Fact-Based Politics

     "What we need is a balanced tax program. Right now the ratio between income tax and total income for the state gives an index that--" 
     "Yeah," I said. "I heard the speech. But they don't give a damn about that. Hell, make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em think you're their weak erring pal, or make 'em think you're God-Almighty....Tell 'em anything. But for Sweet Jesus' sake don't try to improve their minds." 

         Robert Penn Warren
            "All the King's Men" 

That's what you might call the Jack Burden theory of politics, and a few pages later it becomes the Willy Stark theory of politics. Warren stacks the deck, of course; any speech that contains the words "ratio" and "index" is bound to be a stinker, let alone both in the same sentence. 

But a version of this theory, a sort of Jack Burden Lite, is commonly applied even to voters who are not uneducated, poor, or living in the 1930s. That theory says that speeches should appeal primarily to emotions and not bore voters with a lot of facts. Basically, you should emulate Reagan and have touching or heart-wrenching stories to drive home your points.

I don't know that this theory is wrong. But I keep noticing how the political debate in this country is shaped by voters' ignorance of simple facts. For example:

1. The U.S. does not have the longest life expectancy in the world, nor the second longest. It has the 41st longest. It does not have the lowest infant mortality rate in the world, nor the second-lowest. It has the 41st lowest. (The exact rankings vary a bit depending on the source, but in any case, we're behind Cuba.)

2. If the U.S. spent as much on health care as the second-most-expensive country in the world, we would spend around $8,000 per household less than we're spending now. That other country has universal health care and better statistics on life expectancy and infant mortality than we do.

3. Less than one-fifth of third-generation Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles are fluent in Spanish, and 96% prefer to speak English at home.

4. If your ancestors immigrated to the U.S. before the twentieth century, they came at a time when there were no restrictions on immigration by country of origin (only racial restrictions on Chinese). Even if they came in the twentieth century, they probably had refugee status if they came from a Communist country. If your ancestors faced the restrictions of immigrants today, you probably wouldn't be here.

5. The ten years from 2000 to 2009 had the slowest economic growth of any decade since the Great Depression.

6. The top marginal tax rate in the 1950s was over 90%.

Obviously, any of these bald facts needs a little elaboration to help the audience see the policy implications. But any competent speechwriter can do that, and even tug at the heartstrings a little once the basic facts are established.

It is a mystery to me why people who have the facts on their side are so reticent about using them. The biggest offender is of course President Obama, and from the outside it's hard to figure out why.

One factor may be the apparent allergy in American politics to talking about other countries, except as adoring supporters. But why not get that old competitive spirit going? If we care about being number one at the Olympics, why not in health? Education? Infrastructure? Or if not number one, how about number five or six? If pride won't work, how about shame?

Another factor may be the strange reluctance of this Administration to talk to the public at all. Who dreamed that a president famous for being articulate would hold so few press conferences or Oval Office addresses? I don't have my finger on the pulse of the American electorate. But it certainly appears that part of the anger we are seeing today ("elites," "taking back our country," etc.) is about feeling cut out of the loop. You can't listen to each of hundreds of millions of people individually, but you can reduce their alienation a lot by talking to them.

For democracy to work, people need to know the facts. Those who don't have the facts on their side may have to resort to peddling myths. Those who do have the facts on their side, however, have a patriotic obligation to put them before the public. The country needs more than comforting or infuriating fantasies.

The Ad Martha Coakley Should Be Doing

I don't view myself as having any extraordinary political savvy, so when I see professional politicians screwing up, there's always the possibility that I'm wrong. But sometimes I'm right. One general mistake I see politicians, or their campaign experts, make a lot is thinking that TV commercials have to have great visuals, and therefore must be at least a week behind the curve and miss the hot issue.

I, on the other hand, think that if John Kerry had done an ad of himself sitting behind a desk refuting the Swift Boat allegations, instead of pictures of adorable children, he would have been elected. (Which probably would have meant that the Democrats wouldn't have taken back Congress two years later, but that's another issue.) So here's what I think is the winning Martha Coakley ad, with her sitting behind a desk,or standing in her backyard, or wherever:

"Our country is going through some difficult times right now. We face a lot of problems coming at once, most as a result of their having been ignored for a long time: the banking crisis, failing schools, Afghanistan, our overpriced health care system.

"Solving those problems will take action, not more twiddling our thumbs. But instead of coming up with constructive plans, the Republicans are content to do their best to obstruct, delay or kill whatever the Democrats come up with. They've made the calculation that that's their best shot at getting back into power. Can you think of anything constructive that Republicans have done in the last year? I can't.

"Now they're running Scott Brown for Ted Kennedy's old seat. They're looking for him to join their disciplined army in filibustering any effort to deal with our country's problems. And if he's elected, he will.

"We can't afford more years of delay. Our problems won't wait. We can solve them, but not by ignoring them. If I'm elected Senator, I will go to Washington and fight for you, just as I did as Attorney General.

"Let's get this country moving again. My name is Martha Coakley, and I approved this ad."

More on Cadillacs

The rumor today is the Congressional conferees will go with the tax on "Cadillac" plans. Presumably some Senate "moderates" (I guess it's all relative) object to the idea of taxing families with incomes over $1,000,000. Remember when a millionaire was someone with a million dollars in net worth? Even today, having a net worth of a million dollars puts you somewhere in the top 10% of American families (according to the Fed's Survey of Consumer Finances). But we've become so jaded that when people in Congress talk about a "tax on millionaires," they're talking about families with annual income above a million dollars. And taxing even those people is apparently too much for some Democrats.

Meanwhile, I'm still (see December 28, 2009) trying to figure out what these wasteful plans are. I've hunted around the Internet trying to find some evidence that patient choices are a big contributor to waste in health care, and so far I haven't been able to find it. If you know, please tell me. There's a lot about doctor choices, but...

My concern (speculative at this point), is that a lot of the higher-priced plans are ones whose "extras" include dental and vision coverage. But, as I said before, that's clearly a part of basic health care. Being able to go to the dentist or get glasses is not a big deal to the middle class, but for some people it's a very big deal.

For those of you who like true-life stories, take a look at this article by the AP. [Note 3/13/10: The article, "Lessons of a weekend of free health care," by Adam Geller, 1/3/10, has been archived by the AP. If you don't want to pay $1.50, try this instead.] It describes people in Tennessee who drive for hours (and sometimes arrive the night before to get a good place in line) to get into a one-day free medical clinic. The most telling point in the story is that, although almost all of them have medical problems, many don't mention them for fear of losing their chance to get dental or vision care.

Those of you who are more statistically inclined might want to take a look at this information from the CDC. Here are some statistics for people age 45-54 (I chose one age cohort because there were no totals).

Untreated tooth decay: Poor 45%, Near-poor 40% Non-poor 17%
Loss of all natural teeth: Poor 12%, Near-poor 11%, Non-poor 4%

For the woman who was the protagonist of the AP story, having all her teeth pulled was the happy ending. That meant she no longer had to live with constant throbbing pain. (What's even more maddening about this story is that she probably votes Republican.)

Addendum: The Times health blog reports on January 14 that as of 2015 (why 2015?) dental and vision costs will not count toward the threshold for the tax. That's good news, but leaves me more mystified than ever about what's in the high-priced plans. So far, no stampede to include vision and dental as part of what's required for all plans. That's intended humorously--we won't see that in the near future.

It's probably nothing,but...

For a variety of statistical reasons, please don't overinterpret the following fact, but all the same it's striking: In the recent Senate vote on drastically tightening abortion restrictions in the health-care bill, seven Democrats voted in favor. All were men. Two Republicans voted against. Both were women.

Alas! for the Republicans

Oh, dear. I've tried to make it clear in this blog that I would welcome the appearance of a Republican Party with ideas. Strangely, Republicans don't seem to be listening. The latest salvo of blanks comes from ten members of the Republican National Committee, who, Yahoo! News reports, have proposed that any candidate wanting support from the RNC agree to at least eight out of ten items on a list of conservative positions. (Only eight out of ten, lest anyone think there's no room in the Republican Party for diversity.)

The most notable thing about this list is that six of the ten points are of the form "We support X by opposing Y." Not, you understand, "We support X and oppose Y." No, in six of ten cases, the authors find it unnecessary to propose any policies to support their principles; it's enough to be against whatever the Democrats are for. And in the one case where they say they're for something and against something else, it's phony: "We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government-run healthcare." This would be somewhat more compelling if the Republicans actually had a plan for market-based health-care reform.

But Republicans seem to be using the phrase "market-based" like the blank in Scrabble, to mean anything that's convenient in that space: "We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation." Excuse me, but cap-and-trade is a market-based energy reform. Granted, it's not necessarily one that enriches supporters of the Republican Party. The market can be a bitch that way.

Saddest of all was this comment: "A Republican strategist and former Bush White House official, who asked to remain anonymous, told Yahoo! News that the resolution 'bodes well' because 'Republicans are continuing to discuss policy positions and principles.'" For people above the age of two, "No" does not constitute a discussion.

You Read It Here First

While I'm thrilled if Gail Collins is really reading this blog, I wish she'd mention my name, or at least include a link. Her November 11 Conversation with David Brooks in the New York Times online makes exactly the points of my October 14 entry on the filibuster, complete with references to Jimmy Stewart and Southern Democrats. On balance I'd say hers is a bit funnier, though less prompt and lacking the useful coinages "honest filibuster" and "virtual filibuster." As a bonus with Collins, you get some pointed comments on Joe Lieberman, whom neither of us, I'm sure, would ever dream of calling the Christine Jorgensen of the Democratic Party.

Bring Back the Smoke-Filled Room

The most interesting race in yesterday's election didn't make the front page of The NewYork Times. Although it took place in upstate NewYork, it didn't even rate a very prominent mention in the "N.Y./Region" section. And although Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson, Tim Pawlenty, Rush Limbaugh, and Dick Armey all got involved, it wasn't mentioned at all in the "U.S." section.

I'm referring to the race between Democrat Bill Owens and Conservative Douglas Hoffman for the vacant seat in New York's 23rd Congressional district. What made this race noteworthy is that the Republican nominee, one Dede Scozzafava, withdrew from the race after the above-mentioned Republican luminaries backed Hoffman, finding Scozzafava insufficiently ideologically pure. (In a truly breathtaking display of chutzpah, Republicans then denounced her as a turncoat for endorsing Owens.) Owens won, making him the first Democrat in that seat since before you were born.

If I were a Democratic apparatchik, I might be a bit saddened by this result, as it seems likely to slow down  the Republican party's slide toward self-destruction. As someone who believes in multi-party democracy and wants to see at least two parties with intelligent policy ideas, I am cheered. Not that Republicans show much sign of learning. The right is already spinning the results, with Mike Huckabee saying it's Republicans' fault for not choosing Hoffman "from the get-go," and other conservatives saying it serves the party leaders right for trying to foist their choices onto Republican voters.

Foist? Yes. For Scozzafava was chosen by the local Republican Party county committee leaders. So a larger issue raised by this election is how we should feel about party primaries versus back-room deals.

By shifting choice from party bosses to voters,  primaries were of course seen as a way to make elections more democratic. Do they? Here's the issue: in a two-party election (other things equal, with some simplifying assumptions, etc., etc.) the winning candidate is the one closer to the preferences of the median voter. That is, the candidate closer to the center of the electorate gets the most votes.

But with primaries, the candidates selected are those closest to the center of their own parties, who may be far away from the center of the electorate. Thus we have the Arlen Specter phenomenon, where a candidate who is easily electable cannot win his party's nomination.

In theory, of course, primary voters could take account of this possibility in voting, and vote for the candidate most likely to win the general election rather than their personal favorite. In practice, this often doesn't happen. That was the idea behind the Democratic Party's designation of superdelegates to the national convention-- the assumption was that elected officials and party officials would be more pragmatic than the rank and file. But this reasoning was not made very explicit, with the result that in the last election there was some outrage at the idea that superdelegates might go against the expressed wishes of voters-- Democratic voters, that is.

What we end up with, it appears, is increasing polarization among elected officials (particularly at the national level, where ideology tends to be more important), and the increasing impossibility of bipartisanship. And if both parties nominate relatively extreme candidates, there is the possibility of electing true loonies, who are far from what most voters would want.

A few weeks ago (October 14), I advocated bringing back the filibuster. As long as we're thinking the unthinkable, perhaps it's time to bring back the smoke-filled room. Without the smoke, of course.

Elephantine Encephalitis?

One David Catron, whose articles in The American Spectator include, among others, "The AMA's Quisling Strategy" and "Obamacare Could Kill You," has a blog called Health Care BS: Cleaning the Augean Stables of the Heath Care Debate. A recent post introduced readers to the Prisoner's Dilemma, the much-loved game theory construct in which individuals following their own self-interest end up creating a situation in which everyone is worse off.

So what is Catron's policy application of the Prisoner's Dilemma? Greenhouse gas emissions? Overfishing? Highway congestion? Gun ownership? Support for the poor? Standing up at baseball games?

No, his application is to... the public option. Yes, his claim (based on an irony-free reading of Andrew Sullivan) is that the public option is politically insidious, because it encourages voters to follow their individual interests in cheaper health care at the expense of the general good.

The first problem for Republicans, of course, is that he is in effect conceding that individuals could get cheaper health care through the public option. And he's not too specific about what the collective downside is. Hospital closures? Socialism?

But the bigger problem is that Republicanism in the twenty-first century is fundamentally hostile to the idea that there could be a conflict between individual self-interest and the greater good. Telling Republicans about the Prisoner's Dilemma starts you down a slippery slope. Pretty soon you're conceding that there might be a role for government in a free-enterprise economy. That the market can't do it all. That sometimes we need government regulation and government spending.

If too many people read his blog, Catron may find that he has introduced a virus into the central nervous system of the Republican Party.

The Public Option: Building A Better Trigger

OK, Democrats, put your money where your mouths are. Republicans and Democrats in Congress have both made the public option the main focus of the debate on health insurance, even though both sides know it would affect only a small minority of people. Republicans say it's another step on the road to serfdom (I'm paraphrasing); Democrats say that it's needed to assure competition.

Interestingly, a number of the states with the least competition have Congressmen who are adamantly opposed to a public option (i.e., Republicans). A 2002 study by the GAO  reports that the single largest insurer in North Dakota has a stunning 89% of the market. The figure is 87% for Alabama,  55% for Tennessee, and 52% for Alaska. Blue states are not immune, though; the largest insurer in Michigan has 63% of the market.

But if we need a public option to assure competition, the obvious alternative is to have a public option only in those markets that are not already competitive. I'll defer to the Industrial Organization specialists on exactly how that would be defined, but we might say, for example, that there would be a public plan in any market where one firm had a market share over 40%, or three firms over 75%.

Now, to the extent that either Republicans or Democrats in Congress see the public option primarily as a sort of camel's nose that will eventually lead to a single-payer system, this approach won't change any views. But in the battle for public opinion, it has advantages for both sides. Democrats can say, "You say you believe in market competition. How much competition is the market providing in Alabama?" Republicans can say, "You claim we need a public option to provide competition, but here's a list of states that already have plenty of competition." Of course, to make that credible, they would have to support a repeal of the antitrust exemption for health insurance.

A Republican Party that had ideas would have come up with a plan to create private-sector competition in the health insurance industry.  Alas, that's not the Republican Party we have. (See my posting of September 17.)  So they've left it to Democrats to be the advocates of competition. Perhaps the two Republican moderates left in Congress can salvage something by supporting a market trigger instead of a cost trigger.

A public option that does what it's supposed to do. Why should that be a novel idea?

Intolerance (Not the Movie)

The more I think about it, the more I think I was onto something in my September 11 post (Mystery Solved). Perhaps this is something that all real political scientists learned in graduate school, but it seems to me that the fundamental cleavage in modern politics (say the last 200 years) is between a party that emphasizes tolerance/equality and one that emphasizes nationalism.

That started me thinking about tolerance and equality, and about intolerance. There are really two kinds of intolerance, I realized, for which we don't have separate words.

The first kind is when you find some group intolerable. As I understand it, the Baha'i in Iran are in this situation: they are considered apostates, and apostasy is punishable by death. Obviously, this was also the situation of Jews (Gypsies, gays) in Nazi Europe.

The second kind of intolerance is benign by comparison: you tolerate the other group, but don't consider them to have equal rights. As I understand it, that is the situation of, say, Jews and Christians in Saudi Arabia.

When I say (and I do) that the religious right in America is intolerant, I don't mean it in the first sense. I am not worried that if it came to power, it would be starting pogroms or putting people in concentration camps. It would merely be denying some people equality.

The recent response from the right to charges of intolerance has often been, roughly, "I know you are, but what am I?" What about, for example, those Jews who want to keep people from putting creches on public property? Aren't they intolerant?

Well, no. I'm not sure that even some of my Christian friends get this. To put a creche in front of City Hall is to practice the second kind of intolerance. It is to say, "We are the mainstream, but if you don't want to be part of that, we will tolerate you." As I said before, this is a lot better than the first kind of intolerance. But it's not equality. It announces that I'm an outsider in my own country.

Court cases about religious symbols on public property tend to bog down in minutiae about what exactly the government is endorsing. I don't know whether it's a coherent legal strategy to argue these cases on equal-protection grounds rather than the usual First Amendment grounds. But make no mistake. The primary issue is not freedom of conscience. It's equality.

The Knee-Jerk Conservatives

You know, I really want to keep this blog from being predictably partisan. But that goal is getting harder and harder. There was a time when Republicans had some good ideas that were consistent with their ideology, and which evoked knee-jerk objections from Democrats. Energy price decontrol (OK, that was actually started by Carter, but Reagan speeded it up). Tradable pollution permits.

But today Republicans don't seem to have any ideas at all, unless you call making the rich richer an idea. This outburst is provoked by a story in today's New York Times, about a Democratic plan to reform the student loan program. Instead of paying banks to make federally guaranteed loans to students, the federal government will make them directly. The estimated savings are $80 billion over ten years, which is to be redirected to Pell grants, community colleges, and early childhood education, among other things.

One congressman commented that debate over the plan bears “an eerily strong resemblance to the health care debate that rages on today.” And so it does-- both are about trying to bypass a bloated private-sector bureaucracy. But I was startled to discover that this comment was made by a Republican, and he meant it as a criticism of student-loan reform, not as a criticism of the Republican position on health care. To homo republicanus, it seems, the private sector can always do something more cheaply, even if we have to subsidize them to do it. The congressman also noted that the Democratic plan would cost 30,000 jobs nationally. So the Republican position now, apparently, is that government spending on completely unproductive jobs is a good thing. Using the same (bad) math that Republicans used on the economic stimulus bill, that's almost $3 million per job.

In the past, the one kind of federal spending that Republicans unequivocally liked was military spending. But since the private sector can do things more cheaply, why not use private contractors? So we had contract interrogators, contract embassy security, Blackwater, all of which worked out very badly. In the invasion of Iraq, some Army units had to scrounge for water in the 130-degree heat, because contractors weren't delivering enough. Later we had a bribery scandal involving contract water suppliers. What kind of army leaves its soldiers without water? And, oh yes, there was the Halliburton KBR electrocution problem. Is it unreasonable to suggest that maybe the military could do some of these things better itself?

So how do we explain Republican opposition to any kind of service delivery by government? Here are some possibilities:

1. Charitable, relative to the others: Republicans are so locked in their ideology that they will believe it even in the face of the evidence, or believe that constituents will.

2. Cynical: Ideology is just a cover for the wish to extract money from the public at large and deliver it to corporations that will support them financially.

3. Conspiratorial: What Republicans are really afraid of is that the government will be able to do some things more cheaply and effectively than the private sector, and that the public will see it.

I wasn't born yesterday. Of course, politicians worry about campaign contributions. Of course, people's guesses about how well policies will work are based partly on their personal preconceptions. That's OK. But shouldn't we expect that at some point facts and evidence will play some role?

Mystery Solved

Neoconservative godfather Norman Podhoretz has just published a book about the question that has been bothering him for the last thirty years, "Why Are Jews Liberals?" Podhoretz's magazine, Commentary, has published a symposium honoring the book, in which six well-known American Jews discuss why everyone else doesn't get it. This has caused a blizzard in the blogosphere, which The New York Times summarizes here.

Of particular interest is the response of Robert Stacy McCain, a former editor at the Washington Times turned full-time right-wing pundit. On his blog (called "The Other McCain," lest you think that John is a true conservative) he praises Michael Medved's observation that Jews' distrust of right-wing evangelicals is a big factor, and denounces "Norman Lear and others" for their "demonization of the 'Religious Right'" that has so misled Jews. But he doesn't stop there. He continues:

"This effect is compounded by a factor which, whether or not Podhoretz discusses it in his book, I didn't notice mentioned by the symposiasts, namely the town-and-country divide in American politics. Although the trend to suburbanization has somewhat ameliorated this generalization, most American Jews are fundamentally urban in their orientation, while most American conservatives are fundamentally rural.

"Think of Reagan, riding horses and clearning brush at his ranch -- it is an image that appeals to the "country" side of the town-and-country divide, embodying as it does the antique ideal of the American frontier homesteader.

"This 'rugged individual' ideal, the self-sufficient property owner zealously guarding his freedom, is intrinsic to what American conservatism is all about, and it is an ideal quite alien to the urban lifestyle. The city-dweller is inherently dependent on public services. He doesn't draw his water from a well, doesn't go out with a chain-saw to supply firewood for the winter, doesn't augment the grocery budget by hunting deer or growing his vegetables....

"If Messrs. Podhorhetz, et al., wish to promote conservatism among American Jews, let them find some way to encourage Jewish families to move to small towns in the Heartland, where their kids can grow up hunting, fishing and hot-rodding the backroads. A guy with a gun rack in the back window of his four-wheel drive truck may occasionally vote Democrat, but he's extremely unlikely to be an out-and-out liberal."

Well. Mystery solved. How many Jews can hear someone talk about how Jews live in cities, so they're not like us in the Heartland, without feeling queasy? Does anyone expect them to join a political grouping that says, if only you lived like us, you would think like us, but our thinking is alien to your lifestyle? If there were no religious Right, all we would need to explain Jews' liberalism is people like Robert Stacy McCain.

I'm not saying McCain's an anti-Semite; in fact, I doubt he is. And he's certainly correct, and insightful, about the urban-rural divide (which is why the Republican party is withering away). But the attitude of, "We're the real America, and you aren't as authentic as we are" is not one that most American Jews will accept.

Forget principle. Jews have always identified their self-interest with tolerance and equality, not with nativism. The former continues to be the hallmark of the left, the latter of the right. Incidentally, young people in general are notably more tolerant than older people (look at survey data on attitudes toward gays, for example), and were far more likely to vote Democratic in the last election.

The real mystery is why the likes of Podhoretz and Medved continue to be untroubled by these attitudes on the right. Perhaps they accept them. Perhaps it's time to put a new twist on that hoary old neoconservative epithet, the self-hating Jew.

Welcome

This blog will be mainly about things related to public policy and politics, though it will include other topics that I find interesting. Please be aware that I find many things interesting. I will try, though, to limit postings to things I think will be of wide interest; if you want to know what I had for breakfast I am happy to tell you, but please ask by e-mail.

I am calling this blog "Claritas" because I think that clarity is in short supply in discussions of public policy (and, indeed, most things), and because this is an area where I think I can make a contribution. If I fail, please tell me so I can try again.