Principles and Consequences

Recently Stanley Fish wrote a column on the Supreme Court decision in F.E.C. v. United Citizens . In it he explained very clearly the difference in the arguments of the Court's liberal minority and conservative majority. The conservative majority, Fish explained, made a "principled" argument, while the liberals relied on a "consequentialist" approach. These two approaches are often present in left/right debates in the political arena as well. Health insurance reform provides a clear example of a debate between left and right to which the principled-consequentialist theoretical framework can be applied productively to sort through the complexity, confusion, and intensity of the clashing rhetoric.

The conservative majority's argument in F.E.C. v. United Citizens relied on a theory (i.e. principle) without judicial consideration of actual or potential real world consequences. If corporations are legally considered individuals, then they are endowed with the individual right of "free speech" just like everyone else. The liberals on the court, on the other hand, argued that the practical consequences of treating corporate entities as individuals for the purpose of speech protection would be overwhelmingly negative. Unleashing limitless "independent expenditures" by corporations, argued the liberal Supreme Court minority, would further reduce the ability of ordinary citizens to participate in and/or impact elections, and would threaten the democratic integrity of elections.

Every left/right argument about health insurance reform can be fitted to the "principled/consequentialist" frame. In fact, one of the most frustrating aspects of this very intense and often acrimonious debate is the failure of both sides to make their arguments from a consistent theoretical basis. Instead, both sides shift seamlessly between principled and consequentialist claims creating the sense among less passionate observers of dueling monologues, rather than anything resembling a reasonable dialogue. Passionate advocates on both sides are so focused on the righteousness of their chosen ends that they don't even realize the intellectual inconsistency, irrationality, and even intellectual dishonesty of their intermingled principled and consequentialist claims.

The beauty of the Court's opinion in F.E.C. v. United Citizen was the clarity of the disagreement between the majority and the minority. Each side had crafted a reasonable, intellectually consistent argument for all to see and to judge on the merits. Neither side tried to obscure their approach in order to co opt support from less attentive voters. Politicians and policy activists employ no such philosophical restraint; they take virtually no pains to maintain the intellectual integrity of their arguments. Sadly, politicians who do try to live up to high standards of reason in their rhetoric rarely survive in elective politics for long. The intellectual integrity of the dueling opinions on the High Court is not possible in public policy debate because winning votes and voters is the unavoidable bottom line. Winning is the ONLY thing.

What if we could get the liberals and conservatives in Congress to agree to a structured debate about health insurance reform where theoretical inconsistencies would be highlighted and explored? What if efforts to avoid weak spots in arguments by shifting from principles to practicalities (and vice verse) were called out and disallowed, requiring each side to acknowledge all of the implications of their principled and consequential claims before moving on to greener rhetorical pastures? What if each side were required to make two distinct arguments, principled and practical (if possible) without confusing the two?

I truly cannot say which side would prevail in the court of public opinion if this type of structured, mediated debate were possible, but I can say with some confidence that it would serve to reduce (though obviously not eliminate) the ugliness and irrationality that inevitably accompanies the uncritical and uncompromising contestation of passionately held beliefs.

In the debate over increased government regulation of the health insurance industry Conservatives have a clear principled argument deserving of very serious consideration and even deference. Instead of denying that increased regulation reduces individual freedom from government, we should acknowledge it and then consider whether or not the present issue (i.e.universal health care access) justifies any reduction in our freedom from government, and if so then how much and with what safe guards against regulatory overreaching?

Democrats have a persuasive argument about the negative consequences of an uncompromising adherence to America's creedal principles of limited government and individual freedom. Instead of refusing to consider the practical consequences of literal and unyielding interpretations of these cherished principles for fear of incremental enslavement at the hands of determined ideological insurgents, we should demand clear illustrations of the severity of present conditions and explicit acknowledgements of the potential threats to our freedoms of the proposed reforms.

Incivility and social unrest generated by debates such as these are by-products of a competitive political system that at present produces very few incentives for compromise or even rhetorical moderation. Instead, each side appears to have calculated that the present caricature of a debate between unrealistic dogmatists and unprincipled relativists will play to their electoral advantage in either the short or long run.

As I try, largely in vein, to bring highly emotional folks on both sides back to earth in terms of rhetoric versus reality, I wonder if the present state of our national conversation has past the fail-safe point? Is it possible that the only thing most Americans can see clearly these days is their emotional attachment to political cues and symbols that often have little or no reasonable connection to the political questions at hand? I hope not.

Is the Right right?

The intensity and venom coming from conservative opponents of health insurance reform is so great that we simply must examine the conservative argument to find out how so many folks could be so adamant and resistant to compromise.

The conservative punditocracy and blogosphere has been making the conservative argument for over a year now, but it has only resonated with those predisposed to it. So, what is it? At it's core, opponents of health insurance reform are arguing that any increase in government regulation of the health insurance industry will decrease the individual freedom of Americans. It will decrease the freedom of Americans by imposing conditions on each individuals' decisions regarding health insurance, and it will cost Americans now and in future generations a lot of money that could have been used by individuals for their own purposes. Arguments that it would reduce people's burdens and increase their freedom from the greed and deception of insurance companies or even that it would save money in the long run, get no hearing because they are irrelevant to the principle being defended here.

For ideological conservatives, Freedom from government isn't supposed to be a guarantee of a good deal, or even of fair treatment from other Americans. It's simply the freedom from the government, it's rules, and it's influence. The perils of free competition are beyond the scope of limited government. Neither economic winners or losers should be subjected to government regulation or assistance. Economic winners deserve the fruits of their labors and economic losers deserve the opportunity to aspire to success and to chart their own path thereto. Requiring winners to "help" losers punishes the winners and creates moral hazards for the losers, whose ambition and drive are stunted by un-earned assistance. Civil society, not government, is the appropriate venue for charity and community activism because only there can the incentives of reward and punishment be maintained.

As near as I can tell the entirety of the explanation above satisfies the dictates of logic and is free from "intellectual" inconsistency, primarily because it is a theoretical argument from start to finish. Real life consequences are therefore of necessity beside the point. Frankly, the notion that it takes courage to stand on principle implies a willingness to ignore consequential claims, however compelling, precisely because such claims are not rooted in principle.

Passionate adherence to this view of individual freedom and its implications for health insurance reform represents a strong (if uncompromising) commitment to a principle that every American respects, even if its definition is debatable. The problem with this principled argument is with its proponents, not it's logic. Apocalyptic rhetoric and personal recriminations of those who disagree with this argument distort and discredit it. The hysterical and inarticulate defense of this principled position has the unintended but serious consequence of creating unjust associations between principled arguments and unreasonableness, anger, and even violence. So great was the fear of moral absolutism unleashed on politics that the Framers of the Constitution chose political stability over moral righteousness and side-stepped the greatest moral issue of their time, slavery.

When political leaders and their foot soldiers merely take the righteousness of their cause and its fidelity to our Framers intentions on faith, without clearly articulating their principles and soberly acknowledging the real life implications of those principles, they debase our national institutions and our cherished ideals.

In my opinion, anyone making this principled argument honestly and with unflinching acceptance of its implication in theory and in practice deserves respect and even admiration for playing a crucial role in our national dialogue. It is just such principled stands against reform of any kind that deter over-reaching by zealous reformers and that preserve one of the most American of American values; reasonable suspicion of centralized power, benign or otherwise. If a majority of Americans really sees the health insurance reforms as a step toward excessive government power when the principled and practical consequences are plain, then I cannot quibble with sincere efforts to stop or curb these reforms, even as I argue sincerely FOR them.

From my perspective the only way one side of this historic debate can lose is if the debate ends. The Framers of the Constitution were quite clear about their commitment to a free society and above all about the imperative that such a society can only endure when the competition for power and policy in the public interest is perpetual. Only while Americans, passionate and precise in their cause, can press the their case in the public square with civility and respect, will our cherished freedoms truly be secure.

The Dangers of Profitable Rage

The rhetoric that has dominated the year long effort to stop health care reform has ranged from ridiculous to very frightening. The "Tea Partiers" who yelled obscenities and spit on Members of Congress who support health care reform yesterday, reportedly calling several black Congressmen "niggers," ought to scare every reasonable American. The striking contrast between a legislative debate that is truly moderate over a bill filled with formerly Republican proposals, and the hyperbolic rhetoric of opponents is surreal. The bill is far from the comprehensive reform sought by progressives.

I have never in my lifetime witnesses such a massive collision of ignorance and hatred as I've seen on display by opponents of health care reform. The rhetoric of the Republican leaders in Congress has been virtually indistinguishable from those on the front lines of the lunatic fringe. The attitudes and rhetoric of health care opponents bares a frightening resemblance to that of anti-civil rights protesters of the 1950's, including the lament of having "lost their country" and the militant rallying cry to "take it back."

Every movement has extremists whose rage and rhetoric shame the cause, but usually these folks are rebuked by the mainstream elements of a movement. Sadly, Republican leaders are either afraid of these mobs, or worse, are in league with them. Let's hope that someone in the Republican Party succeeds in ratcheting down the hysteria soon.

Opposing the present approach to health care reform doesn't require rage or hatred or fanaticism. There are perfectly rational reasons to prefer a different approach. Unfortunately, rational political debate about something so complex and significant is hampered by the present political environment. The power of ideological and corporate special interests to manipulate news media outlets and to make direct appeals daily to millions of Americans on the internet, talk radio, and Fox News has had a significant and dangerous impact on our national conversation. Unlike the left wing lunatics that hounded George W. Bush for eight years, the present mob is doing the bidding of some of the wealthiest and most powerful special interests in America, whose money and media reach make their ignorant foot soldiers far more dangerous than the left's.

The fact that right wing fanatics on average have less formal education and more guns should also give us pause. Do Rush and Hannity and Beck really understand the potential dangers of the rage they are making millions by stoking? No one makes millions stoking anti-war or pro-environment rage. Left wing extremists don't get $100,000 to speak at progressive conclaves. There is no mass market for progress rage and paranoia. Put simply, liberal extremist propaganda will never play well in Pioria, which ultimately makes it less dangerous. Right wing propaganda, on the other hand, plays on prejudices and predispositions that are ubiquitous in America and makes it demagogic purveyors and marketers into millionaires, not just folk heroes.

If the President and liberal Democrats are able to win this battle over health care reform the nation will undoubtedly take an important (though small) step forward on policy. On the other hand, the reaction of the right wing's corporate sponsors and media bullies may determine the direction our politics goes.

Small Town Candidates and Big-Time Politics

The popular caricature of a glad-handing, back slapping, puddle-deep, politician is ubiquitous in American politics. The relationship between actual politicians and the voters, however, seems to belie this very popular and intentionally pejorative stereotype. In “real life” it often seems like the politicians who most resemble this picture are also the most effective policy makers. This realization tends to amplify another popular notion, namely that big-time politics and policy making are corrupt, superficial, and not attractive to folks who are willing and able to “roll up their sleeves, work hard, and do the right thing even when it’s unpopular.”

In small town America, where elected officials “do the public’s business” for free and have “real jobs” as well, voters have a tendency to reward the candidates who project this anti-politician, pro-business man/woman image of someone who distains the rubber chicken circuit and the photo-ops, while being able to wade into the complexity of policy making with the same sense of professionalism that made them successful in their careers. They tend to embrace the universally popular rhetoric about getting “politics” out of governance more robustly because they really aren’t professional politicians with a material or career interest in holding public office, and they often assume that small town governance actually can be more about policy than politics.

This situation can produce results both positive and negative for small towns, depending very much on the nature of the relationships between and among townspeople, as well as the social and economic pressures affecting these relationships. In small, homogenous communities the “business” of local government, which includes things like public safety, public education, public infrastructure, etc… tends to be done quite well by the “anti-politicians,” for what I think are some obvious reasons all of which center on the shared values and interests of the members of the community. As communities grow, the values and interests of residents tend to become more diverse, and potentially at least, contradictory. When times are good and towns can afford the costs and benefits of diversity in citizen expectations of local governments, political skill remains less necessary for local elected officials, but when times are not good diverse expectations of local governments can transform the honorable skill sets of the anti-politicians into a serious stumbling block to effective local governance.

It turns out that when there is actual politics (i.e. conflict over public policy) you actually need politicians, not doctors, lawyers, and business people. The more influence that a community’s voters have over public policy making, the more you need real politicians conducting the policy making process. Average voters are only too happy to defer to the “best and brightest” whose wisdom and skills confirm their own beliefs and support their own interests. But when these elected officials with impressive resumes say that you have to sacrifice for the greater good, many voters begin to question why they should trust these folks that they don’t really know that well. This means that the trust of voters has to occupy AT LEAST as much attention from elected officials as do the details of policy making or public administration, especially in towns like Longmeadow with a public meeting form of government and the threat of a voter veto of key budget and policy decisions at the ballot box.

When Communities headed by anti-politicians face REAL POLITICAL CONFLICT, it is very easy to foment distrust of elected leaders. One simply has to expose and exaggerate the flip side of Americans distain for the glad-handing pols; elitism and non-responsive public officials and bureaucrats who don’t know us but think they know what’s best for us. When the “best and brightest,” politics-hating elected officials try to explain the “difficult” decisions required by hard times many voters have no reason to trust them anymore than they would the nameless, faceless corporate bureaucrats whose “tough decisions” have impacted them negatively in the workplace. Getting laid off because the survival of the company is at stake –according to decision makers you don’t know and who don’t know you- probably feels similar to losing public services vital to your family in order to stave off the town’s fiscal demise.

The bottom-line is that whatever one does, there most likely is a “professional” way to do it that has garnered this label for a good reason. Mediating among and between voters with conflicting values and interests requires first and foremost, the skills of popular persuasion, not technical competence. People accustomed to “getting it right” through specialized knowledge, hard technical work, and the achievement of clear goals very often behave like fish out of water when tasked with public policy making, simply because such environments often do not have, aren’t even really supposed to have, concrete, measurable goals or objective standards.

This harsh political realization often comes as a shock to folks who were strongly encouraged to “bring their talents to local government.” They become victims of mixed messaging thinking that; “If I was elected because I know how to do what has to be done, then why should I pander to people who don’t.” This sentiment always reminds me of that great monologue by Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. I occasionally half hope public officials would gaze at complaining voters and say “I DON’T GIVE A DAMN WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE ENTITLED TO! I have neither the time nor the inclination to justify myself to someone who rises and sleeps under the very blanket of freedom which I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would prefer you just said thank you and went on your way.” This sometimes understandable reaction, of course, fails to account for the difference between generalized promises of competence, courage, and the public interest in a campaign and the actual consequences of governance, which inevitably activate some opposition. The devil is in the details, along with the incentives for political opposition.

Longmeadow is a town at a cross road. Its residents need to decide what kind of politics they want. Do they want a renaissance of consensus about the town’s principles and priorities? Do they want to “professionalize” our form of government so that the political skills of our officials would more likely match the political intensity of our politics? These are obviously big questions that can’t be quickly answered or settled in one election cycle. I do, however, want to recommend to Longmeadow voters that they keep these questions in mind during this spring’s election season.

Political Argument versus Political Antagonism

This week, I will be trying to put together a whole lot of research, past writings, and new data for a conference paper/ presentation next month on civic knowledge, civility, and partisanship. My fascination with the intersection of personal opinions, styles of intercommunication, and political partisanship is stoked daily by the constant fixation of 24/7 radio & TV with "politics" programming, as well as the seemingly massive "new" media infrastructure built around political research and/or activism. I have regularly monitored and participated in political debate on the internet, both in my own social networks (like facebook) and in various interactive internet formats. The free three-month subscription to satellite radio that accompanied my recently purchased new car has pushed me even further into this strange world of hyper-politics.

One of the best things about being a political junkie and a professional student of politics is the ability to seek shelter from the dangers of my profession and my passion, without abandoning either. When I'm deeply embedded in scholarly research and trying to understand theoretical models and their potential application it is easy to become de-sensitized to the intangibles of human behavior. When you are ensconced in a dialectic that operates according to the dictates of logic, rules of evidence, and peer review, the real world of every day politics can start to look like dogs and cats living together, so to speak.

Some perspective is gained when you join undergraduates in the classroom to untangle the theories and practices of politics in an effort to justify what really looks absurd to most folks - namely that anyone could possibly study or understand politics "scientifically." At least students accept the premise that our work in the classroom should aspire to be systematic, logical, and sensitive to the probity of evidence. When I venture into the "real world" of politics, however, whether it is in a local public hearing or meeting, or on my facebook page, the assumption of shared intellectual standards seems more than just absent; it seems affirmatively discouraged. Efforts to assert or encourage logical discourse are met with a sort of "cut to the chase" attitude, as if in public discourse everyone is assumed to be a special interest pleader. Too often political debate seems like an intellectual standards-free zone.

Particularly frustrating is the seeming impossibility of sustained public discourse that focuses on ideas and arguments, without being distracted by attacks on the arguers or messengers. While this also occurs in academia, to be sure, since one's credibility can be material to one's claims, in public debate, however, opposition to people often seems to be the heart of the matter. I marvel at the ability of even anonymous posters on the internet to personalize debate, both by claiming personal authority and in attacking the credibility of others. Take a second to digest what I've just written. People whose identities are secret take and dish out umbrage and offense more often than they present reasoned claims or responses. The idea that anonymity improves argument by eliminating the validity of attacking the messenger, an idea exemplified by the quality of argument in the Federalist and Antifederalist Papers, is NOWHERE in these internet "discussions."

At some point I'm going to have to try to chronicle my "double" life in politics but for now I have to make sense of some pretty confusing stuff. I can't simply share my frustrations, as I have done here, because my professional peers require that I adhere to the intellectual standards of the academy. As a veteran of academic conclaves I am prepared to meet these standards, in fact, I look forward to the protection and support they offer. I'm also prepared for the inescapable feeling of frustration regarding the huge gulf between professors and politicos, research and real life. No doubt the world would end were either group put in charge of the other, but from where I sit it looks like the real world of politics could use just a bit more of what the academy has to offer. I'm not referring to the conclusions of academics, by the way, but rather the prevailing temperament, an attitude that distains finality and rewards insight; that encourages stipulation and conversation, not stigma and conversion.

Sadly, from the recent efforts of the Texas School Board to literally re-write the history books to the ubiquitous efforts to politicize both higher education and scientific methodology, it appears that "real world" politics is having much more impact on the academy than the academy is having on "real world" politics.

Extremism and Lazy Thinking

Political extremism may not be a vice “in the defense of liberty,” but in most cases it is both cause and consequence of lazy thinking. Even brilliant ideologues, whose conclusions have been honed by a lifetime of scholarship and experience, often come to a place where the scholarly imperative of regularly questioning assumptions (however long held) is logistically impractical, if not impossible, in routine discourse. In fact, the reification of long held principles is probably inescapable given the limitations of human rationality.

The temptation to convert one’s long held assumptions into universal principles deserving of exemption from periodic reassessment is further reinforced by the fast moving, competitive, and uncritical nature of democratic politics. Imagine trying to fully explain the validity of time-tested assumptions on a TV talk show in less than two minutes, or even a newspaper op-ed in only 800 words. Sound intellectual analysis is EXTREMELY difficult in contemporary public discussions for everyone. Indeed, for those mindful of sound analytical methodology it’s often downright un-nerving. It's no wonder that most academics refuse to participate in competitive politics.

Enter the rest of us; those of us without sufficient years or study to honestly fall victim to this intellectual fatigue. Most of us either opt out of public deliberation or simply adopt an intellectual patron or two, accepting –without periodic reassessment- their conclusions as our own assumptions about life, society, and politics. This orientation to political discussion and debate leaves us frequently unable to sufficiently explain our views.

When reference to our intellectual patrons or the simple assertion of their “principles” fails to move the dialogue forward or resolve dispute, frustration and even anger can set in. Subconscious awareness that we are not the authors of our beliefs and are thus incompetent to fully explain them leads to the personalization of the discussion wherein our focus shifts from our cherished patrons’ “ideals” to the likely deceitfulness of those who would deny their prima facie truth and application. At this point public deliberation becomes oxymoronic.

What should we do? Must we either spend half our lives studying up for political participation and debate or simply let the “experts” fight it out and then choose winners in the voting booth? Shouldn’t there be some way to pursue private lives without surrendering meaningful involvement in the governance of our communities?

I don’t have satisfactory answers for these questions. In my own case, I actually did decide to spend much more than half my life studying the ideas, institutions, and interests at play in politics. This experience leads me to think that concerned citizens can put their trust in those who practice politics as long as they hold the claims of political actors and activists to reasonable standards of proof. I also think concerned citizens should try to be introspective regarding their most strongly held political beliefs.

In my opinion, if you can’t fully explain your beliefs, you should at least exercise some humility when expressing said beliefs in an effort to convince or influence the beliefs of others. The full throated expression of complex conclusions with neither the will nor way to provide the attendant intellectual support is not only a disservice to the present debate, but a tremendously bad example to young people in their formative years who may mistake this demagoguery for valid deliberation.

Earmarks: good process, bad politics?

Are all "earmarks" corrupt? A recent New York Times article describes the House Democrats' plan to end "earmarks" to particular companies (i.e. no bid contracts). The article says that Republicans are calling for the end of "ALL" earmarks. Are they trying to seem more anti-corruption? Are they trying to stop earmarks that liberals are more likely to seek? Or, are they hoping to save some corporate earmarks by threatening non-corporate earmarks? My initial sense is that all three of these motives are afoot among both the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress on this issue.

The problem is that the use of earmarks isn't always a bad thing. They are easy whipping boys, but in fact they are actually an efficient way for Congress to provide more specific direction on the expenditure of funds it appropriates. In theory (and sometimes in practice), earmarks remove bureaucratic discretion and increase democratic responsiveness. They are also important instruments of legislative compromise.

The popular disgust with rewarding legislators with earmarks in exchange for votes is understandable but overwrought. The general public does not have a sufficient understanding of the legislative process or the likely consequences of removing opportunities to bargain for votes.

Not much legislation that passes through Congress benefits -clearly & directly- enough states/congressional districts to gain passage. Many laws now beloved by overwhelming majorities of Americans would not have been passed without the ability of leaders to use things like earmarks to sweeten the pot for members for whom a vote would be difficult.

The Framers of the Constitution may not have wanted the legislative process to work smoothly, but neither did they want it to grind to a halt. While the importance of "earmarks" to legislative compromise is not absolutely clear, neither is the notion that they are merely tools of corruption.

Hand holding or arm wrestling?

President Obama was elected on an inspiring message of hope and change. The content of these wonderful things was left to the eye of the beholder. That’s how it’s done, and Obama did it very well. In his first year in office he has indeed changed things. He has steered a very moderate policy course and tried very hard to exemplify what he calls “post partisanship.” He has tried to live up to a rhetorical claim that everyone makes but no one seriously tries to fulfill, namely putting partisanship aside and trying to solve big problems by consensus. This was both a political and a policy mistake! He thought that the American people really did want bipartisan cooperation and compromised policy responses to serious problems, something Americans only claim when confronted with the false choice of gridlock or unprincipled compromise.

The response of a badly splintered Republican Party has been predictable and even understandable. Held hostage to extremists in the wake of an unpopular administration and a number of significant events that seriously reduced the credibility of mainstream conservative economic and foreign policy ideas, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have had little choice but to circle the wagons and try to weather the storm. Any serious efforts to support mainstream conservative policy ideas were doomed to be attacked by the ascendant populist mob and its highly visible but not highly reasonable spokespeople. Doubling down on failed ideas based on the premise that they would have worked if only those “meddling kids”(Scooby-Doo lingo for liberals) hadn’t screwed everything up was a matter of self defense for mainstream conservatives.

The reality is that our political system is designed to be competitive and adversarial. Americans love competition and “hardball,” political or otherwise. Calling for cooperation and bipartisanship should mean that all sides compete hard, but play by the rules; that all sides play to win, but without delegitimizing the rules of the game, or the game itself. In courts of law plaintiffs’ and defendants’ attorneys cooperate with each other by adhering to the rules of discovery, evidence, etc… No one would ever seriously call for opposing attorneys to compromise their clients’ interests. Why do you suppose all the legal shows on TV focus on competitive trials? Why do you suppose there isn’t a hit show about plea bargaining?

Americans assume that the pursuit of justice requires competition. Our political system ought to be openly viewed the same way. Imagine if a rhetorical attack on the court itself or on judges became a staple in the rhetorical arsenals of trial attorneys. What if lawyers routinely claimed to hate the law and pledged that they were above it? How would that play in Peoria? Yet, that’s exactly what we have in politics; politicians who claim to hate politics and to be willing to rise above it. Shouldn’t politicians who think they are above politics be just as illegitimate? If lawyers shouldn’t “put the law aside,” why should politicians “put politics aside?” The pursuit of the public interest ought to be assumed to require competition no less vigorous or adversarial than that required for justice.

The major political parties represent the interests of two broad coalitions in America and should be expected and even encouraged to do so vigorously and skillfully. The pretense that All Americans agree on anything should be understood as the absurdity that it is. Americans only unite when the stakes are existential or insignificant, and that’s as it should be in a liberal democracy. When politicians lay claim to the will of “the American people” they should be vigorously challenged, even mocked on most occasions. Voters, like jurors, should subject such claims to the evidence and should hold the evidence to reasonable standards of proof. Unlike jurors, however, voters should understand which team best represents their interests in politics and not let rhetoric, lofty or low, distract them from voting those interests.

In politics we need to stop calling for “time outs” and just embrace a more “game on” approach. It’s actually more fun and more productive.

Civility versus Substance?

In a recent Washington Post op-ed UVA professor Garard Alexander asks; Why are liberals so condescending? His complaints about liberal intellectual condescension were not unreasonable. In fact, as a liberal who tries to avoid intellectual incompetence and condescension in public dialogue [ironically efforts to avoid of one sometimes lead to the other], I found myself nodding in agreement with much of Alexander's claims. The problem is that after reading the column one is left with what seems to liberals like a plausible answer to his query - because conservatives are stupid. Sadly, Alexander presents no argument or evidence to the contrary.

Professor Alexander's analysis is not inaccurate, it is incomplete. If liberal dismissal of conservative ideas is unjustified, then condescension is a real problem. Unfortunately, Professor Alexander simply assumes that all condescension is intentional and unfair, implying that reasonable conservative ideas are regularly being suppressed or ignored. While there are no doubt at least some examples of this problem out there, Alexander provides none. Why? Is it because the most visible liberal condescension is directed at unreasonable conservative ideas? Is it because Alexander's purpose is not to make a thorough argument, but to strike a political blow? Without clarification from the professor, we cannot answer these questions REASONABLY.

Because he is describing a real problem, and because intellectuals of all stripes should regularly re-evaluate their efforts to practice what they preach, I think Alexander should have gone further than he did. Just shooting the messengers, who should be the target audience of his argument, leaves open the very real possibility that at least some liberal condescension is justifiable. It is certainly not hard to imagine liberal intellectuals responding superficially and defensively to Alexander's piece by simply rattling off prominent conservative leaders and arguments like Sarah Palin and death panels, or President Bush and the English language(condescension or wit?).

I suggest that the critical energies of academics like Professor Alexander would be much better spent on substantive ideological, policy, process, and institutional concerns. Pretending that the credibility of the messenger is all we need debate looks to me like a significant factor in the oft chronicled "dumbing down" of American public debate.

Longmeadow ain't what it used to be

Longmeadow became an upscale community with an exceptionally high quality of life because of its residents’ shared values, among them shared (participatory) governance and shared interests (economic and otherwise). The notion of “commonwealth” was deeply engrained in the people, institutions, and ethos of this place. The persistence of our participatory form of government (Town Meeting) serves as an institutional reminder of the Tocquevillian notions of citizenship and community that survived largely unchallenged in Longmeadow until at least the early 1980s.

The so-called “me” generation that came to the fore in the 1980s was clearly a significant challenge to the notion that community welfare should precede individual welfare; a notion concisely identified by the great French chronicler of American Democracy as “Self interest, rightly understood.” The worst misfortune to befall our close knit New England town was, however, not merely cultural, or even ideological, it was structural. It was a very permanent and very inflexible change in the rules of self governance, the unintended consequences of which are now being felt acutely in our town.

The passage of “Proposition 2&1/2” in Massachusetts, by the direct democratic mechanism of a state-wide ballot initiative, is one of the most significant sources of Longmeadow’s declining fortunes. Direct democratic procedures emphasize individual rights and the “one man, one vote” principle. They are only supportive of “commonwealth & community” when the community understands itself as sharing a moral, ethical, or values consensus. This kind of consensus mitigates the tendency toward lowest common denominator politics and mob rule that can and does tend to infect direct democratic procedures.

Thirty years ago Longmeadow was a community of families that shared an overarching commitment to the welfare of the community that was most concretely expressed in a commitment to the highest quality of public education in the region. The connection between our schools and our honor; our schools and our values, was the source of Longmeadow’s cherished identity, excellent reputation, and superior quality of life.

The imposition of this divisive anti-community political instrument has done more than any other single thing to reduce the quality of life and community in Longmeadow. The “canary in the mine” in this regard is, of course, the quality of education in Longmeadow schools. A comparison of Longmeadow schools in 1980 with those of 2010 reveals a system that has been gutted of nearly all the programs and opportunities that made our town’s schools the envy of the region.

Did Longmeadow residents gradually lose their commitment to education as the primary linchpin of community? Not exactly. What changed was not our understanding of the importance of education, it was our understanding of citizenship and community that was transformed; a transformation furthered by this radical changing of the rules – prop 2&1/2. The anti-government wave that swept over the country in the 1980s was not different in tone than similar anti-government movements that dot our nation’s history. Indeed, previous such movements were supportive, not destructive, of close knit communities that saw themselves as bulwarks against the storms of individualism and self interest “not” rightly understood.

The difference here was the imposition of an individualistic rule that would encourage residents to consider their membership in the community differently than before; not as family members, but rather as “consumers” of services produced by the “government.” Proposition 2&1/2 was the legal/political equivalent of allowing the kids to vote on the resource allocation decisions of the parents. It produced narrowly self interested fissures in the community that made rational public deliberation and decision making about the town’s long-term interests nearly impossible. It encouraged intra-community rivalries the likes of which were once only seen between communities. The now well understood transition across American society from close extended families to the dominance of closed nuclear families was playing out at the community level and was facilitated and legitimated in our town by legal sanction in the form of Prop 2&1/2. The perceived value of the “village” and its role in the lives of every family in the community has eroded to the point where we now snicker at the politicized version of this proverb with no consciousness that it was once the primary source of our town’s uniqueness and higher quality of life.

Today in Longmeadow our strong community spirit animated by shared values is little more than an abstraction found only in our rhetoric and our lamentations. To a person, I expect that residents long for a sense of shared purpose and shared values among the townspeople. In an era of economic complexity, scarcity, and risk, there is indeed strength in numbers. Ironically, today this strength’s greatest manifestations among ordinary folks- close self governing communities, labor unions, churches, social and service clubs- are too often rejected by the very people who need them most.

In 2010, Longmeadow has a form of government designed for commonwealth but a citizenry attuned to the market place. We have citizens who want consensus, but whose actions (and inaction) unintentionally foreclose that possibility. The rise of the “consumer-citizen” in our town has gradually stripped us of our unique identity and our higher quality of life.

By legitimizing, indeed mandating, that each household be enlisted to approve even modest local revenue increases, often increases that don’t even keep up with inflation, Proposition 2&1/2 has helped destroy effective collective self governance by elevating private deliberation, animated by narrow cost/benefit analysis, above public deliberation, animated by shared values and interests.

Nothing understood as a “public” good can be a source of unity, familial bonds, or even civic friendship, if its provision is subject to the norms and values of the marketplace. Our town’s beauty, safety, education, and even administration ain’t what it used to be, not because our public servants are less skilled (they are highly skilled), but because our community’s expectations are no longer expressed as shared purposes, shared values, and shared interests.

Taking Stock in the Aftermath of Defeat

All political debates whether in elections or in governance are translated by the participants into an “us” versus “them” contest. The trick is to make the “us” bigger than the “them.” Even though a lot of college kids take poli sci to avoid math, the reality is that politics in a democracy is really about division and that is as it should be. The only time everyone in a democracy should be united is when everybody in a democracy has the very same interests and principles at stake. In other words, total unity in a democracy is only reasonable in the face of a real existential threat, or on questions with little or nothing at stake (i.e. should we go to war, or should we designate January “neuter your pet” month?). The rest of the time, which is most of the time, calls for national unity are at best an unintentional affront to the principles of individual rights and popular sovereignty.

Unfortunately, because politics is such a high stakes endeavor, it seems that only those willing to elevate the values and policy positions of their opponents to the level of an existential threat can succeed. Such hyperbolic passions naturally lead to an ugly and unprincipled “ends justify the means” mentality. The necessary division of democratic politics is transformed into an arms race of divisiveness in which unilateral disarmament is suicidal and ignoble "means" thought to be "justified" by noble ends actually reduce the viability or potential realization of the ends being pursued.

In yesterday’s historic election in Massachusetts I heard supporters of both the Democratic and Republican Party candidates indicate, only half-joking, that the “fate of the Republic lay in the balance.” In fact, I’m pretty sure I used that language with a fellow lefty or two. Sadly, I also succumbed to hyperbolic passions yesterday (for neither the first or last time I’m sure) in reaction to what looked like a Republican sign holder’s vandalism of my sign for the Democratic candidate (he was actually just putting it down because it was unattended, which is required by law). I verbally assaulted this poor guy so fiercely that he should have punched me right in the nose. Thankfully, he was a patient man and after about 30 minutes I realized my folly and asked for and received his forgiveness. Clearly, I had exaggerated the importance of my party’s victory in the election and had rationalized (however briefly) that my uncivil behavior was acceptable given the stakes.

If you are not familiar with politically motivated hyperbole, incivility, and thuggery, it’s only a click away. Go to any Internet discussion board on which politics is “discussed” among anonymous posters, or type “politics” into the YouTube.com search engine. It ain’t pretty and unchecked it is ultimately corrosive to our way of life. Unfortunately, the more widespread it becomes, the more it creeps into mainstream debate. Republican Joe Wilson’s “you lie” shout at the President during an address to a joint session of Congress and Democrat Barney Frank’s brutal undoing of a member of the “Birther” movement at one of his town meetings both represent (in my opinion) the infectious and almost irresistible nature of hyperbolic passions. I’m sure some Americans on the right and left respectively found Wilson’s and Frank’s behavior cathartic and emotionally satisfying without appreciating the corrosive implications of these incidents.

President Obama and the national Democrats don’t need to succumb to the temptation to “go Rove” on the Republicans because of yesterday’s stinging defeat, but they do need to divide a sufficient number of “us” from a smaller number of “them” by boldly stating their case for (Big D) Democratic reform proposals in a way that clearly and explicitly equates Democratic Party policy options to broadly held values in the American electorate.

Democratic and Republican Party politicians and operatives could go a long way toward reducing the corrosive impact of hyperbolic passions on our politics by being more explicit and assertive about bringing voters to their party’s principles rather than simply competing to connect their personal images to universally supported values like hope, change, honesty, integrity, hard work, sacrifice, etc… Downplaying or blurring of party principles and loyalties to maximize votes in the short-term produces unstable electoral coalitions that are not capable of providing the necessary support between elections that elected officials need to accomplish anything significant.

President Obama and Senator-Elect Brown may have made this very mistake; a mistake that is being more quickly exposed and punished in the “new” media age. Voters with cable TV and computers, but no political party membership cards, wooed by vague connections (or out-of-context hyper-specific connections) between their values and those of candidates can be communicated with and persuaded much more quickly and effectively in the 21st Century. This comes in very handy (and is very hard to resist) when you can score political points by pointing out every misstep great and small of an opponent, distort the context, and contrast it to their campaign promises. Brown’s campaign asked anxious voters, “How’s all that hope working for you now?” Between now and the 2012 election, possibly without regard for Brown’s actual conduct in office, Democrats will no doubt be inundating voters who supported Brown yesterday with questions like, “What happened to all that stuff about “no more business as usual” and “being an independent voice in the Senate?”

For his part, President Obama’s commitment to “post” partisanship now looks like a very bad fit with his bold, yet vague and universal appeals to “hope and change” during the election. By appealing to everyone with “hope and change” he seems to have given opponents -like Scott Brown- an easy, if equally vacuous, counter argument. Since Obama has not done enough to publicly tout and chronicle his progress, he has left an opening for his opponents to chronicle his administration's progress on their terms and without authoritative enough rebuttal. Without details about the content of Obama's hope and change agenda anybody whose hopes remain unrealized and whose impressions of politics have not changed much are ripe for the pickin for Republicans.

Some analysts have attributed Obama's apparent partisan "unilateral disarmament" as an element of his "post" partisan aspirations that now look like unintentional political suicide. I believe that President Obama’s hope of greater cooperation between the parties in government requires a “new” partisanship that is just as competitive but much more self conscious and transparent than present day notions of partisanship, not the fuzzy notions of unity that animate calls for “post” and/or “bi” partisanship based on the at once naïve and cynical pretense of objective political truth in American politics.

In an electorate that is broadly loyal to and supportive of political parties, petty personal attacks don't go away or lose all their force, but in general elections between major party candidates they fall largely on deaf ears. Ask yourself why Democrats and Republicans downplay embarrassing revelations about fellow party members but relentlessly skewer members of the other party at every opportunity. It’s because they hope to attract sympathy for themselves from voters that dislike so-called “party politics” and who think of themselves as “independents.” Voters who recognize which political party generally represents their broad interests and principles are virtually immune from the so-called “politics of personal destruction,” not because they are “blinded” by partisanship, but because they are aware of and in touch with their own political principles and interests enough to recognize which party most consistently represents them. They know that elected officials make and enforce laws and want those laws to be made and enforced according to their principles and interests, not some vague universal idea that loses meaning when the rubber meets the road. Well-informed partisan voters ignore the pabulum being fed to the so-called “swing voters” and understand the difference between the broad values of each political party and the petty stereotypes and caricatures of each political party pitched relentlessly by opposing political operatives.

So, what exactly should the President and the Democratic Congress do now?

First, they should all re-read "Profiles in Courage." Then, they should pass a real health insurance reform bill with or without Republican cooperation. The anxious voters of Massachusetts who are unclear on or misunderstand the content and consequences of reform should be educated and informed via vigorous and comprehensive outreach campaigns. If they still don’t like it, then they can and should vote accordingly in the next election, and Democrats should be okay with that. Health insurance reform is too big an issue to be treated the way politicians treat issues they consider less important than their continuance in office. If a member of Congress supports healthcare reform thinking it would be bad for his constituents, he’s nuts. If a Member of Congress opposes a healthcare reform thinking it would benefit her constituents, she’s nuts. Any Democrat who thinks the present approach to healthcare reform would hurt his or her constituents isn’t really a Democrat in the first place and should change parties. Any Democrat who thinks the present approach to reform would help his constituents but who opposes it for fear of electoral defeat or hope of a “more perfect” bill ought to consider another line of work.

After healthcare, it should be on to jobs, Wall Street reform, the Employee Free Choice Act, a climate change bill and more, all under the bold leadership of the President and the banner of the Democratic Party. The Republicans won't join hands with them and sing Cum Bi Ya, but they will likely be forced to pursue there united opposition more transparently, which is as it should be.

The "Scott" Heard Round the World

It’s January 20, 2010, one year to the day after Americans made history by electing Democrat Barack Obama President of the United States and just 17 hours (or so) after Massachusetts voters sent a very surprising and stern warning to President Obama by electing Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate seat occupied by liberal icon Ted Kennedy for more than four decades. I went to bed last night as a sad Democrat. I woke up this morning, still a sad Democrat. As I made the 40 minute commute to the office this morning I slowly went from just a sad Democrat to a sad Democrat and a very exited political science professor, who by a wonderful coincidence is teaching a course on American public opinion this semester.

In less than two weeks (it appears) Republicans were able to turn Massachusetts politics on its head and fire a powerful political and ideological shot across the bow of a popular president. For a guy in the political/ ideological questions business, this is a windfall. How did it happen? Why did it happen? How will it impact national politics and policy making? Will Brown have a chance to “kill” the health care reform bill? Will the Employee Free Choice Act be filibustered to death? What will happen to Wall Street reforms, the jobs bill, climate change legislation, and more? What does this election tell us about voter behavior and public opinion in general? What will the Democrats do about it? How will the Republicans parlay this historic victory into greater success in the 2010 midterm elections?

Yesterday’s election results may be bad news for establishment Democrats, but they are good news for our democratic system. Competitive elections are good for democracy and uncompetitive elections are bad in the long run for all sides. It’s better for committed partisans to lose now and then. Complacency is a killer. Elections in Massachusetts (state and federal) are not very competitive. A Republican victory in a statewide legislative election should (God willing) breathe life into a state Republican Party that badly needs it. Massachusetts has been a virtual one-party state for decades, with the exception of its governors. This has produced a state and federal legislative delegation that has taken its base supporters and their ideas and interests for granted and a state minority Republican Party without enough political clout to keep the majority Democratic Party accountable. Alienated conservative and progressive voters will hopefully be inspired by this “David beats Goliath” election to stay in (or get in) the game and to organize for political action at the state and local levels in Massachusetts. When enough voters from both sides are paying attention and are willing to engage in political activism, public policy debates are more reasonable and more transparent.

As a politics educator, competitive elections provide the best chance for an engaged and well informed electorate. I also believe (and preach to my students) that political knowledge and skills (often honed by the experience of competitive elections) enhance individual efficacy in virtually every facet of one’s life. Political knowledge and skills can make you better at whatever occupies you; you job, your relationships, even your sense of confidence and self worth. Political cynicism and apathy, on the other hand, are mind numbing and soul sucking delusions.

How should voters of all stripes view the results of this election?

The results are a victory for conservatism and the Republican Party, not merely a victory for a good candidate and campaign. Fifty-three percent of Massachusetts voters now prefer the conservative approach of the Republican Party and have serious doubts about the Obama Administration/Democratic Party’s reform agenda. Even if Brown won some votes because he drives a truck, or has a beautiful family or whatever, it would be a mistake (in my opinion) to say – as some Democrats will no doubt say- that this was about a good candidate/campaign beating a bad candidate/campaign, not a referendum on Obama or the liberal reform agenda. Denial is not the way to go here.
Lots of solid scholarly research has advanced the notion that voters’ conscious fixation on candidate preferences, rather than ideological or specific policy preferences, ARE reflective of and consistent with conscious and/or subconscious ideological and public policy preferences. Voters didn’t simply like Scott Brown more; they also agreed with his party’s claims and positions on the issues.

I tend to think that voters focus on candidates rather than ideology or policy because it’s more convenient. I see it as a convenient and more accessible proxy for philosophical and/or policy oriented discussion. Focus on candidate character and competence may be frustrating for political partisans, analysts, and even educators but the more sophisticated, substantive public policy debates craved by the experts may be just as easily distorted by intellectual elites as candidates’ characters, resumes, and positions are by political elites. Besides, getting a firm grip on our personal views of numerous complex public policy questions is virtually impossible for anyone with a real job. The vast majority of voters have no choice but to trust someone about politics and public policy in much the same way they have to trust their auto mechanic, physician, or priest. They should be smart customers, patients, church goers, and citizens but they can’t be “do-it-yourselfers” in more than a few areas of life. There simply isn’t time to understand everything a modern American citizen is expected to understand, but everyone has the time to make judgments about people. We do it every day and we rely on such judgments for many very important decisions.

Put simply, if you like one candidate more than another it’s highly probable (though not certain) that you also generally prefer the ideas and policy positions of that candidate’s political party. Trust can’t really be earned and sustained through trickery. Obviously, electoral losers have a powerful incentive to pretend that voters were tricked by a pretty face or slick rhetoric or a deceitful campaign. These are understandable rationalizations, but they are also counter-productive and almost always exaggerated.

So congratulations to conservative voters and to the Republican Party. I urge you to act like you’ve been there before and to remember that Senator Brown’s success depends on your ACTIVE support BETWEEN elections as much or more than your efforts during the election. This is a lesson on which President Obama’s enthusiastic supporters may need a refresher course.

Public Opinion: When does it matter?

The standing of American presidents in the polls has long been an every-day story in the national press. As the numbers creep up or down hand wringing about the loss or gain of influence fills the op-ed pages and the cable news airwaves. That a president's approval ratings impact his capacity to lead is clear, the nature and degree of this impact, however, is not. President George W. Bush recorded many of his policy victories while his poll numbers were subterranean, and President Obama's approach to his policy agenda seems anything but responsive to the polls. What's going on here? What has changed that would reduce the need for president's to jealously guard their public approval numbers?

First, it's important to re-affirm that a president's influence over the public policy agenda IS causally connected to his public approval. The difference today is that the public's approval is more fickle, or flexible, than ever. Or so it seems.

The present media environment has spawned a sort of public "reaction," rather than opinion, cycle. People's views on policy issues, on general questions such as "right and wrong direction" and "job approval" questions seem to have undergone something akin to the "testing effect." The views expressed in standard tracking polls don't have the staying power that they once did. It may be that our warp drive mass media has created a more profound distinction in the minds of Americans between their deeply held beliefs and their "present political postures." Traditionally, we think of politicians and public figures employing the tactic of "posturing," but given the sunami of partisan political argument that has overwhelmed the news gathering business, and news consumption in America, it may be that ordinary Americans are increasingly registering short term reactions to political questions, that may not be easily traced to their core beliefs or worldviews.

Pollster John Zogby seems to have tapped into this technology inspired transformation in the way American opine. When other pollsters are content to report findings at face value, Zogby has assumed that a better measurement of public opinion must get at the consistent views of Americans, the consistent "values" that can sometimes produce what look like inconsistent opinions.

When George W. Bush's poll numbers were in the toilet, he was, nonetheless, able to lead, especially on matters of foreign policy. Why? It could be that while the public's "reaction" to his administration's efforts soured, the under-lying assumptions about America's place in the world and our battle against terrorists may well have remained within the American opinion mainstream.

President Obama's less than aggressive public relations efforts on his major policy proposals looks quite a bit different from the present media story lines when you consider public opinion from Zogby's "values" perspective. Partisan political attack may produce short-term movement in public "reactions" to politics, but voters don't simply react when they go to the polls on Election Day. Voters vote their "values" and to understand their values we must look more closely at the polls for the deeper clues that reveal the public's animating beliefs, not just their present posture.

The Intentions of the Founders

I recently heard Glenn Beck praising the recent uptick in popular interest in the political thought of America's founding generation of statesmen, marking one of the few times I agreed with him. Increased interest in understanding the ideas, motivations, and arguments of the men who designed our constitutional system is a very good thing, though I'm not sure it will work out very well for the Glenn Beck's of the world.

Anyone who takes a serious interest in the writings of America's revolutionaries will quickly realize that like all serious intellectuals these men we revere as virtual philosopher statesmen were much more complex and nuanced in their views than our school boy mythology reveals.

When protesters hold up famous quotes from Paine, Jefferson, Madison, etc, They are almost always taking the words of these men out of context. Indeed, one of the truly revolutionary ideas championed by these men was the rejection of government and politics as an arena for the contestation of "universal truths." Their belief that such matters were too important for politics represents their "revolutionary" rejection of the classical marriage of virtue and citizenship, as well as their intellectual sensitivity to context.

Preeminent historian John Patrick Diggins explained that Thomas Jefferson linked virtue to "authenticity," not religion or even good citizenship. This insight into Jefferson's thought makes the author of the Declaration more like America's X and Y generations than the folks in the pews, the political parties, or the Fox News audience.

I'm not arguing that the Founding Fathers were left wingers, but merely that serious scrutiny is the enemy of jingoism and politically-motivated spin. If Americans really are starting to examine the writings of our Founding Fathers, then demagogues on all sides will lose credibility (and maybe even ratings) because though they were hard-headed politicians, the founders were also intellectuals at a time before the divorce of power and intellectualism in America.

Whenever demagogic pundits or politicians enlist the Framers in their harangues, I'm always reminded of the reality that it was actually just such anti-intellectualism that most offended the men who shaped our Republic.

Mediscare: Republican Style

When the Newt Gingrich led Republican Congress of 1995 tried to slow the growth of Medicare payments, the Democrats employed hyperbolic scare tactics in an effort to prevent the reduction in growth to Medicare. Today, Senate Republicans are doing the same thing on the healthcare reform bill when they say over and over and over that the bill will "raid" Medicare and "cut benefits to seniors" and even "kill grandma." Republican Senators McCain and Alexander relished the opportunity to use the Democrats' opposition to cuts in growth in 1995 in their own attempt to prevent the cuts in growth that are part of the present Democratic healthcare reform bill. Every politician loves the opportunity to use the words of opponents against them.

The problem for the Republicans today is that their efforts to slow Medicare growth in the 1990s were proposed by a party whose leader openly admitted that his goal was to let Medicare "die on the vine." Republicans claiming that they tried to "save" Medicare by slowing its growth are really insulting the intelligence of the American people. Medicare and Social Security, the two most popular government programs in our history are both programs that were and are bitterly opposed by the Republican Party. Republicans fought very hard against both programs at their inception and have sought to privatize both.

The point is, when a team of doctor suggests a particular, but counter-intuitive, treatment for a patient as part of a larger, comprehensive treatment plan, common sense dictates deferring to the expert. In the 1990s the Republican proposals to slow the growth of Medicare were not part of a comprehensive healthcare reform bill. Their proposal was akin to an undertaker prescribing a counter-intuitive treatment to a sick patient. Credibility counts!

Is it unfair, pure partisanship of me to say that when Democrats propose a specific thing for Medicare as part of a comprehensive plan it is more credible than when Republicans propose the same particular thing as a stand-alone proposal? I certainly hope not, but if my logic escapes you then you ought to consider a fact that Republicans are loath to distort. The most powerful and well respected group advocating for the interests of seniors, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) is not only a strong supporter of the present healthcare reform bill and its provisions intended to slow the growth of Medicare Advantage payments to providers, it ALSO was squarely behind the Democrats in 1995 when the Republicans' proposed slowing the growth of Medicare payments.

This time around, not only is the entire bill strongly endorsed by the AARP, the beneficiaries of Medicare, it is also strongly endorsed by the most prominent and credible group representing the interests of America's physicians, the American Medical Association (AMA). Republicans are claiming that the healthcare reform bill should be killed because it hurts doctors and patients despite the FACT that doctors and patients, whether measured by opinion poll or by interest group advocates, SUPPORT the bill because they believe it helps doctors and patients.

Having listened to the debate on the Senate floor yesterday, I now know why the Democratic leaders were so happy just to get the bill to the floor. The Republicans can't credibly refute the non-partisan interpretation of the bill being provided by the AARP and the AMA, nor can they attack these two very powerful interest groups without attacking doctors and seniors.

Turnabout may well be fair play, but for the Republicans on this issue it's foolish, self defeating play that signals the inevitability of the reform package's eventual approval.

Whose Crazies are Crazier

The considerable attention being given to conservative extremists protesting against the Democratic healthcare reform bills has raised protests from Republicans who feel that the media didn't highlight the bad behavior of liberal extremists during the Bush Administration. Are they right about that? While I have not seen any systematic media content analysis on the question, I do think their perception is reasonable. So the question is why? Why is the media (even Fox News) jumping at the chance to cover conservative citizens frothing at the mouth about things as ridiculous as the liberal conspiracy theory that Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks?

One theory I heard on talk radio was interesting. It was that crazy conservatives are news, while crazy liberals are business as usual. Despite the host's probable partisan motive for this line of argument, I actually think it has merit. Clearly, those on the left have always had more to protest in America than those on the right. Remember, left wing crazies come out against presidents of both parties because neither Democrats or Republicans are willing to support overt socialism. This means that their pursuit of "change" is constant. Right wing crazies have less cause for protest because conservative protest is by definition sparked by serious threats of change, which are NOT constant. Unlike liberal extremists, conservative extremism is not outside the boundaries of American individualism, but rather is just an extreme version of it.

If all protests draw some crazies then indeed liberal crazies ARE more common than conservative crazies. The nature of conservatism, political and otherwise, IS more consistent with good manners, rule following, respect for decorum, norms of behavior, and tradition, so when folks who call themselves conservatives act like mental patients, either they are not very good conservatives, or they have indeed gone mad. Since conservative leaders are not distancing themselves from the protesters, I assume that they are not thought to be bad conservatives and that their descent into madness is considered justified. Either way, you can see how this would be more attractive to commercial news editors.

So, whose crazies are crazier? My guess is that liberal crazies are actually crazier because they stay crazy between gigs, but that conservative crazies, who come out only when liberal crazies seem to be making headway, make for better ratings.

The Public Option Debate

I am fascinated by the responses from virtually all quarters to the President's approach to the public option element of the proposed health care insurance reforms. The media and supposedly "in the know" pundits are constantly heralding the imminent death of the public option. It appears that everyone has become so obsessed with reading between the lines, that they simply refuse to actually read the lines. The White House line on this has been very consistent. They have always maintained support for the public option, but have qualified that support by indicating that it's only a means to an end. If someone comes up with another way to achieve the goals of a public option, the White House is all ears.

How exactly is this a weak defense of the public option? Why would anyone object to another method of achieving the same results? The purpose of the public option is to force greater efficiency and lower prices on private insurance companies. Ironically, the public option would be a market-friendly approach to this goal. It is not a command and control regulatory approach, which is why Republican opposition to the reforms are so transparently NOT about the dangers of increased government regulation. The sights and sounds of conservative Republicans standing tall against any potential cuts to our present government run, single-payer health insurance program known as Medicare should make the Republicans philosophical bankruptcy as plain as day.

Flexibility on the public option is actually a no-lose position for the White House. Most experts agree that the only other ways to achieve the same results would require more government regulation of the private marketplace. And, at the end of the day, the Democrats have the votes to pass a liberal health care bill. Despite the feverish reporting on the objections of so-called "blue Dog" Democrats, no Democrat in the US Senate can afford to make an enemy out of this president. A couple of conservative Democrats may in the end be allowed to vote against the bill, but unless a couple of liberal Republicans sign on clearly and early, none of these "Blue Dogs" will be allowed to oppose cloture preventing the bill from getting to the Senate floor.

Forget about all the public campaigning and the ups and downs of public opinion on Health care or even on the Obama presidency. The fate of this reform is in the hands of 60-65 US Senators and 60 of them will need this president's blessing to get past this issue. There are no sure things, to be sure, but the smart money is on a health care insurance reform bill that increases competition in the insurance marketplace by expanding consumer choice. Who cares what you call it.

X + Facts = Reasonable Claim

Solve for X. I have always encountered resistance to theoretical discussion and debate, both in the classroom and in the public square. Students and politicians fear it, voters have no patience for it, and reporters and pundits can't sell it. Americans expect anyone with a valid argument to simply "cut to the chase," and to "let the facts speak for themselves." Efforts to interpret facts contextually (i.e. the only intellectually honest way to do it) are assumed to be efforts to manipulate facts for personal gain, which is itself assumed to be contrary to the public interest. In other words, a healthy scepticism has been replaced by a very unhealthy cynicism, which actually works very well for those who really are trying to "fool some of the people some of the time."

When John Adams called facts "stubborn things" factual disputes were indeed rare and short lived. There was a virtual consensus on the political objectivity of reason and logic, concepts apparently learned in school at some point in our past. Today, however, it may be better to consult Ronald Reagan who called facts "stupid things." The Great Communicator may have been at his most prescient in this flubbed line because these days factual disputes endure and often seem intractable. In fact, in modern American politics everyone does seem "entitled to their own facts." The clarification of theoretical premises, to say nothing about their relationship to the interpretation of facts, is an endangered species being kept alive in intellectual preserves called universities. It's way too dangerous out in the wild of American society and politics for such vulnerable creatures.

How did this happen? I have a theory and an example.

Americans have conflated the meaning and significance of truths and facts. Everybody's doing it. "Global warming is a fact!" Actually, it’s not a fact. It is, however, a theory supported by a huge majority of the applicable scientific community, making it a reasonable truth claim. The "theory" of evolution is in the same boat. Interestingly, this increasingly common logical misstep - treating well established truth claims as facts- may be a prime suspect in the mind blowing unreasonableness and stupidity run amuck in our present politics.

Because ideas like evolution and global warming are considered "true" by relevant expert communities, they are often treated, even sometimes referred to carelessly, as facts. While this may be fine in conversations with people who recognize the implied and unstated "for all intents and purposes" qualification, it is not fine for the majority of Americans who apparently only recognize such implied disclaimers when they already agree with the claim in question.

The ubiquity of this intellectual shortcut in the information overload of 21st Century life and politics may be doing a tremendous disservice to younger generations of Americans who seem to have never learned the intellectual route being shortened; making them likely suckers for two versions of a particular anti-intellectual argument that can be employed like a powerful one-two punch by a skilled rhetorician.

An argument that relies on the mistaken conflation of truth claims and factual claims can be used by a political, commercial, or even theological claimant to discredit his opponents "truth" claims by holding them to the appropriate intellectual standards for the verification of factual claims, while supporting and defending his own "truth" claims (which may even be intentionally mischaracterized as a fact) with the intellectual standards for evaluating a reasonable truth claim, which are much less rigorous.

In American politics, the political partisans use this intellectually disingenuous approach, continuously feeding it with deracinated "facts" in an ongoing effort to keep ordinary voters from seeing the forest for the trees. For the right, global warming is a hoax because summer was cooler this year, or because of any number of out of context facts which are piled up by politicians, talk show hosts, and op-ed columnists. Not to be outdone, America's left wingers trot out their endless "parade of horribles" in their efforts to discredit all things American or capitalistic. America is an evil empire because of the long- out of context- list of bad stuff our government has done.

Just today I was saddened by George Will's apparent agreement with Rush Limbaugh that global warming is a politically motivated hoax. Will, a conservative who still has intellectual credibility, trotted out what he called "inconvenient facts" that further reveal the big liberal lie that is global warming. Will attacks the messengers and the experts with lines like, "According to the Times, however, "scientists" say that "trying to communicate such scientific nuances to the public -- and to policymakers -- can be frustrating."

Here Will is employing a "hide in plain sight" approach to anti-intellectual persuasion here. He puts quotes around "scientists" and "trying to communicate such scientific nuances to the public -- and to policymakers -- can be frustrating" because he understands these to be reasonable claims that he nonetheless must discredit in order to achieve his rhetorical ends. His quotes are meant to signal a sort of "yeah right" sarcastic and incredulous response as if it were unreasonable to claim that scientists (i.e. the scientific community as a whole) were convinced of global warming. He quotes the next phrase to signal another baseless but emotionally powerful anti-intellectual response; namely that this phrase shows that these liberal scientists can't defend their arguments against “the facts" so they have to pretend it’s too complicated for "poor dumb average slobs to comprehend."

Good old faithful populist pandering. Is it any wonder that so many Americans believe so many ridiculous things? Will's approach even includes a built-in intellectual defense. When called out on his obviously unsubstantiated and unreasonable implied claims he can simply say that he didn't make any counter-factual claims, allowing him to continue his masquerade as a truth teller who deals only in facts, which (according to him) is all john and Jane Q. Public need to debunk "liberal lies."

I say, solve for X.

Health Care Reform

The political debate over healthcare reform in the United States has been extremely heated despite the reality that the actual policy debate is rather tame, even boring. Constitutional, public policy, and healthcare policy experts are NOT really divided on the relevant legal and policy questions. The controversy and conflict over healthcare policy has been introduced and maintained by those with narrow economic and/or rigid ideological interests.

Every political science 101 class learns the three primary functions of ANY government, 1, Maintenance of ORDER; 2, Regulation of PROPERTY; & 3, The provision of PUBLIC GOODS. No one disputes the appropriateness of these three functions of government. The United States has a liberal constitutional system in which the government performs these functions with as little interference in peoples' lives as possible(or practicable).

The relevant question about access to health care is; is it a "public good?" In our system, a public good is anything the nation needs that cannot be adequately distributed by the free market. If we conclude that access to healthcare is not adequately distributed by the market in America, then we must decide the manner and extent to which the government must subsidize or facilitate the distribution of access to healthcare in order for it to be adequately distributed.

While the initial question of whether or not healthcare is a public good IS debatable, no one in the present political debate is EXPLICITLY debating this point. Even the strongest opponents of reform have conceded that reform is necessary and that the government must act. Advocates of reform have largely succeded in framing the debate around how much the government should do, rather than whether or not it should do anything. Advocates for reductions in government involvement or retention of the status quo have gotten zero traction with their substantive arguments and have been forced to mask these substantive positions in generalized anti-government, pro-free market rhetoric.

The actual range of options for the adequate provision of healthcare access are, from left to right (with left as total provision and right as total deregulation) as follows:

Nationalization >> Single Payer >><< Subsidized Market << Total Deregulation

The political debate is entirely contained within the "subsidized market" category of reform. Advocates for nationalization, single payer, or total deregulation have never really had a seat at the table. Since the proponents on the left, who really want a nationalized or single payer system, have essentially allowed Obama to take these off the table, the loudest complaints are coming from the far right.

With a Democratic Administration advocating a market friendly approach, reasonable conservative criticisms have been coopted, leaving the lunatic fringe to suck up all the opposition energy and attention. Its important to note that the actual businessmen and women who make their livings in any market are NOT free market purists, especially in the health insurance industry. They know that if the governemnt did not subsidize health insurance it would become a MUCH less profitable enterprize.

President Obama's strategy on health care reform, which has frustrated just about everybody, may turn out to hinge on inevitability. With every opposition argument gradually emploding when compared to the status quo, and the White House refusing to push hard rhetorically on its policy preferences, meaningful reform will simply outlast the weak arguments of its opponents. Reformers have the high ground on reasonable arguments and the President has refused to jeopardize that high ground by pushing his offensive, leaving opponents with no easy targets and only ideologically extreme claims and arguments.

Its only a matter of time before wavering Democratic Senators realize that popular opposition to the reforms in the House passed bill are VERY thin and easily subdued by credible information. This leaves folks like Joe Lieberman with only two choices; they can make it clear to all that they are bought and paid for by the insurance industry, or they can stall for now, hoping for minor concessions that will appease their pay masters, and eventually allow reform to get a straight up or down majority vote in the Senate.

You don't have to be a psychic to know that in this case, light will eventually win out over heat.