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The Bull about the Bully Pulpit - George Edwards and the Powerless Presidential Bully Pulpit : The New Yorker

When you’re running for President, giving a good speech helps you achieve your goals. When you are President, giving a good speech can prevent you from achieving them.

via www.newyorker.com

Ezra Klein wrote an interesting piece in The New Yorker, "The Unpersuaded," about the work of George Edwards, the director of the Center for Presidential Studies, at Texas A. & M. University, outlining a strong argument that presidents--even those considered good communicators--have far less power to persuade with public speeches than many Americans realize.

Consider the following about presidents Clinton, Reagan, and Franklin Roosevelt:

Between his first inauguration, in January, 1993, and his first midterm election, in November, 1994, [Clinton] travelled to nearly two hundred cities and towns, and made more than two hundred appearances, to sell his Presidency, his legislative initiatives (notably his health-care bill), and his party. But his poll numbers fell, the health-care bill failed, and, in the next election, the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives for the first time in more than forty years. Yet Clinton never gave up on the idea that all he needed was a few more speeches, or a slightly better message. “I’ve got to . . . spend more time communicating with the American people,” the President said in a 1994 interview. Edwards notes, “It seems never to have occurred to him or his staff that his basic strategy may have been inherently flawed.”
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Reagan succeeded in passing major provisions of his agenda, such as the 1981 tax cuts, but, Edwards wrote, “surveys of public opinion have found that support for regulatory programs and spending on health care, welfare, urban problems, education, environmental protection and aid to minorities”—all programs that the President opposed—“increased rather than decreased during Reagan’s tenure.” Meanwhile, “support for increased defense expenditures was decidedly lower at the end of his administration than at the beginning.” In other words, people were less persuaded by Reagan when he left office than they were when he took office.
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[P]olitical scientists Matthew Baum and Samuel Kernell...found that [FDR's fireside chats] fostered “less than a 1 percentage point increase” in his approval rating. His more traditional speeches didn’t do any better. He was unable to persuade Americans to enter the Second World War, for example, until Pearl Harbor.

In fact, Edwards' evidence suggest that many presidents achieve their policy goals most efficiently without publicly advocating for them. For a president to publicly address a policy goal, according to Edwards, is often to solidify partisan opposition against it. But it can also strengthen support  among the president's own party. Presidents' public persuasion attempts often have a politicizing effect--whether they like it or not.

Edwards:

“Barack Obama is only the latest in a long line of presidents who have not been able to transform the political landscape through their efforts at persuasion. When he succeeded in achieving major change, it was by mobilizing those predisposed to support him and driving legislation through Congress on a party-line vote.”

Of course, this is not to say that presidential attempts to persuade cannot effect the rhetorical landscape. Jeffery L. Bineham, a rhetoric professor at St. Cloud State University, notes in a letter to the editor of The New Yorker that "death tax," "wars" on poverty, drugs, terror, and mottos like "government is not the solution but the problem," are all examples of presidential speech entering the political lexicon.

Next Week's Supreme Court Arguments on Health Care Law

The Supreme Court is set to hear three days of arguments next week over challenges to the health reform law President Obama signed two years ago. Here's a viewer's guide from The PBS Hews Hour as well at a summary by Jeffery Toobin of The New Yorker.

Watch A Viewer's Guide to Supreme Court Arguments on Health Care on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Toobin:

The legal challenges to ACA, which the Supreme Court will hear next week, center on its key provision, the individual mandate. The mandate essentially requires all adults to obtain health insurance, either through their employers or by buying it themselves. (There will be subsidies for those who cannot afford it.) The idea of a health-insurance mandate first came to wide public notice in 1989, in the form of a proposal from the Heritage Foundation, one of Washington’s venerable right-wing think tanks.... For decades, no one suggested that an individual mandate was unconstitutional.
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The main argument that opponents of the health-care law have come up with is that the mandate regulates economic inactivity—i.e., not buying insurance—and the Commerce Clause allows only the regulation of economic activity. In the first appellate review of the law, last summer, the Sixth Circuit demolished that argument. The court pointed out that there are two unique characteristics of the market for health care: “(1) virtually everyone requires health care services at some unpredictable point; and (2) individuals receive health care services regardless of ability to pay.” Thus, there was no such thing as “inactivity” in the health-care market; everyone participates, even if he or she chooses not to buy insurance. Indeed, the choice to forgo insurance imposes a direct cost on the taxpayers, who wind up footing the bill. Those choices by consumers, especially in the aggregate, represent an economic matter that Congress may decide to regulate.

Krugman v./+ The Economist, and the Muted Middle

When Krugman of the economic (and social) American left and The Economist of the economic British and European right are agreeing...it's wise to pay attention. 

They're agreeing on characteristics of both the European economic crisis and to an extent what actions should be taken by various nations, including the US, to best deal with respective national economic problems.

What they agree on are mostly facts--realities; yet, realities shockingly seldom heard in the US especially among commentators on the political right, both partisan Republicans and self-described libertarians.

(Image: cartoon of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Friedrich Hayek, and John Keynes. Heaven forbid that even if they weren't all equallycorrect and incorrect, each thinker might each have been at least somewhatcorrect--and incorrect! Heaven forbid one of them mightn't have been 100% correct and the other three 100% wrong!)

Both Krugman and The Economist have recently pointed out that the European crisis is rooted as much or more in monetary policy than in fiscal irresponsibility evidenced by bloated welfare programs.

In terms of welfare programs' role, Krugman notes in "What Ails Europe?" that:

[I]n 1991, when Sweden was suffering from a banking crisis brought on by deregulation (sound familiar?), the Cato Institute published a triumphant report on how this proved the failure of the whole welfare state model.... Sweden, which still has a very generous welfare state, is currently a star performer, with economic growth faster than that of any other wealthy nation. 

So, welfare programs' generosity aren't hurting Sweden. But note that Sweden is not a Eurozone country, either. Perhaps it's the Eurozone itself that's the problem. (Wait for it. The Economist ends up saying as much!)

But, Krugman looks at Eurozone nations, too, not just Sweden:

Look at the 15 European nations currently using the euro (leaving Malta and Cyprus aside), and rank them by the percentage of G.D.P. they spent on social programs before the crisis. Do the troubled GIPSI nations (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy) stand out for having unusually large welfare states? No, they don’t; only Italy was in the top five, and even so its welfare state was smaller than Germany’s.

The Economist in "A Very Short History of the Crisis" noted much the same recently:

Before the crisis the governments of both Ireland and Spain ran budget surpluses. Both meticulously kept within the limits for deficits and debts set down by the stability and growth pact—unlike Germany, which flouted the rules for four years from 2003 (and avoided punishment). Nor did Italy lurch into extravagance. (Emphasis mine.)

Krugman's summary of the European crisis is as follows, with The Economist's below that. Both note that large welfare bills are at least in part a result of the crisis.

Krugman:

By introducing a single currency without the institutions needed to make that currency work, Europe effectively reinvented the defects of the gold standard — defects that played a major role in causing and perpetuating the Great Depression.

More specifically, the creation of the euro fostered a false sense of security among private investors, unleashing huge, unsustainable flows of capital into nations all around Europe’s periphery. As a consequence of these inflows, costs and prices rose, manufacturing became uncompetitive, and nations that had roughly balanced trade in 1999 began running large trade deficits instead. Then the music stopped.

If the peripheral nations still had their own currencies, they could and would use devaluation to quickly restore competitiveness. But they don’t, which means that they are in for a long period of mass unemployment and slow, grinding deflation. Their debt crises are mainly a byproduct of this sad prospect, because depressed economies lead to budget deficits and deflation magnifies the burden of debt

The Economist:

Debt in [the GIPSI nations] has become a burden not because of government profligacy but because each enjoyed a decade of low interest rates and was then hit by the financial crisis. Easy credit fuelled debt in households and the financial sector. The European Central Bank oversaw a binge of cross-border lending. In the crisis unemployment and hardship have deepened, increasing the bill for welfare. Some countries, such as Ireland and Spain, have needed to find money to prop up their banks. These new expenses fell on the state just when tax receipts collapsed—catastrophically in countries that had seen a property boom

Krugman and The Economisteven share some degree of opposition to austerity as a way of addressing economies worsened by the 2088-2009 Great Recession, though Krugman is much more opposed. Also, he sees debt as a short-term necessary evil to be outweighed by the benefits of stimulus (i.e., government spending and tax relief) if the stimulus is sufficiently large, while The Economist is more fearful of debt and deficits.

Krugman's lack of alarm may be evidenced by statements like this:

[C]ountries that aren’t on the euro seem able to run large deficits and carry large debts without facing any crises. Britain and the United States can borrow long-term at interest rates of around 2 percent; Japan, which is far more deeply in debt than any country in Europe, Greece included, pays only 1 percent.

True, but a $15.5 trillion US debt? With interest it's more than $56.6 trillion! That's an astronomically staggering sum. Granted, the US GDP is $15.0 trillion, but can the US's GDP be expected to increase substantially anytime soon as a means of lowering the debt? Republicans say, yes, if taxes and regulations are cut. Output will increase and jobs and consumer spending will follow. Democrats say, yes, especially if government stimulus helps fuel new industries, increases the infrastructure the economy needs, and places money short-term in people's pockets--even the unemployed--so consumer demand doesn't devastatingly fall. To which Republicans have numerous counterpoints, to which Democrats have counter-counterpoints, etc.

It's an endless discussion, really.

An now to another point: it's an endless discussion that also is not going very well. I find the discussion to be most helpful when it's least ideological and partisan. But, that's dispiritingly rare these days.

I recently had the priviledge of joining Peter H. Schuck at a dinner at a friend's home. He's the author of Meditations of a Militant Moderate: Cool Views on Hot Topics. While the book focuses mostly on debates thriving in the first few years of this century, there's a basic principle at work in his analyses--articulated in various places in the book--that's relevant even more now than when the book was published, and it's a principle that I keep finding myself coming back to: the once not-so-shocking principle that many issues are complex, that there's inherent value in trying to understand others' perspectives, and that it's exceedingly rare that one side of in a debate is 100% right while all the other sides are 100% wrong.

This position seems to be one that fewer and fewer Americans hold--it particular, it's exactly the position not-held by commentators on Fox News and CNBC on one hand and MSNBC on the other.* Heaven forbid, some problems' solutions can't be summarized by a bumpersticker slogan. That goes for economics, too. When someone shouts (and it's increasingly frequently shouted) that you can't spend your way out of debt, it increasingly frequently strikes me as an overly narrow simplification of all things to be considered. I feel exactly the same way when someone else shouts that you also can't cut your way to growth. It's been refreshing in the past year when I've heard non-shouting types on TV say that cutting too much government spending too fast is dangerous and in the same breath say that debt is a serious problem. Guess what? These might not be mutually exclusive realities! (Gasp!) But the last word seems usually given on TV to someone insisting that one or the other economic viewpoint is totally wrong. I'm then inclined to remember that as strong as religious fundamentalism is, there's such a thing as epistemological fundamentalism, too: it's called being ideological, and it results in the politization of problem-solving, and it can make problems even harder to sort out.

See also:Keynes v. Hayek, a BBC Business news feature.

*This is the secondary reason why I mostly get my news from The PBS NewsHour and the BBC--the main reasons being the measured tone of the NewsHour and the BBC and the refusal of each to dumb-down content.

CREW's list of 2011's 11 most corrupt Congress Members

Here they are....

Unexpected legacy left by hero of Flight 93 - Yahoo! News

Mark Bingham died Sept. 11, 2001, while saving countless lives. Just how many will never be known.

The openly gay rugby player was one of the heroic passengers who led a revolt against the terrorists on United Airlines Flight 93. The hijackers planned to slam the plane into the White House or the U.S. Capitol, according to the 9/11 Commission Report. Instead, the plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pa., killing the terrorists and passengers – but nobody else.

The most visible torchbearer of Bingham’s legacy is Alice Hoagland, his mother. After losing Bingham -- her only child -- Hoagland became a tireless advocate for issues that were important to her son. Now 61, the retired United flight attendant is a proponent of aviation safety, a spokesperson for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community, and an avid supporter of rugby.

via news.yahoo.com

The Democrats/Republicans are weak and the Republicans/Democrats are nuts

A friend of mine who's a professor and chair of a college's political science department posted from his Android phone to Facebook on Friday, July 29th, perhaps in a moment of exasperation: "The Democrats are weak and the Republicans are nuts." Possibly, truer words have never been communicated by a droid since C-3PO said, "Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1."

The last time the Republicans were weak and the Democrats were nuts as completely as is the reverse-case now was, perhaps, 1876, when the Democrats got an end to Reconstruction so they could be more effectively racist in the South, and the Republicans agreed to it in a backroom deal so they could get their presidential candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, who pledged to serve only one term (and did so)--and who couldn't even win the popular vote--to hold the White House briefly with his dearest wife, Lemonade Lucy. ("Water flowed like wine" in her White House.) Hayes promised "wise, honest, and peaceful local self-government" in the South and returned the nation to the gold standard.

President Hayes once noted: "The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth." Which is of course what all good Republicans think. Oh, wait.... 

(Image: "Rutherford B-3PO." Click to enlarge.)

An undemocratic recovery -- the cost of a gentry liberal political base?

The gentry liberalism that has triumphed in the Obama era differs radically from its New Deal forbearers.... [T]he New Deal was forged by a New York that was at the time a leader in economic growth, infrastructure development and social democracy. In the 1920s and 1930s, small entrepreneurs and skilled craftsmen, office workers and the unskilled flocked to New York. Today those same populations are deserting the Obama bastions in huge numbers for places, notably Texas, that embrace a very different political philosophy.

Unlike the urban-centered Obama, Roosevelt also focused heavily on the nation’s less developed regions. Indeed, the Hudson Valley gentleman farmer had among his stated goals “to make the country in every way as desirable as city life…” The New Deal great hydro-electric plants, for example, literally brought light to large areas that had barely emerged from semi-feudalism, particularly in the South.... Roosevelt’s policies expanded the Democratic Party’s sway from cities to many rural areas.... [S]ometimes bipartisan enthusiasm sparked a surplus of unwise credits to boost homeownership, but at least the party embraced the lifestyle aspirations of Americans, as opposed to seeking to transform them to an urbanist model.

These approaches must be changed if the Administration and their allies want to create the basis for, as they often claim, a long-term progressive era. Here again the New Deal model could be helpful.... To be effective, and worth it to the public, a new WPA should concentrate on such things as the expansion of ports, roads, electrical transmission lines and other critical elements needed to revive American industry.

Joel Kotkin's article is interesting. By gentry liberals he means urbanites. If I am reading him correctly, he cites New York's infrastructure development in the past as a good thing, but then argues against high-speed rail investment, noting

[t]he Administration’s...dogged emphasis on expensive programs like high-speed rail [that] reveal a cultural mindset that rejects the fundamental aspirations of a vast majority of Americans to own their homes in low-density neighborhoods.

However, I have always thought of high-speed rail as infrastructure accommodating low-density neighborhoods! Kotkin keenly observes that the US, like Britain, is beset with core cities "surrounded by a large underclass and a fading middle class;" but, the those core cities have golden inner cores (e.g., Central London, Manhattan, parts of Brooklyn, etc.) with great amenities and heavy cost of living, and to which travel, every workday, very far-flung workers who are economically quite far beneath the economic top 2% (i.e., make less than c. $225,000). They suffer through very long commutes to work.

Consider that workers in New York City now have the longest average commute time in the nation--worse than those in LA or Atlanta. But, at least mass transit--the NYC subways, the Long Island Rail Road, MetroNorth, and Amtrak--though not high-speed, is nonetheless infrastructure that benefits those commuters from low-density neighborhoods, giving them opportunities to get some work done on the train or even nap (presuming the commuter gets a seat!), and providing savings for the commuter on fuel expenses and automobile wear and tear--not to mention the fact that mass transit is far less negatively impactful on the environment than masses of commuters driving alone to work.

It may be that Kotkin sees only those in rural areas as being the "large underclass and...fading middle class" population of which he writes. But, I think of the "large underclass and...fading middle class" population as also being those in suburban areas.

It seems Kotkin just thinks those suburbanites are too tied to city-oriented (urbanist) economic sectors (e.g., financial services and service-related tech) that have already benefited from taxpayer largess, and thus are not deserving of further largess in the form of government-backed high-speed rail, even though high-speed rail is infrastructure, and infrastructure investment is what he's arguing for. If so, then, yes, I largely agree.

He continues (my emphases):

Most future growth would come from the private sector, but one has to ask what kind of industries should be fostered.... Perhaps policies should be redirected instead towards bolstering those “basic industries” – notably agriculture, energy and manufacturing – that since the beginning of the Administration have received, at best, mixed signals.

As Intel co-founder Andy Grove has noted, we cannot rebuild our job base just with sexy start-ups; we need to also “scale up” our emerging companies, the very thing that made Silicon Valley and its counterparts across the country such prodigious opportunity regions in the past.

Kitkon notes other sectors that more than urban ones deserve infrastructure-related investment:

[O]il and natural gas industries need, with improved regulation, to expand at a time of growing global demand and rising prices. Farmers, notably in the West, have been greeted with pronouncements...about the end of dam-building, a critical source of water, at a time of generally rising demand and prices.

Manufacturers, particularly smaller ones, have been hard-pressed by regulatory reform when their competitors elsewhere are dialing into the developing country market.

(Images: first, via NewGeography and by Tony the Misfit: a photo of a detail of Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington D.C.; second: map via The Wall Street Journal online; click either to enlarge.)

Phone Hacking Scandal Widens: News International Targeted Gordon Brown, BSkyB Bid Delayed (LIVE UPDATES)

The phone hacking scandal widened on Monday, as new reports emerged that papers beyond the News of the World were also involved in criminal behavior. In addition, Rupert Murdoch's bid to take over BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster, looked to be in serious peril.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Buffett: GOP Threatening To 'Blow Your Brains Out' Over Debt Ceiling

Republicans are playing a dangerous game by refusing to raise the debt ceiling, according to Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett.

"We raised the debt ceiling seven times during the Bush Administration," Buffett told CNBC on Thursday. Now, the Republican-controlled Congress is "trying to use the incentive now that we're going to blow your brains out, America, in terms of your debt worthiness over time."

If Congress fails to raise the borrowing limit of the federal government by August 2, the date when the U.S. will reach the limit of its borrowing abilities, it will likely begin defaulting on its loans.

Buffett, who according to the Washington Post has helped raise money for Democratic candidates like Hillary Clinton in the past, has been highly critical of the actions of the Republican-controlled Congress. In May, Buffett stated at a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder's meeting that if the Congress failed to raise the debt ceiling, it would constitute "the most asinine act" in the nation's history, reports Reuters.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Soldier leaves legacy much larger than 'he was gay'

He was also among the smartest in the half-million force, scoring a perfect score on his aptitude test, a feat the Army says is rare.

Andrew was so well-liked his comrades named a combat outpost for the soldier with the infectious smile. COP Wilfahrt sits 6 kilometers from Kandahar. To his buddies, it is not named for a gay soldier, but for one who fought with valor.

"Mom, everyone knows [I'm gay]. Nobody cares," he told his mother in their final conversation, a phone call from Afghanistan on Thanksgiving.
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Andrew never denied his sexuality. But like so many, he struggled with what it means to be gay in America. Yet it was only one part of him. He was so much more. In the note on his laptop, he never used the words gay or homosexual to define himself. His younger sister, Martha, says it's the least interesting thing about him.

via www.cnn.com

A smart, wise younger sister. She gets it.

Also from the news profile:

Jeff's greatest regret is not hugging his son when he first told him he was gay. "This is how it is for an old fool of a man. This moment is the burden I carry."
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Republican Rep. John Kriesel, who lost his legs while serving in Iraq, sent Andrew's photo around the floor during debate in the Minnesota House. A few years ago, he said, he would have defined marriage as solely between heterosexuals. But his military service changed that.

"This amendment doesn't represent what I went to fight for," he told lawmakers."I cannot look at this family and look at this picture and say, 'You know what, Corporal, you were good enough to fight for your country and give your life, but you were not good enough to marry the person you love.' I can't do that."

Andrew didn't have a significant other. If he had, the partner wouldn't have been allowed to escort his body home from Dover Air Force Base, nor would he have received Andrew's $100,000 death benefit.
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"We will never forget him and are honored to have served with such an outstanding person," platoon leader 1st Lt. Brandon LaMar said in a letter informing the family of the naming of the outpost.