became known for being able to reach across the aisle to get things done. During this era, Kennedy was largely responsible for more legislation than any other Senator could dream of. There are too many bills to mention, but a few significant ones that Kennedy played a major role in during this time include:

The Americans with Disabilities Act

The Family and Medical Leave Act

The State Children’s Healthcare Insurance Program

No Child Left Behind Act

I purposely have included No Child Left Behind on this list as it is a bill that is often not all that popular with the base of the so-called Liberal Lion. This bill in particular has led many right-wing commentators to argue that Ted Kennedy was all about a compromise akin to capitulation, as so many of his centrist Democratic colleagues unfortunately have been over the past three decades. However, nothing could be farther from the truth. While Ted Kennedy was perfectly willing to compromise the means, I have yet to find an instance in this period where he compromised the ends. In order to get more funding for education, yes, he was willing to agree to tougher standards for teachers and more accountability through testing.  (Yes, the Bush administration did not follow through on all of the promised funding, but funding did increase.) Sure, in order to get a path for citizenship for illegal immigrants, he was willing to negotiate other issues with John McCain and George W. Bush in the immigration bill on which President Bush jumped ship after a backlash from his own base. However, at the end of the day, while he often was willing to meet the other side half way, that is not the same thing as capitulating on the main reason/goal that brought him to the negotiation table in the first place. If your goal is to provide all Americans affordable insurance options, you can be willing to negotiate the means of getting there, but any man or woman of principle simply cannot be willing to negotiate away the end goal.

While Ted Kennedy’s legislative record does teach us that one can accomplish much by being willing to accept frameworks that could be expanded in the future, it tells us nothing of  agreement to self-aggrandizing political compromises that have no real policy implications to ever improve the lot of those who you aim to help. According to recent reports, this type of debate is currently going on between the policy and politics people in the Obama administration. I firmly believe that the lessons of Kennedy’s legislative experience squarely support the ideals of the policy camp and those who choose real substance over faux accomplishment and photo ops.

What’s the Matter with Such Principled Negotiation Today?

Part of the problem with going a bipartisan route to achieving such compromise on policy matters, including the processes and mechanisms of bills such as health care, is that lately it seems that virtually no Republicans share the same overall end goals to improve policy. Sure, we may all disagree on what policy improvement should look like, but in order to negotiate we must at the very least agree that our end goal is to actually improve policy and not to simply pump up our political agendas. If it was a given that 10 GOP Senators honestly agreed to the goals of a good health care bill that extended affordable coverage to 95% of Americans, then Ted Kennedy’s type of compromise would work. If such honest negotiation was taking place on both sides of the aisle, the Senate finance committee would have reached an agreement months ago instead of being nothing but a vehicle for delay meant to kill any real reform. Unfortunately, in the current debates, it seems that with the possible exception of the two Senators from Maine, there are no honest brokers on the GOP side of the aisle today. For believers in a healthy diverse intraparty political system, this is disappointing to say the least.

Given these current dynamics, anyone who falls for such a bipartisan negotiation trap in the current political environment is at best naive, at worst guilty of political malfeasance. It would be akin to negotiating with Strom Thurmond over civil rights or Jefferson Davis over slavery. In times when there is no loyal opposition that is serious about policy improvements, bipartisanship is nothing but smoke and mirrors. Thankfully during many legislative battles of the past, such as the civil rights battles of the 1950s and 1960s, there were supporters of change on both sides of the aisle and bipartisan compromise was not only possible, but the only way forward. Unlike today, during this time period both parties had national support that crossed both geographical and ideological lines.  When ideology and worldviews cross cut party identification on certain issues, those issues are ripe for bipartisan compromise. Otherwise bipartisanship means nothing.  Unfortunately the only real substantive policy negotiation that can occur today is between members of the same political party. This much has been obvious for a long time to anyone who has had their eyes open.

Bottom Line

When it comes to health care and other pending issues such as global climate change legislation, President Obama and Democrats in Congress need to choose policy over politics and hold out  the hope that doing the right thing for those who elected them will win out at the ballot box at the end of the day. It can’t be the other way around.  A real leader can do more with a four year window than a series of weak leaders could ever hope to accomplish in decades of impotent rule. It’s time for real leadership and adherence to ideals that would make Ted Kennedy proud.

Any views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of any organizations that the author is in any way affiliated with.

Gallup, Abortion, and Shades of Gray

With the economy, health care reform, environmental regulation, and other important issues being widely discussed in policy circles, it would be easy for one to forget about wedge issues, such as abortion. However, with the news of the shooting of  Dr. George Tiller, among other recent acts of extremist right-wing violence, and the debate over a new Supreme Court nominee, abortion is back on the front pages.

In this light, I decided that I would take a deeper look into a recent poll that was conducted by Gallup that found changing attitudes toward abortion in the US. Gallup’s results showed that for the first time since they began polling the issue 14 years ago,  more Americans identify themselves as “pro-life” than “pro-choice”.  According to this new poll, virtually all movement in public attitudes toward the pro-life position has occurred within the past year.  After reading about these results, I had several questions, including:

1. The dramatic shift in the past year looked a bit odd to me.  Could Gallup expand upon the bottom-line reasoning from their reporting?
2. What was the party breakdown of the poll? It doesn’t mention weighting, but perhaps they did weight. (If I remembered correctly from the Presidential tracking polls in 2008, one of the big differences between Gallup and Rasmussen was that Rasmussen weighted and Gallup did not, leading to more swings in the Gallup tracker.) My concerns here were that a smaller, more extremist Republican tent, could indicate a misleading swing if they were still weighted at their 2008 levels.
3. Relating to #2, I recently read that Gallup had nearly a 50/50 split in Party ID in this poll. Was this correct?
   

Thanks to my former graduate school classmate, Cynthia English, a Gallup writer and researcher, I had the honor of having my questions answered by Lydia Saad, a Senior Editor at Gallup who worked on this poll. Ms. Saad gave very thoughtful answers to my questions and went above and beyond what I expected. Here are some of Ms. Saad’s responses:

• Kevin’s memory is correct; we do not weight our surveys by Party ID. Although some pollsters do it, weighting by Party ID is not the standard in national RDD surveys. Party ID is essentially a political attitude like every other that we measure; and while it is generally stable from one survey to the next, it does change over time and is susceptible to survey-to-survey variation due to the content of a given survey. Weighting by party ID on election polls, for example, can be problematic since it’s asked after the candidate preference ballot, and therefore largely mirrors the ballot. To weight by party ID on these surveys is to essentially weight by the ballot.

• We did obtain a near 50-50 split in leaned party ID on the 2009 May Values survey. Because this was unusual, we did two things to check the validity of the data. We re-ran the abortion questions on the G1K track two days later, and obtained nearly the same results. That survey had a 10-point advantage for the Democrats on leaned party ID. We also did a post hoc reweighting of the data by party ID, using targets giving Democrats/Dem leaners a 14-point advantage (typical of what we’ve been getting on recent stand-alone polls) and re-ran the survey results . (This was for internal analysis only; we are not publishing the reweighted figures.) The figures changed by only 1-2 points in most cases – indicating that the party distribution of the sample did not account for all or even much of the change seen in the abortion trends. However, as noted in point A, we don’t consider the party ID distribution we obtained in the survey “wrong” just because it was different from what we obtain on other surveys. Thus, we stand behind the published figures based on our standard Census-based demographic targets.

• As highlighted in the story, and expanded on in the “bottom line” analysis, the major change in abortion attitudes over the past year was seen among Republicans and independents who lean Republican. Thus, even if we were to hold party ID constant across the two surveys, attitudes would have become less friendly to abortion rights because Republicans moved to the right, while Democrats stayed the same. The question is, why did Republicans become more conservative in their views on abortion? The “pro-life” side has been eager to attribute it to the “success of their efforts” on the issue. I’m dubious about that. Without a high profile “pro-life” campaign over the past year to attribute this to (which I can’t),  I would expect to see that sort of attitudinal change happen more gradually. This was abrupt. The major change that’s happened is that Obama was elected, and since he is “pro-choice” and those views have been forefront in the news over the Notre Dame flap, I think it’s reasonable to hypothesize that this has compelled some.

• The external validation component is very important. We are not alone in showing a shift toward the “pro-life” position (or anti-abortion position, in the case of legality questions). Aside from Gallup, four other organizations have come out with abortion data in recent weeks, and all of them show a more “pro-life” stance than they did in their last measurement in 2008 (all pre-election).

• “PRO-LIFE” V “PRO-CHOICE”
  Gallup Values survey shows a 7 point increase in “pro-life” and an 8 point decline in “pro-choice” (May 08 vs. May 09) SWING=15 POINTS.    Gallup G1K survey shows a 6 point increase in “pro-life” and a 7 point decline in “pro-choice” (May 08 vs. May 09) SWING=13 POINTS.    Fox News shows an 8 point increase in “pro-life” and 6 point decline in “pro-choice” (September 08 vs. May 09) SWING = 14 POINTS.    CNN shows a 1 point increase in “pro-life” and a 4 point decline in “pro-choice” (Aug 08 vs. April 09) SWING=5 POINTS.

• LEGAL/ILLEGAL
  Gallup Values survey shows a 3 point increase in “legal in only a few/illegal in all” and a 4 point decrease in “legal in all/most” SWING=7 POINTS.    Gallup G1K survey shows a 5 point increase in “legal in only a few/illegal in all” and a 6 point decrease in “legal in all/most” SWING=11 POINTS.    Quinnipiac shows a 3 point increase in “always/usually illegal” and a 5 point decline in “always/usually legal.” (July 08 vs. April 09) SWING=8 POINTS.    Pew shows a 3 point increase in “always/usually illegal” and an 8 point decline in “always/usually legal” (Aug 09 vs. Apr 09) SWING=11 POINTS.

Given these responses, I think it is fair to say that Gallup and others are on to something. There does seem to be a change, albeit possibly temporary, in attitudes toward abortion. Given this change, several questions come to mind:

1. Is reporting about abortion with only two binary options the most appropriate way of showing public opinion? What are some other options to polling about abortion?
2. Will this change be permanent or just a temporary blip in public opinion due to reasons that Gallup points out?

As far as reporting such polling results as binary options (”pro-choice” v. “pro-life” or always/sometimes legal vs. always/sometimes illegal), Gallup also thankfully breaks down its legal/illegal question into four categories. Granted, opinion on abortion is probably more nuanced than four categories, but it is encouraging that Gallup offers these details:

• Legal under any circumstance (change from 2008 to 2009):  -6 points
• Legal under most circumstances: +2 points
• Illegal under most circumstances: – 3 points
• Illegal under all circumstances: +6 points

While it is possible and in fact likely that many Republicans who once had a nuanced position on abortion now identify themselves in the extreme given the polarization of the GOP tent and the fear of an “abortion-loving president” from the talk radio set, the movement away from the “legal under any circumstances” category is still a bit  perplexing by the “Republican Party being more extreme” movement theory.  Are there really many Republicans who just one year ago thought abortion should be legal under any circumstance who now are 1.) Still Republicans AND 2.) No longer hold this position?  It’s possible, but definitely not as likely or as easily explainable as the movement toward the “illegal under any circumstances” camp.  Perhaps this cross-tabulation is just random noise, which wouldn’t be surprising since the margin of error is going to be much higher among these subgroups.

What are some other approaches for asking about abortion?

While I commend Gallup for asking about this question in more than a strictly binary fashion, it’s important to point out that there are other possible ways of asking about abortion that could possibly lead to very different baseline conclusions.  Paul Rosenberg does a nice job of summarizing the findings of the General Population Survey (GPS), which gives survey respondents three different abortion scenarios and asks them to indicate whether they think abortion should be illegal in:

1. None of these cases
2. One of these cases
3. Two of these cases
4. All of these cases

Since many people may have a hard time defining exactly what “pro-choice” and “pro-life” are (Gallup admits that it doesn’t necessarily endorse these terms, and hence uses them in quotes), this approach is nice because it conceptualizes the issue in three nuanced situations, ranging in acceptability.  By using this approach, the GPS finds that only 9% of respondents believe that abortion should be illegal in all three given cases.  This is not to say that this bottom-line result is more accurate than other polls, as it is  asking about slightly different things. (It’s also important to note that these numbers are not meant to in any way dispute Gallup’s trend, but rather to show that a different interpretation of baseline values could be made by using a slightly different methodology.)

What does this mean?

The book Myth of a Polarized America further explores some these issues and argues that most of the “pro-choice” versus “pro-life” debate is in fact media driven and that most Americans actually lie somewhere in the middle, holding a nuanced opinion about abortion and other social issues.  In this light, is it possible that media reports that only repeat binary results of such wedge-issue polls encourage the narrative of a divided, polarized America?

Although recent right-wing extremism may be afoot, it is important to remember that most of those that are pro-life are anything but extremists.  Despite what they may tell pollsters, one can legitimately argue that most Americans hold nuanced views that deserve nuanced reporting that respects the complexities that are inherent in such social issues. Given the apparent sudden change in attitudes, it will be interesting to look at this issue again in five or six months or in a year to see whether this is a short-term blip in response to the first brand-new Democratic President in 16 years or a sudden, sustainable change in public opinion.  The best period to which to compare this recent movement would be 1993, when President Clinton first took office. Unfortunately, 1993 was two years before Gallup began polling this issue.

Bottom Line

I applaud Gallup and others for looking in-depth at these issues and hope that the mainstream media can begin to report such public attitudes and beliefs with the nuance and respectful tone that they deserve.  Like most things in life, abortion does not involve mutually exclusive sets of ideas and values for most individuals.

Welcome to the Wilderness: Where Will the GOP Go From Here?

As I watched Newt Gingrich on Meet the Press recently, I began to think about the current state of the Republican Party. Now, a Republican I am not. However, I do believe in a healthy multiparty system, and with the current death spiral of the Republican Party, we are drifting more and more away from that.

Of course, all parties often find themselves in the political wilderness from time to time. In many parliamentary systems, such as the UK, virtually all power shifts from one party to another every 5-15 years. In the US, with multiple branches of government and rules such as the filibuster, which theoretically are designed to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority, such wilderness periods are usually not as absolute. The closest thing the US has seen in the past century was perhaps the period from 1933 to 1939, when the Democrats controlled the Presidency and supermajorities of both Houses. But even then, the Supreme Court was not fully in line, hence FDR’s disastrous attempt to expand the size of the court.  Other time periods in the “liberal consensus” period of 1933-1969 saw much division within the majority party (largely along North-South lines), which gave a great deal of power to the minority party on many issues, such as civil rights.

Therefore, the current Republican wilderness period isn’t as common as we might think. However, at the same time, it is a great time for the party to define itself going forward without the pressure of actually governing. Going forward, there are several different paths the Republican Party could take. Let’s take a look at some of them:

1. The Establishment Direction

Current Leaders: Newt Gingrich, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and Dick Cheney

Potential 2012 Candidates: Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Jeb Bush

This option generally embraces the past and takes the position that what worked in the 1990s will work now, full stop. It simply plugs in tired arguments of the past into the present and expects that they will produce the exact same results, no matter how different circumstances may be today. This option embraces the fact that Republican values are important, and that the party cannot compromise on its core values. This “love us, or leave us” strategy places a renewed emphasis on national security, fear, and wedge issues.  However, unlike some of the options outlined below, this option is very inside baseball. It’s Washington insiders, roaring 1990s, all over again.  According to the latest CNN Research poll, each of the leaders of this strategy have approval ratings in the 30s according recent opinion polls, but yet enjoy the support of a large majority of members of the shrinking Republican party. As more and more Republicans leave the party, the greater percentage of those left that will be in support of this strategy.

2. Establishment with a Twist

Current Leaders: Mitt Romney and Eric Cantor

Potential 2012 Candidates: Mitt Romney, Lindsay Graham, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, and Tim Pawlenty

This faction of the Republican party is in some ways perceived as “moderate,” but yet in other ways very conformist and in sync with the establishment listed above. However, unlike members of the establishment, people like Mitt Romney and Lindsay Graham are actually somewhat likable individuals that don’t seem like retreads from a past era. However, when you look beyond a few policy exceptions, most in this group fall in line with the group above. However, this path realizes the importance of aesthetics and is willing to compromise on a few tangential issues in order to actually win. While there is nothing necessarily fundamentally different about this group that could necessarily shift the dynamics away from the Republican Party becoming limited to a regional force in the long run, right now this option may be the best bet for the short term survival of the party that doesn’t compromise some on some of its core ideals of the past several decades.

3. Movement Conservatives

Current Leaders:  Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh

Potential 2012 Candidates:  Sarah Palin and Tom Tancredo

This path is top-down populism if there ever was such a thing. Four plus decades after the Southern strategy began its outreach to social conservatives throughout the country, the “movement” they created has come close to completely taking over the Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln. What started with Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan’s pawns, first achieved electoral victory within its new home in 1988 when Pat Robertson finished a strong second in the Iowa caucuses, solidly ahead of sitting Vice President George H. W. Bush.  Twenty years later, for the first time, the movement had one of its own nominated to be Vice President of the United States. Don’t expect the movement to stop there. The movement has all the momentum within the party and will not be satisfied until one of its own is the Presidential nominee, no matter what that might mean for the overall party’s general election chances. Although his name may never appear on a ballot, Rush Limbaugh is without a doubt the current leader of this faction of the Republican Party.

4. A New Populism

Current Leader: Mike Huckabee
Potential 2012 Candidate: Mike Huckabee

This option is intriguing because it has the potential to contract and/or expand the reach of the Republican Party in the long run.  Like the movement, it is populist in nature. However, unlike the movement, it seems to have the potential for real bottom-up populism. With an emphasis on social values, religion, and cultural issues, this option in many ways continues the trend of making the GOP a regional party of the South. However, at the same time, this option is also anti-establishment in a way that the movement is not. Also, this path is not necessarily in line step by step on foreign policy and economic issues with the three factions outlined above. Mike Huckabee flirted with economic equity arguments in 2008, but never went quite far enough to establish a real break here. In the long run, a real break with Republican core stances on certain issues, such as tax policy or immigration, with a reemphasis on cultural issues, could be an intriguing strategy for the GOP.  This strategy could finally open the GOP tent to many African American and Latino voters, who tend to be more socially conservative. While this may sound drastic, such a realignment would not necessarily be anything new in American politics. American history suggests that fundamental political realignments may occur every three to four decades. If you consider 2006-2010 a realignment period (some scholars argue that a realignment normally includes three consecutive elections with the same dynamic trend, although there is generally a critical election) that has finally ended the political equilibrium that has existed since 1968 or 1980 or 1994 (depending on when you define end of the Fifth Party System), then it is still unclear exactly what equilibrium may exist by the middle part of next decade. In fact, some scholars argue that we are currently in the middle of a disalignment, and the exact composition of the Sixth Party System is yet to be set in stone. (Admittedly, with Republican actions in recent years and the rise of Obama, this sort of realignment is probably not realistic for at least a decade or more.)

5. Rockefeller Revisited

Current Leaders: Colin Powell, Jim Huntsman, Charlie Crist, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Tom Ridge

Potential 2012 Candidate:  Tom Ridge

This is the old, moderate, and even sometimes liberal Republican party. And it also could be the new Republican Party that emerges out a possible realignment period. At least in the short term (2012), this looks like the only faction that could actually stand a chance at winning a general election at the presidential level. However, although more popular overall, this faction no longer has many votes within the Republican Party itself. As moderate Republicans have become independents or Democrats in recent years, the Party has essentially purged itself of many of these sane voices. For example, while Republican Colin Powell has a 70% approval rating in the latest CNN poll of all voters, only 64% of Republicans approve of him. When a greater combined percentage of Democrats and independents approve of a Republican than Republicans, chances for a like-minded moderate winning a Republican primary are slim to none. Smartly, Obama and many Democrats know that this is the only faction of Republicans that could beat them in the short term and have strategically moved to the center on several key peripheral (in their mind) issues to ensure that most of those who switched party affiliation in the past 4 to 8 years will remain Democrats or independents throughout the Obama years. This virtually eliminates the GOP’s best hope for 2012, nominating a moderate voice. Further, the best and brightest potential presidential candidate for the GOP out of this moderate wing, Utah governor Jim Huntsman, was recently appointed by Obama to be Ambassador to China.  With Hillary and Huntsman on board, Obama has continued to marginalize those who he sees as political threats. It’s no coincidence that David Plouffe, Obama’s 2008 campaign manager and presumed reelection captain, said publicly 10 days before the appointment that Huntsman was his greatest worry for 2012.

Who Will Win Out?

As the Republicans continue their internal fight out of the wilderness, everyone will speculate about who will emerge out of this power vacuum. While a month, let alone a year, is an eternity in politics, if I were to guess right now, I would predict the following:

The Three Headed Monster of Gingrich-Cheney-Limbaugh will continue to dominate the conversation through the 2010 elections. At that time, as the Republicans gear up for 2012, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee will all emerge as serious presidential contenders. Notice how I did not mention any of the moderate Rockefeller Republicans in that list. Right now, I simply don’t see anyone emerging. Possibly Tom Ridge, but I wouldn’t bet on it. While I think Romney would be the most competitive general election candidate out of the four names listed above, I still think all four would lose pretty handily. Huckabee may be the best hope for some sort of outside-the-box, realignment election. Gingrich is the worst for the short term and the long term, but next to Romney, may have the best shot at the nomination. However, by 2014 or 2016, I believe that either the movement or Huckabee wing will emerge. In many aspects, both of these options represent a complete destruction of the Republican status quo and establishment. The movement was meant to elect Republicans, not to actually run the party from within. The Southern strategy will have finally come full circle.

So what happens if and when the movement does finally completely take over the party? The movement could then continue down the death spiral to irrelevance, leading to a possible reemergence of a moderate wing of the GOP or a formidable new second party to fill that vacuum (assuming the Dems don’t totally co-opt the center, which may lead to a leftist party).  Finally, although unlikely, a unification of populist elements under the guise of cultural conservatism, racial tolerance, economic equity, and/or freer migration of people is another intriguing possibility for a potential new period in American political history.

And you wonder why they call it the wilderness….

Sex Scandals and Politics: A New Norm?

In light of David Vitter’s political survival and the apparent political comeback of Eliot Spitzer written on the wall, I began to think back to a simpler time, a time when sex was taboo and charlatans claimed a 100,000 Dow was possible.

When thinking about such a time, I also remembered chuckling a few years back when I saw a particularly astute bumper sticker that read:

When Clinton Lied, Nobody Died

In the midst of the many abuses of power by the Bush administration, not seen since Watergate (and probably Teapot Dome before that), it seemed funny in retrospect how obsessed many had been in the late 1990s, just a few years before, about President Clinton’s zipper problem with the infamous Ms. Lewinsky.

Many of the popular defenses of Bill Clinton’s behaviors during the aftermath of the Lewinsky affair seemed to be based on two lines of thought:

1. This sort of behavior was nothing new among American Presidents.

Popular icons such as FDR and JFK were anything but faithful during their days in the White House. While no evidence exists about oral favors in the Oval Office per se, speculation about JFK makes Clinton’s behavior look like an ABC Family Special. Granted the press also conveniently never mentioned that FDR was in a wheel chair or that Kennedy was in ill health. In addition, for anyone who has watched the television series Mad Men knows, it was a different time. It was before the sexual revolution, it was before Watergate and the loss of trust between the public and its politicians, and most importantly, it was before the rise of the popular press and cable news (not to mention the internet). There wasn’t the competition we see today, and those in power were good friends with those in the media. For good or bad, it was a good old boys club with respected boundaries.

2 . This sort of thing was not a big deal elsewhere in the world.

This line of thought was especially interesting to me as at the time when I was studying European politics. It seemed that all of the institutional factors that had arisen in the US, such as the popular press, the internet, and the devolution of the good old boys club, had all occurred in Europe as well. However, unlike the US, despite the fact that the public now knew about the personal faults of their leaders, it seemed that the public didn’t give a damn. The easy explanation for this at the time was that Europe didn’t have the same evangelical and fundamentalist tradition as the US and was far more secular. As such, they didn’t see their politicians as moral role models and therefore could properly separate their actions as individuals from their policies which actually affected their pocketbooks.

As I read a Newsweek snippet that claimed that Bill Clinton’s survival was the exception to the rule of death by sex scandal, I began to wonder whether or not Bill Clinton’s scandal was not an exception, but rather an inflection point in the ethos of the politics of sex scandals. The more I thought about this hypothesis, the more it seemed to make sense. If this were true, what then could be the reasons for this new dynamic?

The Moral Crusaders Went Too Far

This argument goes on the assumption that politics works like a pendulum in the sense that one side often goes too far, which then causes a big backlash that moves the pendulum swinging back in the other direction. From a cultural perspective, this argument would start somewhere back in the middle of the 20th century. Out of the economic and war torn family unit of the Great Depression and World War II emerged a period from the late 1940s to the early 1960s that is sometimes referred to as the neo-Victorian era. This period of unprecedented economic prosperity enabled a return the one worker per family norm that hadn’t been seen in several generations. However, “hi honey, I’m home” had run its course by the mid-1960s, and the pendulum swung far back to the cultural left with the rise of the sexual revolution, the flower children, and a general destruction, for good or bad, of the morals and cultural norms of the previous period. This period in turn ran its course with the excesses of the 1970s, and by the early 1980s the new “moral majority” had risen to power and catapulted conservative California governor Ronald Reagan (who was once deemed far too conservative to ever be elected president) to power. This backlash/pendulum argument would then speculate that this moral majority movement had gone too far, starting with the Lewinsky affair and ending with the assault on homosexuals and immigrants in the years to follow.

Generational Changes

Tied to this previous explanation is the fact that just as the moral majority was stepping too far, new generations began to come of age who cared little for the wedge politics that defined their parents and grandparents generations. Many in these new generations X and Y had grown up in broken families, had a parent who had strayed, and had had friends of different races and sexual orientations. To many in these new generations, things weren’t as black and white or as us versus them. Simply put, most young people don’t care about consensual adult sex.

Context is Everything

Finally, as hinted at before, in the light of Bush’s abuse of powers and the overall failure of a presidency, all of 1990s’ political scandals seemed so feeble in comparison. Dear God, how naïve were we back in those roaring 90s? This argument is not only the easiest to explain, but is also needed by default to even begin to explain and/or justify the previous arguments. This would also seem to imply that any movement of the past decade in cultural norms is anything but nonreversible. If history is any guide, there is likely to be at least one step backward before we can necessarily begin to move forward. Conservative cultural forces in the United States are too strong and too entrenched to simply fade away.

What’s Next?

Granted, it will be years before we will know for sure whether the recent cases of David Vitter or Eliot Spitzer are evidence of a new dynamic or confirmation that our cultural pendulum has not swung much after all. Perhaps in the context of American evangelical traditions, American politicians with loose zippers can now finally be born again.

The Evolution of Demockracy

As our loyal readers have undoubtedly noticed, Demockracy has a new and improved design. However, there’s more than meets the eye. While this new design is the most obvious of recent upgrades, it is only one of our ongoing efforts to constantly improve the site based on feedback from our writers and loyal readers. Some of the changes in recent months include defining our mission and vision and focusing on more in-depth content, adding a commentary section to display regular columns and other political commentary, bringing on an art editor who contributes a weekly political cartoon to the main page, moving toward a regular cycle of publishing featured articles and most commentaries at the beginning of each week, initiating our first podcast, and a starting a new satire column.

The most recent changes have included an initial redesign of the site to incorporate more of a magazine feel. Within this new and improved design, we have incorporated more ways for writers and users to interact with the site through our new “connect with Demockracy” feature. This feature includes a link to our own Facebook group, a Twitter feed, a direct link to submit original material to the site and contact one of our editors, and  a more seamless way to connect to our RSS feed and email list to help keep our loyal readers up to date on all new Demockracy content.

As we move forward, we plan to implement more improvements to the site. Some of these ideas include:

• Interviews with Policymakers
• Monthly Podcasts
• Original Video and Photography (ideally satire)
• New Columns

We would love any feedback from writers and readers. Among other things, we’d like to know:

• What do you like?
• What other features should we add?
• How should we best leverage Web 2.0 tools (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to make the site more interactive?
• What type of content would you like to see more of?

Every suggestion will be considered seriously as we move forward. Because of our non-profit model, it is paramount that all change be organic and incorporate feedback from everyone who enjoys the site. We are thus committed to rapid cycle improvement and a process of plan, test, evaluate, and, when deemed worthwhile, implement.

Please leave your thoughts below and/or send a personal note to our editors.

Scapegoats, Red Herrings, and Zombie Banks

The last 10 days has been anything but roses for the Obama administration. While the AIG bonuses are largely irrelevant in the whole scheme of things, they are a symptom of a potential larger problem facing this administration.

The AIG Distraction–How does it play in Connecticut?

When news first broke about the shenanigans at AIG that were allowable because of bonus restrictions being stripped from the bailout bill, the White House pointed a finger at already embattled Connecticut Senator, and member of the Countrywide VIP Club, Chris Dodd.  Because Chris Dodd, like Chuck Schumer and most of the congressional delegations of New York and Connecticut, is easily influenced by the Wall Street hacks, Dodd was an easy scapegoat.  To Dodd’s much maligned credit (pardon the pun), he and others would be hard pressed to be anything other than such friends of Wall Street when such a large percentage of their constituents are so reliant on Wall Street for their bread and caviar.

However unscrupulous Dodd may or may not be, there was a little fact about this story that the Obama administration apparently forgot to mention. It was their men, Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, who had lobbied Dodd to strip the bonus restrictions in the first place. Senator Dodd, of course, was quick to point this out. While Geithner, Summers, and team have had barely two months to formulate a response, their ineptness to even get out of the batter’s box lately makes one wonder if Obama may have sacrificed the wrong lamb when it came to tax issues. It sure seems now that Timothy Geithner may have been a better fall guy.

What’s the Dilemma Guys?

When AIG isn’t being blamed for all of our current troubles, it’s the lobbyists. The Obama administration’s response to this situation seems to be an insistence on having it both ways. They claim the “change” mantle and a new way of doing things in Washington, but yet at the same time, they are finding that it is virtually impossible to field a competent staff to address the unparalleled challenges facing our country without hiring at least some experts who have spent some time lobbying. Virtually all of those who have had previous government experience have spent at least some time in some lobbying function. “The rotating door” is alive and well and will take decades to remedy. While efforts at stopping this trend in the long run are noble ideas, suddenly stopping this trend to hire those without any type of lobbying experience means that you de facto are eliminating most of those who have any previous top-level government experience. Of course, new blood is surely needed, but to staff the entire upper strata of government with neophytes in this current environment makes little sense. Therefore, while lobbyists may be good bogeymen to go with the AIG executives, they seem to be the least of our worries. The bigger issue seems to be an utter lack of political will on behalf of the Obama administration and many in the United States Congress.

Socialists and Communists, Oh No!

Just as no Democrat could go to China during the Cold War (Dick Nixon of course could), it seems that no Democrat can muster up the political will to do what is right–temporarily nationalize several of the larger banks. This is something that has been called for by many liberal (in the economic, free market sense) economists and publications such as The Economist. This is anything but a fringe idea.

Instead, Tim Geithner announced today that the government will form “public-private partnerships” to help out the banks. The problem with this approach is is that many economists seem to doubt that the private sector will in fact buy much of these assets.  In fact, the plan basically entails the government subsidizing private investors to buy bad assets. If the assets are in fact undervalued (as Geithner is betting the farm on), then the private investors will make it rich off of Uncle Sam’s dime.  (Of course, this would also likely mean the economy would likely start rolling again and millions of jobs may reappear–presto!) However, if the assets are not really undervalued, as Paul Krugman speculates, then these private investors will simply walk away from the losses. It seems to be more of the same–the public bearing the risk with investors reaping most of the benefits. It certainly sounds good for Wall Street–the Dow was up 500 points today!

To Geithner’s credit, he also mentioned today that there must be new regulations put in place that stop the same moral hazards that got us into this mess in the first place. The problem is that these regulations seem to be something to eventually get around to in the future. In the meantime, more of our tax dollars are going to prop up zombie banks, without much control over where the money goes. In other words, the same people who got us into this mess are still running the same companies under the same set of rules that existed for the last decade. Plus, we’re giving them more money to boot! Does anyone see a problem with this?

Is it possible that the Obama administration cannot possibly do what is economically necessary because of a fear of being called socialists? For God’s sake, they were called socialists during the entire election season and still won in a landslide. If anything, this was a landslide of socialism. You might as well own it if it what is necessary for national economic recovery. As a free marketer and University of Chicago grad, I, of course, am not a big fan of long-term government interruption of the markets. However, I also am not a fan of zombie banks being propped up by the government. The best economic (although apparently not political) solution seems to be obvious. These banks need to be temporarily taken over, divvied up, sacked of most management, and sold off once solvent again. If this is not done, we risk the chance of a lost decade similar to what Japan faced in the 1990s. Temporary nationalization sure beats a decade of no growth.

But instead, the Obama administration, lead by friends of Wall Street within the administration and Congress, apparently plan to do what’s best for the executives and what seems to be politically palatable. However, like it or not, if the economy fails to rebound in a few years, the Obama administration will be blamed for it. It’s as simple as this. They must do what’s necessary to turn around the economy, no matter what labels it may lead to. They must be bold. They must be independent. They must shed away fears of socialism and embrace what’s right. Because, in fact, showing that companies that fail will not be allowed to survive is anything but socialism. It is the true nature of the free market. Without such consequences, we encourage moral hazard and the adverse behavior that have plagued our markets in recent years. Those who make bad decisions must be held accountable for their actions. Those who fail must be allowed to fail so that there is room for the new best ideas to flourish. Every so often it is necessary to flush out the waste to achieve new growth. Sometimes government is the only entity with the buying power to successfully flush out this waste while avoiding complete economic collapse.

It is not the ideal situation. But it is the best worst option in these worst of times. It is about time the Obama administration be honest with the American people and do what’s right for everyone, not just for those in Manhattan and Connecticut. It’s time for the best economic solution for the future of our country, even if it’s not the best short-term political decision. This is what real leadership would entail. This is what real change would look like.

Metrics, Mistakes, and Opportunities for Growth

Overall, I am a big fan of metrics. I truly believe that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Presidents are often measured on a 100-day metric, “The First 100 Days” as a phrase often chirped by the media. Questions have persisted recently about how realistic a metric this is. With President Obama, many believe that this amount of time will not be sufficient to even begin to make a dent in the serious deficits (both moral and economic) that were left behind by the previous President. Some have proposed that the end of 2009 might be a better metric. With most economists speculating that the current deep recession will not turn around under a best-case scenario until late 2009, this seems a bit fairer.

However, after less than 20 days, for many on the far left and far right, Obama’s honeymoon has already ended. No one expected his honeymoon with those on the far right to last long. However, the fact that the far left have in many cases already turned on Obama is disconcerting.  For example, check out some of the comments on this thread from OpenLeft.

Yes, Obama has made some blunders, but I do not believe that these mishaps have been anywhere near fatal errors. Instead of knee-jerk reactions, let’s take a look at two areas where I believe Obama actually has made a mistake, and more importantly, how I believe he can use this mistake as a learning experience. As a human being, everyone makes mistakes, even presidents. The question is not whether a mistake was made during the beginning days of a presidency, but rather whether action was taken to learn from that mistake. In general, this includes a root-cause analysis with corrective action going forward. For example, President Kennedy took the Bay of Pigs failure and used it as the impetus to change the decision-making process in his inner circle. This fundamental change helped get rid of the previous group think and helped avert a disaster in the Cuban missile crisis, which occurred the next year. Yes, the Bay of Pigs was unfortunate. However, if the Bay of Pigs mistake had not happened, the same disaster, at a billion times the magnitude (i.e., nuclear holocaust) could have occurred the following year. Working with the subject of patient safety in health care, I am exposed to this type of analysis all the time. Most errors are not the fault of one person, but rather the result of a misaligned organizational structure that does not catch errors or raise the proper questions.

Let’s take a look at two examples of what I believe have been mistakes and how the Obama administration could possibly learn from them going forward:

1. Tom Daschle Appointment

As a health care policy wonk, I found the developments with Tom Daschle the most disappointing developments to date. As I wrote here, I believed Tom Daschle would have been a perfect fit to get real health care reform through Congress. Granted, I write this before it is clear who Obama’s replacement choice may be, and this choice may surprise us all. However, when it came to the pure Washington knowledge needed to get something through, Daschle was the man. However, this greatest strength also came to be Mr. Daschle’s greatest weakness.  To me, the tax issue was an aside. The biggest problem was that Daschle became emblematic of the Washington insider’s sense of entitlement or the lobbyist rotating door cycle of greed that Obama campaigned against. When taking office, Obama seems to have caved on some of this campaign rhetoric in favor of practicality, with the reality that you must work within the system in order to get anything done.  Overall, this is unfortunate, but largely correct. However, there is a line to be passed; there is a needed sense of accountability and most importantly transparency in government. Tom Daschle crossed this line, and more importantly, did not disclose these transgressions. The fact that no one in the Obama transition raised questions about Daschle’s past lobbying or tax issues is very troubling. The dilemma is that in order to get anything accomplished, you must work within the system (even if you are independently working to change it). However, at the same time, if the system is broken, you cannot try to make lasting change with those who have become one with the system. Finding a cabinet secretary who can meet this requirement is easier said than done.

The solution here is perhaps to create two positions, one for a “health care czar” to handle the political issues and another for Secretary of HHS to handle the technical aspects and realities of health care reform. Ideally, there would also be an independent board appointed outside of the political realm to handle tough decisions related to such issues as cost effectiveness and reimbursement. Such tough decisions must be brought outside of the direct influence of lobbyists. Outside of being a health care expert, President Obama must make sure that he finds individual(s) with the complex mix of insider knowledge and outsider credibility, and most importantly, that any such person is properly vetted.

2. Stimulus Bill Negotiations

Although successful in the end, President Obama severely underestimated his opponents in the negotiations over this package. In a gesture of bipartisanship, Obama offered a large percentage of the bill as tax cuts in his first proposal to Congress, thinking that this would lead to widespread Republican support and easy passage of the bill. This was naïve at best, possibly political malpractice if repeated in the future. One of the big lessons out of this is that outside of a few Republican Senators, the Republican party is not a moderate party. The last two election cycles have defeated most Republican moderates in swing districts and turned the once great party of Abraham Lincoln into nothing but a regional party controlled by the Deep South. There is no incentive for most of these members, outside of people like Arlen Specter who are up for reelection in blue states, to be for a stimulus package. If the stimulus is a success, it doesn’t matter how they voted because the Democrats will get the credit. If the stimulus package fails, there will be a real opportunity for Republicans who voted against it to claim they were in the right. Therefore, a simple logic tree would have shown Obama and his political team that there was no incentive for the Republicans to compromise on this bill.

Hopefully, Obama’s political team will learn from this mistake in the same way that Kennedy’s team learned from the Bay of Pigs disaster. From now on they must give nothing without getting something in return. Bipartisanship only works if someone is willing to meet you in the middle.

Final Thoughts

Overall, the far right needs to be ignored, the far left needs to chill out, and the Obama administration needs to methodologically look at and learn from their early mistakes. If the Obama administration is to be successful, odds are that these early mistakes will be looked back at not as blunders, but rather as invaluable learning opportunities for a young presidency.

Harry, Are We There Yet?

On January 3, 2009, just one week ago, the 111th U.S. Congress was sworn into session. So now that all the dust has settled, where do things stand? The dust has settled, right?

Well, things are pretty straightforward in the House where the exact number of the Democratic majority matters little at this point. With a comfortable majority, even when subtracting conservative blue-dog Dems, most legislation will be a foregone conclusion. Of course, the Senate with its arcane rules and blue-blood past has always been the voice of idiocy and reason at the same time. This is not a new phenomenon. President Garfield is famous for allegedly responding to his wife’s call that robbers were in their house, with a quip of “No, my dear, not in the House, but there are plenty in the Senate.”

Nothing controversial gets done in the Senate, of course, unless you can somehow muster 60 odd votes for your particular bill. With that said, I began to ask myself what exactly is the makeup of the Senate as of today, the 11th of January.  The number of Republicans looks fairly certain.  With Norm Coleman losing the recount in Minnesota and with Illinois refusing to hold a special election, there will be almost certainly 41 Republicans in the upcoming session. However, after that it gets a little tricky. Right now, there are 53 Democratic Senators, not including Joe Biden, who is still a Senator and who will also become vice president in a week. Biden stayed on, unlike Obama, because he got a photoop with Dick Cheney while being sworn in for his seventh six-year term. (Perhaps he and Cheney can talk about whether Biden will actually be switching branches of the government next week.)

So that leaves us with 94 total Senators. Who else is left? Well, there is also one Benedict Liebercrat and one Ben-and -Jerry socialist (Bernie Sanders, Vermont), making 96. But this is not a Lost episode, and I am not having a flashback to before Hawaii became our forty-ninth state in the year my mother was born. Instead, what we have here is four Democratic Senators in limbo, with only one assured of actually becoming a Senator.

Still confused?

Well, let’s take a brief look at all four of these individuals who could potentially fill out the remaining four spots. Or at least at three of them. Or maybe at two.

1. Well, we know who one will be for sure anyhow, Ted Kaufman of Delaware. Mr. Kaufman, a long-time aide to Joe Biden, will be a two-year seat warmer for Joe’s son Beau to continue the nepotism tradition of the Senate. I think we can agree that Mr. Kaufman’s isn’t all that interesting, so let’s move on.

2. Next in the order of likelihood is either Al Franken or Roland Burris. Now these two, unlike Mr. Kaufman, are very interesting stories. Mark Wilson gave a good background about the legalities surrounding the Burris appointment. In short, Burris is the legitimate appointment of illegitimate and recently impeached Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. First, Harry Reid appeared to be playing hard ball, and the Senate Sergeant at Arms (no, this is not Britain) even went as far as denying Mr. Burris’ credentials this past week. However, as the days go on, it looks likely that Burris will probably become the junior senator from Illinois. Well, unless Blago is actually convicted by the Illinois Senate before the U.S. Senate finally caves. The fact that some, including Chicago Congressman Bobby Rush, are comparing the treatment of Burris to a lynching, makes it likely that Mr. Reid will capitulate.

3. The other interesting individual here is a comedian who is ahead by only 225 votes after a two-month recount. Famous for his Saturday Night Live role as Stuart Smalley, Franken looks to be good enough and smart enough to actually become Minnesota’s Senator. However, unlike in Illinois, where the law is probably on Burris’ side, Franken still legally is not allowed to be sworn in as Senator, and it’s not exactly clear when that might change. Incumbent Senator Norm Coleman, who had a few hundred-vote lead before the recount of all the lizard people votes, has filed a lawsuit, and Minnesota law states that the results cannot be certified until this is settled. Yes, Franken will most likely pull this out at the end of the day (or month or winter), but it’s not completely over yet.

4. Finally, we get to the seat that, although everyone this side of Cher is lobbying for it, hasn’t actually had anyone appointed to it yet. New York Governor David Paterson, who is apparently too scared to tick off either the Kennedy or Cuomo family, has waited nearly two months and still has not selected anyone to fill Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat. We know it will likely be a political scion–we just don’t know which one yet.

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve linked to a few other previous articles that I have written in the past. This isn’t because I’m feeling cocky or self-important tonight. Rather, it’s to demonstrate a point. We have been in purgatory season for U.S. national politics for the past two months, with only Senate seat payoffs, tainted ballots, and dinosaur bailouts to keep our domestic palate wet. Thankfully, this long national political nightmare is about to come to an end. No, I’m not talking about the Bush presidency (although that will be nice as well). Rather, the dead zone between the election and inauguration is finally almost over, and we will at last have some fresh new policy to talk about in the coming months. Now we can start debating important things, like how long until the new Congress actually passes meaningful legislation. Nancy Pelosi has promised to keep the House in business through its President’s day vacation if the Stimulus package is not passed yet. Harry Reid has made no such promises. The word on the street is that the House might even reintroduce the State Children’s Healthcare Insurance Program (SCHIP) expansion bill again as soon as this coming week.

I’m starting to feel excited about U.S. national politics again. Kind of like a kid who might be lucky enough to find health insurance under the Christmas tree (and maybe a tax cut after that). How in God’s name did people wait until March for this dead season to end back in the days when there were actually supposed to be 96 Senators?

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