What Obama Should Do

What should President Obama do to win reelection? Everyone seems to agree about what he will do, in part because he is already doing it. He will largely give up actually trying to make policy and instead focus solely on the campaign. His every proposal will be designed with the campaign in mind. He will raise tens of millions and then, when a Republican opponent emerges, probably early next year, he will wage a bitterly negative campaign.

I am pretty sure that is what will happen because most of it is already happening. It is pretty much what the political playbook recommends, given the dreadful list of his liabilities.

David Brooks thinks this is a doomed strategy. Democrats are the party of trust in government. Republicans are the party of distrust in government. Right now, trust in government among the American electorate is in the toilet. If the election comes down to a choice between the Republican and Democratic positions, Obama loses. What he should do is return to the strategy he won on in the first place.

Obama would be wiser to champion a Grand Bargain strategy. Use the Congressional deficit supercommittee to embrace the sort of new social contract we've been circling around for the past few years: simpler taxes, reformed entitlements, more money for human capital, growth and innovation.

Don't just whisper Grand Bargain in back rooms with John Boehner. Make it explicit. Take it to the country. Lower the ideological atmosphere and get everybody thinking concretely about the real choices facing the nation.

Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein think this is terrible advice. Yes, voters may say they are more conservative now, but they don't really mean it. They are just depressed about the economy. Obama should use all his power and money to paint the Republicans as obstructionists. We could fix the economy, if only the Republicans weren't blocking us.

Both Brooks and Mann/Ornstein think that the election will be won by the candidate who employs the right labels. If Obama can affix the "unifier and conciliator" label to his own forehead (Brooks) or if he can affix the obstructionist label to the opposition (Mann/Ornstein), then he can win.

This is all wrong. After three years in office, voters have figured this guy out. No change of labels will help. The Republican brand is, if anything, less popular than the Obama brand, but that didn't stop the Republicans from sweeping the last election down to the level of dog catcher.

What voters will be looking for next year is someone, anyone, who can steer the damn ship of state. A loss of confidence in Obama's navigation is his real problem. He may well in by painting his opponent as an even less promising captain, but if he does he will set the stage for a very dismal second term.

If Obama wants a bold strategy, I have one to offer. He should suspend campaigning altogether and promise not to resume it until after the national conventions. He should go back to Washington and spend all his time trying to hammer out a real budget proposal. He should be constantly meeting with Republican leaders. He should frankly acknowledge the problems facing America's great social programs and put forth real proposals with real numbers for dealing with them.

Instead of trying to deny the gun-running scandal, he should publicly acknowledge it and very visibly call his Justice Department to account. Instead of denying the obvious mess that his green jobs program has been or the boondoggle that his health care policy is turning out to be, he should act if he was the first person to notice the problems and is now energetically addressing them.

The point of all this would not be to convince the voters that he is the great conciliator or that the Republicans are all orcs. The point would be to convince voters that he is interested in doing his job. Then voters would have to wonder if the Republican to be named later would really be any better at it.

Of course, all this presumes that Obama is really interested in and capable of doing his job, or at least of appearing to be so. It would also presume real courage. For both reasons, the President is not likely to be inspired by my advice.

Fat Facts About Flat Tax

Perhaps the best thing about Herman Cain's 9-9-9 is that he could use the Beatle's White Album in a campaign commercial. The second best thing is that it has Republicans talking about a flat tax.

The flat tax is so obviously a good idea that one can assume that it can never be enacted. A marginal flat tax would replace the entire U.S. tax code with a simple calculation. Taxpayers at every level would be entitled to some simple deductions and/or exceptions. Beyond that all income would be taxed at the same rate. Below a certain level of income, there would be no tax liability. 

The proposal is obviously a good idea for two big reasons. One is simplicity. Rick Perry advertized the idea when he said that your tax form could be no bigger than a post card. Put in your total income, subtract the deductions and exemptions, and then calculate the rate. Not only would that be shockingly easy, but it would relieve the economy of a great burden. Individuals and corporations spend billions every year just to pay their taxes. They employ a vast army of lawyers cum accountants to do it. A genuine flat tax would release the wealth and time consumed to be used for other purposes.

The second great advantage would be transparency. Under the current, Rube Goldberg tax regime, it is difficult to tell what percentage of income an individual or corporation really pays. Thus we spend a lot of time arguing about rich guys and corporations that pay no taxes, with little idea of who really pays what. Under a genuine flax tax, we would know that, after deductions, if one fellow makes a hundred times what another fellow does, the former pays a hundred times as much in taxes.

Another, perhaps more important kind of transparency would come from the fact that everyone who actually pays taxes would know exactly how much the federal government is costing him or her. She and he would share a proportional part of the burden for it. Knowledge is power, or so I have been told.

If it is such a good idea, then why isn't everyone for it? The most honest objection to the flat tax is that it is not progressive. Progressive taxation is designed to take progressively bigger bites out of the income of richer people. This is intended to reduce inequality between the very rich and the rest of us. Does it in fact do this?

It is true that under the current system, the wealthiest 5% pay more than half the income taxes. However, as the recent, celebrated CBO report on income equality demonstrates, that has done little if anything to stop growing income inequality. Perhaps a genuinely punitive rate of taxation would make a genuine difference, but experience suggests otherwise. At a certain point, wealth flees or hides and becomes unavailable for any useful purpose. Whatever progressive taxation accomplishes, it does not and probably cannot reduce income inequality.

A flat tax would save billions and make the tax system transparent to everyone. There is very little chance that it will ever be enacted. The reason is that the billions wasted on the current system represent very large vested interests. All the countless tax lawyers would have to earn an honest living. Charitable foundations would have to depend on charity, instead of greed disguised as charity. Congress would no longer be able to fundraise by manipulating the Byzantine tax code.

The Left will pull out all stops to prevent it because they will never give up the idea of progressive taxation. In this way, the Left serves the interests of the 1% while it cries about unfairness and inequality.

Still, it is good to raise the question. One can never know for sure what is possible. We can thank Herman Cain for thinking large.

Rhode Island is the Problem

It is a sign of the myopia of the establishment Press (not to mention the left thinkocracy and some of my favorite bloggers) that it is preoccupied with a recent CBO report on growing income inequality. That is worth pondering, to be sure, but it is also abstract. Whether, how, and to what degree it is a bad thing depends on a lot of assumptions. More assumptions are required to speculate on its causes and possible remedies.

There is less interest in a much more concrete problem facing us, one of which the danger is crystal clear. The New York Times, to its credit, brings a vivid example to our attention. Here is Mary Williams Walsh on the dilemma in Rhode Island:

ON the night of Sept. 8, Gina M. Raimondo, a financier by trade, rolled up here with news no one wanted to hear: Rhode Island, she declared, was going broke…

If current trends held, Ms. Raimondo warned, the Ocean State would soon look like Athens on the Narragansett: undersized and overextended. Its economy would wither. Jobs would vanish. The state would be hollowed out.

It is not the sort of message you might expect from Ms. Raimondo, a proud daughter of Providence, a successful venture capitalist and, not least, the current general treasurer of Rhode Island. But it is a message worth hearing. The smallest state in the union, it turns out, has a very big debt problem.

After decades of drift, denial and inaction, Rhode Island's $14.8 billion pension system is in crisis. Ten cents of every state tax dollar now goes to retired public workers. Before long, Ms. Raimondo has been cautioning in whistle-stops here and across the state, that figure will climb perilously toward 20 cents. But the scary thing is that no one really knows. The Providence Journal recently tried to count all the municipal pension plans outside the state system and stopped at 155, conceding that it might have missed some.

Let's boil that down. Rhode Island has a public pension system that is about to bankrupt the state. Very soon now the state government will face a choice between keeping its promises to retired public workers and providing basic services like plowing snow off roads and putting out fires. Assuming it won't stop doing the latter, some retired workers will be lucky to get back a few dimes on every dollar they invested in their pensions. Municipalities are already past that point, and they are declaring bankruptcy to get out of pension obligations and cutting basic services.

For decades this has been on the horizon. It could have been addressed with relatively little pain thirty years ago. Instead, "drift, denial, and inaction" was the legislature's response.

Illinois, California, Connecticut, Oklahoma, Michigan — the list of stretched states runs on. In Pennsylvania, the capital city, Harrisburg, filed for bankruptcy earlier this month to avoid having to use prized assets to pay off Wall Street creditors. In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie wants to roll back benefits, too.

In a very powerful essay, Walter Russell Mead has a name for this.

Years of blue social policy have wrecked local and state government finance in the country's smallest state, and now the bills are coming due. Services are being cut to the bone and elderly retirees are losing money they thought was secure.

Blue social policy. Is this fair? The Rhode Island House of Representatives has 65 Democrats and 10 Republicans. Its Senate has 29 Democrats and 8 Republicans. That's about as blue as you get, and that's after the 2010 election. Connecticut and California are similarly Democrat heavy. Illinois not so much, though it remains about two to one dominated by Democrats in the state legislature. In Michigan the Republicans controlled the state senate before 2010 and the House after 2010. Only Oklahoma, from the list above, has been solidly Republican.

Republicans are just as capable of being fiscally irresponsible as Democrats. It remains to be seen whether Democrats are as capable of fiscal responsibility as Republicans. New Jersey may the place where this is decided.

One thing is for sure: the blue state social model is finished for the foreseeable future. The pension crisis is both broad and deep and it will challenge every level of government from the U.S. Congress to the small town city council. This is the real problem facing us. Republicans may not benefit from being right on principle, if they have to be the ones to impose all the pain. Democrats may not benefit either if all they know how to do is to resist the inevitable.

Gaddafi was dead: to begin with

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Well, the scourge of Tripoli is as dead as Scrooge's Marley: to begin with. Dead as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade.

It's hard not to say that it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Gaddafi was a tyrant and a cutthroat. But I repeat myself. Americans have a congenital dislike of tyrants, not that we don't manage to get over it now and then. When we pound the nails into the coffin of a tyrant, we are perhaps entitled to some satisfaction.

A reasonable person might object to the way in which Gaddafi was dispatched. Apparently he was pulled from the drainpipe in which he was hiding. Then he was bruised a bit. Then someone put a bullet in his temple. Standard procedure, or sic semper, as you will; but it was hardly due process. Christopher Hitchens thinks that the killing was the first mistake of the new regime. Ben Johnson, also at Slate, has this:

Even as the country celebrates liberation, questions about the circumstances around Qaddafi's death continue to grow. A medical examiner confirmed just hours before the ceremony in Benghazi that the former dictator died from a gunshot wound to the head. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other world leaders have called for a full investigation into the matter, and Secretary Clinton told "Meet the Press" on Sunday that she supported an investigation by both the National Transitional Council and the United Nations, according to AP.

What would an investigation uncover, beyond such or similar facts as I have mentioned? The Libyan rebellion was not a modern army with an established chain of command. It was a wave of popular indignation that grew in strength as the regime wilted under allied airpower. President Obama's decision to fight exclusively from the air may have been the right move, but it meant that we could have precious little influence on the ground.

Gaddafi passed up several chances to escape, with his wardrobe intact, into exile. What did he or anyone think was going to happen when he was pulled out of his last, cramped hidey-hole, not by American soldiers, but by his fellow Libyans? He should have been arrested and tried and then executed. That would have been the civilized thing to do. Libya is not civilized, just yet.

President Obama gets credit for the death of a tyrant and for the regime to come, despite the fact that we resolutely denied that they were targeting Gaddafi, when we obviously were, and we declared that regime change was not our strategic objective, when it obviously was. I have criticized the Administration on several counts, the most important of which that it had no idea what it was doing. I still think so, but that's a pretty silly position to be in right now.

It is too soon to declare the mission accomplished. There is this from the Washington Post:

Libya's top leader declared the country officially "liberated" Sunday from the four-decade rule of Moammar Gaddafi, pledging to replace his dictatorship with a more democratic but also a more strictly Islamic system.

In a speech to a cheering, flag-waving crowd, Mustafa Abdel Ja­lil, head of the Transitional National Council, promised to ban interest on housing loans and scrap other laws that didn't conform to Islamic jurisprudence.

We may find out sooner rather than later what NATO's power hath wrought. Gaddafi's ghost may haunt the tyrants of the Middle East, but it, along with the ghost of the Shah of Iran may haunt us as well.

WaPo Hit Piece No. 2: Marco Rubio

It is tempting to view the recent Washington Post story on Marco Rubio as second in a series of hit pieces on prominent Republicans. Is it? John Hinderaker at Powerline certainly regards the piece as a smear of Rubio and, unsurprisingly, that's how Rubio views it. There is merit to these complaints. Here is the offensive passage.

During his rise to political prominence, Sen. Marco Rubio frequently repeated a compelling version of his family's history that had special resonance in South Florida. He was the "son of exiles," he told audiences, Cuban Americans forced off their beloved island after "a thug," Fidel Castro, took power.

But a review of documents — including naturalization papers and other official records — reveals that the Florida Republican's account embellishes the facts. The documents show that Rubio's parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than two-and-a-half years before Castro's forces overthrew the Cuban government and took power on New Year's Day 1959.

The supposed flight of Rubio's parents has been at the core of the young senator's political identity, both before and after his stunning tea-party-propelled victory in last year's Senate election.

Unlike the Post's expose of Rick Perry's racist rock, which built a story out of virtually nothing, the Rubio piece does address a serious matter. Rubio is frequently discussed as a possible running mate for the Republican nominee to be named later. It is not too soon to inquire into Rubio's qualifications for the office. It turns out he was born in the U.S. and his citizenship is not at question.

Like the Perry's rock expose, the Manuel Roig-Franzia piece on Rubio clearly embellishes the facts in an effort to make them look like a scandal. Yes, Rubio has made political capital out of his identity as part of the Cuban exile community. Yes, his parents left Cuba three years before Castro came to power. Despite Roig-Franzia's heroic efforts, there is no contradiction here, let alone a scandal.

No doubt it would have made a better story if Rubio's parents had just made it on board the last boat leaving Havana, with communist bullets nipping at their heels; however, leaving a bit earlier than that doesn't mean that they aren't exiles. What makes you an exile is that you lived there before and you can't go back. It would certainly have been unsafe for the Rubio family to have repatriated to Cuba after Castro took over.

It is up to the Cuban exile community to decide whether Marco Rubio speaks for them. Roig-Franzia tells us that

being connected to the post-revolution exile community gives a politician cachet that could never be achieved by someone identified with the pre-Castro exodus, a group sometimes viewed with suspicion.

If there is any evidence that the Cuban community is prepared to disown the first Cuban American to be Speaker of the Florida House, Roig-Franzia fails to produce it. For the rest of us, Marco Rubio has plenty of authority to speak about tyranny.

The Washington Post seems to be striving to prove that it can be just as irresponsible as the New York Times. The Rubio piece is a hit piece, built on straw. I can't wait for the next installment.

Corynomics

My friend and esteemed colleague at South Dakota Magazine online, Cory Heidelberger, has developed his own theory of economics. I owe it to Cory and the world to say just how daring and innovative it is. It has been presented in his many posts on the Keystone XL project and recently in a post in reply to yours truly.

Here are some highlights. Conventional economics holds that when a country imports some raw natural resource, say crude oil, and then refines it domestically, and then sells it abroad, that is a very good thing. The term for that is "value added", and it is the most important source of national wealth.

According to Corynomics, refining something and selling it to other countries is a very bad thing. That is because then the other country gets something good from us. It is especially bad is the purchaser of the refined material is China. I think we can infer an unstated Corynomic principle: that trade deficits are very good, since the other country is selling more value-added products to us than we are to them. I told you the theory was daring! A lot of fundamental economic models will have to be put on the dust heap.

According to conventional economics, increasing the supply and flow of some resource, say crude oil, will result in lower prices for that resource in an open market. Again, this is a fundamental principle. According to Corynomics, however, increasing the supply and flow of some resource will actually increase the price of the resource. So the Keystone XL pipeline will result in an increase in the price of gas.

If all that isn't daring enough, Corynomics includes a novel theory of economic development. I pointed out that federal subsidies per megawatt hour for wind and solar power dwarf federal subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear power. Cory has this reply:

But let's focus on one major flaw in Dr. Blanchard's thinking (shared, it appears, by anti-government crusader Rep. Paul Ryan): apply his anti-subsidy reasoning with consistency throughout American history, and we might still be burning tallow and cow patties in our sod huts and taking the kids to town by horse…

The federal government intervenes in the energy market to help new industries get on their feet, expand our energy supply, and reduce costs in the long term. The federal government has provided "seed money" of this sort for every major form of energy we use today, including and especially fossil fuels. Coal, oil, natural gas… heck, even wood (made more cheaply available through big 19th century land grants) received federal support in their developing years that made energy cheaper and more abundant. Many of those subsidies continue to this day.

According to conventional economics, the driving forces in development are private industry and innovation and the ultimate source of energy is untapped natural reserves. Government can contribute, of course, in two ways. Government secures property rights, which is a vital encouragement to industry and innovation. Government can also subsidize innovation, but that means moving wealth from existing productive enterprises to developing ones. Government can't make one thing cheaper except by making something else more expensive. In fairly short order, the subsidized enterprise needs to show a return, if government subsidies make sense.

Corynomics sweeps all this away. No form of energy production, including burning wood apparently, would have gotten off the ground without government subsidies. I do have to wonder about the structure of subsidies among those hunter-gatherer bands that discovered fire.

Such is the power of government subsidies that we don't have to ask whether the new technology will really, ever, produce more energy than it consumes. It would be rude to ask how many acres of land need to be covered by solar panels and wind towers to replace more than a fraction of the energy the nation will need in the future. It would be unforgivable to wonder why biofuels, which have depended on subsidies, are still dependent. Government subsidies are the source of all real economic power.

I am genuinely impressed by the daring of Corynomics, but I am not altogether convinced by it. Can one really believe that wood would not have been burnt for fuel without land grants? Can one believe that coal, oil, and natural gas would not have been exploited by people looking for opportunities without a little green from Congress? Cory apparently believes both things. I can believe neither. 

I believe, for example, that the industrial revolution owes a lot to dissidents from the Church of England who went in search of new forms of power precisely because they were excluded from the official economy.  Viable sources of power are, well, viable.  That's where all real power comes from, and all subsidies just move it around. 

Now: would the wind industry or the solar industry exist today in their present forms without massive government subsidies? I say no. Is there any reason to believe that these technologies will ever supply more than a fraction of the power we need? I know of no reason to think so.

Corynomics may be the right economics, if not for this world or for this kosmos, maybe for some parallel universe. At this position in the space-time continuum, it looks like proof of what I have argued: that the left in general and Cory in particular have no energy policy.

That Darn Republican Establishment

Allow me a rant inspired by this post by Paul Rahe at Richochet. 

It is easy to pick on Mitt Romney.  He certainly has his share of inconsistencies (to say the least) and I share Rahe's concerns about Romney being a mere technocrat.  Sadly, he is the most viable candidate running for the Republican nomination.  But is this the fault of the Republican Party, of which Rahe writes, "time and again I have argued that the field is exceptionally weak and that the Republican Party has let us down"?

Did the establishment tell Mitch Daniels not to run? Or John Thune?  Or Haley Barbour?  Or Paul Ryan? Or Chris Christie?  Did the establishment abscond with Tim Pawlenty's gonads, making him run away at the first sight of Mitt Romney and bad poll numbers?  Did the establishment conspire for Jeb Bush to lose in the 1994 governor's race in Florida so he would have to wait until 1998 which made him not ready in 2000 so the presidency went to the less impressive Bush brother who proceeded to make the Bush name Mudd?  

It'd be nice if Rick Perry was not rhetorically challenged, but Republicans should be tired of presidential candidates that make you cringe every time they talk for fear they will go Torquemada on the English language.  Speaking to the people is part of the modern presidency and Perry seems almost totally incapable of doing so.  John Huntsman is like Mr. Rogers, if Mr. Rogers was a sanctimonious ass.  Rick Santorum reminds me of Tanner from the original Bad News Bears.  He's scrappy and hard working, but after a while you realize why so many people want to punch him in the face.  Newt Gingrich is really smart, but apparently not smart enough to avoid being a failure as Speaker of the House and not smart enough not to cheat on his first two wives.  Herman Cain is a breath of fresh air who just happens to be almost totally ignorant of foreign policy (beware the candidate that says, "I'll just go along with whatever the generals say").  Ron Paul and Michelle Bachman prove everyday why they are doomed to be back benchers.  They are very good at preaching to the converted, but as their meager legislative records show, they have no ability to actually change anyone's mind.  They seem totally ignorant of the fact that the median voter is not nearly as anti-government as they are.  Should I discuss Gary Johnson?  I thought not.  I admire some things about all of these people, but this isn't about whom I admire or who I agree with.  I admire and agree with a lot of people, myself for example, who I don't think should be president.  

It is not a failure of the party or of the establishment that better candidates did not run.  That is the failure of these particular people to seize the moment and do something great.  Clearly this is the time for Republican hopefuls to run, as they will rarely get a more weakened incumbent (as Prof. Blanchard has demonstrated).  They let their party and nation down.  Well, sucks to be us.  

I cautiously support Mitt Romney not because I trust him, but because he can win and that characteristic ain't small potatoes.   I dislike his interventionist foreign policy and I suspect he will continue Washington's corporatism.  But he can win and I think he's better than Obama by a long shot. I now await the comments from the true believers that tell me I am a sell out and Donald Pay to explain how Obama is just a conservative Republican in disguise.  Kucinich 2012!!!!

A Reaction to Last Night's Debate

I enjoyed last night’s debate immensely. CNN’s Anderson Cooper did a fine job of making sure that every candidate had a chance to speak. Viewers had a chance to see more of the candidates who have been sometimes been ignored in previous debates. I tend to like heated debates better than “debates” where candidates are more concerned with appearing friendly than with addressing political issues. This debate did not disappoint. It was full of heated exchanges over the issues and even a bit of witty repartee.

I was, however, disappointed in the exclusion of Gary Johnson. Having recently discovered that Johnson is a fellow Dakotan (a Minot native), I was particularly looking forward to seeing him in the debate. Alas, it was not to be. I do not agree much with Johnson on social issues, but CNN’s exclusion of the candidate is unfair, both to Johnson and to voters.Debates are worth watching, not only because they give voters an idea of which candidate represents them best, but also because they give viewers exposure to different arguments for and against certain issues.

 In last’s night’s debate, for instance, the candidates were able to give their arguments for and against Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan, the creation of a border fence and defense cuts. They also talked about their views regarding the influence of religion on presidential candidates. Being able to hear Johnson’s opinions on these things would have made the debates richer. It is a pity that CNN did not think so.

Still, I was pleased with much of the rest of the debate. I think Mitt Romney came out as the winner, though I have not yet looked at other reactions. He was well-prepared, quick on his feet, and able to answer every accusation thrown at him. Not only that, he was able to turn many of the criticisms launched at him around. When Rick Perry criticized him for hiring illegals, for instance, Romney pointed out that Perry had not only opposed a border fence, but also introduced a magnet for illegal immigration, by providing tuition for illegal immigrants. But Romney was not the only candidate to give an impressive performance.

Rick Santorum was absolutely on fire. He confronted Romney on two of the issues that worry conservatives the most about Romney – his links to Obama’s healthcare reform legislation and his credibility. Here’s Santorum:

You just don't have credibility, Mitt, when it comes to repealing Obamacare. Your plan was the basis for Obamacare. Your consultants helped Obama craft Obamacare. And to say that you're going to repeal it, you just -- you have no track record on that that that we can trust you that you're going to do that. (Video)

Santorum may have turned some voters off with his aggressive approach, but he gave voice to some concerns that are shared by many conservatives. I think he was right to do so. Furthermore, I thought the exchanges between Romney and Santorum were some of the best in the debate.

Romney gave a reasonable and fair answer to Santorum’s argument, saying that his healthcare plan had been crafted for Massachusetts and that it would be wrong to force the rest of the country to adopt such a plan. He stressed the importance of states’ rights regarding healthcare and went on to say that, if he was elected, he would repeal “Obamacare.”

Newt Gingrich also put in a good performance, often backing up the criticism of other candidates in a more measured way. Like Santorum, he objected to Romney’s Massachussets healthcare legislation, but he took a gentler approach. Here’s Gingrich:

Now, there's a fundamental difference between trying to solve the problems of this country from the top down and trying to create environments in which doctors and patients and families solve the problem from the bottom up.

And candidly, Mitt, your plan ultimately, philosophically, it's not Obamacare, and that's not a fair charge. But your plan essentially is one more big government, bureaucratic, high-cost system, which candidly could not have been done by any other state because no other state had a Medicare program as lavish as yours, and no other state got as much money from the federal government under the Bush administration for this experiment. So there's a lot as big government behind Romneycare. Not as much as Obamacare, but a heck of a lot more than your campaign is admitting.

By giving this sort of measured response after Santorum’s passionate criticism, Gingrich came off as moderate and sensible, while still delivering a strong argument against Romney's approach. I think this was his best moment in the debate.

Ron Paul was also well worth listening to, particularly when he addressed the problem of spending. Here is what he said:

But I do want to make a point that spending is a tax. As soon as the governments spend money, eventually it's a tax. Sometimes we put a direct tax on the people. Sometimes we borrow the money. And sometimes we print the money. And then when prices go up, like today, the wholesale price index went up 7 percent rate, and if you look at the free market, prices are going up 9 and 10 percent. So that is the tax. So, spending is the tax. That is the reason I offered the program, to cut $1 trillion out of the first year budget that I offer.

Paul is right. Whenever the government spends money, we pay for it in one way or another. While few will agree with every part of Paul’s plan to cut spending, he may be the only candidate who is courageous enough to cut spending as aggressively as it needs to be cut.

In my view, Romney, Santorum, Gingrich and Paul came out looking very good. Meanwhile, Perry, Cain and Bachmann came out looking poorly. Perry was unable to effectively answer Romney’s criticism of his behavior regarding immigration. He often stumbled over his words, looked a little lost from time to time, and was hard to take seriously. Some of this is only superficial. His mannerisms often made him look worse than his arguments, but he did not appear ready and he was no match for Romney last night.

I like Bachmann’s optimism and her sunny disposition, and she answered some questions well. I thought her arguments against Cain’s 9-9-9 plan, for instance, were reasonable. I share her concern about giving Congress the authority to levy a new tax.  But sometimes she seemed to dodge questions and during one particularly painful moment, she interrupted an exchange between Gingrich and Romney to make a point that was little more than cheerleading. Here is what she said:

When even the Obama administration wants to repeal this bill, I think we're going to win this thing. We're going to repeal it! And I will!

This is a fine point, but it was not one that was so important that it warranted breaking into an exchange between two other candidates to make. I think it made Bachmann look a little silly.

Cain suffered in this debate, not necessarily because of anything he did wrong, but because nearly every other candidate attacked his 9-9-9 plan. Cain’s biggest mistake may be focusing so much on 9-9-9. If 9-9-9 goes down, I suspect that Cain will too. Right now, Cain seems to be struggling to defend the plan. Part of Cain’s problem is that he keeps asking people to accept the analysis of the plan that he is putting out himself. What he really needs is to be able to point to an independent group (or groups) that show that his plan is sound and that it does what he says it does.

Still, there is something to like about every candidate and I am looking forward to seeing more of every one of them (and hopefully Johnson and Huntsman!) in the next debate.

Hurricane Katrina Saves New Orleans Schools

File this one under "someone had to say it, I just didn't think it would be the New York Times." In an astonishing editorial on October 15^th, the New York Times explains how to save a failing school system.

Before Hurricane Katrina, more than 60 percent of children in New Orleans attended a failing school. Now, only about 18 percent do.

Five years ago, less than a quarter of the children in a special district set up by the state to manage the lowest performing schools scored at or above the "basic" level on state tests. Now, nearly half do.

Anyone who pays any attention to the school reform debate will recognize this as an impressive turnaround. School reform is something that policy makers have chased after for decades, mostly without result. It is not unusual to hear a story about a single school or a few schools rebounding, but effective reform over an entire urban system is rather rare. So what was the secret? The Times tells us:

There are three important things to consider about the New Orleans experience: Many of the structural changes occurred because the hurricane essentially destroyed the old system, allowing the city to begin fresh. Charter schools, while a foundation of the system now, did not by themselves improve achievement. And finally, New Orleans has done the hard work of changing the school culture while embracing new instructional methods.

The Times singles out three "important things to consider". It concedes what is glaringly obvious: Hurricane Katrina is the only thing that made reform possible by destroying the existing school system. Neither of the other factors would have been possible without the Hurricane. The Times is careful to warn us that Charter schools "did not by themselves improve achievement" while implicitly acknowledging that they did in fact improve achievement. Finally, New Orleans did take advantage of the opportunity, which is saying a lot.

Why did it take a once in a century storm to make school reform possible? The Times, to its credit, doesn't bury the truth.

By the time of the storm, the state and the city were fully intent on strengthening the teaching corps. With its schools empty, New Orleans took the extraordinary step of laying off the entire teaching force, requiring basic skills tests for those who wished to return to their jobs. By some estimates, only about 20 percent of the original force returned to work.

Katrina gave the city an unprecedented chance to do what it wanted to do: get a better staff of teachers. We cannot assume that 80% of the old staff couldn't pass the basic skills test. A lot of folks left for good. Nonetheless, only one out of five teachers in place before the storm did return and pass the test. Apparently, the old school system was carrying a lot of incompetent teachers. Why? The Times gives us what is surely the most important answer to that question.

Meanwhile, schools that had been failing for years came under the control of the Recovery School District, a state entity that opted out of collective bargaining agreements with teachers' unions. The district, which now oversees an overwhelming majority of the city's schools, streamlined the central bureaucracy, and pushed money and policy authority down to the school building level. It also recruited new talent from around the country, making New Orleans a magnet for young school leaders.

The biggest pre-Katrina obstacle to effective reform in New Orleans was the teacher's unions. The teacher's unions would have worked vociferously to protect the now missing 80% of teachers and otherwise block any effective change. The unions would also have pulled out all stops to protect the "central bureaucracy". Katrina swept that obstacle away, making reform possible.

The Times goes on to grudgingly acknowledge the role that Charter schools are playing in the reform while explaining carefully that Charter schools "are often no better than traditional schools, and are frequently worse." The Times loathes the very idea of Charter schools. But the evidence in this case cannot be denied.

This is, as I say, an astonishing editorial. It acknowledges implicitly what conservatives have argued for a long time: that public unions in general and teacher's unions in particular, are formidable obstacles to reform.

This is not irrelevant to the attempts by governors in Wisconsin and Ohio to break the power of public unions in their respective states. Unfortunately, most states cannot count on a hurricane. They have to depend on political storms. One can only hope that more of those are on the horizon.

The Odds Against Obama. Update

For several days now I have been surrounded by people who know as much or a lot more than I do about biopolitics, genetics, evolutionary psychology, and philosophical theories of ethics. For some reason, the Association of Politics and the Life Sciences attracts a lot of Libertarians, so Ron Paul can rest assured that he will carry the conference in the primaries.

While I was hobnobbing with these folks, two Professor Schaffs posted on SDP. One of them thinks Obama will lose and the other thinks he will win. The latter is the real Schaff, as he acknowledged. I know the good professor to be inclined to pessimism, but I also know better than to commit the genetic fallacy.

Professor Schaff's case for an Obama victory is solid but hardly compelling. Yes, Obama will run an entirely negative campaign against whoever the nominee turns out to be and yes, that worked for Bush in '04. However, campaign strategies rarely have more than a marginal influence on election outcomes. A good campaign can energize your base and depress turnout on the other side. It may have some effect on the shift among independents. It is very hard to move voters from one column into the other.

Because the 2004 election was very close, Karl Rove's magic may have made the difference; however, that was only because the electoral tectonics already favored Bush. The latter fact made it very hard for Democrats to mount a coherent alternative to Bush. Kerry could denounce Bush on foreign policy but he was never able to say exactly what he would do nor was he able to really confront the issues on which the election turned.

Looking at the current electoral tectonics, it is hard to see them as other than disastrous for Obama. Obviously the economy is the greatest obstacle to the President's reelection. No one expects it to improve much in time to influence next year's event. One of the best polling indicators of Presidential election outcomes is the question whether the country is headed in the right direction or is on the wrong track. Pollster.com has the wrong track leading the right direction by 73-18%!

Turning to job approval, Obama is running well below Bush's numbers for this point in the cycle, according to Gallup. He is also running a little below Clinton's numbers, though this is the point at which Clinton's numbers climbed into the positive. Will Obama enjoy a similar rebound? I can't see the future, but I can see that Clinton enjoyed an economic recovery and Obama has not.

What really matters, however, is the disposition of the three great blocs of voters: Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. Seventy-four percent of Republicans strongly disapprove of the President, which dwarfs the 43% of Democrats who strongly approve. Obama will win almost all of the Democrats who bother to vote, with the likely exception of the "Reagan Democrats" who will cross over. Can his campaign effectively suppress the strong Republican disapproval?

Self-described independents have grown as a percentage of the total electorate to about 46%. A strong majority of independents disapproves of the President's job performance. Forty-three percent of independents strongly disapprove of the way the President is handling his job.

The loss of support for Democrats among independent voters is not something that just now happened. It has been going on since late 2009 and it underlies Republican victories from the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey and Scott Brown's election to the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, to the 2010 election. It is difficult to see what the Obama campaign can do to reverse it. As Jay Cost puts it:

What would happen to the president if he were to win only 35 percent of independent voters next year? He would lose. And it would not be close.

Obama will run with a terrible economic record. There is no public confidence in his leadership. He has given up trying to offer real economic policy proposals, assuming he ever tried. His signature piece of legislation remains unpopular and it is crumbling as we speak. Unless there is a dramatic shift in these numbers, Obama will lose and it won't be close.

None of this is to say that the Republicans are not capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. They surely are. They may nominate Rick Perry. However, I expect Mitt Romney to be the nominee. Republicans will never love him, but they will love to beat Obama. He is better positioned than anyone else in the field to appeal to independent voters.

I make no predictions. I do think the board looks very good right now for the right Republican.

Update.  Wolf Blitzer has this bit of information from a recent CNN poll:

Among all voters, 59% think that President Obama’s policies will fail compared to only 36% who say they will succeed.

In 2010, 47% thought the president’s policies would fail. And back in 2009, only 32% thought the president’s policies would fail.

You see the trend, and it’s not good for the president’s re-election prospects.

CLASS Canceled

Dear Readers: I brought the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program, or CLASS, to your attention on September 28^th. This was part of ObamaCare. In theory it would provide long term cash benefits for disabled Americans who voluntarily enrolled in the program. It would be entirely funded by contributions rather than taxpayer dollars. There was never any reason to believe that this would work. However, the projected initial contributions to CLASS made it look like ObamaCare was cheaper than it really was. So the Democrats ignored fiscal reality and stuffed it into the ObamaCare stuff sack.

Apparently the Obama Administration is reading SDP, because they finally admitted the truth about CLASS. They killed it. From the Washington Post:

The Obama administration cut a major planned benefit from the 2010 health-care law on Friday, announcing that a program to offer Americans insurance for long-term care was simply unworkable.

Although the program had been dogged from the start by doubts about its feasibility, its elimination marks the first time the administration has backed away from a key piece of President Obama's signature legislative achievement.

Of course, that has some uncomfortable fiscal consequences.

Because the insurance program had been projected to reduce the federal deficit by $86 billion over the next 10 years, terminating it complicates the nation's budget picture. It is now estimated that the health-care law will cut the deficit by $124 billion from 2012 to 2021, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't this blog that the Administration was reading. From Yuval Levin at NRO's The Corner:

Just about every conservative critic of Obamacare pointed to the irrational design of the CLASS Act before the legislation's enactment. In fact, the administration's own CMS actuary said it would never work. He was ignored by his employers not because they disagreed with him, but because they needed to pretend their legislation would reduce the deficit.

The CBO's scoring methodology could be manipulated to accept a lot of implausible assumptions, but even with those the legislation needed help, and by designing the CLASS Act to start collecting premiums five years before it would start paying benefits (and counting those premiums as deficit reduction even though they would eventually need to be paid out in benefits) they were able to make the program seem to be in the black by $70 billion in its first ten years, which accounted for about half of the overall "deficit reduction" the Democrats claimed.

In other words, the inclusion of CLASS in ObamaCare was an act of fraud. As I pointed out in another post, the Accountable Care Organizations section of the Affordable Care Act is also looking like a failure. The ACO was the other major cost-cutting program, at least on paper.

The only question now is whether there will be enough of ObamaCare left for the Supreme Court to review.

Why Obama Will Win

In the preceding post I articulated an argument that Barack Obama will lose next year.  In that post I argued that the fundamentals of the election, mostly regarding the economy, will be unfavorable to Obama.  I concluded by saying that a generic Republican should be favored to beat Obama.

This is why I think Obama will win.  A great way to judge the strength of an incumbent is look at the kind of competition he draws.  One way would could tell Stephanie Herseth Sandlin was in trouble is the fact that Kristi Noem, Blake Curd, and Chris Nelson were all quality challengers.  Right now only Mitt Romney and possibly (possibly!!) Rick Perry are credible challengers to Obama, and Perry is leaking oil terribly.  For whatever reason, credible challengers such as John Thune, Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour, Chris Christie, and Paul Ryan decided not to run.  Mr. Generic Republican, Tim Pawlenty, failed to catch on.  I think any of the people I just mentioned (except possibly Barbour) would beat Obama.  Every candidate under Romney right now, including Herman Cain, is deeply flawed and a well-financed, articulate, and, frankly, demagogic Obama will tear Cain and the rest of the Republican field apart.  Again, maybe Perry has a shot at overcoming his weaknesses, but I doubt it.  

Funding is also why Obama will do well.  He will raise a billion dollars and his top notch team will get enough of the vote out to win the election.  He will run a race like Bush in 2004.  Taking a page from Karl Rove, Obama win get out his base with highly ideological and partisan appeals while going highly negative on his opponent.  The era of "hope and change" is over.    Obama will win, but he will win ugly. He is already telegraphing a deeply negative campaign, and I think it will work.   Like when you are being chased by the bear, you don't have to out run the bear, you just need to out run the other guy.  

So in short, Obama is not popular and clearly is not as skilled as a politician as everyone thought.  Three years of Obama have him wearing thin.  But I think he will be more acceptable to the public than the Republican nominee.  I noted the political science models of presidential elections in my previous post.  They explain a good deal of the variance in presidential voting, but they don't explain it all.  One thing they can't control for is the quality of the challenger and his ability to articulate a compelling argument against the incumbent.  I don't think any of the Republican candidates (except Romney) are capable of doing this.  Let's be frank: the fact that Herman Cain, God bless him, is even near the top of the Republican polls should have Republicans soiling themselves.  Whatever his virtues are, Cain is clearly unqualified to be president (note, for example, his totally unformed foreign policy views).  

Apparently Rush Limbaugh said this week that Mitt Romney is no conservative (I don't listen to Limbaugh, so I get this from RealClear).  Limbaugh is probably right.  But so far he is the only candidate who has been consistently articulate in debates, holds views (albeit ever changing views) that are likely to attract a majority of voters, and has a background that suggests the capacity to govern.  I think he has a fair shot of beating Obama.  Perry is a long shot, and everyone else is a no shot.  

Bill Flemming asked in the comments of the previous post about a third party candidate.  Obama has nothing to fear here.  I think if Romney is the Republican nominee there is a fair shot at there being a third party conservative candidate (although I am not ready to predict that).  This of course will destroy Romney and ensure that Obama wins.  

Why Obama Will Lose

Fear not, all you who disagree with this post title. I will also pen a post soon explaining why Obama will win (which right now is my default position). But let's stay with the post title for now.

The political science models on presidential elections are heavy on two variables: the economy and presidential job approval. Barak Obama is not doing well on either score. The political science models usually come out in May because by Spring before an election the fundamentals of the race are basically set. I do not see Obama's fate on these to variables (economy and approval) getting appreciably better over the next five months or so. If anything, I expect the economic news to be somewhere between bad and worse, but certainly not significantly better. I note that the political science models are quite predictive (but not perfectly so: wait for the next post). When you take into account Obama's approval, the economy, the number of Americans saying the country is on the wrong track, it is safe to say that the fundamentals of this election are not favorable to the president.

In any election where an incumbent in involved one necessary component of the challenger's strategy is to give enough voters some reason to change their mind. Obama, with a poor record on jobs, deficits, and saddled with an unpopular health care bill, has left plenty of ammunition for this case to be made. This is an election where almost any generic Republican is likely to beat Mr. Obama. The questions is, where will we find that generic Republican?

From the Garfield Suites

I am on the tenth floor of the Garfield Suites, named after a President whose administration lasted 200 days. He was felled by an assassin's bullet and killed by a miracle of modern medicine. My suite has a balcony, on which I am sitting and blogging. Below me is the Cincinnati public library, which still has books and a cute fountain that pours water over a pile of stone books. To my left is the headquarters of Kroger, many shelves taller than my hotel, but bathed in pink light now. The Kroger building is urging me to become aware of breast cancer. I am resisting the urge. From time to time I hear the clop clop of a horse drawn carriage pass below.

It's a nice, soft night after a long day. I delivered a paper this morning, heard a panel on evolution and politics, and shared lunch with a gaggle of political scientists, biologists, sociologists, and experts in management theory at a Turkish restaurant. I had the chicken kabobs.

Adjacent to the hotel is the Garfield Plaza, a long strip of concrete and planters dividing the east and west lanes of the boulevard. The Plaza is currently occupied by the ill-named "Occupy Cincinnati." There are maybe a half dozen tents and a lot of punk rockers smoking cigarettes and hold signs with the word "banker" covered by a circle and slash. One sign read "We are the 97%". I think that means that someone in the camp lost her dog, because there were more people sitting in the lobby of the bank across the street this afternoon. A Cub Scout jamboree would be better attended.

If Occupy [city to be named later] is the Left's answer to the Tea Party, then the Left's ass is oatmeal. The Tea Party movement was sharply focused on policy question. The folks down below me are vaguely if emphatically disgruntled. There is not a hint of what we might actually do to solve anyone's problems.

I noticed, as I scanned the Web for the first time in, say, 48 hours, that Herman Cain leads Mitt Romney in a couple of major polls. I doubt that Cain will last. He just doesn't look ready for the number one post.

This much is clear, however. Some people in the local blogosphere have insisted that Obama's conservative critics, whether the Tea Party Movement in particular or the Republican Party in general, are motivated by racism. Those people have been revealed as fools. Cain's race is, if anything, an asset. He has surged because of his voice and his genuine conservatism. Race is, if anything, much less a factor in the Republican nomination process that it was in the Democratic nomination process in 2008.

So long from Ohio.

Let Occupy Occupy

Mayor Bloomberg has drawn criticism from some conservatives for letting Occupy Wall Street stay indefinitely. In some ways, it is easy to understand why critics are upset with Bloomberg. Garbage is piling up, one person defecated on a police car, and many of the protestors do not even seem to know why they are there.

Even charitable accounts note that, after three weeks of protests, organization “is still lacking and political goals still need unpacking.” This group has protested for three weeks without knowing what its goals are. So it isn’t hard to see what critics are upset about.

But there are four good reasons for conservatives to applaud Bloomberg’s decision. The first is that it favors democracy. Contrast Bloomberg’s decision to Governor Perdue’s recent suggestion that we should suspend congressional elections for two years, so that Congress could concentrate on fixing the country’s financial problems. Or consider the claims by many on the left, including Vice President Joe Biden, that the Republican were akin to terrorists, because they engaged in debate and would not immediately let the Democrats raise the debt ceiling.

Elections and congressional deliberation are two core parts of America’s democratic system and it is worrisome to me that some would suggest bypassing either. In light of these things, Bloomberg’ decision to support free speech seems refreshingly Democratic. This is, I think, the best reason for conservatives to support Bloomberg’s decision. But it is not the only one.

When Fox's Brian Kilmeade asked who he thought Occupy Wall Street benefitted, conservative columnist Mark Steyn replied that it benefitted everyone. Here’s why:

Kilmeade: Mark, who is benefitting from these protests downtown?

Steyn: I think we all are, actually, because, this is a very clarifying moment. I mean, I think it’s the dumbest revolution (so-called), of the last hundred years. It’s basically non-workers of the world united. It’s basically all the economically non-productive elements of society from America’s vast pampered college class, big labor is supporting them, the spend-a-holic Democratic Party is supporting them. And I think it’s symbolically useful in that sense, because it gets to the heart of the biggest problem in the western world today – that too many people lead economically unproductive lives and to have them all down there in lower Manhattan providing a great visual reminder of that actually does us all a service.

Steyn is right. The protestors do a good deal to expose the problems many conservatives have with certain elements of the leftist base. These problems range from the willingness of some do or repeat anything, to the apparent contradictions in their positions.

For instance, Occupy is marching both against high student tuition and against lowering the salaries or lessening the benefits of Dartmouth professors. I suspect that it would be hard to lower tuition without lowering salaries as well.

Furthermore, Occupy is protesting against the rich, while defending some of the richest academics in the country. The average salary for a Darmouth Faculty is $203,140 – higher than the average salary for faculty at Cornell and Brown. The university currently has a budget deficit of $96 million. Yet Occupy is protesting even the most modest cuts in faculty salaries.

Perhaps Occupy would be more supportive if Darmouth administrators could levy a tax on faculty instead. At any rate, both the hypocrisy and the unworkability of certain leftist ideas are put into the spotlight by the protests.

But Occupy doesn’t just expose problems with the left’s base. It also exposes the hypocrisy of some of the most prominent political figures on the left.  Perhaps the most vocal congressional critic of the tea parties has been Nancy Pelosi. She first dismissed Tea Party protests as “astroturf”, then went on to treat the Tea Party as an uncontrollable and fearsome group. She urged Republicans to take back control of their party. She hinted that Tea Party protestors were creating a culture of violence. Contrast this to the way she reacts to Occupy. Does she say that Occupy is promoting a culture of violence? Is she scared of Occupy? Does she dismiss it as astoturf? Of course not.

Here’s Pelosi on Occupy (transcribed from a broadcast on C-Span):

The message of the protestors is a message for establishment every place. The focus is on Wall Street and justifiably so. God bless them for their spontaneity! It’s independent people coming. It’s young, it’s spontaneous, it’s focused and it’s going to be effective.

There are only a couple problems with this. One is Pelosi’s blatant hypocrisy. If people who are politically opposed to the policies she supports, they are dangerous and worrisome. If people more in line with her political ideologies protest against something, well, God bless them.

The other is that Pelosi is obviously wrong. She calls Occupy, which is largely financed by unions “independent”, while dismissing the largely grass roots tea parties as “astroturf.” She praises Occupy for its “focus”, even when even many of its participants admit that it has none. Occupy Wall Street puts the hypocrisy of figures like Pelosi in full view of the American people. The right ought to be happy about this.

Finally, when Occupy does express itself clearly, it is sometimes right. The group is right, for instance, about the wrongness of the bail-outs. It is right about the failure of the Obama administration to fix America’s economic woes. Occupy and the Tea Party would make unlikely allies, but I suspect that they do agree on some thing.

So, I say, let occupy occupy. Well done, Mayor Bloomberg.

Iran makes war against us and everyone else

If there is one bright spot in the Administration's record, it is counter-terrorism. The Justice Department apparently scored another big success: foiling an act of war by Iran against the United States, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Mexico. From the New York Times:

The United States on Tuesday accused Iranian officials of plotting to murder Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States in a bizarre scheme involving an Iranian-American used-car salesman who believed he was hiring assassins from a Mexican drug cartel for $1.5 million.

The alleged plot also included plans to pay the cartel, Los Zetas, to bomb the Israeli Embassy in Washington and the Saudi and Israeli Embassies in Argentina, according to a law enforcement official.

The plotters also discussed a side deal between the Quds Force, part of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and Los Zetas to funnel tons of opium from the Middle East to Mexico, the official said. The plans never progressed, though, because the two suspects — the Iranian-American and an Iranian Quds Force officer — unwittingly were dealing with an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, officials said.

If this is real it is something new. Iran has been at war with the United States for decades but it has always fought that war indirectly, in places like Iraq, and by means of proxies like Hezbollah and al Qaeda. Involving the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in terrorist operations within the United States, that is extremely brazen and it takes the conflict to the next level.

I can offer two explanations. One is that Iran perceives the U.S. to be economically, strategically, and psychologically weak and all but incapable of any serious response. That may be right. The better one comes from Charles Krauthammer. He thinks that this is meant to show that Iran can conduct covert operations within the United States. When they get a nuke, as sooner or later they will, they will then have a credible threat that might keep the U.S. from ever daring to invade. That is what grand strategy looks like.

Iran might be the single most serious threat to the security of the U.S. and its allies. This looks like a genuine act of war. If we don't take it seriously now, there will be Hell to pay later. I predict we will not take it seriously.

Religious Tests & Testy Religions

My friend and regional blogosphere coconspirator, Cory Heidelberger, has a very interesting post on the Pastor Jeffress controversy. Pastor Rick Jeffress, a supporter of Governor Rick Perry who introduced the Governor to a recent conservative forum in Washington, said the following in an interview with CNN:

And I want to make it very clear that Governor Perry had no knowledge ahead of time of what I was going to say. However, this is not an unusual view, John, that Mormonism is not Christianity.

Historical Christianity has never embraced Mormonism as a part of its faith. In fact, for many years, the Southern Baptist Convention did label it on its official Web site as a cult. That's not saying that Mitt Romney's a bad person. I think he's a good person, a moral person, but he doesn't embrace the historical tenets of evangelical Christianity.

Cory of course wants to find Pastor Jeffress' position illegitimate, but he had to tread rather carefully here as he acknowledges:

I've elicited numerous comments in response to my post about the Iglesia ni Cristo's purchase of the town of Scenic, South Dakota. Reviewing the church's doctrines and practices, I found that the church is not Christian and behaves like a cult.

Well, that sounds a lot like Jeffress' statement on Mormonism, the chief difference being that Cory is a self-professed Atheist. I dissent in part and concur in part.

The question of who is a genuine Christian and who is not is a matter of faith and doctrine. It can only be made within the context of some faith tradition. Cory was proposing that the Iglesia ni Cristo sect was clearly not Christian from an independent, historical point of view. I rather doubt that one can distinguish genuine from non-genuine Christianity on historical grounds and I am sure that this is a dubious ground for an atheist to criticize a sect whose arrival displeases him.

By contrast, the term "cult" can be defined independently of any faith tradition. A cult is simply a sect that attempts to cut off contact between its members and outsiders. If the church tells you that you must sever ties with friends and family members who do not belong, your church is a cult. I don't know enough about the Iglesia ni Cristo to say, but by this standard Mormonism is surely not a cult.

Here is Cory's attempt to put some distance between himself and Jeffress:

But Jeffress isn't making a theological argument. He's making propaganda. He's trying to impose a religious test on political candidates. He's trying to give voters a lazy reason to vote for Perry and against Romney that won't involve their having to wrestle with actual policy questions or assessments of which man is practically qualified to serve as President. In doing so, Pastor Jeffress is violating the spirit of the Constitution and the Bible, both of which support a separation of church and state. He is not spreading the Gospel; he is pandering to ignorance and using his clerical authority to score political points for his favored earthly candidate.

  There are all kinds of things wrong in this paragraph, but I will focus on one. The term "religious test" has a very specific meaning in American history. It means that a religious profession is qualification for office or other privileges of citizenship. In this Republic, there can be no such religious tests. No religious belief or lack thereof can be grounds for barring someone otherwise qualified from voting or serving as President.

Jeffress is not proposing any kind of religious test. He does think, I gather, that Christians should insist on a genuine Christian as a candidate for office. Voters are free to pick their own sets of criteria when deciding how to vote. Martin Luther said that he would rather be governed by a competent Turk than an incompetent Christian. That is certainly my view. I can easily imagine, however, that I might vote against a candidate because of his or her religious beliefs.

I would not vote for a candidate who believes that "Jesus hates queers." I would not vote for a candidate whose church is flamboyantly racist or misogynist. I wouldn't vote for a candidate who sat for twenty years before a pastor who was vehemently anti-American and anti-Semitic. I don't think that this is laziness on my part. I don't think I am violating the spirit of the Constitution by employing such criteria.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

I spent a couple of days with my son, backpacking in the Teddy Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. This is one of my favorite places. Here is a shot

 

SDP @ the Spookies: Troll Hunter

If you are tired of those shaky, found footage mockumentaries, well, that's too damn bad. The device is being employed frequently these days and it is producing some of the best horror available in years. Cloverfield, [Rec] and its American doppelganger, Quarantine, and Paranormal Activity, were each of them very solid additions to the horror catalog.

Now comes Troll Hunter out of Norway. It strikes me as the best of the lot, as well as one of the freshest and most engaging monster movies I have ever seen. I've seen a lot.

Trolljergeren is directed by André Øvredal. The film is in Norwegian with English subtitles, though a good bit of English is spoken by some Polish bear traffickers. I view it as a general rule that any movie with Polish bear traffickers speaking English to Norwegians is worth watching.

The film begins with three college students following and filming a man they believe to be a bear poacher. Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud) and Johana (Johana Mørck) are both very convincing as naïve youngsters playing at the roles of investigative reporters. Hans (Otto Jespersen), whose truck and weathered trailer they are following, stands of course in stark contrast: older, jaded, and sporting a magnificent beard under his wide-brimmed hat. After several attempts to shoo them away, he decides to let them film the big secret he is in on. He is tired, of keeping secrets among other things.  As you may guess from the clip above, he is not so much a Troll Hunter as a Troll warden. 

Unlike any of the other mockumentaries, Troll Hunter is full of gorgeous footage. A lot of their time is spent zipping up rain splashed pavement with fjords and misty mountains always in view. The wet realism of the scenery was one the things that kept me watching.

One of the bits of genius in the cinematic recipe was a taste for subtly pretty everywhere except, of course, when a troll actually comes into view. There are a few splashes of scientific pseudo explanations, a dash of secret government agency paranoia, and just a pinch of supernatural spice. Let this stand for one small spoiler: the Trolls don't like the smell of Christian blood.

The trolls themselves look as sound about as real as any creature could that has escaped from a children's collection of fairy tales. Since they are always up when the sun isn't, they can blend in with the darkness or gray fog. A Darwinian adaptation? We report, you decide. I'll just say that I can't think of large monsters that ever seemed so real on camera.

One of the most important tasks of dark fantasy cinema is to take the childhood ogre and make it feel real again. Troll Hunter does this very well. I give it four stars out of four.

The Bacon Fat Hardens on the Plate

 
This might be the most ominous thing yet published on Obama's chances for reelection. From Chris Cillizza's The Fix at the WaPo:

Four in 10 Americans "strongly" disapprove of how President Obama is handling the job of president in the new Washington Post-ABC News poll, the highest that number has risen during his time in office and a sign of the hardening opposition to him as he seeks a second term.

While the topline numbers are troubling enough, dig deeper into them and the news gets no better for Obama. Forty-three percent of independents — a group the president spent the better part of the last year courting — strongly disapprove of the job he is doing. Forty-seven percent of people 65 years of age and older — reliable voters in any election — strongly disapprove of how he is doing his job.

Strong opposition to Obama has grown markedly since the start of the year.

I would not have the courage to say that a poll taken more than a year before the election can predict the outcome of that election, even if I believed it. I don't. However, if any poll did have such power, it would look like this.

Consider that a candidate for President from either party can usually count on 40% of the vote. Since 1964 only Bush 41, McGovern, and Goldwater fell into the upper 30's. If the WaPo poll is right, 40% of the voters are lost to Obama. If that holds, then the Republican candidate, whoever he is, will need to add only 11% to win the popular vote. Don't look to the Electoral College to save Barack. He is as weak in key states as he is nationally.

As Cillizza notes, it gets worse. A candidate wins the White House by adding to his base number from swing voters. Forty-three percent of independents strongly disapprove of his job performance. Voters over 65, the most politically active demographic, are approaching 50% strong disapproval.

To look at the poll numbers, his net disapproval on the economy and job creation is 61 and 60%. Strong disapproval is at 48 and 47% respectively.

I think the President's political strategy is all wrong. He is in full tilt campaign mode already and everyone knows it. This is in line with the idea that in the past Democrats have waited too long to answer charges and get moving on bringing out the vote. That idea was never well founded, but right now it is probably the opposite of the truth. Obama needs to look like he is governing rather than campaigning. The early incessant campaigning reinforces the view that he has nothing to offer in the way of policy. In fact he doesn't, but it doesn't help to advertize the fact.

Maybe the Republicans will nominate Rick Perry and he'll choose Sarah Palin as his running mate. That is the kind of thing Obama's people must be hoping for. Right now it is hard to see how Obama can beat anything short of ridiculous.

Holder Lied. People died.

Not in that order, perhaps, but still…

It has been said that Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms sounds more like a Mississippi convenience store than a federal agency. That is unfair to convenience stores, which are generally run with a pretty clear idea of what they are doing. What, exactly, did the ATF think it was doing when it delivered arms to Mexican gangs?

I have yet to see a reasonable explanation of the strategy behind "Project Gunrunner" or "Gunwalker," or "Fast and Furious," as the policy has been called. In case you are behind the curve on this one, the ATF pressured gun stores in Phoenix to sell high powered semi-automatic rifles and military pistols to questionable buyers (i.e., Mexican gangsters).

Apparently the idea was to follow the weapons and see where they ended up, apparently with the idea of shutting down the networks. Apparently no means of actually tracking the weapons were employed (assuming such means are available). All the ATF actually did do was to make sure that the weapons were delivered. From CBS News:

50-caliber weapons are fearsome. For months, ATF agents followed 50-caliber Barrett rifles and other guns believed headed for the Mexican border, but were ordered to let them go. One distraught agent was often overheard on ATF radios begging and pleading to be allowed to intercept transports. The answer: "Negative. Stand down."

I have been trying to imagine what the strategy was behind this. Here is my best guess. Maybe the ATF wanted to show that weapons purchased in the U.S. and delivered to Mexican gangs would in turn be resold in the U.S. to domestic criminals. That would be determined when the weapons resurfaced in arrests here. The demonstration of such a contraband flow would then be used to justify stricter controls on U.S. gun sales.

That is the best I can come up with and it's both criminal and stupid. Putting thousands of dangerous guns in the hands in order to bolster the case for gun control would be insane. It would make the ATF an accomplice in all the murders committed with those weapons.

And indeed that is all that the policy actually accomplished.

One agent argued with a superior asking, "are you prepared to go to the funeral of a federal officer killed with one of these guns?" Another said every time there was a shooting near the border, "we would all hold our breath hoping it wasn't one of 'our' guns."

Then, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. The serial numbers on the two assault rifles found at the scene matched two rifles ATF watched Jaime Avila buy in Phoenix nearly a year before. Officials won't answer whether the bullet that killed Terry came from one of those rifles. But the nightmare had come true: "walked" guns turned up at a federal agent's murder.

I don't know whether the ATF can offer a better justification for the policy than I suggest here, but I am pretty sure that whatever they might offer won't satisfy Agent Terry's family. Oh, and it also seems likely that these weapons figure in the murder of a number of officials in Mexico. The government of our southern neighbor is not amused.

The Obama Administration has denied knowing anything about "Fast and Furious". Not so fast. Again from CBS News:

WASHINGTON - New documents obtained by CBS News show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress.

On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing, "I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."

Yet internal Justice Department documents show that at least ten months before that hearing, Holder began receiving frequent memos discussing Fast and Furious.

General Holder's May 3^rd testimony to Congress was not technically a lie. It was only an actual lie. The weasel word "probably" nails it down. It was also a stupid lie. With Republicans in control of the House Judiciary Committee, General Holder could not have expected that he could pretend ignorance for very long or for long enough to make it past next year's election.

Of course there is another possible interpretation of the facts.

The Justice Department told CBS News that the officials in those emails were talking about a different case started before Eric Holder became Attorney General. And tonight they tell CBS News, Holder misunderstood that question from the committee - he did know about Fast and Furious - just not the details.

For that explanation of his testimony to work, you have to believe two things. One is that the ATF was running a ridiculously stupid and dangerous program on our southern border and neither the Attorney General nor the President knew much of anything about it. The other is that the Attorney General did know at least something about it, but was not curious enough, let alone alarmed enough, to inquire further.  File under "criminal negligence."  Cross file under "incompetence."  

The ignorance excuse is more damning that the lie. I go with the latter, but given what we know about the empty wheel house on Obama's ship of state, one can scarcely be sure.

Rick’s Racist Rock

I carry no water for Texas Governor Rick Perry. I doubt that he is the right man for the Republican nomination and I doubt that he will get the nomination. It still has to be said that the Washington Post hit piece on Perry was a sloppy and scurrilous piece of yellow journalism.

Here is the nugget of truth in the story.

In the early years of his political career, Rick Perry began hosting fellow lawmakers, friends and supporters at his family's secluded West Texas hunting camp, a place known by the name painted in block letters across a large, flat rock standing upright at its gated entrance.

"Niggerhead," it read.

Okay. Apparently the camp was called "Niggerhead" locally, and there was a rock with that word painted on it. Perry's father leased the property in the 1980's and Perry used the camp frequently. He says that his father painted over the word just after he leased the property.

The Post article produces a lot of testimony, almost all of it anonymous, to the effect that the name lingered on the rock long after that. There are is a series of photos to accompany the article, but no picture of the rock. All of them are of Rick Perry doing Rick Perry things. The article tells us a lot about the climate and landscape of this bit of Texas, and a little about the history of race relations there. It tells us nothing at all that is useful in judging Rick Perry.

I gather that the offensive piece of geology has been removed to God knows where. The Post offers us no pictures of it, but does mention a picture that the Post does not provide. Here are the final words of the story, with my sarcastic commentary.

The rock remained by the gate, the name brushed with a thin coat of white paint. The paint was slightly faded, according to the person who saw it recently.

Who was this "person"? When was "recently"?

"That's something that sticks in my memory," this person said. "It was kind of a sloppy job. It wasn't doing what it was intended to do."

Your memory from when, precisely? What was it "intended" to do?

As recently as this summer, the rock was still there, according to photographs viewed by The Washington Post.

How, exactly, were the photos dated? Why can't we see them?

In the photos, it was to the left of the gate. It was laid down flat. The exposed face was brushed clean of dirt. White paint, dried drippings visible, covered a word across the surface. An N and two G's were faintly visible.

I gather that we are to infer from this that the rock was only painted over very recently. We have a "person" who seems to find fault with the paint job, but the photo the Post claims to have seen is somehow not available.

This is journalistic malpractice. There's no story here, only innuendo. The only hard evidence the Post produces confirms the Perry's story that the rock was painted over. We can't know from what they tell us when the photo was taken or when the offensive word was painted over or whether the word was painted over more than once.

If this is the best bit of dirty laundry that the Post can come with on Perry, they had better hope he doesn't improve in the next debates. The editors deserve to be spanked and set to bed without their supper.

How to Reduce Deficits

The current budgetary paralysis in Washington arises from the fact that Democrats are adamantly opposed to any real spending cuts and Republicans are adamantly opposed to raising taxes. Democrats argue that "austerity," i.e., reductions in spending will retard economic growth. Republicans make the same claim about raising taxes but also argue that any increase in revenue will simply be used to protect or increase spending and thus will not do anything to reduce the growth of public debt.

Public debt is the problem. At every level of government it is putting manageable pressures on budgetary policies. Insolvent or nearly insolvent nations are dragging the European Union toward a financial precipice. The United States, if not so near the edge, is being pulled irresistibly in the same direction. One way or the other, Greek fiscal policy is going to end and "the other" is very, very bad.

The question is not whether to raise taxes or cut spending, but what combination of revenue growth and spending cuts is most likely to actually reduce public debt. Veronique de Rugy, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, directs our attention at Reason Magazine to a study that answers this question: "Large changes in fiscal policy: taxes versus spending" by Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna.

For fiscal adjustments we show that spending cuts are much more effective than tax increases in stabilizing the debt and avoiding economic downturns. In fact, we uncover several episodes in which spending cuts adopted to reduce deficits have been associated with economic expansions rather than recessions. We also investigate which components of taxes and spending affect the economy more in these large episodes and we try to uncover channels running through private consumption and/or investment.

Alesina and Ardagna analyzed over a hundred attempts to reduce deficits in 21 OECD countries. They found, not surprisingly, that most of these efforts failed. It's as hard to reduce public debt as it is to reduce one's waistline, and for the same reason. What distinguishes the rare successes from the many failures is illustrated by this chart.

The left side of the chart indicates successful fiscal adjustments, i.e., those that actually resulted in a cumulative reduction in the debt to GDP ratio (4.5% after 3 years). That ratio is what really counts for fiscal stability.

The successful policies actually saw revenues decrease by a half a percentage of GDP. They cut spending by almost two percentage points. That is what works.

Nations that cut spending only modestly (.8% of GDP) while raising revenues by nearly a point and a half experience increases in the debt to GDP ratio.

There you have it. I think that some tax increases here may be unavoidable politically and suspect that they may make economic sense at least until we get back to the historically typical ratio of revenues to GDP. Nonetheless, any successful debt reduction policy has to be weighted more heavily toward spending cuts. Otherwise it will not work.

If you want to lose weight, should you increase exercise or reduce calories? The answer is yes, but the main thing is to stop eating so much. If we want to reduce the growth of public debt, let alone shrink it, and we must, we are just going to have to reduce public spending.

We Killed al-Awlaki

We killed Anwar al-Awlaki. I won't shout out "yeah!" I'll just say "good." Al-Awlaki was an American citizen hiding out in Yemen. He was also a traitor, making war against the United States. If it had been feasible to capture him, or if he had presented himself for trial, we would have had to try him. As long as he continued to hide out and prosecute war against us, we were entitled to hunt him down and put a missile up his ass.

I have more than a little sympathy with those (including many conservatives) who are concerned with the President's prerogative in this matter. David Harsanyi wrote:

I'm uneasy, and always have been, about allowing the United States executive branch to simply order the assassination of an American citizen with so little oversight or demand for evidence.

I'm uneasy as well. It would be nice to have a protocol for such situations. We certainly don't want the President to be able to assassinate mere critics, citizens or otherwise, merely because they are abroad and in back country. Perhaps Harsanyi can work on that.

Emergency situations are notoriously resistant to protocol. When someone is shooting people from the top of a tower in Texas and you can't just tackle him, you shoot him. His citizenship is irrelevant. When terrorists make war against the United States and hide in the hinterlands, judicial procedure is not in order. These cutthroats have exploited the protection of mountain hideouts and compounds in Pakistan, not to mention hiding among innocent civilians. It is only fair that we respond with modern surveillance and predator drones.

When you make war, the object is to use all your power to eliminate the power of the enemy to make war against you. The critical distinction here is between a state a war and a state of peace. We can't send a drone to take out Mahmūd Ahmadinezhād, because we aren't at war with Iran. We are at war with al Qaeda, or what is left of it. Maybe some protocol can be devised so we can keep this straight. It is more important, perhaps, that the al-Awlakis of the world understand the distinction. Let this stand for an example.