Big Mac and Donny Baseball

So Mark McGwire has been hired to be the hitting coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers, working with manager Don Mattingly. There are a couple minor things that make this cool that I want to talk about before the bigger issue of Mark McGwire's career.

First, I like that my childhood baseball hero is now working with my brother's childhood baseball hero. There is something fun about being an adult and seeing our childhood heroes also in new stages in life. And it is fun that these two former competitors - both first basemen in the American League during the late 1980s and early 1990s, now working together. And they both had such different hitting styles: Mattingly hit for average and McGwire hit for power.

Now both of these great hitters will be working together, maybe helping different players with different styles. As my brother said, if this team doesn't hit, it won't be the fault of the coaches. He also said though that what remains to be seen is whether they can coach the other side of the infield. That is funny and true.

But for McGwire, I am very happy that he is quietly focusing on this task, doing what he knows, maybe trying slowly to rebuild his reputation. It was always said that he knew the fundementals of hitting. (Note: I am not trying to argue that his knowledge of the fundamentals was more important in his hitting than the steroids. I imagine the two things worked well together.) 

Everyone makes mistakes. I was - and still am - disappointed to learn that McGwire had used steroids. He has to live with that decision the rest of his life and I do believe that it pains him. Even small mistakes, much less really big ones - can haunt you all of your life. But we can also work to make up for our mistakes - to show that one mistake, or even one long series of mistakes, doesn't define us. He is doing that now, and I respect that.

Of course, he has a lot more work to do. And I hope someday he'll talk much more openly about it. But for now, this makes me happy.

What an Election!

Okay, the election results are pretty amazing. I am relived that President Obama was reelected (which should cement the Affordable Care Act among other good things). But I am excited about the other developments.

The following Democrats won their US Senate races: Jon Tester won in Montana; Heidi Heitkamp won in North Dakota. Tammy Baldwin will be the first openly gay or lesbian member of the US Senate and just as importantly another progressive Democrat; Tim Kaine won in Virginia - beating George Allen hopefully for the last time; Christopher Murphy beat Linda McMahon hopefully for the last time; and Elizabeth Warren won in Massachusetts.

I will admit that I am really happy about Warren - I think she will be great, loud, proud liberal voice. And I am really happy about Jon Tester. A good friend of mine works for him and says he is great - moderate but strong and principled. By the way - yesterday I wondered whether I would accept a trade of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans for moderates. Instead, we got liberal Democrats and moderate Democrats. Pretty great.

And maybe best of all, two states - Maine and Maryland passed marriage equality referendums and in Washington is still being tallied but supporters are in the lead. Amazing. Now nine states support same sex marriage rights: New York, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Vermont, plus the District of Columbia, and now Maryland and Maine. Washington state would make it 11.

The Republicans retained control of the House, so it wasn't all good news. Although in my hometown news, Democrat Sean Patrick Maloney defeated Republican Nan Hayworth.

In New York State news, the state senate might actually revert to the Democrats, which means the state would have a Democratic governor, assembly and senate. Which means progressive legislation would be much easier to pass.

So all in all, a pretty great night.

Update: 
I forgot to mention that Joe Walsh lost, Alan West is losing but hasn't conceded, and Michelle Bachmann almost lost in a pretty conservative district. 

Nate Silver Backlash

Around the time of the hurricane, there was apparently a big discussion about Nate Silver. First there was a Politico blog post about whether if Nate Silver is wrong will he lose all his popularity. There was also comments by Joe Scarborough saying Nate Silver doesn't know what he is talking about.

The responses from Silver supporters were great. Ezra Klein said that reporters don't like Silver because he makes them feel innumerate. Then they criticize him and prove him right. David Roberts and Matt O'Brien had similarly good tweets.

And I want to add my two cents in defense of Silver. In doing so, I need to say that I find the people who attack him to show a lack of understanding of high school probability and intro statistics.

A commenter on twitter said they don't understand what a probability means to a one-off event. That is high school probability. Here is an example: flipping a coin twice and getting two heads has a 25% probability. That doesn't mean it can't or won't happen. It just means it is unlikely to happen.

Here is another example: if the weather forecast says there is a 75% chance of rain, I would recommend you bring an umbrella. It might not rain. That doesn't necessarily mean the forecast was wrong. 

For a while, Nate Silver's blog had the probability of Obama winning as around 75% (now it is 90%). The same thing goes - according to Silver's model, Obama is likely to win.

The poltico story and others seemed to accuse Silver of being overly certain and yet hedging at the same time. Again, they are misunderstanding probability. Silver's model is not a prediction, it shows probability. And probabilities show the likelihood and the uncertainty of events. (After re-reading the Politico piece, it is amazing how stupid it is. Dylan Byers clearly doesn't understand probability at all.)

Romney winning doesn't necessarily mean that Silver was wrong. Silver's model says that based on the data he is using, he thinks there is a high chance Obama wins. But there is a small chance Romney wins. That small chance reflects how the data is unable to predict anything perfectly - that to a certain degree events are somewhat unpredictable.
 
But we should ask, and Silver will do this, what it does mean if Romney wins. Since Silver relies so heavily on polling, it could mean that the polling was wrong. Or it could mean that he was wrong to adjust the polling like he does. In other words, it could mean that his model was right or it could mean his model was wrong.

What makes Silver so popular is not his model so much but how he explains statistics. He explains to everyone what his assumptions are, and how he got to them. You can disagree with some of those assumptions and argue that his model should be different.

But that isn't what these critics are doing. They are saying he is wrong but from complete ignorance of what he is actually doing.

David Brooks has joined this chorus - and as much as I like Brooks on some issues, anything involving math and Brooks says it is witchcraft. He doesn't understand economics and so says it cannot predict anything. And he doesn't understand statistics and probability and so says it can't predict human behavior. With regard to statistics, history shows how much presidential election outcomes depend on fundamentals like the economy as well as how often outcomes are in line with long term polling averages.

All of this backlash is from media types that are threatened by Silver. Scarbarough, Brooks, and others have credibility not by evidence but by gut feelings and high level contacts. Their predictions are often wrong, but they don't lose credibility. That is because they are providing entertainment, not real news.

Silver's method asks us to calm down around so-called big events. The news media blows everything up to be game-changers. And they also say races are nail biters. Both provide entertainment and therefore viewers. Silver however says that the evidence shows these events rarely change polling and that the race isn't as close as the news wants to pretend. So he threatens their model. I don't read any polls or any poll coverage save for Nate Silver. If others did that, the news would have less viewers (and the world would have more informed people).

I'll finish by responding to the original question posed by the Politico story. If Romney wins, will I stop reading Nate Silver. The answer is no, because unlike political pundits who won't look at their predictions critically and ask why they were wrong, Silver will look at what happened and explain it. And that is why I read him, because he is smart and great at explaining what is really going on.

All Election Prospects

So according to Nate Silver, not only should we expect Obama to win a second term (apparently the first time we've had three 2-term presidencies in a row since Jefferson, Madison, Monroe), but the Senate is expected to be controlled by the Democrats.

In fact, Silver probabilities suggest that Elizabeth Warren will win in Massachusetts, Linda McMahon will lose in Connecticut, and Tim Kaine will win in Virginia. These are all good things. Unfortunately, Nate Silver's model shows that Jon Tester is likely to lose in Montana and Heidi Heitkamp is expected to lose in North Dakota. That is really too bad. I've heard great things about both candidates.

Where the Democrats are winning and where they are losing shows more extreme candidates beating more moderate ones. Take Massachusetts. I actually kind of like Scott Brown. We need moderates. In a perfect world, he would be the Republican Senator from one of the really red states.

I realize though that I am being a bit hypocritical. I say we need moderates, like Jon Tester, but then I support Warren over Brown. I haven't fully resolved this. In Massachusetts, I think we need a liberal Democrat more than we need a moderate Republican. But if we were to have more moderates overall, we'd need to trade some liberal democrats for moderate Republicans (ie trade Warren for Tester) and vice versa. I don't know whether I would take that trade.

But instead of that hypothetical, we have a real world where moderates are losing and more extreme candidates are winning. That suggests we'll have more partisanship and gridlock ahead. The former isn't necessarily a bad thing. The later is.

As for the House, there was one model that suggested that Democrats can retake the majority. But other models that show a Republican-controlled House are more convincing. So I think that is the situation we'll be facing. We should expect a GOP House, a Democratic Senate, and President Obama with a second term.

Election Day 2012

So today is election day. I had planned to write a post about how to watch the coverage and which states to pay attention to. But really, it is all about Ohio. Granted, if Obama loses Pennsylvania, that is a really bad sign. Same goes for if Romney loses Florida. But absent those scenarios, just pay attention to Ohio. And right now, Nate Silver's blog says Ohio and therefore the election are likely to go to Obama with 90.0% probability.

Instead though, I am going to reflect on this year versus four years ago. Four years ago, I was a relatively early Obama supporter. I started off favoring Bill Richardson but went to Obama once I realized he wasn't viable. And I became a really strong Obama supporter - so much so that I donated and volunteered for Obama.

Mitt Romney was right though, the best feeling I had about Obama was the day after the election. This post is kind of embarassing in retrospect (and I guess it is no surprise that I am now reading a lot of history again). When I am trying to be fair, I think that Obama has done a good enough job. He passed major health care reform, a big stimulus, prevented the recession from continuing, took major stands in favor of same sex couples, and passed a banking reform bill.

But he has also been disappointing on foreign policy, specifically on drone strikes (more in a future post), and he was weak on the economy and caved on budget issues. He has let Republicans set the agenda by focusing on a medium term issue - the budget - instead of the immediate issue of job. And then let them attack him for not doing enough on jobs.

In light of all of this, I did not donate nor did I volunteer this time. Maybe part of my lack of volunteering is due to my young son. But much more so, it is because I am not as inspired. Sure, we need to avoid a Romney presidency. But that isn't enough to get me out volunteering.

So here's hoping for an Obama win tonight. But I won't be filled with as much hope. Just much less dread.

Star Wars Point Counterpoint

There was a post on Slate about the Star Wars and Disney deal that I want to respond to, since it disagrees with my post of a few days ago. The writer basically says that the Star Wars movies are for kids, that both the original and the prequels were made that way and suffer from the same faults that only adults see. And Disney is good at making movies for kids so the next movies will be good, too.


I completely disagree. The original movies were compelling and easy to understand. It was revolution against an empire. Any student of the American Revolution - or any other revolution - would get it. It was powerful and cruel despots against fledgling upstarts with heart. It was good humans against bad humans.

The prequels were the opposite. There were arcane trade wars that I don't understand (and neither does the author of the Slate piece) and clone wars that make less sense when being shown in the prequels than when mentioned in the originals. And it was humans against machines. Darth Maul was powerful and scary - if there were more like him, the movies might have been better. But the 4 light-saber robot was boring and unmoving - I felt nothing during the battle and nothing when he died - because he was a robot.

The author of the Slate piece is right that there are similarities - there is some bad acting (maybe Mark Hammil and definitely Hayden Christiansen, though the later I blame on the directing) and bad dialogue writing. And both have annoying characters (C3PO and Jar Jar). But the stories are much different. Only the originals have powerful and understandable themes. And only they stand up to adult scrutiny.

Tuesday's Forecast: Phew - Obama a Favorite

All is right with the world of politics again. After the post-debate scare when Romney made up a lot of ground, Obama is back to being a solid favorite in Nate Silver's forecast. I admit, I was worried for a while there. (Not that I am overconfident now, it is still close enough for Romney to win, but much less likely.)

Having said that, I am really disappointed that one debate can move the polls so much, especially when relatively few people watched it, and even more so because the polls moved based on voters understanding of who won not what anyone said. That is depressing.

To be clear, that is the cynical interpretation of why Romney gained ground - that people changed their minds based not on what someone said, but how they said it - or actually how the press said they said it. But there are better and more plausible reasons why the polls shifted.

The polls movement many have been reversion to the mean - in other words the polls might have been moving back in line with the fundamentals. This makes sense if you think Romney was underperforming - maybe by scaring voters away with is 47 percent comments, and flawed convention including a crazy Clint Eastwood speech. So the debate might have shown some voters that would want to vote for Romney that he isn't that crazy or that incompetent.

Now that Obama is looking good again, I will say that there was a time when I was actually kind of curious about how Romney would be as a president. Mitt Romney is running a campaign that promises a lot with no specifics and avoids anything controversial: tax cuts, increased military spending, and general (but huge) cuts to discretionary spending.

But once he governs, he would have to figure out those details. For example, what discretionary spending would he gut to make his budget numbers add up? I think cuts of the magnitude he is proposing would be deeply unpopular. But if he doesn't do it, the GOP would be furious with him. It all just comes back to whether he would be extreme or moderate. Would he fight his party or be subservient to it? I think the later - and articles like this confirm my fear.

But the point is that someone who has so much avoided making any decisions and making anyone angry would have to finally do so. And I wonder how he wound handle that. Though I am not so curious that I want to see him win just to see what he would do.

Star Wars Won the Super Bowl

In news that got lost in the Hurricane Sandy coverage, Disney bought Lucasfilm from George Lucas, including ILM and Skywalker Sound. And with it came news that Disney plans to bring new Star Wars movies to the screen.

I think this will be a good thing - at least for the movies. I loved the original movies (ie episodes IV, V, and VI) but didn't really like the prequels (episodes I, II, and III - Phantom Menace, etc). I think there was so much promise for the prequels but they just didn't deliver. And I think the main problem was George Lucas. He spent the intervening decades between the originals and the prequals as a business man and not as a writer / director.

Even at top form, I am not convinced Lucas was a great director. I have seen on interviews that he wasn't a very good director of actors. He often relied on good actors to coach themselves (Harrison Ford, Alec Guinness, Liam Neeson, Ewen McGregor as compared to Hayden Christensen and Samuel L. Jackson - the later of which was just a bad casting decision). In fact, the two best movies, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, were not directed by Lucas.

But I am convinced he was a good writer. Although his dialogue was sometimes pretty flat the stories were engaging and powerful. Remember, he wrote note just Star Wars but the stories for the Indiana Jones movies.

But writing and directing are both crafts that need to be practiced if you want to remain good at them. Believing that you can walk away from them, then come back without any problems is extreme hubris. Lucas decided to write and direct the prequels, and so they suffered. The prequels had not only bad acting but the story didn't hold up.

Disney can be really good at telling stories and I think will be able to create much better movies. At their best, Disney movies like Finding Nemo and Wall-i and Lion King and Monsters, Inc have really great stories.

However, Disney also has a history of creating really bad movies as well. As Seth MacFarlane (the Family Guy) said on Twitter:

Looking forward to seeing what exciting new Star Wars adventures will be cooked up by the dream factory that brought us Mars Needs Moms!

 I think it depends on how seriously Disney treats the movies, and I think they will treat the Star Wars movies well. 

Book Report - Best Biographies: UPDATED

This is my attempt to put together a list of the best biographies on important people (as it turns out, mostly American Presidents). I haven't read all of the books on here. The one's I haven't read are included based on reputation. (The books I have read are noted with an asterisk.

I expect this to be a work in progress, so I will update it as I get comments and as things change. So you know, my idea of a definitive book is contemporary, well written, and if possible not insanely long. In many cases, I will go with authors that have a good reputation.

You'll also find that most of the people listed here have biographies on PBS's American Experience where you can get a good idea of their life in just a few hours.

You might notice the lack of women and people of color on here. This can partly be explained by the diminished role women and African-Americans were allowed to play for much of our history. Even considering that, I still don't feel good about it. The best I can say is that we'll eagerly await the definitive treatments of Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton, Indira Ghandi and Golda Meir - and Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Malcom X (see below), Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas among others.

George Washington
*His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph Ellis
Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
I don't know which of these is better. I read the Ellis biography and found it to be pretty good. I get the feeling though that Chernow's is more comprehensive.

John Adams
*John Adams by David McCullough
This is an amazing book.

Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson by RB Bernstein
American Sphinx by Joseph Ellis
Again, not sure which is the better book. Both are contemporary. Ellis is pretty popular and has written a lot on this time period. Also, The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed (professor at New York Law School) won the Pulitzer Prize. I haven't read it, but have it on my list.

Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
This book is very well regarded. I really want to read this, but it keeps falling behind other priorities.

Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson
The First American by H.W. Brands
I don't know which is better, although I think I have seen Isaacson's book more often.

Andrew Jackson
American Lion* by John Meacham
Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times by H.W. Brands
I read Meacham's book because it was shorter. I regret that decision. The book spent more time on gossip than important policy and refused to engage in much criticism of the Indian Removal Policy or any analysis of the national bank decision. How this book won the Pulitzer is beyond me.

Abraham Lincoln
Team of Rivals* by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Great book. Can't wait for the movie. 

Ulyses S. Grant
Jean Edward Smith's Grant seems well regarded and contemporary.
John Waugh's U.S. Grant seems to provide a good analysis of Grant's changed reputation.
And now the very prolific H.W. Brands has a Grant biography: The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace. I don't know which I will read. I really like Brands' writing, but I might want to mix it up and give Smith a try.

Teddy Roosevelt
Edmund Morris has a three volume set (The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, and Colonel Roosevelt) that seems to the best available. The prolific H.W. Brands has a single volume biography titled T.R. The Last Romantic.

Franklin D. Roosevelt
No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Traitor to His Class* by H.W. Brands
FDR by Jean Edward Smith
I am reading Traitor by Brands. It is really good and includes a good amount on Eleanor's life as well. And since I am liking it so much, I will probably read the Teddy Roosevelt and maybe the Jackson biographies by Brands.

Eleanor Roosevelt
It seems that Blanche Wiesen Cook's series is the best available. It currently stands at two volumes and goes through the first years of FDR's presidency and could easily run two more volumes. I wish there was something shorter.

Harry Truman
Truman by David McCullough
McCullough's biography is by far the most highly regarded and probably helped change opinions on his presidency.

Dwight D. Eisenhower
Eisenhower: Soldier and President by Stephen Ambrose
The one volume condensation or the full two volume work by Ambrose seems to be the best out there. There is also one by Jean Edward Smith - Eisenhower in War and Peace.

John F. Kennedy
An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek

Malcolm X
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention* by Manning Marable
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley*
I have read both books and I think everyone should read both. The Autobiography gives Malcolm's view (with some editing by Alex Haley) whereas Manning Marable's biography should be considered more objective and also adds a lot of historical context and analysis.

Lyndon Johnson
Robert Caro's trilogy is the most comprehensive and contemporary. Caro is a great writer and is able to find all the good stories. However, the sheer size of it probably scares most people away. Other options include Robert Dallek's two volume set and Doris Kearns Goodwin's single volume.

Richard Nixon - Barack Obama
For the modern presidents (Nixon - Obama) it is probably too early for really good biographies. There are American Experience series for Nixon, Carter, Reagan and George HW Bush. Woodward wrote two books on Clinton covering his first couple years in office and his reelection. There is also a book called Dead Center on Clinton's presidency, but it is more of a study of leadership (I read it in an undergrad political science class). Woodward also wrote three or four books on Bush's presidency as well as one so far on Obama (focusing on his administration's foreign policy debates).

* books I have read

The 47 Percent

We are all very familiar with Romney's taped comments about how 47 percent of the country didn't pay income taxes and are therefore dependent on the system and don't take responsibility for their lives and think they are entitled to benefits. There has been a lot of discussion about this, some of it very good and smart. I want to add my thoughts here.

The first thing I should mention is how dishonest this comment is. A lot of others have pointed this out, but it bears repeating. First of all, that number is abnormally high due to the recession. It is usually 40% that don't pay income taxes. But of that 47 percent, 60 percent are working and paying taxes for social security and Medicare. Another 22 percent are retirees. About 8 percent are not paying any federal taxes because they are unemployed, students, or on disability.

So the 47 percent are not all unemployed people on welfare. Most are working or retired. But let's pretend that Romney had the right number - let's say he made the same comments about that 8 percent that are not paying any taxes and are not working. Or even better, let's say he had a number that included only those unemployed and ignored the students and people on disability. Romney's claim was that this small number of people can never be convinced to take responsibility for their lives.

If there is one thing that seems to be consistent for Romney over the years, it is disdain for the welfare. He claims he ran against Kennedy because he wanted to tell the world that Kennedy's policies created a permanent underclass - that by helping people with food stamps and cash assistance, we were actually hurting them.

There are so many things wrong with the statement and that outlook. Ezra Klein has a great post on how the poor actually are taking responsibility but are in fact drowning in responsibility. I completely agree with that post and couldn't have written it better. But I don't expect someone with Romney's history to know what Klein points out. But I do expect him to know how he lived his life.

Mitt Romney did not live his life, nor treat his children, in a way that suggests responsibility and success only comes through hardship and self-reliance. We know that Mitt Romney used his inheritance from his Dad to support himself through school. And good for him. He used free money to better himself and become self sufficient - free money that was way more than what people on welfare get.

Also, Mitt Romney isn't forcing his kids to become poor to teach them how to make it on their own. Instead, he has set up a family trust that has $100 million in it, and he made sure to avoid taxes as best he could. As David Brooks says in his great take down, middle - and upper I would add - class parents don't deny their kids to teach responsibility, they shower them with everything they can. The best schools, the best programs. They give them a comfortable life so that they are most likely to achieve success.

The point here is that there is a huge disconnect between how Romney found success and then how he treats his children, and how he thinks poor people should be treated to find success. He believes his kids will find success if they are showered with supports and provided with lots of money, and his Dad felt the same way. But he believes that the poor will only find success if they are starved of supports and money.

I don't think this disconnect is racism. I think it is forced on him by his conservative worldview. In order to believe that you care about people's success but also to believe that government is too generous, you need to believe that people need less support in order to succeed. And you believe this despite your own experience and behavior. In fact, this is the greatest trick conservatives play on the world: that the best way to help someone is to not help them at all. Then you can perceive yourself as generous and kind, but also feel like you should keep more of your money.

Unfortunately, it is wrong. The best way to help someone is to help them. Just like the best way to help your family is to help them. And you do that by providing them with lots of money.

QE3 (ie QEuntilitworks)

I have been meaning to write a quick post about this but haven't gotten the chance. I am really happy with the Federal Reserves decision to undertake QE3 - or what I am calling QEuntilitworks because of its open-ended asset purchases, which will continue until there is more progress in the economy. I am very glad the fed finally acted, and I am glad they are using some of their signaling power - basically saying they are willing to let inflation increase above what had previously been a 2% ceiling until things pick-up.

I want to say one more thing about this economic situation we are facing. In the more recent past, the debate among economists - between Friemdman's and Keynes's followers - was whether the best way to fight a recession was to use monetary (ie Federal Reserve) or fiscal (ie stimulus ie government spending) policy. And it seemed for a while that the monetarists were winning the argument (though even Republican presidents like George W. Bush implemented fiscal stimulus).

But during this crisis, Republicans have decided to go back in time and declare that we should do neither monetary nor fiscal policy - that we should let the recession play out. This puts them decades behind and much farther to the right of Milton Friedman.

But putting that aside, the debate over monetary versus fiscal policy has gotten really interesting during this recession. Although we have seen the bottom, we have also seen a slow recovery.

In other recessions, you might see Democrats push for fiscal stimulus while Republican push for monetary stimulus. And if Democrats can't get fiscal stimulus passed, at least monetary stimulus would be enacted by the Fed and the recovery would get going.

However, in this case (after Obama's large but not large enough stimulus failed to start a big recovery), the federal reserve felt it had run out of tools because they couldn't lower interest rates any further (the traditional tool to get growth going again). So Ben Bernake called on Congress to use fiscal stimulus - though in his vague I'm saying it, but not really, way.

So the Federal Reserve was stuck. They had two options. One: wait for Congress to agree to fiscal stimulus. Two: try riskier fed tools like more and more quantitative easing. They waited as long as they could and are now trying the risky option.

I do wish Bernake had been much more obvious in what he was calling for. The Federal Reserve is meant to be above politics so that it can act to help the economy even when politicians will not. But when they run out of tools, they should use their position as non-partisan actors and speak up clearly. He should have said, "The Federal Reserve is out of good, non-risky options. Therefore, we think Congress should pass and the president should sign a fiscal stimulus of X magnitude."

The fact is that we need the federal reserve to be above politics to help the overall economy. But there may be other times in the future when they are low on tools but where Congress has plenty of tools. In that case, they should make very clear and specific recommendations.

But since I don't see that happening here, I will say that I am at least glad that the Fed is willing to try the risky tools since Congress (ie Republicans) don't want to use their tools. 

What to Expect if Obama Wins a Second Term

I'll keep this brief. Basically, I think there are three things we'll definitely see if Obama is reelected. First, he'll implement the Affordable Care Act, which will show the public what all the really good provisions are and keep it from being repealed. Second, he'll definitely work on a longer-term budget deal, which will probably give away too much. And I don't think he'll do much in the short term to help the economy. Instead he'll let the Federal Reserve do as much as it is willing and hope that is enough to cause the sputtering growth to pick up steam. And third, I think he'll really focus on immigration reform. I don't think Republicans can afford to spend too many more elections taking the far right position on this issue. And so I think Obama will push on this.

I don't think we'll see any efforts around global warming (ie cap and trade) unless the Democrats do the unthinkable and take back the House.

GOP VP Selections

I want to comment on the past two GOP vice presidential candidates. I realized after hearing Romney's convention speech that in both cases, the GOP presidential candidates chose a VP that undermined their argument against President Obama.

In 2008, one of John McCain's main attacks against Obama was that he wasn’t experienced enough. However, he then went on to choose Sarah Palin as his VP candidate - someone who was objectively as inexperienced and far less ready to be president.

Now Mitt Romney says, in his convention speech and many other places, that Obama failed because he has never been in the private sector. But he selected a VP candidate with even less private experience.

In both cases, it suggests that the GOP candidates didn't really believe one of their main attacks. If overall experience was key, you would want the next in line to also be experienced. If private sector experience is important, again you would chose the potential next-in-line to be someone with private sector experience.

Polling - I Only Read Nate

Because of Nate Silver, I never read news articles about the latest polls. Instead, I check his blog (at least twice a day) for the overall projection and read his posts about the different polls and what they mean.

And Nate Silver’s blog at the NY Times is telling us President Obama has a really good chance (77.5%) of being re-elected. If this is accurate, then it looks like I was wrong. I thought he wouldn’t be re-elected because he hasn’t done enough or even tried hard enough on the economy. I wasn’t prepared for how bad Romney’s campaign would be (see birth certificate joke, consulate attack comments, Clint Eastwood, 47%, etc). And I hadn’t realized how strong the incumbent position is - which is probably the biggest reason Obama is so strong*.

And if Obama wins, I will be very relieved. Though I don’t think the Republicans can do much long-term damage, Romney has a radical agenda and will make it a really rough 4 years for the low income and unemployed and will really affect America's ability to compete and grow businesses (ie cuts to education, infrastructure, research, etc).


*By the way, I've been meaning to comment on this. The political science blogs I have been reading (really just Monkey Cage and 538) talk about the fundamentals, including incumbency and the economy. But really the incumbency factor is very strong.

I find it a little sad though because it says that voters aren't really evaluating the candidates very much and more often making quick and simple decisions. It's not as much about politics and policy. Instead, if the economy is getting better, might as well leave the incumbent in for another 4 years. This will likely give us Obama again, which is good, but this factor also gave us Bush again in 2004. It is hard to say though whether overall it is better. Is the country better with four more years of Bush and eight years of Obama than it would have been with 4 years of Kerry and 8 years of a Republican (or 8 years of Kerry)?

Tackling the Debt

I tried this new budget debt tool - it gives you options for cutting the federal deficit over a ten year period. It is pretty user-friendly, though there are a few options that I don't fully understand (even with the explanations).

First time through I ended up with a big surplus (almost $2 trillion). My choices were pretty liberal - almost $2.5 in revenue increases for every $1 in expense cuts. I think I let the Bush tax cuts expire and then added more tax brackets at the high end. Speaking of the Bush tax cuts, this debt tool makes it clear how expensive those (unfunded) tax cuts really are. Which again reminds me of the amazing hypocrisy of the GOP's focus on the deficits and debt since they passed the tax cuts.

I didn’t raise the Medicare or SS age. And I wasn't harsh on military spending at all. It almost felt too easy. Then again, the tax increases would never fly. Unfortunately.

When I ran through it a second time, the big decisions became clearer. One of course is the taxes. The Bush tax cuts cost $4.5 trillion. Preserving just the middle income costs $3.7 trillion. And the tax reform I selected generates $1.3 trillion.

The other is the overall government spending levels. If you let government grow with the economy as I prefer, which is a growth of 5.1%, it costs you an extra $2.4 trillion. If you let it expand with inflation, which is just under 2%, it only costs $0.8 trillion. 

The bottom line is that balancing the budget over the next 10 years mostly involves just a few big decisions - how much do we want to raise in taxes, and how much do we want to spend on discretionary programs.

In 2008, candidate Barack Obama said that he would take a scalpel to the budget, not a sledge hammer. It was a great talking point, except that it was vapid and ridiculous. Obama was trying to say he could balance the budget with a lot of small cuts in programs that aren't working. Knowledge of the budget and this tool show that isn't possible.

In the end, you kind of need both the scalpel and the sledge hammer. Or rather, you need a blue print and set guidelines. Then you can use whatever metaphorical tool you want. Obama's talking point was a cute way of avoiding discussing his guidelines.

At risk of overwhelming this post, I do want so say that I think the discussions of budgets are more detailed this year than in 2008. Sure Romney and Ryan are light on details, and Obama is forced into more clarity due to his position as the incumbent president, but there is more substance overall. With Romney's plan, you can see what would have to happen to achieve his goals. Compare that to Obama's scalpel and McCain's call to balance the budget by eliminating Congressional discretionary spending (ie pork) which isn't even a drop in the bucket.

Romney's Convention Speech

I didn't watch Mitt Romney's convention speech (nor will I watch President Obama's speech), but I did read the coverage of it and one line stuck out. He said:

You know there’s something wrong with the kind of job he’s done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him.

That's not untrue. A lot of us are disappointed by President Obama. He hasn't lived up to our expectations, which he created during his campaign. His promise of bipartisanship turned into rolling over in the face of a radical Republican party. His moderation meant working on the budget deficit - not a real concern right now - instead of dealing with unemployment. I can go on, and have in previous posts.

But just like other Romney criticisms of Obama, Romney isn't the solution. If we were disappointed by the lack of "Hope and Change", Romeny won't deliver that instead. If we want someone young, energetic and forward-looking, that isn't Mitt Romney. If we want someone who can be bipartisan and move us away from the bitter partisan debates of the baby-boomers, that isn't Mitt Romney (at least not the current version of Mitt Romney)*. All the things we wanted in Obama are definitely nowhere in Mitt Romney.

This is similar to Mitt Romney's criticisms over Obama's handling of the economy. He is right that Obama hasn't done enough to fix the economy. Granted, Romney's party has stood in the way much of the time, but I agree that Obama could have done more or at least tried harder. But either way, Romney isn't the solution. What this economy needs (fiscal and monetary stimulus) Romney isn't promising.

The question is whether voters will understand this. Will they only realize their disappointment and punish Obama? Or will they realize that Romney cannot deliver what we want. Will they realize that our best bet for "Hope and Change" is to re-elect President Obama and see if he can deliver on his promise in the second term. We might be disappointed again, but at least there is a chance. And with Mitt Romney, there is no chance. 


*At this point, I doubt whether we want that. And I very much doubt that it is possible. It seems like the country is very divided along partisan lines.

Election Update: August

There was a time when I thought Obama wouldn't be re-elected. I assumed the economy was so bad that he could only win if he could explain that Republicans blocked his great plans. And he can't really say that.

But we are at the point now where polls are much better at telling us what might happen than suppositions based on generalities. I check Nate Silver's blog every day, and so I am now pretty confident that Obama can and will win (his model says Obama is a 68.7% favorite).

There are only two things that worry me. One is still the economy. If it goes south, I think Obama loses. Two, I am a little worried about the debates. There is a chance that Romney shines and Obama doesn't, and in a close race, that might matter. I think Obama is a better debater and when he makes gaffes, they are less bad than Romney's (ie $10,000), but the worrier in me thinks it could be a problem.

But putting those two things aside, I feel pretty good about the presidency. And the Senate (thanks to Akin).

Bush: More Rethinking

I wrote a post about how I was rethinking Bush in light of the major right turn of the GOP. With Bush not even part of the Republican convention, I have more thoughts / questions.

My question is why the GOP is distancing themselves from him? Yes, he was and remains unpopular. Yet the things he is unpopular for are things the GOP still stands for. Bush is unpopular because of the recession and the Iraq War. But Mitt Romney's economic policies are more of the same from Bush and show he hasn't learned anything from the Great Recessions. And his foreign policy - specifically its belligerence towards Iran - shows he didn't learn any lessons from the Iraq War.

My best guess is that the GOP is distancing themselves from Bush because people might see the connection between the GOP platform and Bush (and might even realize the GOP is even more extreme than Bush was). But this is a party that seems to laugh in the face of unpopularity. I would have expected them to highlight Bush and try to say he was right about all of those things. That would be the honest thing to do. And the decent thing to do as well.

Instead, they are humiliating someone for having the audacity to implement policies the party still supports. 

Romney: What Will He Do?

I am finding it difficult to predict what Mitt Romney will do in office if he becomes president. In the past, I have assumed that he is acting very conservative because he fears his base, so he will act that way in office. However, he has refused to take any position that might be at all unpopular. O anything that could be unpopular he is vague or silent. So this really makes me wonder what he will do in office.

It is clear that his policies, if looked at what is implied to meet his promises, are extremely conservative. It is also clear that doing what is implied would be deeply unpopular. The best example of this is his budget and the cuts that would be required to allow him to balance the budget, cut taxes, increase defense spending, and keep medicare and social security whole. To meet these goals he would have to gut all other government programs.

So will he go through with his unpopular policies or will be back down and be much more moderate? Jonathan Chait points to noise from the campaign suggesting Romney wants so bad to institute real change, even if it is deeply unpopular and causes him to have only a one-term presidency.

President Obama said the same thing and he was clearly being disingenuous. (The Romney campaign makes it sound more credible by referencing James Polk, though misrepresenting the history a bit.) And I don’t see Romney as being the one who is more willing than Obama to be unpopular.

It’s not like these are positions Romney has held dear. He has become a staunch conservative to win the nomination but as we all know he was a moderate as governor of Massachusetts.

So I am stuck. Will he actually take very unpopular steps to institute deeply conservative policies? I think Chait is right that Conservatives want to, seeing as that it is their last chance considering where the demographics are going.

It's possible that Mitt Romney doesn't even knows what he will do. Maybe he doesn't realize these policies will be deeply unpopular. Either way, I am not too worried. If the demographics are right, I don't see such far right policies saying for long. As Douthat points out in the Polk piece, the things Romney et al want to do are far in the future and easily overturned. Except for the budget cuts: though they can be reversed in short time there will be some short term damage.

2012 as 2004

This race reminds me more and more of 2004, with the party roles reversed. A rich, awkward, uninspiring candidate running as the opposite of the incumbent president (ie making the race a referendum - though it seems Romney is moving away from this).

A younger, relatively untested, more base-inspiring running-mate. The challenger is more about his biography and has only vague or unformed plans (Kerry was a real war veteran who could fix Iraq and Romney is the businessman who can save the economy).

The main difference is that Kerry wasn’t proposing to implement a far-far-left government, as Romney is.

Anyway, some splendid similarities.

Romney's New Direction

Ezra Klien has a piece on how the Romney campaign has jettisoned its three premises for the campaign:

The first was to make this a referendum, not a choice. The second was to keep it focused on the economy. The third was to bow to Obama’s essential likability by treating him as a decent guy who is simply in over his head.

He then says they have made it a choice by having Paul Ryan as the runningmate and have moved away from the economy, talking about Medicare and Welfare (with what seems to be some race whistles by the Romney campaign). And they have attacked Obama's character.

The last point I think is defensible, to be honest. I imagine the Romney campaign has seen how harsh the Obama campaign has been, and seen how voters are perceiving it - taking some of the shine off of President Obama. If Obama is less likable, the Romney campaign should be penalized less for going after him. 

What Matters to Romney?

I can’t figure out what matters to Mitt Romney - what is the thing he has been consistent on from day one - starting back in his campaign for Senate against Ted Kennedy. Something he won't move to the right on to please the base. But I can't find anything. Everything seems open to him to move far right. There is nothing moderate or even sensible - not even on business and the economy.

What finally made me realize this was his is arguing against active monetary policy and allowing gold standard talk in the GOP platform.This seems to be against the advice of his economic advisers. And as a businessman, it must be against his own good judgement. If it isn't, then his business acumen is far, far less impressive than we allow. Going back to the gold standard would be a disaster and wouldn't even lead to stable money. And a less active monetary policy would have made the recession worse and goes against Milton Friedman's teachings. 

I would understand if he was a strong business leader and was willing to cede to the right all social policies. But this isn’t the case. He is espousing far right policies in every arena. And the least sensible ideas are the in the area he knows the most about (or should) and therefore are the ones you would most expect him to understand and reject.

I just don't get it. The only explanation is that Romney just wants to be President for purely ambitious reasons and doesn't care about policy at all. 

Baseball and PEDs

The positive drug test by another MLB star has everyone talking about performance enhancing drugs (PED) again. MLB says it shows that they system is working. I don't believe that for a minute. My sense, and what I have seen in print, is that these systems are easy to get around. But I have never seen information on how, until now. This piece at Huffington Post has the following quote from Victor Conte:

"They only test the players when they’re at the ballpark," Conte explained. "Therefore, after a game, you can apply a testosterone cream or a gel or a patch, and this will peak at about four hours after you take it and be all the way back down to baseline about eight hours after. … This helps with tissue repair and healing and recovery, so they just wait until after the game and apply it … and they get the benefit of having that testosterone circulate and accelerate healing."

This is the first concrete thing I have seen about how to actually beat the system. Now, when someone says that to fail a PED drug test means you have really failed two tests, the drug test and an IQ test, I know why. Smithsonian Magazine had a decent piece before the Olympics (though they punted on the "Test Me, I'm Clean" bracelet), but it didn't give anything this specific. 

All of the performance enhancing drug incidents over the last 15-20 years have left me very cynical. I now believe that anyone who is a leader in their sport is taking performance enhancing drugs. Seriously. Close your eyes and picture someone who is the leader (or near leader), and I am assuming they are on drugs. This may not be fair, but that is just where I am at right now. 

Book Report: Grand Pursuit

I finally finished Sylvia Nasar's Grand Pursuit. I won't do a full book review, but instead give some thoughts.

Basically, the idea of the book was a good one - mini biographies of all of the great economists / economic thinkers. Unfortunately, the execution was imperfect - the structure just didn't work. I think the author's goal was a flowing book, showing the arc of economic thinking. In this way, the book was mostly chronological, so you jump back and forth between individuals. But the chronology wasn't consistent and sometimes would move forward then go back in order to stay with one person before moving to another.

I think I would have preferred a more traditional approach of a full bio of each person in individual chapters.  Sure, this might have been more boring, but I think more useful. With individual chapters, it would have been easier to follow the arc of the person and retain more about them. 

Also, the book gave more biographical detail than was necessary. It is hard to pinpoint exactly, but there are descriptions that could have been done in a couple paragraphs that took many pages instead. And in doing this, I think she spent a little less time on their theories. 

The book covered Keynes and Freeman, Hayek and Schumpeter, Marx and Engels, Marshall, Fisher, and Samuelson, and my favorite, Amartya Sen. But it also included Beatrice and Sydney Webb and Joan Robinson, two that I didn't find necessary.

Though I found the book too long on biography and too short on theory, I will reference it in the future, if only to then do more research on the individuals.

On Paul Ryan

So Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate. I will discuss two aspects of this: what this means for the race, and what I think of the person of Paul Ryan.

First, I don't share the same glee that many Democrats do - though it doesn't make me nervous either. Instead, I feel this does nothing great and nothing bad for the election. Although I do think Ryan is extreme, I think that is hard to show to the average voter. Ryan seems reasonable enough, and the things he says, though disingenusous, also seem reasonable. He says he is for equality of opportunity. He wants to preserve Medicare while Obama will let it die. He wants to balance the budget.

Of course, any smart person can look at his actual plans and see something very different - that he is actually for large tax cuts for the rich, can't possibly balance the budget, and wants to save Medicare by making seniors pay more. But reaching and convincing large numbers of voters of this is difficult. It is much more difficult than showing them that Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, for some examples, are extreme and dangerous (which is why none of them were likely VP picks).

Having said all of that, I still think Democrats should try to convince voters that Ryan is extreme, because he is. But I don't think it will be easy and I don't think it will make the election. It might help turnout among informed liberals, but won't make much difference among independents.

On the flip side, I don't think it does a lot for Romney on the electoral college front. I generally trust / believe Nate Silver, who says that there were better picks from an electoral college perspective. But Ryan will help Romney with conservatives, help he needs, just like John McCain needed help. And like I said, I don't think it will hurt him much with independents.

Now, what do I think of Paul Ryan as a politician? I think he is more brave and more policy focused than many others, but less so than the press gives him credit for. And though he does propose policy, he is very often political and very often disingenuous.

Take his most recent budget for example. He says he can balance the budget and cut taxes (popular) without being specific at all about where the cuts (unpopular) will come from and he makes it sound like the cuts will be easy and painless instead of acknowledging honestly how large the cuts will have to be in order to meet his targets. 

Mitt Romney's plan, which Ryan has now signed onto, is even worse on this front and specifically so on tax breaks. It proposes cutting taxes while also cutting deductions, in theory leaving the overall share of taxes across incomes the same. However, it doesn't say which deductions will be cut. Nor does the math add up.

So overall, Ryan isn't adding much substance or honesty to Romney. They both are making budget claims that are extreme, vague, and hard to believe. 

On the political side, he is willing to give a speech accusing Obama of believing in equality of outcome, which is completely untrue. A man as smart and unpolitical as the press thinks he is would not say such a thing.

To conclude, Romney added someone to the ticket that will help him turnout conservatives and might also help turnout some liberals, but otherwise doesn't change much. And it is a person that I find far less wonkish and honest than many in the press - someone with an extreme and unpopular vision who is vague on all the unpopular parts of his plans.

Both Right and Both Wrong

Both candidates gave speeches on the economy a few weeks back, and I think they were both right, which is unfortunate for the country.

Romney is right that Obama’s policies haven’t improved the economy enough. Granted, Republicans have stood in the way of the few things Obama has proposed. But what he proposed was relatively modest and he has barely made the case that unemployment is our biggest problem and that his proposals are big enough to handle it. 

On the flip side, Obama is right that Romney’s policies won’t help the short term problem of high unemployment. More importantly, his policies are a return to those of George W. Bush. And remember, even without considering the crash (which was the result of ultra-free market policies of Clinton and Bush), Bush's economic record is one of very slow growth.

In other words, if Obama is elected and Republicans control at least one chamber, we are looking at the status quo - Obama paying limited attention to unemployment and having his small proposals blocked. But if Romney is elected, he'll let loose the free market, which won't improve short term growth or put us on a path to high medium term growth, but will lead to more risk and possibly more bail outs.

This is why we need Bernake and the Fed to act like the grownups and get us out of this. Unfortunately, they don't see an urgency or any serious problems.

Romney and Bain: More Thoughts

This is a post I drafted a month or so ago. Ezra Klein has written much better posts on this topic, but I still want to post my thoughts for posterity. 

The debate around Mitt Romney's time at Bain and how it qualifies him for president continues and I have some more thoughts.

First, his time at Bain is definitely fair game since that seems to be the only thing he talks about that qualifies him for president. Romney is saying that because of his time at Bain Capital, he knows how businesses work and he knows what it will take to get the economy going again.

To be clear, I don't actually think that is true. The economy is a huge complicated system and especially during a major recession the focus should be on macroeconomics instead of microeconomics. So if we wanted the best person for the economy, we would elect a macro-economist instead of a businessman.

I understand many people might not agree with that though. So let's think about what knowing about businesses would help Romney do? I agree with President Obama that by knowing only about businesses, Romney will miss all of the other important constituencies that a president needs to think about.

For example, Romney might have learned that regulations get in the way of business. In fact, that does seem to be something he believes strongly. But by only seeing things from the business's perspective means he wouldn't understand why the regulations are necessary. Lots of businesses would rather there weren't anti-pollution regulations or safe workplace regulations, but they protect lots of people and compensate for major and known negative externalities.

Also, Romney might have learned that taxes are bad for businesses. Again, this is something Romney has said. But only thinking about the business would mean he doesn't understand why taxes are necessary - he might be blind to all of the necessary services that tax revenues support from education and transportation to health and security.

My point is that Romney's experience at Bain isn't particularly helpful for a president because of how limiting it is. Better experience would be if Romney had been a state governor. If he had been, he might have seen how important things like healthcare are and might have proposed legislation that could extend coverage and might be a national model. And if he had done that, he could talk about it and show how he cares about helping everyone.

But based on the way Romney is campaigning, it seems like he hasn't done that and it seems that his only experience is at Bain Capital.

American Lion or Lamb?

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
by John Meacham

When I was on vacation in Charleston, South Carolina, I saw a pair of paintings of presidents playing cards. One is of Republican presidents and the other Democratic presidents, and both feature the ostensible founder of the party - back to the painting - playing with the modern presidents in that party. So the Republican painting has Abraham Lincoln playing with Teddy Roosevelt, Nixon, Eisenhower, Ford, Reagan, and both Bushes. The Democrat painting has Andrew Jackson playing with Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, Carter, and Clinton.

On first look, it poses what might be an interesting question: what would it be like if the modern presidents were able to talk with the founder of their party? But on thinking a little more, the real question is whether the current presidents have anything in common with their founder?


Andrew Jackson, the founder of the Democratic party, initiated the Native American removal policy - forcibly sending Native Americans west of the Mississippi - ended the Second Bank of the United States, prevented state nullification of federal laws but supported slavery and states rights generally. And he was ostensibly a war hero, having fought the battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.

He was also a populist - the first frontiersman elected president - and very popular among the general population. He greatly expanded the presidency, exercising the veto much more often and setting an agenda independent of Congress.

John Meacham's book, American Lion, focuses on Jackson's White House years, and therefore only gives us the briefest overview of his early life and elections. We learn a little about his fights and duels, the battle of New Orleans, his wife and her passing, the failed election where John Quincy Adams won in the House of Representatives, and his election in 1828 and the creation of the Democratic Party.

Then we are taken through his presidency in some more detail. Meacham shows us the controversy over his Secretary of War John Eaton and his wife, which divides his supporters. And in fact, this one of the great weaknesses of this book (which inexplicably won the Pulitzer Prize). Meacham spends far more time on the gossip and familial / staff battles over Secretary Eaton than he does on other far more important topics. Having said that, he does seem to cover the issue fairly; neither side looks very good. Eaton's wife does come off as unpleasant but the others look uptight and elitist.

Meacham covers all of the major issues of the presidency: nullification and the tariff, Native American Removal, the ending of the Second Bank's charter, the dispute between America and France over war debt.  But in some cases he is too brief (Native American Removal and the tariff) but in all cases he spends less time on them than he does the Eaton affair.

But worse than that is the lack of objectivity in this book. Meacham spends countless paragraphs telling the reader that Jackson was a great leader and his men and the public generally loved him and trusted him to save them. The author would have benefited from more show and less tell.

And on the other side, he glosses over major areas of concern. He doesn't talk at all about the impact of the closing of the Second Bank of the United States. Once it is ended, it is of no importance to the author. There is only a quick sentence at the end of the book that some think its closing caused a major recession. The reader would have benefited from a discussion and analysis of the impact.

The same is true of Native American removal. He talks about why Jackson did it but is too fair. And then barely talks about the mass suffering and deaths from the actual implementation. He quickly blames it on Jackson's successor, Martin Van Buren who was president when it actually happened. Is it fair to blame it on Van Buren? Did Jackson have a safer plan that Van Buren didn't implement? Again, the reader would have benefited from more discussion of this.

The author might argue that the book is only about the White House years. But both of these things happened in the White House years and their longer-term impacts should be discussed.

Overall, the book is a pretty fast read. It might be fine for someone who just wants a quick overview of Jackson's presidency (which is what I was looking for). However, if you have a little more time, reading one of the other bios is probably worth it. I plan to read HW Brand's book sometime in the future to get a much better understanding of Andrew Jackson. 


So what would the 20th Century Democratic presidents think of their party's founder? Or what should liberals and progressives think of Andrew Jackson? Native American removal is a stain on our history. And Jackson was very wrong on the issue of slavery at a time when the abolition movement was growing. There isn't enough information to make any decision about the Second Bank of the US.

And yet he handled nullification in a way that avoided - or as we know only delayed - secession and civil war. And he expanded the president's powers in a way that makes perfect sense by making it co-equal with Congress. I think we can recognize the scale of his impact but say his policies were not progressive and therefore not positive. I think the modern Democratic presidents would agree. That doesn't mean it would be an unpleasant card game though.

Wisconsin Recall

I didn't like the California recall election in 2003, where Gray Davis was recalled and Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected. And I don't like the recall in Wisconsin. Short of illegal activity, elected officials should serve out their terms. If we had recall elections for every elected or executive official that is unpopular at some point in their term, officials would never be able to govern.

Fortunately, these things happen infrequently, and I hope it stays that way. And frankly, I am kind of glad Scott Walker won the recall because it will give other groups in other states pause before trying this. If Walker had lost, Republicans likely would have reacted by going after Democratic governors in every state they could.

While someone is governing, all energy should be going towards policy debates. We should save the politics for the elections. Recalls threaten to make everything about politics and elections never-ending.

The recall was also just bad strategy on the Democrat's part. They could have moderated Scott Walker with protests and other tactics to bring down his polling numbers. In fact, there was a time when Walker was at least talking about finding consensus and moderating a bit because of those tactics. He may not have been genuine, but he at least felt chastened and compelled to say those things.

But now that he won the recall decisively, he will feel no need to moderate and will only be more aggressive - more far-right. And worse, he is being discussed as a potential national candidate. Before the recall effort, he looked like a buffoon who went too far. Now the press is calling him a conservative hero. Granted, I think the press greatly exaggerates things, but the point is that wouldn't have been said 6 months ago.

There is also evidence that many people voted for Scott Walker simply because they didn't agree with the recall effort. This means that his overwhelming victory is partly based on moderates disagreeing with Democrats' tactics and therefore exaggerating Walker's overall support. This makes Scott Walker stronger than he should be. Overall, this was really bad strategy.

So Timid

I really don't understand why Democrats are so timid and why Republicans are so brave. I am especially confused because Republican positions are mostly unpopular generally. And in many cases, Democrats could make a really strong argument if they had some courage.

Take the recent testimony before Congress by Ben Bernake. The summary is that Republicans pressed him for less action - less monetary stimulus - while Democrats did not press him to do more.

This is crazy. Republicans are saying the economy is in bad shape because of Obama, while opposing both fiscal and monetary policy - opposing everything that could actually help. And Democrats are doing nothing.

In a previous post, I had argued against someone who thought that the problem is that Democrats want fiscal stimulus and Republicans want no stimulus. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it is only the liberal economists that want monetary stimulus, but liberal politicians want... nothing? fiscal stimulus? I don't know what they want because they are barely saying anything. 

I just continue to be amazed that Republicans are strongly arguing for far right policies. And all Democrats can muster are a few general populist messages but are too scared to articulate an approach from the left. Paul Ryan has a far right budget plan. Where is the plan from the left?

This is why Republicans can win in November: not because their ideas are more popular, but because Democrats lack the courage to have a real debate.

Great Minds

Great minds think alike, right? That saying is probably more often invoked by a lesser mind to associate with a great mind. That might be the case here.

A while ago, I wrote a post wondering if we would get out of the recession faster with a Republican as president because they would actually try stimulative policies so they could stay in power whereas Republicans oppose stimulus mostly to keep Obama from being successful.

Ezra Klein wonders the same thing, in a much more thorough and better written post.

Another Extreme Example

Ezra Klein linked to a post where Tyler Cowen posts the following comment from another site:

It’s incredibly frustrating. The political and policy world falls into two camps:

Those who believe no stimulus is necessary, everything is supply-side. Those who believe stimulus is necessary but only fiscal stimulus can or should supply it.

It’s like people completely forgot the existence of Milton Friedman, and decided to revert to the stupidest possible version of New Keynesianism, where interest rates are the only lever of monetary policy and the printing press is something that only functions when rates are above zero.

I feel like to both the centre left and the right, Milton Friedman is too heretical now — too right-wing for the left obviously and too left-wing for the right. Consequently, everything about monetarism has been stripped out of the public consciousness and we are left with vulgar Keynesianism and vulgar Austrianism.

We truly live in a Dark Age of economics.

This is silliness. Actually what is happening is that the Republican v. Democrat debate was over whether to use monetary or fiscal policy (respectively). Now the debate is whether to do anything. Milton Friedman is too liberal for the Republicans, which shows how far right they have gone. While Democrats are openly calling for more monetary policy.

Let that sink in. Republicans are opposing Milton Friedman policies. 

Too many people are trying to say the two sides are equally to blame. But this example makes it perfectly clear, contrary to the commenter, that the Republicans have gone off the reservation and won't even agree to Democrat suggestions that line up with old Republican positions - positions that used to be far to the right at the time.

Wishful Thinking as Usual

According to an article on Politico, President Obama thinks the Republican craziness will end after he wins reelection. He thinks that the craziness stems from trying to prevent him from being reelected. His wishful thinking and refusal to understand the current Republican thinking is distressing.

First, the Republicans want to prevent any accomplishments for him period. They don't want him to have a lasting record and don't want Democrats to have anything to campaign on.

But more importantly, the party itself has gone hard to the right. And there are only two things that will moderate the party.

One is big election losses that would make the party realize how unpopular their positions really are - from an insistence that all budget balancing come from program cuts to disbelieving global warming, and from immigration reform to opposing even civil unions.

The other thing that would moderate the party would be winning the upcoming elections and actually imposing their crazy agenda.

But a victory by Obama and a divided or Republican Congress will not moderate the party. Believing otherwise is naive. And I had hoped the president had learned his lesson after the debt ceiling debacle.

Bully Romney?

A story surfaced recently that Romney bullied someone in high school and possibly chose one person because he was gay. I don't think whether Romney bullied means anything about whether he would be a good president. But how he has responded does say something about how he will be as president.

The reason I don't think it matters whether he bullied is because lots of kids bully. I was pretty mean at times. Kids don't really get how much they hurt other people and so without proper supervision and instruction, kids will be mean and kids will bully. It doesn't necessarily mean that a kid that bullies will be a mean person as an adult. 

But it does matter how Romney handles it - and he didn't handle it well. He was a little bit contrite and apologetic, which is nice, but at the same time a bit dismissive. He says he was involved in "pranks and hijinks". That shows that Romney doesn't really take it seriously and hasn't learned anything.

What he should have learned is that kids bully but they shouldn't and we should try to prevent it. Good work is being done here in NYC (see Respect for All) thanks to leadership from the NY City Council. We do it by educating teachers and students about what is acceptable and how it affects people.

A Romney that takes it seriously and that learned from his youth would say that he is deeply sorry for any hurt he caused and he wishes he could go back in time and talk to that young Romney. And as importantly, he would say that he is committed to having or promoting programs that deal with this issue to prevent bullying in schools. He did apologize but he definitely didn't talk about this issue more broadly.

No one should be bullied and we should work and aspire to preventing it. Romney is not up to the challenge and I wonder if he even thinks it is a problem. 

On Consistency

A major theme for opponents of Mitt Romney has been his huge change on many issues - moving from being a very moderate Republican to a very conservative one. There has been some debate recently about whether consistency really matters to voters.

Before I get to whether I think it affects voters actual decisions, I will say that it certainly affects my thinking and I think it is worth the press covering the fact that positions have changed. It matters because it gives a sense of the candidate's character. For example, President Obama recently changed his position on same sex marriage. Many people though wondered how genuine his position has been on this.

There is some evidence he favored same sex marriage while a state senator, then changed his position when he had more national ambitions. And his comments that his position is "evolving" seemed just ridiculous. So many believe that he changed his mind to support same sex marriage only when it was right politically.

John Kerry faced bad press over his changed position on the Iraq War, and maybe rightly so. He supported it before he opposed it.

Mitt Romney is also facing questions about his changed positions on gun control, abortion, gay rights, health care, auto industry bailout and more that I am probably forgetting. All of this reinforces the image of someone who will change any position if it means becoming president. If he can go from becoming a moderate to a "severe" conservative, than what does he really stand for.

So I think all of these examples say something about the character of the candidate. But it also says something about being an elected leader in a representative democracy. Voters want to elect someone who agrees with them. But they also want to elect someone who has real convictions and strong character.

Ideally, they want both. In the GOP primary, Romney won because the only candidates that were more consistent had other much bigger flaws. I think if there had been someone more consistently conservative and with good credentials, they would have chosen that person.

The question is which do they prefer when those two cannot go together? I agree with the Monkey Cage that ultimately they want someone that agrees with them now. Democrats are happy that Obama finally supports same sex marriage and Democrats were happy when Kerry changed his mind on Iraq - as Democratic and independent voters had done. And Republicans would far prefer a Romney that changed all of his positions to follow a party that is turning hard right than if Romney had stood fast to most of his moderate beliefs. (Which is why Huntsman had little chance).

The problem is that candidates often have to follow the voters. When voters change their minds, we blame the politicians for being just as fickle as the voters are. Maybe that isn't fair. Or maybe it is. Maybe it makes sense to chose someone whose judgement is sound and doesn't have to change their minds and is right from the beginning. Probably a bit naive, but a good goal, I think.

Jobs Numbers: Ouch

I am so depressed about the really bad jobs numbers released yesterday. I know that one data point doesn't tell a full picture. But this is one bad data point - or set of data points. The number of jobs added were half what was predicted and previous months numbers were reported down.

If things don’t really speed up in the coming months, there is a good chance Romney will be our next president. And what really depresses me is that Romney has worse, not better plans, to help the economy.

I understand that the economy hasn't gotten better under President Obama, and he deserves his fair share of the blame. He has been silent on monetary policy and extremely meek on fiscal policy. He must know that more fiscal stimulus will help, but he assumes it is unpopular and unlikely to pass and so he won't call for it. So the voters don't know why the economy isn't getting better. 

So the voters will punish the current president - somewhat fairly - but in return get a president who's ideas to help the economy are much worse. Our only hope is that Romney - and other Republicans are more Keynesian than they let on.

There is some evidence of this. Romney said he doesn't want to cut the budget too much too soon and put us back into a recession. And it seems like other Republicans want to prevent stimulus to prevent Obama's re-election. Disgusting as this all is, there is hope that when in power, Republicans might actually do the right thing (as they have in the past). So that is our best case scenario right now. Pretty unfortunate, no?

Taxes and Fairness

I heard someone say recently that it isn't fair to tax money twice. This person is of course referring to taxes on dividends and investments. The theory is that the income from the company is already taxed, and that income is then used to pay dividends to investors. So the investors should not then be taxed.

I feel like there is some nuance as to when the income is actually being taxed twice - in other words only when it is dividends and not when the stock value appreciates and the stock is sold, but I need to think that through some more. But that isn't even the real point. The real issue is over how we understand fairness.

Now, on one level, I could just say that we have different understandings of this very subjective term "fair" and leave it at that. But you know I can't really do that. So let's look at what is fair or unfair about taxing investments.

First of all, who would this tax be unfair to? Who gets hurt by being taxed twice? The money is being taxed twice, but money is inanimate, so it can't feel oppressed or burdened. So it must be unfair to the investor. The person who is investing is typically wealthy, so why is it unfair to tax their money? Is it more fair to tax what someone earns through work than what someone earns without doing work but by giving someone money? I would think it the other way around. I would rather tax the investor than the worker - the teacher, the police officer, the farm worker, the construction worker, the miner, etc. Or I would rather tax them both and at the same progressive rates.

In fact, let's compare apples to apples. Say there is someone who goes to work everyday as a Wall Street trader and makes $5 million a year in salary and bonuses. And there is someone else who has a trust fund or made a ton of money they earned previously and makes $5 million a year from investments. Why should the investor who stays home everyday while his money is working pay less taxes? I can't think of a good reason.

But does the person really think it is unfair to the investor? Maybe what they really mean is that it provides a negative incentive to the investor. I am sure there are some more detailed analysis by economists on how a higher tax rate - or a tax at all - on investments will affect the level of investment. But let's look at one simple example instead.

Imagine someone with net worth of $250 million. Let's say his name is Bitt Nomrey. Now, would he refuse to invest that money just because there were taxes on the income? A 15% tax rate didn't stop Mitt Romney from investing. Would a 30% tax rate stop him?

Sure if the taxes were 90% he might not invest. But if the taxes were the same as our current income tax rate, he would definitely invest the money. He makes income, pays some taxes, but still retains the overwhelming amount of what he earned from the investments.

So I ask again, who is this unfair to? Or how does it affect investor choices?

Foreign Policy Platform

I feel that coming of age during eight years of a George W. Bush presidency and four years of an Obama presidency (and having learned a bunch about Bill Clinton's eight years), has provided some great tests on foreign policy ideas. And from those tests, I think we should have learned much better what we should and should not do in the foreign policy arena. Below is my foreign policy platform based on what we have learned in the last decade or two (though really going back as far as Korea and Vietnam as well).

To summarize, I think we should take a long view of history. Making dramatic changes in the short term is extremely costly and difficult. Instead, we should do what we can to alleviate suffering, prevent massive human rights abuses, and support oppositions to oppressive governments while realizing the new government may not be perfect. And when change isn't as fast as we want, we should not lose heart and give up on future chances for change. We should always try to understand the feelings on the ground. And when something requires too much resources, we should seek containment.

So let's look at some examples. First, human rights abuses. I think we should have been involved in Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo, South Sudan, Darfur, Libya, and now Syria. In each case, human rights abuses were happening or likely to happen.

Of course, how much help we can and should give is an issue. I agree with Samantha Power (as you probably know if you have read this blog before) that we could have done far more in Rwanda. It may or may not have required boots on the ground, though I think we could have done that with a small amount of international troops. Syria though may be a little more difficult. I feel like we are doing too little right now. Though since I am not immersed in the details, I should say that maybe real change would require too much support and focusing on the long term and not over-committing in the short term is justified.

In Tunisia,  Egypt, and Libya, we supported real movements that were seeking change. But we are not committed to creating real democracy right now so we don't have to provide a lot of resources.

Compare that to Iraq where we invaded - originally because of WMD but changing the rationale to creating democracy and overthrowing a tyrant. And because we invaded, we were responsible for creating a very positive outcome. The resources required to even get to something close to that were enormous: 5,000 American soldiers died, many more injured, and billions in deficit spending.

Some of these (Tunisia, Egypt, Libya) might not become democracies right away. In fact, in Egypt, the choices are sad - a former Mubarak supporter or a more radical Islamist / Muslim Brotherhood member. If Egypt goes backwards, we shouldn't lose heart. This rebellion was a step forward and should be creating conditions for Egypt to eventually - today or further down the road - establish lasting democracy and rule of law. Same goes for Libya.

In places like North Korea and Iran, I think we should focus on containment. There is little threat of immediate action from either of those governments and the possibility of a very costly conflict once one starts - Korea even more so than Iran. And yet there are folks in the Romney team - notably the crazy John Bolton - that desperately want war in Iran and probably North Korea as well.

Instead, if we focus on the long term, on preventing them from attacking other countries and focusing on making their regimes difficult and create conditions for democracy down the road, we can avoid large short term costs and pave the way for big long term benefits.

I know this sounds kind of vague. But let's look at the Soviet Union. In many cases, we focused on preventing the spread of communism as much as we could. In some cases, we tried too hard (Vietnam). In some cases, we did a lot then walked away (Afghanistan). and in some cases we did the absolute wrong thing (Iran, Chile, Cuba, etc) by supporting capitalist murderous dictators over more democratic but leftist oppositions. But over the long term, the Soviet Union eventually collapsed. And we should have faith, while proactively creating the conditions, for the same things to happen in North Korea and Iran (or at least for Iran to be more democratic and more focused on the rule of law).

This platform contrasts with a few things. First, it contrasts with the opposition against Obama's efforts (supporting European leadership) in Libya and delayed support in Egypt, which suggested that we shouldn't have done anything because it might not turn out to be democratic (or more might not be as open to US influence). I reject both of these. The two candidates in Egypt might not be perfect, but having choices is better than having no choices and no liberty. Or at least it should be to a country that claims to be a model for the world.

It also contrasts with those that think genocide and mass murder in other countries are not our concern. Every time we say "never again", and every time we let it happen anew. And we let it happen because we let those who say it isn't our business align with those who want to pretend it isn't happening because they are too weak to do something. 

Finally, it contrasts with major conflicts like the ones we saw in Vietnam and Iraq (and maybe even Afghanistan and Korea). The costs were far too high and the benefits too small. We should avoid these conflicts as much as possible. And yet, I fear we might not be able to. It is much easier to convince the public that there is a threat and that war is necessary. And with a Republican administration - especially one that can't decide whether it likes warmongers like Bolton or more moderates like Colin Powell - possible in 2012, we might be headed to more big conflicts. If so, that will be very sad indeed, and many young Americans will pay the price. And the benefits will be small indeed.

Romney Will Gut, Not Streamline Government

David Brooks had the most ridiculous column last week. In the column, he claimed it was people like Romney - private equity folks - that took an inefficient American business system and turned companies around and made them and the system more streamlined. Brooks then claims Romney plans to do the same thing with the federal government.

Paul Krugman takes Brooks to task on his point about private equity making America more efficient. I don't know who is right about the history, but I don't think that is the main point.

Even if we can accept that Romeny and the rest of private equity vastly improved efficiency in American business, it is clear that this isn't Romney's goal with government.

Actually, I don't know what Romney's real goal is, other than to be president for the sake of being president. But anyway, if we look at his policy and budget proposals and his support for Paul Ryan's budget, it is clear he doesn't want to streamline government. Mitt Romney wants to gut government. Read this post by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, or almost any recent post by Ezra Klien on the Ryan / Romney budget. The cuts necessary to meet all of his goals are draconian.

But the worst part about Brooks' column is that he attributes something to Romney that I have never heard Romney say. In other words, Brooks is trying to soften Romeny's plans in a way that Romeny isn't trying. Romney has never said his cuts will streamline and improve service provision. Instead, Romney makes it clear he wants a smaller government that does a lot less - less for veterans; less for low income seniors, families and children; and less for public education and investment.

What makes this particularly disappointing is that Brooks had in the past criticized Republican's budget plans that are hurting our future by disinvesting in our youth while investing too much in our seniors. I think we should be doing both (taking care of seniors and investing in our future), but the point is that there was a time that Brooks understood how bad at least part of the Republicans plans were. For some reason, Brooks is no longer talking about that and worse, is pretending that somehow these draconian cuts will actually make things better. So disappointing.