A conservative inherently distrusts material discontinuities or deviations from traditional context. A couple of examples illustrate the point. For example, when President Reagan with Congress significantly cut marginal individual tax rates, that constituted a change but was not out of the historical context for lower tax burdens. [It is true that some fiscal conservatives were concerned whether the tax cuts would pay for themselves, i.e., whether lower rates could generate enough economic growth to make up the difference in aggregate tax revenue, similar to how lower product margins and prices at WalMart generate higher company profits through transaction volume.] On the other hand, the sex revolution of 1960's and 1970's, enabled by the ready availability of low-cost, effective contraceptives, introduced moral hazards affecting the traditional social institutions of marriage and family and public health, i.e., the spread of sexually transmitted infections.
The American tradition built a liberal participatory democratic republic based on popular sovereignty and largely influenced by the principles underlying the contemporary English government and legal tradition. Our government is founded on inalienable or natural rights are inspired by the Lockean-specified concepts of life, liberty, and property (Jefferson substituting the phrase "pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence). Liberty refers to the ability of a person to act according to his or her will relevant principles include cultural liberty (free speech, freedom of religion), economic liberty (free markets, free exchange of ideas, limited government, private property, free trade), and political liberty (fair trial, rule of law, transparent government, universal suffrage and eligibility for elective office). Our Constitutional government is structurally constrained by the concepts of the separation of powers and checks and balances; our natural rights are further explicated and protected in the US Bill of Rights.
Government does serve useful functions from an economic liberal perspective. It can build public infrastructure, operate public services (police, fire, emergency, etc.), subsidize unprofitable endeavors (e.g., basic scientific research or orphan drugs) and handle catastrophe relief when the private sector lacks the scalable resources, a profit incentive or will to assume the risks. It can ensure fair competition and a free flow of information about products, services, and investments. It can protect consumer and employee safety and rights and restrict abusive business practices (e.g., overfishing). It can also facilitate business growth by negotiating treaties, maintain a stable monetary system, and promote a strong national defense to protect our economy and way of life.
Basic Differences Between American Conservatives and Liberals Over Liberty
There are many policy differences among groups of American conservatives (and similarly for American liberals). But perhaps the biggest difference between the groups is an extension to classical liberalism referred to as social liberalism: in particular, different perspectives on the approach to social justice. We can think about a coercion dimension where one end is anchored by individualism and the other end is collectivism. An individualism implementation focuses on mechanisms such as charitable fundraising and philanthropies. The collectivist approach focuses on bringing pressure to bear on relevant parties and/or coercive action through the state to provide enabling resources or benefits, considered to be rights, on behalf of groups of citizens considered to be not authentically participating in a free society.
Isaiah Berlin wrote a relevant influential 1958 paper distinguishing between two concepts of liberty: negative and positive. Negative liberty refers to freedom from restriction on what one can do, typically by coercion of the state. Examples of relevant negative rights are: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, private property, and right to a fair trial. For example, zoning laws may limit what I can do or build on my property, or someone may not be permitted to practice medicine without an approved license. Positive liberty refers to the self-sufficiency of individuals to participate in a free society. Government solutions focuses more on compelling individuals to act (e.g., by statute, judgment or through tax policy) to more fully enable those whom lack the necessary resources or opportunity. Examples of relevant positive rights are: public education, university loans, guaranteed access to health care services, public defender, living wages, guaranteed retirement income, affirmative action hiring, minority setasides for government contracts, unemployment compensation, and natural catastrophe relief. For example, a pharmacy may be compelled to dispense an abortifacient to a female customer, even if a staff pharmacist is morally opposed to enabling the practice of elective abortion. A business is forced to rehire, with back pay, an employee whom successfully claims sexual harassment as the reason for her dismissal.
An American Historical Perspective of Viewpoints
The American liberal (as the term is commonly understood) in the current context views propertied interests in a manner similar to Jefferson did: a corrupting influence between government and propertied interests (i.e., Big Business). For example, Barack Obama claims that McCain and the GOP are unduly influenced by lobbyists. He justifies his position reversal on public financing of the campaign, based on his rationale that his contributions are different (small and more numerous) than the types of influence public financing was designed. [The idea that his contributions, just like nearly $1B in earmark requests, are "more equal" than others, is self-serving, e.g., Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac contributions (PAC/employee) which ranked Obama #2 over lawmakers over the past 10 years. The Obama campaign has responded by trying to link McCain campaign manager Rick Davis to past lobbyist/contractor relationships with the GSE's, although McCain is on the record sponsoring a relevant reform act in 2005--which Obama did not support.]
In an interesting twist, Jefferson's response to a suspected link between the federal government and propertied interests was to advocate for limited government and to argue against judicial activism, which ironically are positions today favored by American conservatives.
John Adams was concerned with the supremacy of law. The basic concept is the submission to the authority of law by government officials, citizens and businesses; the law should be transparent, general in scope, and stable so citizens and businesses know the boundaries of their activities and autonomy. John Adams saw the economic future of the US resting on modernizing and diversifying a then primarily agricultural economy, in particular, focusing on the emergence and distribution of city banks and factories, with a strong national defense to protect the homeland and trade.
Tariffs, until the emergence of the income tax, were the principal method of raising federal tax money. Interestingly, the Federalists/Whigs/Republicans of the nineteenth century, particularly in the largely urban Northeast, favored a high tariff policy, which was a version of trade protectionism. The Democrats, and particularly the South, resented high tariffs which they felt raised their production costs, harmed their own trade interests and adversely affected consumer prices.
We have seen a transition of political alliances, with unions, allied with Democrats, and related industries more protectionist, although some paleoconservatives, like Pat Buchanan, and fiscal conservatives, like Ross Perot, have been protectionist, in particular opposing NAFTA; in addition, the Republicans were more isolationist through WWII and have become more assertive internationally. More notably, the Democrats have been distinctly associated with cultural liberals, in particular, feminists/pro-abortion rights and racial minority groups, even though Republicans were the party of Emancipation, advocated post-Civil War civil rights and allied with Northern liberals to pass landmark civil rights legislation in the 1950's and 1960's.
The Democratic Party, particularly since the Great Depression with the 1932 election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), has engaged more in socioeconomic experimental/innovative legislation in the "New Deal", including social security. Some economists suggest the emergence of the economy from the Depression had more to do with WWII and its aftermath than FDR's initiatives. We also saw some excesses of FDR (relative to John Adam's concern with the supremacy of law) in terms of his attempts to usurp the Supreme Court by packing it, upset by his bills being narrowly ruled unconstitutional, and by running for an unprecedented third and fourth terms.
An Abridged List of Contemporary Conservative Concerns
--Need to Streamline Government Regulation
We need to be able to reorganize basic regulatory mechanisms, which may have been a contributing factor to the ongoing financial crisis, i.e., inconsistencies, overlaps, redundancies, and the like , making it more difficult to manage, to identify gaps and compliance issues, and to establish accountability. Streamlining would be consistent with Adam's preference for laws that are general in scope. We need to simplify interfaces with individuals and organizations to a single point of contact.
--Government Operations Reprocessing
I believe that the massive Baby Boomer federal civil service retirements over the coming generation provides an historical opportunity to lower head count, consolidate and flatten hierarchical levels of functionally related agencies, and identify/implement best practices and rigorously defined criteria and baselines.
My evidence here is primarily anecdotal in nature, based on interviewing and/or working for information technology projects for various federal agencies. I found applications using desupported versions of Oracle databases and application server technologies, invalidly configured database replication strategies which did not control for geographic risk, archive database log files being maintained which were unusable from an Oracle database recovery perspective, insecurely configured Oracle network listeners, inconsistent versions of Oracle database software for different copies of application databases, no database backups retained beyond the current operational week for one goverment sector, inconsistent settings between switches and server network cards, an improperly installed production server backup power supply, a government manager whom pleaded with me (without any access to government records and limited to applications under one contract) to help her determine how many Oracle licenses were currently deployed across the applications on the base, and a government auditor whom actually pulled out equipment he couldn't identify in terms of equipment functionality in a production rack in the middle of a business day and caused two servers to reboot during his audit. [The auditor refused to desist his activities until after business hours; I had over 400 hourly paid users in St. Louis with estimated costs of downtime of $10,000/hour. The operations room manager alleged that I was violating federal rules by attempting to interfere with the auditor's activities, and I had to call my civil servant boss in St. Louis to intercede.] Of course, one also needs to look at acceptability metrics for transaction throughput. For example, one can use an obvious example of the delay from submitting a tax return and seeing one's refund. However, a more interesting one is described in Newt Gingrich's Real Change, where he notes that you can obtain a realtime status of your checking account or investment portfolio through the Internet, but employers can't identify the fraudulent reuse of social security numbers in a convenient period of time.
--Eliminate Unnecessary Competition with the Non-Government Sector
A current relevant example is the GSE's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, discussed in earlier posts, which have controlled about half of the $12T mortgage market. Some have questioned if the GSE's had outlived their usefulness given a sufficient critical mass of liquidity in the private sector. In an earlier post, I mentioned that the GSE's had grown from about 6% in the 1960's, despite only modestic gains in home ownership percentage. The GSE's had certain systematic cost advantages against private sector competitors, including an exemption from SEC governance and a cheaper government-direct credit line, and grew to a size that exposed the federal government to a disproportionate share of the risk. There was also heavy political political pressure for a positive right, i.e., increasing the number of mortgages to lower-income/higher-risk households. Several conservative reformers have called for a stripping of the government financing subsidy, subdividing and spinning off to the private sector (say, 4 or more) Baby Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac's.
--Flexible Globally Competitive Tax Policies and Expedited Trade Agreement Ratification
A couple of obvious examples are a company tax rate of 35%, among the two highest among the developed economies and a capital gains tax which exceeds China's 0%. The Democrats are using McCain's universal tax cut proposal to 25% as a windfall to Big Oil; they want to use tax subsidies on a nuanced basis for positive rights. We have also seen the Democrats stonewall trade agreements with Colombia and South Korea, primarily to appease protectionist unions.
--Reform Employment Practices in the Public Sector
Even when the rest of the economy suffers with layoffs and reduced hours with frozen or cancelled projects as cities and states learn to accommodate reduced revenues, we don't see the federal sector engaging in similar pain. Moreover, there are some gold-plated benefits not available in the private sector, some occupations are paid out of step with the private markets, and it can be more difficult to terminate unproductive workers.
For many taxpayers whom have not worked in the federal sector, it can be a culture shock. For instance, I was working as a contractor at National Archives prior to the 2004 election; while I was hard at work maintaining the databases and servers underlying the process of allowing military veterans to order copies of their records, openly partisan civil servants were gathered around nearby cubicles laughing over the latest JibJab cartoon features and openly talking about deferring Bush Administration requests until after the upcoming election so President-Elect Kerry could put his own stamp on priorities.
-- Increased Competition in the Public Sector
Newt Gingrich gives a good example on this point as he discusses how the Detroit school system, despite huge budgets and a high school graduation rate of 50% or worse, furiously fought off the opening of new charter schools affiliated with nearby universities. We need to seriously reconsider the relevance of concepts like tenure and the obsolete agrarian school calendar, and consider a globally competitive education strategy. Although I haven't seen a number of conservatives address this point, one wonders if unions should be subjected to the same antitrust considerations applied to Big Business. For example, teacher unions seem to promote protectionist practices and stonewall genuine educational reform, including a marketplace for adjusting teacher salaries in response to specialty supply/demand, merit-based compensation, streamlined procedures for hiring teachers and terminating for unsatisfactory performance or cause, and development and validation of objective performance criteria. We know that certain types of schools, e.g., Catholic schools and charter schools, have succeeded in high-failure urban areas, often at a lower cost per student, although it's unclear whether that success is scalable. [I once had a roommate whom was working as a public school teacher and insisted the private schools cherrypick more able students and/or with parents more involved with their children's education, a predictor of success; however, he never explained if his point of view was anecdotal or based on evidence beyond teacher union talking points. ] Ultimately, in the private sector, businesses who don't serve their customers' needs fail. Public schools with high attrition rates and/or socially passing students with unusable communication or precursor technology skills (e.g., math and science literacy) necessary to compete for higher-skill/higher-paying jobs are failing their mission. Protectionist arguments, portraying vouchers in zero-sum terms, are disingenuous; effectively lower-income parents are being deprived of a real alternative to a dysfunctional public school.
--Need to Get Entitlement Spending Under Control and Properly Funded
Fiscal conservatives have worried about the growth in entitlement spending (social security, Medicare, Medicaid), which have grown since the FDR's socially liberal New Deal and fellow Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson's "Great Society" to about 42% of federal expenditures, sure to rise with the Baby Boomer generation starting to retire, possibly crowding out other expenditures, like national defense, or setting the stage for growth-crippling tax hikes. Obama's class warfare "solutions" are not an answer to benefit increases out of step with the cost of living and actuarial changes (e.g., longer lives and relevant higher medical expenditures). We also need to look at more innovative alternative to growing a self-sustaining reserve asset base, such as diversifying through mutual funds and/or revenues accrued through national assets, like energy and timber.
--Balancing the Federal and Trade Deficits
The federal deficit is near an all-time high over several years at about 70% of GNP, and I suspect retention of the 2001/2003 Bush tax cuts beyond 2010 is dead, given an almost certain Democratically-controlled Congress. The national campaign has gotten a little disingenuous here with McCain focusing on earmarks and Obama trying to draft off McCain's middle-class tax cuts. Obama has jumped at any and all opportunities to insist on raising the highest tax bracket back to Clinton's percentage, but he was spending these revenues even before racking up $1T in new spending and the recent $700B bailout package. This isn't even counting the tax credits he's giving to nearly half of households not making any taxable income, which is de facto welfare. When you throw on top of that state, county and/or local taxes, the math just doesn't add up. It reminds me of the 1992 election when Clinton promised a middle-class tax cut, but after the election, he had to resort to a more broad-based tax.
McCain is stuck on the deficit from sheer logistics, but he can hold the Democrats responsible for not renewing the tax cuts. He can probably get his way on earmarks, but Draconian cuts in discretionary spending are probably not viable. We can expect with the current bear market that capital gains, dividends, and interest will be down significantly this calendar year. Business reprocessing and related activities are longer term in nature. I do think in the longer term the Blue Dog Democrats would enter into a Republican alliance to counterbalance Obama's domestic expansionist agenda. I suspect McCain will look at growth to cut down the deficit, but I suspect in the long run we'll need to resort to a revised, simplified version of taxation.
The trade deficit is more difficult to resolve. In part, we can get there by increased demand for American higher-end goods and services by a growing middle class in developing economies, and by American taxpayers become more balanced in choices between consumption and saving. The McCain campaign has particularly focused on the large imbalance in reference to net energy imports and significantly undeveloped domestic energy supplies.
--Proper Proportion of Personal Savings to Consumption
Some studies suggest a negative savings rate for American taxpayers. In response to the recent mortgage scandal, I would like to see for taxpayers not currently homeowners able to grow savings or fixed-income securities tax-free up to a conventional 20% down payment on the average house price. I would also like to see a flat interest/dividend income exclusions and adjustments of any interest, dividends or capital gains for inflation.
--Risk-Based Framework for National Infrastructure, the Economy and Homeland Security
One disconcerting scenario described by others as a possible consequence of a rogue nation (e.g., Iran) obtaining nuclear weapon and long-range missile capability is the possible explosion of the missile above ground, perhaps decimating our national power grid, telecommunications and public media infrastructure, satellite communications, etc. Let's just assume the feasibility of this vulnerability. We need to discuss any viable methods of compartmentalizing risks to the power grid, power redundancy within compartments, redundancies in satellite functionality and/or improved protection of satellites, responses to farmland contamination, etc. We need to control for vulnerability single or regional single points of failure. For instance, if something happened to the New York Stock Exchange, could we open the markets almost instantaneously, say, in Topeka, Kansas? If a catastrophic event occurred in Washington with the Congress, President, and Supreme Court in session, how would our country function?
Another example is our current dependency on Gulf of Mexico refineries, particularly notable in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, by severe gasoline shortages in the Atlanta area due to a dearth of refineries in the Southeast. Hostile forces or catastrophic weather conditions, for instance, could block access to Gulf refineries, and we need contingency plans.
We have increased awareness of border protection issues via last year's immigration debate, but we still don't effective tracking of undocumented workers.
--Strong National Defense
I'm concerned that we are being spread too thin, with multiple threats, including nuclear-armed Russia and China, each with significant financial resources and in the process of producing next-generation military systems, capable of exploiting soft spots in missile defense systems, satellite-cripping technologies, stealth aircraft, improving naval capabilities, attacks on key infrastructure, sea lanes , foreign hacker attacks on military/intelligence information systems, etc. McCain has basically fought most of the campaign framed on Barack Obama's zero-sum game between Iraq and Afghanistan deployments; to a certain extent, I think McCain has gotten an automatic pass as military chief, primarily since Obama is unqualified to be Commander in Chief. I still believe that McCain should swear off any future nation-building in the aftermath of Iraq and discuss a first-term goal of winding down of active involvement in the Middle East. I am more concerned about foreign entanglements particularly with former Soviet satellites, including the recent Georgia crisis and missile bases in Poland. We now see the Russians cozying up with Hugo Chavez and Venezuela, a potentially destabilizing event in South America. I would like to see McCain doing more Eisenhower-style jawboning of the military-industrial compex.
--Resource/Energy/Supplier Independence
Conservation groups, a key Democratic constituency, have erected legal barriers to domestic energy exploration and production (ANWR, oil shale, offshore) and buildout of nuclear power plants. Democrats continue to argue that the US has only 3% of energy reserves and any oil/gas production is a decade away. However, improvements in exploration technology have significantly raised estimates, oil drillers dispute time to market, in some cases, saying we could see production within 6 to 18 months depending on proximity to known sources. The key issue of oil spikes is not so much the amount of oil we import as the degree of slack between global supply and demand. We don't expect that oil demand from the rapidly growing Asian economy to decline over the coming decade, so it would be prudent to expedite exploration now for longer-term energy requirements.
We also need to address other economic security vulnerabilities, e.g., concentrated holders of dollars and undue dependence on unfriendly countries for key commodities or other goods and services.
--Side Effects from Liberal Interference with the Private Sector
Liberal attempts to influence market behavior can have unintended consequences. For example, many environmentalists have pushed biomass alternative as an alternative or supplement to gasoline in support of energy independence. Relevant side effects from the relevant production of corn ethanol: the increased nitrogen-based runoffs relevant to the application of fertilizer to corn production ultimately into the Gulf of Mexico, aggravating the hypoxia (dead zone) effect affecting seafood; inefficient market mechanisms, including tax dollars to subsidize corn production while maintaining high tariffs on Brazilian-produced ethanol; distortions to crop rotation policies affecting soil fertility; increased food inflation as the use of corn for food competes with its use as fuel.
As a matter of fact, corn ethanol has a relatively low energy yield (roughly 25 percent). Moreover, there have been logistics issues associated with the use of ethanol: it's corrosive using existing pipelines, existing cars aren't able to use higher-percentage mixtures like E85 without extra-cost, non-default flex-fuel technology, which is standard in Brazil, and there is a lack of critical mass flex-fuel customers for many service station owners to convert existing tanks/pumps.
In the existing campaign, Obama has questioned McCain's support of the "all of the aobve" approach of alternative fuels; this is primarily because McCain does not support Obama's protectionist stands in favor of subsidies for corn ethanol and high tariffs for Brazilian sugar-based ethanol. Starch-based ethanol requires an extra production step to break down starches to sugars; a prospectively higher energy-yield cellulosic ethanol is not yet scalable to production. Sugar-based ethanol is more efficient, with some suggesting tropical maize or earless corn as a potential relevant North American crop.
-- Moral Hazards from Positive Right Policies
There are some suggestions that a welfare safety net may promote dysfunctional behaviors. For example, it may result in fathers abandoning their urban-situated families if they feel that the state provides financial support in their absence. I have an American liberal friend, a college professor, whom will not marry his quadriplegic girlfriend (whom suffered her disabling injuries in a bad car accident) because it would affect the disposition of his assets and her eligibility for ongoing state-provided assistance. The extension of unemployment compensation during an economic downturn, a current Democratic policy demand, may delay efforts of unemployed workers to move to areas with better prospects. The knowledge that social security is going to be available at retirement after minimal eligibility requirements could result in less people actually setting up a retirement nestegg; the idea that the government may pick up the costs for elderly nursing home care could stifle any initiative from a grown child to set aside a room in his home for his aging parent. In short, a positive rights agenda undermines the traditional values of work ethic, self-reliance, thriftiness, initiative, responsibility, charity, and family. My observation to a government teaching men to fish for a living is that the nearest pond will soon be sterile, while the next pond over will remain fully-stocked.
--Nomination of Judges with Judicial Restraint Philosophy
We need to pick judges whom have substantive judicial or commensurate legal experience, respect legal tradition (precedence and stare decisis), recognize the separation of powers and in particular the authority of the legislature, consider the context of the law at the time it was enacted, restrict the scope of Constitutional impact from any decision, and guard against the obtrusiveness of one's own personal political opinions in the decision.
A key litmus test decision of note was Roe v Wade, which established a broad legal right for a woman to abort her child. It's somewhat disingenuous for justices to assert the question of abortion was unknown from the start of the republic or that the practice had not been governed by the states through the time of the decision. The decision not only introduced a broad, sweeping change in the Constitution and was disruptive of dozens of existing state laws, but it ignited a divisive culture war that exists to this day and has affected the current campaign.
There are a couple of relevant issues: Would overturning Roe v Wade be itself a judicial activist action? What would be the implications of overturning Roe v Wade? From a Burkean conservative standpoint, we would simply be restoring traditional state regulation of the practice, and a number of states had liberalized it.
The stances of the two candidate could not be clearer. John McCain expresses conservative criteria for judicial nominees, while Barack Obama says, "We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old—and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges." This seems to suggest a predisposition to candidates with a hidden positive right agenda, looking to creatively reinterpret legislation or to impose a positive rights point of view in the "living Constitution". Examples of relevant judicial activism shows up in the Massachusetts Supreme Court imposing a new gay marriage right, refusing the substitution of an alternative civil union with partner rights, and the California Supreme Court which also prescribed a gay marriage option, currently being challenged by a state proposition.
A Risk-Based Decision Process for the 2008 Presidential Election Voter
A useful analogy is how an auditor would look at a company's books and supporting documents in attesting to the faithful representation of financial statements. Without going into unnecessary details, there are a number of things I would look at. If an accounting application software product is being used, is the product an industry-standard product? Does it reflect current requirements (e.g., Sarbanes-Oxley functionality)? Is the software updated on a regular basis? Are the staff accountants and IT support personnel skilled at operation and maintenance of the software and the database? Do they follow industry best practices? Are internal controls (separation of duties to control against fraud) being maintained ? What are backup and recovery strategies? How quickly can we link source document to computerized data records? Can we trace the transaction entries through the system and vouch entries backwards to source documents? In essence, the degree to which we can say "yes" or experience minimum delay in responding to these type questions, we have more confidence in a standard sampling audit plan; if, on the other hand, we see an operation being run seat of the pants, high turnover, people assuming multiple roles involving a potential conflict of interest, source documents aren't filed on a timely basis, etc., we will need to widen the scope of the audit plan.
When voters look to hire a new President, we are looking obviously to duties outlined under Article II of the Institution: He or she is head of the Executive Branch, overseeing approved secretaries of the Cabinet, responsible for key government departments and agencies. He or she has approval or veto privileges over passed legislation, nominates federal judges for Senate approval, conducts foreign policy and negotiates treaties (subject to Congressional approval), has a pardon privilege, and is the Commander in Chief. In addition, he or she has certain responsibilities to report to the Congress and the American public, annually in the form of the State of the Union Address, where he or she reports on domestic, national defense and foreign foreign matters and establishes relevance policy priorities.
I would argue that the top criterion is leadership. Presidential leadership includes being proactive, taking the initiative, showing flexibility and leading by example; being decisive, making the tough decisions, and accepting responsibility; talking straight with the American people, focusing on results, and keeping the people informed.
Ideal voter criteria also include: general administrative experience, particularly in the public sector; exposure to, distinctive competencies and accomplishments in federal government; and a breadth of knowledge and experience with and a set of priorities for:
- economics matters (monetary flow and policy, domestic economic indicators, commerce, labor, agriculture, treasury, consumer data and trends, federal revenues and expenditures)
- foreign policy (diplomacy, alliances, trade)
- national defense and homeland security (wars, alliances, threats, trends and challenges, manpower staffing and hardware, weapons systems, border and coast security, foreign workers and visitors)
- federal domestic infrastructure, resources and operations (transportation, interior, energy, justice, housing and urban development, health and human services, education, veterans affairs)
Relevant Consderations in the 2008 Presidential Election?
--Checks and Balances
One of the curious things about the campaign is that John McCain has not, to date, stressed the inherent issues involved in leaving a Democrat President (not to mention a weak, inexperienced President) in charge of the Democratic-controlled Congress. We already know the historical pattern of Democratic Congress overspending; the only balanced budgets in recent memory were under a Republican Speaker of the House. I honestly don't see Barack Obama vetoing a Christmas tree bill focusing on one of his positive right initiatives. During the campaign, John McCain has made passing reference to being called Sheriff of the Senate because of his laser-beam focus on earmark abuse. I'm surprised that he hasn't driven the metaphor further, talking about needing a Sheriff in the White House, to keep the budget deficit, already at a high against GNP, from exploding out of control from a freespending Congress: How can the voters trust someone to hold the line on spending when he himself has requested nearly $1B in earmarks in his short career and has largely voted in lockstep with his Democratic colleagues in the Senate? How do we trust judicial nominees from a President whom considers cultural liberal sympathies the primary criterion, not judicial qualifications and respect for precedent, and whom voted against two well-qualified jurists (Roberts and Alito) to the Supreme Court?
--Bipartisan Accomplishments vs. Rhetoric
John McCain has forged working relationships with several prominent Democrats (Lieberman, Feingold, Kennedy) on issues like climate change, Senate ethics and lobbyist reform, campaign reform, and immigration. His support for stem cell research derives from his political mentor from across the aisle, former Democratic Presidential candidate Rep. Mo Udall, whom died suffering from Parkinson's disease.
Even more notably, during Democratic attempts to abuse the Senate filibuster privilege to stonewall floor votes on judicial nominees (and Obama was supportive of the attempt to filibuster Judge Alito, based strictly on partisan grounds), the Republican leadership seriously considered modifying Senate rules to strike filibuster privileges for judges; McCain led the bipartisan Gang of 14, which guaranteed some delayed floor votes would be taken while protecting Senate tradition. Barack Obama's post-partisan rhetoric is illusory; in fact, as I pointed out in a prior post, on issues where President Bush took a position, Obama has voted with the majority of his Democratic colleagues 96% of the time. During the recent bailout crisis, Obama during the White House meeting attempted to steamroll over House Republican objections to a Senate package, despite Speaker Pelosi's insistence she needed 100 GOP votes.
We also have two other relevant examples: McCain had welcomed him to a bipartisan group on Senate ethics reform. Obama quickly dropped out, sending out a press release (vs. communicating with McCain) saying he backed the Democratic partisan bill (the Dems were hoping to use the Abramoff scandal as an election issue). Then there was the 2007 Immigration Bill where Obama won two minor concessions in the bipartisan venture, but then authored and/or voted for poison-pill amendments striking concessions made to Republicans: merit-based criteria for immigration, and a quota for aboveboard nonimmigrant workers, opposed by unions. (One of the concessions Obama won dealt with letting a foreign worker remain in the country while he appeals an unfavorable judgment.)
--Qualifications, Achievements and Experience
McCain served over 20 years in the US Navy and as the air squadron commander in Jacksonville, he hit his goal of getting 100% of aircraft into operation, starting with about a third in maintenance, achieved the first squadron award at the facility, and set a flight safety record. In his 26 years in the House and Senate, McCain has considerable expertise in national defense and foreign policy matters and hit shown prescient judgment in balking at two Republican Presidents, Reagan in his decision to send Marine peacekeepers to Beirut and Bush in terms of manpower staffing levels after the 2003 liberation of Iraq. McCain stood steadfast in favor of the surge, despite the occupation's political unpopularity and his collapsing Presidential campaign.
John McCain has a track record of literally hundreds of votes, with a lifetime conservative record of over 80%. He has a rare reputation of no-spin straight talk and candor; he accepts responsibilities for his votes and his mistakes, including the failure of his first marriage and his recent apology for initially resisting recognition of Martin Luther King day, even though McCain is unlikely to score better than 5% of the African-American vote against the half-Kenyan American Barack Obama. We already know how John McCain put principle in front of his own interests when he refused early release as a prisoner of war (this was a propaganda ploy by the North Vietnamese because McCain's father was a known high-profile admiral), insisting others ahead of him be released first.
Personally I think the principle of country first was honored (unnoticed) during the recent bailout battles in Congress. After discovering issues with the bailout legislation (in particular, House Republican opposition), McCain suspended his campaign and rushed back to Washington. Senate Majority Harry Reid, sniffing political motives at heart, struck back, accusing McCain of trying to take credit for the Senate tentative compromise. McCain proved to be right when the White House meeting broke up in discord. While negotiation was ongoing, McCain agreed to head for that Friday's first Presidential debate in Mississippi (Obama had refused to reschedule the debate and basically implied McCain couldn't walk and chew gum). Then the Dems sharpened their partisan attack, noting no agreement and that McCain seemed "erratic".
When Speaker Pelosi went on the attack against Bush and the Republicans just before the following Monday's vote, I felt McCain missed an extraordinary attempt to capitalize on the situation politically. The bailout package was hugely unpopular. The Democrats as the governing party and in particular Barack Obama were on the hook. This would have been an ideal opportunity for McCain to say the bill was too much of a sellout to Big Business and an abandonment of conservative principles, painting the bill as a compromise between Bush and the Dems. It provided him with an historic opportunity to put Obama away: take away the Bush "third term" argument, take on the hugely unpopular Democratic leadership in Congress, and put Obama in a deep hole. If McCain had withdrawn support at the time of the Pelosi speech, the bill would have gone down to defeat with no Republican support, and the Democrats and Bush would have had no choice but to negotiate directly with McCain. With a revised bill, McCain would have been able to claim credit for making the bill better than the one Bush and Obama wanted to shove down the taxpayers' throats. I do believe that McCain does deserves credit for making a better bill, but the conventional wisdom has been that McCain, behind in the race, was forced to blink, because he couldn't afford to look like he was conceding a debate based on foreign policy, his strong suit, while coming up empty to Mississippi, make McCain look politically desperate.
McCain probably should have handled things differently, even if he didn't want to politically exploit the issue, by setting expectations correctly and getting a necessary delay for the debate; I do condemn the debate commission for refusing to agree to a reschedule and McCain cover given the extraordinary circumstances. To suspend one's campaign on Wednesday afternoon and be ready for an early evening Friday night debate really set McCain up for failure. That the Democrats would use the opportunity to politically attack McCain's noble intentions doesn't really surprise me; I'm a little surprised that a 26-year politician would put himself in that position.
Obama's record is manifestly inadequate for the Presidency. He speaks of his community organizer background, but by his very own admission, his efforts did not really transform a high-unemployment area following closure of steel mills. He is a product of the notorious Chicago political machine; for all talk of reform and post-partisan politics, he seems imprudent in terms of his associations with convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko, anti-American Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and former domestic terrorist William Ayers. He seems to think simply making politically expedient disclaimers that disown controversial things they have said or done should be enough. I seriously doubt these things were isolated events that didn't manifest themselves in other areas of his relationships with them, and I don't think these individuals are anomalies in his professional relationships. His past professional relationship with ACORN, which has been implicated in voter fraud across several states (Missouri, Washington, New Mexico, Florida, Colorado, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia, to name a few), is questionable, as is the fact that the Obama campaign has paid a fee for their involvement during the current campaign.
Obama's state senator efforts included a handful of conventional rights causes, including an earned income credit and racial profiling, along with certain nurse staffing regulations and a legislator gift tax. I've looked at his US Senate contributions in an earlier post, a reporting requirement attached to a Bush Administrative initiative relevant to interdiction of materials relevant to nuclear weapons. He also had a role in making Congressional expenditures accessible via the Internet and in Senate ethics reform.
However, it's difficult to make a case, even in his minor focus on political reform and budget transparency, given the fact he submitted almost 1$B in earmarks and is rated low by taxpayer watchdogs like Citizens Against Government Waste. Not only that but he reneged on an earlier campaign reform pledge to participate in the equally funded national campaign fund because he discovered he could gain a competitive edge in the campaign because of his prodigious fundraising, outspending McCain by up to 8-to-1 in key swing states.
Obama is his fourth year in the Senate, about half the time he has been running for President. He has no credible administrative or business experience. I am unaware of any expertise in economic policy or job creation. As a prospective Commander in Chief, he has no relevant military or defense policy experience, was unwilling to vote for defense funding not tied to an unconditional withdrawal, and despite running against the Iraq War and occupation, has taken only one trip to Iraq where apparently he attempted to talk Iraqi government officials into holding off on a new American troop agreement until after the election. He has accused our troops in Afghanistan of atrocities, and he telegraphed unauthorized military actions in Pakistan, which earned a rebuke from assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, which I believe castes doubts on his claims for regaining respect in international relations.
--Comparative Response
John McCain has proven prescient in a number of areas where we can see a direct comparison with Barack Obama: his early recognition of an inadequate footprint in Iraq after its liberation (since 2003) and his politically courageous support of the surge in conjunction with General Petraeus' anti-insurgency tactics; his 2005 support for regulatory reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, warning of a potential financial crisis if action was not taken; his more rapid diagnosis and response to the recent Russian invasion in Georgia; his recognition that the initial Senate agreement in response to the federal bailout effort lacked necessary support with House Republicans and suspended his campaign to address these issues in person, while Obama decided his greater priority was to maintain his campaign schedule and limited his involvement to phone calls until President Bush asked him to attend a bipartisan White House meeting on the bailout.
There's another subtle way you can compare the candidates. Obama is 47 years old, has written 2 autobiographies and has a lucrative new book contract. McCain's book royalties since 1998 (about $1,800,000) have gone to charity; he has focused recent volumes on topics like courage, hard decisions, and character. This alone tells me more about the differences in their values and priorities and whom better focuses on the qualities I seek for the Presidency.
--Character Issues: Obama's Obstinacy and Rewriting History
Barack Obama has shown a certain degree of obstinacy in a number of important respects; for example, he consistently refused to acknowledge the success of the Petraeus anti-insurgent surge strategy he had voted against, for months after it had sharply reduced American and local civilian casualties, shifting attention to unresolved Iraqi domestical political disputes. In a similar manner, after tapes of Rev. Wright's 2001 post-9/11 anti-American rant emerged , along with crackpot allegations of government genocide against blacks, Obama paid lip service to rejecting the objectionable messages but insisted he could no more abandon Rev. Wright than his own white grandmother, whom he insisted was comparably flawed.
Obama has intentionally mischaracterized John McCain's stands, not to mention his own statements. For example, in the famous Democratic Primary Youtube debate, Obama was specifically asked whether he, AS PRESIDENT, without preconditions, would sit down and talk with leaders of rogue nations, such as Admadinejad of Iran, Chavez of Venezuela, and Castro of Cuba. He said he would. Ever since then he has been running away from that statement, claiming he was referring to diplomatic contacts at lower levels, which no one, including Bush and McCain, ever disputed. If Obama wants to act with integrity, he needs to admit, in front of everyone in the US, that he was WRONG in what he said at that Youtube debate. He has not done that and insists that Hillary Clinton, John McCain and others are misrepresenting what is a matter of public record and beyond dispute. I think it's a troubling lack of personal integrity; if he lies about what he said on the record, what's to hold him accountable over things he says or does beyond the camera? Remember, Bill Clinton denied any improper relationship with Monica Lewinsky until the infamous blue dress with Bill Clinton's DNA on it showed up.
There are other anecdotes that bear on integrity issues. First, there was the time that Obama suggested that he was conceived in the aftermath of the 1965 Selma march, when in fact he was born in 1961. Second, there was the well-documented fact that Obama, reacting to criticisms of his vacuous kumbaya rallies, essentially stole lines, without proper credit, from 2006 Massachusetts Democrat gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick's "Just Words" speech. Third, Obama in his book Dreams From My Father talks about being powerfully affected by a Life magazine story about a black man whom attempted to use bleach in an attempt to lighten his skin, complete with pictures--a story that never appeared in Life or any other magazine researched to date. (Apparently Obama was so influenced by the article he never kept a copy of it...) Fourth, Obama talked in a black Selma church about all those Big Oil lobbyists in Washington writing energy bills to their benefit and against ordinary people; there's just one minor problem with that: McCain voted against the 2005 Bush Energy Bill while Obama's Senate office broadcast the fact that there were goodies for Illinois (ethanol subsidies) in the bill Obama voted for.
Finally, there's the intentional mischaracterization of McCain's campaign as a Bush third-term. Vice President Dick Cheney is not running--McCain is. McCain was George W. Bush's chief competition in the 2000 campaign. I've already written a separate post on this issue, but McCain has differed with Bush on a number of on-the-record issues: the 2001/2003 tax cuts, environmental policy, Medicare drug coverage, the 2005 Energy bill, Iraq conflict manpower staffing, termination of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, torture policy, overspending, embryonic stem cell research, and the original Paulson bailout plan (i.e., without oversight).
--Character Issue: Misrepresentation of McCain's Positions
Obama's campaign is also engaging in sheer demagoguery in terms of intentionally attacking McCain's positions. I present some of the flagrant examples below: proposed business tax reduction from 35 to 25%, misrepresenting McCain's health care tax reform as being paid for by taxing employee health benefits, maligning McCain's social security reform as "gambling", deliberate lying about McCain's position in support of embryonic stem cell research and distortions about McCain's position on alternative energy.
The business tax reform is being representing as a windfall for energy companies. Apparently the Obamanomicians believe that oil sector business earnings are less equal than other sector business earnings. But the hidden fact Obamanomicians don't tell Americans is that American oil sector business taxes are higher than other nations' oil sector business taxes; they also don't remind Americans that a lot of people on fixed-income, whom depend on dividend income, are invested in energy companies, and lower taxes means higher dividends. But the real reason for business tax reductions is to offline a competitive advantage by other companies using cut-rate taxes to attract foreign capital and investment. Ironically, Obamanomicians have been arguing about giving tax subsidies to companies whom invest in America and taking them away from companies whom take advantage of lower business taxes elsewhere.
The health care issue. Here's the context: During WWII, wage and price controls were in effect, and employers tried to work away around them, which led to pretax health benefits. In essence, the federal government is already giving you a subsidy for health insurance relevant to your tax bracket and the value of your health care premium. Suppose you are in a 33% tax bracket, and you are paying $150 in a health care premium through payroll deductions. You would be paying $50 more in tax if you were paying in post-tax dollars. So effectively you're really only paying $100 in health care premium. However, everybody OUTSIDE the employer tax advantaged health care system pays in AFTER-TAX dollars. They aren't getting the same $50 a pay period you are in tax benefits. This is basically a tax fairness issue: let's take the health care stuff out of employer pretax and simply give everyone an equal crack at a tax subsidy. John McCain's tax credit will, for most workers, pay you at least what your current pretax subsidy is giving you. How do you "lose"? Say for instance McCain limits you to $50 for each pay period and your premium is $210. This means your current tax subsidy is $70, which means you end up paying $20 more in tax. But more importantly, someone paying the same $210 for health care outside the employer pretax system currently gets NO dollars and will get that same $50 you're getting. McCain has priced his tax credit so that typical family should do as well, if not better, than they're doing under the status quo.
There are two other primary issues to note: first, McCain wants to open up the health care insurance market so companies can offer policies across state lines; open competition should promote economies of scale and lower costs; second, Obama is talking about tax penalties to companies not offering health insurance, which is the equivalent of raising taxes, a job killer; also, Obama is guaranteeing buying into a federal system. The second alternative may suffer the problem of adverse selection, with high health-risk families flooding the federal system, paying less in premiums than benefits received. Inevitably, the government, stuck with huge losses, will argue it's taking all the risk and argue they need the remaining policyholders outside the system to balance their risks. In other words, it's a predictable backdoor approach leading to nationalized health care. McCain does deal with the problem of poor health risks/preexisting conditions by suggesting somethng like assigned risk pools in states.
On social security reform, Obama is talking about essentially turning a self-financing system into a welfare system which effectively changes the highest tax bracket, on top of Clinton's 39.6%, and redirecting that income to the social security reserve. This is, at its heart, a job-killing income redistribution system which doesn't address the core problems of "pay as you go" coupled with a reserve in low-earning T-bills and benefit increases based on a different, higher criterion than the cost of living. McCain's plan is somewhat similar to Bush's (although McCain indicated in the second Presidential debate that his plan is negotiable) in that he is open to partial privitization of an individual's contribution. The idea is to allow the individual to alternately seek higher returns of the stock market through less risky mutual funds. The big difference is more of a cash flow issue that should wash out in the long run: since current worker contributions are used directly to fund beneficiaries (because they aren't paid from a real asset base), any investments in real assets now requires borrowing money in order to make up for any shortage to beneficiaries and the reserve. However, in the long run, the fixed portion of the social security payout will shrink for the participating worker in a commensurate manner.
On embryonic stem cell research, we have the following Obama ad script:
Jody: My name is Jody Montgomery and my daughter Maddy was diagnosed with Type I Juvenile Diabetes at age 3. Six times a day, I take her blood. Six times a day, I pray for a cure. Researchers are working hard to do just that. Our best hope is stem cell research, and that’s why we support Barack Obama.
ANNOUNCER: Stem cell research could unlock cures for diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer’s, too. But John McCain has stood in the way ... he's opposed stem cell research. Picked a running mate who's against it ... And he’s running on a platform even more extreme than George Bush's on this vital research. John McCain doesn’t understand that medical research benefiting millions shouldn’t be held hostage by the political views of a few.
Jody: For Maddy and millions of others, stem cell research can unlock cures. Barack Obama understands that. But John McCain just doesn’t.
There are a couple of elements of this ad not involving John McCain which are plausible, but the ad is knowingly false about John McCain and the Republican ticket's stand (in fact, the campaign released an ad supportive of the same). From the 7/15/01 edition of NBC Meet the Press, John McCain explained he had switched his position to supporting embryonic stem cell research (and has consistently voted for it since):
I've looked at the issue more carefully. I have talked with numerous scientific experts. I believe that under stringent safeguards and under the most rigorous kinds of procedures, that this can help in finding the cure for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other serious diseases. I had supported, in the past, fetal tissue research, and this is an earlier stage, as you know, of the process. So, I think it's an issue that I was educated on.Finally, the Obama campaign distorts McCain's position on alternative fuels. In fact, he was supportive of guidelines allowing up to a certain current car engine compatible percentage of ethanol in gasoline. McCain has opposed subsidies for ethanol and tariffs against Brazilian sugar-based ethanol. The Obama position is anti-competitive and essentially raises the prices people pay for alternative fuels, while at the same time fueling food inflation because food now competes with fuel for corn supply, an implicit regressive tax on lower and middle-income people. Moreover, current fuel requirements vastly outstrip the upper bound of feasible corn crops.
-- Character Issue: Political Expediency: Flip-Flops
There are also some questions of political expediency in flip-flopping. Some positions are reversed for changed circumstances or past mistakes. For example, John McCain had initially voted against the 2001/2003 Bush tax cuts for a variety of reasons: the distribution of the 2001 tax cuts; the magnitude of the 2003 tax cuts, considering the need to pay for Iraq war/occupation expenses; the temporary nature of the tax cuts. In 2006 McCain voted to make the Bush tax cuts, due to expire in 2010, permanent, noting the increase in federal revenue following the tax cuts, concerned about the implications of a tax hike and noting the difference between a temporary and permanent tax cut. The Democrats accused him of doing it for purposes of political ambition, i.e., 2008. This doesn't appear to be legitimate criticism because McCain never supported the Clinton 1993 tax hike, and without voting to make the Bush cuts permanent, they would revert to Clinton tax brackets, and he did vote for more limited or different distributions of tax cuts in 2001/2003. So whereas it is true that McCain would have preferred the status quo being somewhat different, effectively a vote against making the Bush tax cuts permanent would have been de facto second vote for the Clinton tax hike, and one could argue that he was flip-flopping on his 1993 vote.
In fact, the media conservatives never forgave McCain for his 2001/2003 votes, and McCain has gained little, if any political benefit for backing the Bush cuts, winning the nomination despite and with active opposition by the media conservatives.
McCain also made changes in his positions regarding embryonic stem cell research in 2001 as noted above. He also notably flipped on offshore drilling during the current campaign--but that was based on clear gamechanger, namely $150/barrel of oil and gasoline prices exceeding $4 an hour. We are currently consuming about 20M barrels a day, about 60% of which we're importing. The good news is we've slowed the rate of oil we are consuming; the bad news is that demand in rapidly growing Asian and other economies is increasing and basically pushing the available supply of oil. So, where Obama and other Democrats are correct in the sense we would be hard pressed to meeting a domestic production rate of 20M barrels a day, at least in the short term and we must conserve, the problem is that it is very difficult to achieve even single-digit percentage changes in conservation. Even if we wanted every vehicle in the country to run with hybrid technology, auto makers can't deliver; we don't have widespread alternate fuel retail outlets. In the meanwhile, Democrats have engaged in analysis paralysis, exaggerating the length of time to market (as if the demand isn't going to be an issue up to 10 years from now!) blocking access to increasingly environmental-friendly offshore technology, using rhetoric like Veep candidate Joe Biden characterizing it as "raping" the Outer Continental Shelf.
John McCain understands that there's a tradeoff between economic reality and environmental ideals and accordingly has changed his position. It wasn't a political gambit to steal away the pro-oil vote from Obama, whom is on the record for also having opposed offshore drilling and McCain's aggressive plans for creating new nuclear power plants (from a speech on June 24):
It doesn't make sense for America. In fact, it makes about as much sense as his proposal to build 45 new nuclear reactors without a plan to store the waste some place other than right here at Yucca Mountain.Now Obama is like Kerry in that he has a lot of nuanced positions. For example, he will consider favorable treatment for small business capital gains--but there are so many restrictions and hoops to jump through, from an investor standpoint, it has nominal value. The same thing with saying, like some in the Congress were recently, that we'll open things up if states agree, if drilling is at least 100 miles offshore, etc. Or on nuclear power: Let's take France, which depends on nuclear power plant power. Obama has decided that we don't move forward on constructing nuclear power plants until we jump through his criteria for nuclear waste disposal--which is nothing short of obstructionism and makes his openness nuclear power essentially nominal. In other words, he will say that he is open to drilling and new nuclear power plants, but the barriers to market are so high that the positions are vacuous, little more than lip service, which allows him to play an issue both ways. McCain's positions are unambiguous, e.g., 45 new nuclear power plants. Obama's positions are usually so nuanced to the point of being dishonest with the American people.
-- An Abridged List of Obama Politically Motivated Flip-Flops
- public financing of the general election: Obama and McCain both committed themselves to equal public financing, but Obama later backed out after realizing his fundraising ability constituted a competitive advantage over McCain
- refused townhall debates with John McCain although before the nomination was clinched, he promised to debate McCain "any time, any place"
- has criticized Bush Administration energy policy during the campaign, alhough voted for the Bush-Cheney Energy Bill in 2005
- reversed himself on refusing to use oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve except for emergency purposes, in favor of Pelosi's proposal to drive down prices
- reversed himself from a ban on oil drilling (after McCain)
- agreed to nuclear power plants under conditions in Sept. 2007 during MSNBC debate, said he wasn't a proponent of nuclear power at a townhall in Dec. 2007, then flipped back recently
- has suggested, given current economic problems, he might delay the long-hyped increase to the upper 5% of taxpayers (making at least $250K), which seems to be a tacit admission that raising taxes at upper levels of income has implications for economic health
- has vacillated being open to mandates of individual health insurance (as Clinton advocated) or allowing exemptions for people whom can't afford premiums
- recently touted the success of welfare reform, although he opposed it while an Illinois state senator
- originally threatened filibustering retroactive telecomm immunity for terrorist surveillance support to supporting compromise FISA legislation
- agreed with Supreme Court decision (after the primary campaign) calling DC gun ban unconstitutional, although in fact he support the gun ban before the decision
- opposed June Supreme Court decision outlawing the death penalty for child rapists, although as a candidate for the Illinois state senate, he opposed the death penalty unconditionally
- gave conflicting explanations for his opposing on multiple occasions the Illinois born alive act requiring medical care for babies surviving abortion
- suggests that mental distress is not an adequate reason for late term abortions although he has resisted any restrictions on abortion
- opposes California proposal banning gay marriage, although he claims he believes marriage is between a man and a woman
- Iraq withdrawal: originally withdrawal within at most 16 months; in July, suggested that pace of withdrawal may be more flexible based on troop safety and overall stability feedback
- reversed himself from the Youtube debate response agreeing to meet with leaders of rogue nations without preconditions
- backed off primary season anti-NAFTA rhetoric when confronted with non-partisan studies showing positive benefits
- paid lip service to an undivided Jerusalem (a pro-Israeli position), then reversed himself towards negotiation of final status
- reversed himself from his 2004 stand in favor of ending the embargo with Cuba
- changed his response to the Russan invasion of Georgia
Conclusion
Less than a month from now, the American people will be choosing a new President. The Dow today just established a multi-year low, down about a third over the past year, with GM wobbling under a correction revisiting a stock price not seen since 1950. There are rumors about the government taking stakes in US banks, and foreign markets are seeing steeper corrections. I saw one reported suggesting economists seeing at minimum a 3-quarter contraction.
As I write, we've seen Barack Obama, a 4-year US Senator from Illinois, manage approximately a 15-point swing in the polls from the post-GOP convention surge month ago temporarily putting McCain in the lead, particularly with the base's embrace of his Veep selection, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. This is not necessarily fatal to McCain; Bush made up a comparable difference in the 2000 election against Gore, and Ford almost caught Carter from behind in 1976. Races tend to tighten up in the closing weeks of a campaign, and I think McCain at about 42% is close to a core bottom. All it takes is about a swing of 5 people out of a 100, or just the people whom were with McCain a month ago to return.
There tends to be a drift towards Democrats during economic hard times. In a sense that mystifies me: What do Democrats know about creating jobs? They increase regulations and raise taxes, which raise barriers to entry, reduce return, handicap growth and investment, and discourage hiring. Deficit spending on make-work public projects? Most likely I believe it's a belief in a social safety net, although the tools that Democrats have to use are fairly limited, e.g., extend unemployment benefits, boost entitlement payments, etc.
Still, we are dealing with a man whose work experience is limited to a couple of years of community organizing, a few years teaching and practicing law, and a dozen years of being a state and US Senator, with, at best, modest legislative accomplishments which can't even be articulated by most people supporting him. We don't have a long history of votes, haven't viewed him react under domestic and foreign crises.
Well, in a way we have: in the week after Bush proposed a huge bailout plan to address a credit liquidity crisis, Obama remained curiously detached, believing that the biggest crisis since he was elected Senator was adequately being addressed by Paulson, Reid, Pelosi, Dunn, and Frank, and his time was better served campaigning against McCain, occasionally calling principals for updates. To some people, including maybe some of the ones whom have shifted to Obama over the last couple of weeks, Obama appears calm, cool, collected, articulate under pressure, maybe even "Presidential". Obama has been fairly successful at trying to portray McCain as politically desperate, "erratic", and has opened baited him, accusing him of not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time and taunting McCain's request to delay the Presidential debate as an excuse to duck him (when, in fact, McCain was on the record of wanting a dozen joint townhall debates, in addition to more than 3 Presidential debates). It is rather remarkable that the American people would actually tolerate middle-school schoolyard behavior from the Democratic nominee for President. To me, Obama's behavior comes across more as manipulative and/or blissfully ignorant of just how serious this financial tsunami is.
I am concerned about the McCain campaign. Part of the drop in support he's seen is related to unforced errors, as they say in tennis. The selection of Sarah Palin was initially seen as a stroke of genius, and the over-the-top reaction by Democrats actually served to McCain's political benefit. But I never thought I would see a politician for national office unable or unwilling to field a basic question of what sources she uses to keep up with current events at the national level or unable to articulate Supreme Court decisions beyond Roe v Wade. It seems as if she was stalling for time by repeating and rephrasing a question until she could formulate a response. Even after the press had debunked her line of saying "thanks, but no thanks for the Bridge to Nowhere", she was repeating the line. When Democrats started demagoguing the issue--even though both Obama and Biden voted against stripping the relevant Alaskan earmark in Congress and had submitted hundreds of millions in earmarks themselves--you would have thought even a modest amount of creativity would have led Sarah Palin addressing rallies saying, "You know what the real Bridge to Nowhere is? Where Obama wants to lead this country..."
The fact is that Sarah Palin has largely taken the experience argument away from McCain, and that was too big a card. It isn't so much her limited national experience: it's the fact that she can't articulate herself beyond talking points on national issues. Obama, in comparison, lacks key experience, but he is able to articulate matters on a general level. The fact is, whereas Palin is still strongly popular with the GOP base and will undoubtedly motivate the base to get the vote out, she has been toxic with moderate and independent voters--which McCain needs to win the election. I wrote a post recommending her replacement with Romney. I stand by that post, but I realize it's not going to happen. A late replacement might be viewed as desperate, and it may demoralize the base.
Second, Bush's Paulson bailout proposal was a massive interventionist proposal that ran against core conservative economic principles. It was hugely unpopular with the general public. Barack Obama was effectively boxed in; first of all, he didn't have a clue how to deal with the crisis; second, the Democratic leadership in Congress (Reid and Pelosi), as the governing party, were required to respond or face, if it is possible, voter retribution at the elections--something that would work to President McCain's benefit. Obama couldn't afford to undermine the Democratic leadership, so the best he could hope for was for McCain to co-opt himself and give Obama political cover. Bush had not consulted with McCain or with the House Republicans; given Obama's tiresome, repetitive attacks of McCain as a Bush third term gave McCain an unprecedented opportunity to publicly rebuke Bush and put the Democrats at the awkward position of having to carry the water with Bush. Not only does McCain essentially throw away the best cards he was holding, but a 26-year politician rushes off to save the day in Washington, seemingly oblivious of the fact that Reid could and would do anything to deprive McCain of a key notch on his bipartisan post. I simply don't understand it; at a point where he should be providing a sharp difference with Obama, they both sounded similar. I understand McCain's instinct to look for bipartisan action, but he isn't just one of 100 senators: he's running for President.
Third, during the second Presidential debate, in which an overriding question was how we were going to afford the bailout, tax cuts, a cumulative federal debt, McCain comes out with a surprise proposal to buy out troubled mortgages, which, if anything, is a liberal intervention.
However, despite McCain's stumbles, I do think the campaign is keying on a relevant them: risk. If we go back to my earlier specified metaphor of auditing a public company, we have a Democratic challenger with a limited record under circumstances of an ongoing unprecedented economic crisis, increasing challenges in Afghanistan, and starting to disengage from a fragile Iraqi democracy. What if, for instance, Al Qaeda decided to unleash a second attack while the global stock markets are still reeling from the financial tsunami? What in Barack Obama's thin resume leads us to believe he is capable of handling both domestic and foreign chaos? Barack Obama wants credit for sending a letter last year talking about subprime mortgages AFTER interest rates had started climbing and the real estate market was already starting to cool off? Where was he on cracking down on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when there were gross accounting issues which first surfaced about 4 years ago? McCain is on the record for predicting a possible financial crisis in 2005. Obama was a US Senator in 2005. If voters want to trust him with the economy, they need to ask whether there was a reason the GSE's PAC and employees contributed to him more over the past 20 years than just one other senator (NOT McCain)? Why would the voters want to leave the economy in hands of someone with ties to part of the problem vs. McCain whom warned about the risks 3 years ago? If Obama was audited by the equivalent of a voter auditor, we would be looking at Obama's thin resume--and expand our voter audit. We would really scrutinize, say, Obama's "innocuous" relationships with Ayers, Rezko, and Wright, his legal and campaign relationships with ACORN, notorious for voter registration fraud. We would be asking WHY a Harvard Law School graduate whom taught Constitutional law suddenly decide, after the nomination was won, that citizens have a second amendment right for handguns, in support of the recent Supreme Court decision, after actually supporting the DC gun ban, which was overturned? Why, after vowing to filibuster retroactive immunity with respect to FISA, did he suddenly relent? Why does he object to a Supreme Court decision ruling out the death penalty for child rape, when in fact he had previously been opposed to the death penalty in concept? Why do we expect Obama to hold the line on spending when he continues to push for his $800B plus in new spending, even after the $700B bailout, promises large federal tax credits to working Americans currently not paying federal income tax, and personally requested almost 900M in federal earmarks, including the same hospital system for which his wife works? Why would we trust foreign policy to a novice US Senator whom has already complicated our relationships with statements he's made with Canada (over NAFTA), Pakistan (over taking unilateral, unapproved military action inside Pakistan), Israel and the Palestinian Authority (over statements on the status of Jerusalem)? Who has dismissed Iran, which has defied international authorities on nuclear inspectors and has armed and funded Mideast terrorists and Iraqi resistance, as a "tiny country"? How do we expect him to transform the US when he couldn't even transform Chicago's bleak neighborhoods? And whom claims a connection with lower-income Americans while getting a sweetheart price and super jumbo mortgage on a $1.6M mansion, and sending his daughters to private schools instead of those public schools he champions with 50% or worse graduation rates? We expect him to prioritize serious issues of the American government when he gets all bent out of shape over being asked over wearing an American flag pin on his lapel, not to mention a Presidential candidate and lawyer whom doesn't understand what the US Flag Code has to say on what to do with one's hand during the playing of the National Anthem?
