Fallout of Denial

The Newsprint

Timothy Noah over at Slate has decided that the time has come (maybe) for Democrats to take the nuclear option and eradicate the filibuster. That's right. Faced with electoral repudiation in Massachusetts and plummeting poll numbers suggesting that the public is now roundly against the proposed health care reform bill, Noah's answer is to cheat. Sound familiar?

Ok, maybe cheating is too strong a word. But if not cheating, what do you call changing the rules midway through the process? And having them changed at the behest of the executive branch to boot! Unless of course Noah is ready to buy into Dick Cheney's hogwash about the indeterminacy of the Vice-Presidency's role in government. Methinks not. For support, I'll go to Rahm.

Anyhow, what's the bigger issue here? Liberals in the Democratic Party are so convinced of both the basic justness and the inherent appeal of their ideas that they refuse to change. At first, as we've seen, they deny that their ideas have failed and blame either conventional bogeymen like racism, sexism, or some other such -ism. Next, they blame their own (see the Coakley recrimination circus or the Obama personality-meter stories previously cited). After that delusion wears off, they blame the ghosts of Republicans past and present. And finally, they blame the rules of the game. At no point do they blame the ideas themselves.

The irony, of course, is that Obama seemed to get this during the campaign. He famously described the GOP as the "party of ideas" and took a great deal of heat for it from within his own ranks. And while no serious person bought his vacuous claims for "good government rather than more or less government," it suggested that the President understood that a return to Great Society boilerplate would be political hari kiri.

Instead, a year in we've seen a presidency remarkable for its complete lack of creativity. It's as if the Great Society and its subsequent failure never happened. As a result, the White House announced that it's considering a three year spending freeze in direct contradiction of the President's campaign. Moreover, Harry Reid is looking to be the second consecutive Democratic Senate leader to go down to electoral defeat this fall.

The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

UPDATE: Here's a small piece on the filibuster by Greg Koger at the University of Miami's Political Science Department.

Richard Nixon: People Person

The Newsprint

A little over a week ago, the Nixon Library released more than a quarter-million pages of previously restricted material, including the files of some of Nixon's closest aids and previously unheard recordings. The media coverage of the release has focused on Nixon’s mercenary approach to politics, exposing with particular alacrity his disdain for modern art and Ted Kennedy. Occasional lip service is paid to the political motivations behind Nixon’s views, but even then, Nixon’s baser motives get most of the attention.

But Walter Pincus at WaPo has done everyone a favor by noting, partially, the real canniness behind the blunt and sometimes shocking calculations in Nixon’s papers. Pincus misses the point when he calls Nixon a “political scientist”; Nixon’s not. Little of the most arresting paperwork with Nixon’s hand on it deals with the likely outcomes of policy. Rather, Nixon reveals himself to be a peerless manipulator of personality. Put in the sterilized terms of politics today, Nixon comes across as a personnel manager par excellence, something President Obama is not.

Pincus uses Nixon to jab at Obama, suggesting that the current president could learn a lesson or two from his complex and controversial predecessor. He’s clearly right. Nixon’s White House possessed a political diversity unmatched in Obama’s crowded West Wing. And while both men managed to inspired considerable personal loyalty from their followers, Nixon managed to do so across an ideological spectrum. Obama, not so much.

An upcoming post will deal in greater detail with Obama’s personnel problems. For now, as Howard Fineman notes at Newsweek, the return of David Plouffe and swirling rumors about a pending Emanuel resignation suggest Obama remains a lackluster player in the personality game that is the stuff of governing.

Presidential Popularity Redux

The Newsprint

Here's Jacob Weisberg at Slate doing a Freudian assessment of Obama's "connection" problem. I stand by my previous posting on the issue. It's patently ridiculous to view his ability to relate as somehow unrelated (pun intended) to his policies.

I don't buy this image of Obama as connecting in an analytical manner at all. Indeed, his campaign was distinctively even notoriously light on substance and heavy on emotions. Yes, Obama made an incisive statement on race in Philadelphia during the Jeremiah Wright fiasco, but the bulk of his oratory has been emotive and, it would seem, empty.

This view of Obama as hyper-rational and aloof was first tried on by Republicans trying to limit his striking personal appeal. Now, it seems, it's serving as comfort to self-deluding Democrats who can't understand why, on the face of it, their policy agenda is being rejected by the American people.

Update: Marion Berry (No, Not That One) Retiring

The Newsprint

A quick update: Arkansas Congressman Marion Berry will retire. Berry (D), not to be confused with the pharmacologically enthusiastic ex-mayor of DC, has announced that he will not seek an eighth term in the House, opening up yet another seat vulnerable to GOP takeover.

Politico has more and Berry's official press release is here.

Additionally, Beau Biden will not face Mike Castle for his father's open Senate seat, opening the door for a Republican Senate gain in Delaware. Instead, Biden will run for reelection as Attorney General, apparently biding (or should we say Biden?) his time before jumping to the national stage.

Taken together, these announcements suggest widespread Democratic unease. More importantly, they may spark Republican fundraising, which spent much of 2009 in the sink.

Clearly, results from Massachusetts are changing the calculus for a number of prospective candidates. Sean Trende over at RCP has announced that both the House and the Senate could be in play come November. While such prognostication seems premature, we're willing to bet that things will get increasingly exciting as primary season approaches. Handicapping the races beforehand is basically alchemy...but that doesn't mean we won't try.

UPDATE: Here's some seriously wishful thinking from Christopher Beam at Slate. Democrats would be better served using their energy to circle the wagons rather than rationalizing like this. I'm reminded of the recrimination game that began in Massachusetts even before Coakley lost.

Citizens Disunited: Part I

Iv(or)y and Newsprint

The Supreme Court has decided Citizens United v. FEC, siding with Citizens United and dramatically increasing the power of corporate entities, both for- and non-profit, to donate to political campaigns. It’s a complicated issue, so we’re putting on both our academic and our journalistic hats for the response.

Keith Olbermann was predictably apoplectic. Andrew Cohen was forlorn. E. J. Dionne called for a mass resistance movement. Even the White House weighed in, suggesting that the decision was an assault on the fabric of our democracy. On the other hand, Megan McArdle found the proposal "sensible", Anthony Dick was sanguine about the ruling's consequences over at NRO, and Jeff Jacoby was downright enthusiastic. In determining the path to the decision, Robert Barnes focused on the Kennedy factor and Howard Schweber cried "judicial activism" over at HuffPo. Dahlia Lithwick was incredulous. Only Nathaniel Persily has been circumspect enough to ask and answer the obvious: does this actually change anything?

All of this is probably much ado about nothing. If we move beyond the histrionic responses, a different picture of the decision emerges. The decision raises three questions: one, what are its political consequences; two, what are its legal implications; and three, what does it mean for inter-branch relations? Answering all three in one post would be too much, so today we’re focusing on the politics.

On the face of it, the court has overturned several parts of the McCain-Feingold Act, more properly known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002. What are the ruling’s political consequences? In a word: “zilch.” Contrary to what most of the media is saying (i.e., either this is beneficial or this is Armageddon), I expect few political ramifications from the case in terms of actual influence. Despite all the ballyhoo and panic, rampant donation is already being done.

So where do the chattering-turned-panicking classes get it wrong?

First, the idea of a monolithic cabal of “the corporations” is ludicrous. Unlike, say, “the unions,” the corporations are a notoriously promiscuous bunch, frequently giving to both parties and even to rival candidates. Moreover, as much of the political science research available indicates, politicians rarely operate in a direct pay-to-play manner. Rather, donations guarantee access, but not outcomes. This may exacerbate what Ted Lowi has called interest group liberalism’s “socialism for the organized, capitalism for the disorganized,” but a matter of degree is not the difference between night and day.

Second, most of the commentary assumes that the controls on campaign finance contained in BCRA are working. They’re not. They never have. Beginning in 2004, high level coordination between the parties and 527 issue advocacy groups effectively nullified the restrictions on corporate and private donations. Though legally independent of one another, the parties and the 527 groups have shared personnel and coordinated to an extent that makes a mockery of BCRA’s purported donation limits. Indeed, in 2005 the FEC fined both MoveOn and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for their direct coordination with the parties.

Given wanton flouting of the existing system, the decision may pave the way for improved transparency. First, it allows the parties to retake the lead in fundraising, should they choose to do so. This will permit them to cut their satellite 527 groups and instead assume direct responsibility for fundraising and, more importantly, reporting.

Most politicians are content pretending that 527 issue advocacy groups are substantively distinct from political parties and lobbying organizations, but party leaders have chafed at their inability to use campaign funds as a disciplinary tool. Mass communication has made party labels more important at a time when party control has been tremendously weakened by the current campaign finance system. Under these conditions, responsible government requires stronger parties to help override what political scientists call ascendant “individual pluralism” in Congress.

Second, reporting requirements for parties, which are already fairly strict, could easily tighten if the decision arouses popular anxiety, obliging Congress to pass further transparency rules to “safeguard against a corporate takeover” of our democracy or some such nonsense. Don’t expect E. J. Dionne’s pipe dream of a new populist-progressive alliance to appear any time soon, but we may see some legislation to improve transparency. Dahlai Lithwick, this time with the assistance of Barry Friedman has anticipated just such a reaction.

Serious reform on the issue would be welcome: the existing transparency regime under BCRA has been bucked successfully by a number of organizations, dating back at least to 2004. While filings are interesting and sometimes revealing, they are as yet insufficient.

However, substantive campaign finance reform entails either taxing 527 groups or refusing to make donations to them tax deductible (so that they become indistinguishable from 501(c)4 groups). If the Congressional proposals that emerge in the wake of the decision lack one of these components, they’re not serious efforts at reform.

Third, many commentators seem to view BCRA as a pro-democracy measure, a method of controlling the special interests. This is true to an extent, but it’s really a mechanism designed to control any interest except for the incumbent’s.

Currently, BCRA functions as an incumbent insurance program by creating fundraising impediments for prospective challengers. The nasty underside of campaign finance reform is that it exacerbates the incumbency advantage and actually entrenches extant centers of power. While there’s no guarantee that Citizens United will do anything to change this, opening up the process to more donors is unlikely to make it any more a free ride for incumbents.

Fourth, and finally, an exception to my rather blasé assessment of the political impact of Citizens United: federalism. Strong support for a heavily rights-centered jurisprudence anchored in the Bill of Rights is, by implication of incorporation, restrictive of the powers of state governments. If incorporation means anything, then Citizens United must imply the elimination of state-by-state restrictions on campaign finance.

I’m less than thrilled about this side of the decision, as it seems to further vitiate state self-governance. However, as we’ll suggest in a forthcoming “legal implications” entry, this anti-federalism comes along with so capacious an interpretation of the First Amendment. If pornography, money, and what would conventionally be called obscenity can all make claims to First Amendment protections from the federal government, then states looking to change the terrain are out of luck. So long as the republican government clause is non-justiciable, the Courts will be siding with individual rights over the democratic political process. This paradox strikes jurisprudential and political liberalism to its core. The chickens, in this sense, are coming home to roost.

Health Deform

The Iv(or)y

In the wake of the Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts, Democratic leaders in Congress must recalibrate their approach to health care reform. Recriminations have run back and forth and it now seems obvious that an incremental approach would have increased the likelihood of success. The “silver bullet” versions of the reform bill that emerged from the House and the Senate proved ungainly and, ultimately, unpopular.

But there are still more basic questions to ask about health care reform. Why is it hard to pass a bill, any bill, reforming health care? We’ve heard a litany of arguments proffered by the chattering classes: vested special interests, separation of powers, and the complexity of the issue just to name a few. But most of these obstacles confront any significant piece of legislation, and many of them pass nonetheless.

This post argues that the problem in the instance of health care is structural, having to do with the non-delegation doctrine and, frankly, Congress's incentives to husband institutional power. Thus, Democrats should be wary as they reevaluate their options. Whatever polling tells them (and it would seem that they’ve received some really terrible polling), they need to be aware of what reforming and eventually universalizing health care means institutionally.

It’s no great leap to observe that Congress wants to control the particulars about any piece of legislation insofar as possible. This is especially true when legislation creates new executive powers. Technically, Congress cannot delegate any of its legislative powers to the executive branch; it can only create new executive powers. And creating new executive power is precisely what a health care bill does of necessity. It opens the door to regulating the health of all or nearly all Americans either directly or indirectly and that means a greater role for the executive branch.

Before the libertarians panic, let’s be honest about the importance of vigorous and responsive government. Many aspects of our lives are subject to regulation and oversight by government agencies and we are more or less willing to tolerate this interference. Assuming that most Americans accept state interference or even control in a part of society – take defense as an example – we generally want that interference to be efficient, unobtrusive, and responsive. Americans are thus not against government per se; they just want the chance to determine its limits and hold it to account. This is true of Republicans and Democrats alike. Where they differ most, in some sense, is in what areas they’re prepared to accept government interference.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that most Americans are prepared to accept government interference in the health care system above and beyond what already exists. Nay, let’s go even further and assume that most Americans want universal health care coverage. They’re going to want that coverage to be delivered efficiently and affordably, both on the supply and the demand side. They’re not going to want to wait in long lines, to receive inadequate care, or to have their concerns ignored. Similarly, as taxpayers, they’re going to want the system to function affordably without damaging the economy and requiring ever-expanding tax increases. This is a pretty serious burden: services must remain adequate but costs must be kept under control.

On the one hand, the legislature is generally viewed as the most responsive branch of government. But that doesn’t necessarily make it the best administrative unit. As such, the legislature might not be the best site of administrative design for resolving the question “how do we cover all Americans.” Indeed, many of the problems with health care are essentially administrative and could be resolved with greater efficiency through executive administration.

But as mentioned above, Congress can't delegate authority tantamount to legislative power to an executive actor. Hence the line between administrative prerogative and legislation becomes central to the validity of whatever bill gets passed. While the Supreme Court is unlikely to interfere in any major legislation that doesn’t imply a drastic interference with established and precedent-protected rights, the way legislators think about the administrative aims of the executive powers that a health bill will create matters in terms of formulating legislation.

Technically, Congress could enumerate a series of broad goals and then sketch a general outline of a bureaucratic administration charged with overseeing those goals. Consider, for example, the 1789 Chapter XII Act, which established the Treasury Department. It has eight sections enumerating the responsibilities of the department, providing for some procedural restrictions, and structuring the offices to avoid general conflicts of interest. Obviously, it's not a case study for a vastly expanded bureaucracy contending with a nationally-integrated, highly diversified, and rapidly changing economy. Nonetheless, the bill’s “high level” approach might be an ideal type for this kind of legislation: enumerate the big goals, provide some basic structures, and then create real executive power to operate within the limits stated.

Such an approach is inherently risky – creating executive power is never something to be taken lightly. But for health reform to be effective, a lot of leeway needs to be built into the institutions responsible for its maintenance. Moreover, this forces Americans to confront the real question of “how much government is too much government.”

However, Congress almost always errs on the side of non-delegation (except in economic crises). One also has to do some logrolling and some interest group buying, so reform legislation balloons. And then negotiators get into particulars and the various Congressional committees clash with one another over oversight responsibilities. In the end, they all try to carve out their own niches and, above all, do a lot of executive hand-tying to ensure that executive actors can't overstep their remits once the new system comes online.

Unfortunately, this wary approach usually just leads to administrative insanity. Worse yet, it can create conflicting structures seeking, ostensibly, the same goals. Moreover, explicitly enumerating policy provisions to the level of minutia helps to harden opposition to it. Congressmen seem to forget that it takes a lot of reasons to like a bill, but only one to hate it. Big bills foment and define their own opposition, making them extremely vulnerable.

So, to wrap up, the reason that Congress can't pass a health bill is because its institutional incentives disincline it to do so. The only real way to provide this kind of coverage is to create real executive power, but Congress isn't prepared to do that without adding tons of unhelpful riders and pork.

A good health care bill won’t try to dovetail into the existing bureaucracy. Instead, it will scrap or combine existing agencies and bodies and largely start over. Indeed, it would look best if it totally rehashed Health and Human Services. The bill could punt Human Services into its own Outer Cabinet Department or combine it with HUD, and change Medicare and Medicaid to subsidiary bureaus within a newly minted Department of Health that could sit firmly in the Middle Cabinet along with Agriculture, Commerce, Interior, and Labor.

Instead, Congressmen are thinking like administrators (which they're not) trying to provide immediate services to consumers (i.e. voters nearing an election year) rather than thinking like institution builders. Until the mindset changes, they're going to continue churning out big, self-defeating bills.

Is the Liberal Academy Good for Conservatives?

The Iv(or)y

Such is the argument from Ed Tenner over at the Atlantic, and it provides the opportunity for our inaugural case from “The Iv(or)y”. Sit down Newsprint, you’ve been plenty busy. Although The Iv(or)y is not persuaded by Tenner’s brief, its three central thrusts demand discussion.

First, Tenner makes the obvious argument that conservatives on liberal campuses have to hone their argumentative skills. The need to defend their values against near-constant assault hardens conservatives, makes them quick to the draw with a talking point or a pointed question, and readies them for intellectual combat. Conservatives don’t simply graduate, we are told, they survive.

This idea is a recurring meme in discussions about the campus politics, and one embraced by right and left alike. The conservatives like the idea because it’s flattering to any conservative who finds himself on the late side of Pomp and Circumstance. We’re here, we’re still right of center, so we must be among the few, the proud, the tempered rightists who’ve made it through the grist mill of academe with our values intact.

Dinesh D’Souza has made a career of recounting his halcyon days at Dartmouth, doing ideological battle with intellectual radicals in the New Hampshire woods. Indeed, his satisfied reminiscences about his days as what we might call an “out and proud” conservative in Hanover dominate his pithy (and frequently pedantic) reminiscences in Letters to a Young Conservative. If it isn’t apparent yet, I don’t much care for the book. I find it trite – more talking points than real argumentation. But I’m largely prejudiced because I don’t care much for the general “survivor” view of life as a campus conservative. It’s too simplistic and it privileges the obdurate over the intelligent.

There’s a second, equally smug iteration on conservatism-as-endurance-test, but one that doesn’t lead to a reactionary position. My personal preference, it runs something like this: real skepticism means a serious investigation of the reigning orthodoxy, which in this case means Leftism. Finding oneself a Socrates among benighted Athenians means that the cream has risen to the top. In a word, we’re conservative because we’re smart. We see through the nonsense of academic authority and prevailing hegemony. We’re the real critical thinkers in a forest of self-deluding liberals who repeat the party line like an incantation but can’t hold up for five minutes in an honest debate.

This spin on the old theme came up just this week. After dispatching with Jon Stewart in an interview, John Yoo coyly suggested that he learned his debating tactics through a lengthy career of corralling uppity students who don’t do the reading.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t really do the job either, much as I wish it would. Testing might make for better argument, but it doesn’t necessarily make for greater intelligence. And given that neither side is often persuaded even by the clear light of the other’s reason, it’s hard to see an actual intelligence emerging from the narcissism and inanity of campus politics.

Moreover, as any conservative student in a university will tell you, universities are not democracies. Rather, of necessity, they’re agglomerations of a thousand little authoritarian fiefdoms, few of which permit the freedom of expression in good faith. Hence the central assumption of Tenner’s argument – that conservative students defend their views in open forums – may not hold.

As any conservative student can tell you, one learns to tread lightly, head bowed, and to slide under the ideological radar of one’s superiors. The power dynamics in departments and classrooms are clear and present, and at a certain point, discretion is the better part of valor.

Tenner offers two more arguments why liberal campuses help conservatives. Politically, he notes, the antics of campus radicals often enflame public opinion. This aggravation, he argues, proves a windfall for conservative politicians looking to illustrate the degeneracy of the left’s vision of the good society.

While this may have been true in the 1960s and 70s, when campus radicals were actually taken seriously, it seems an unlikely argument today. Even the recent lunacy at Berkeley, covered thoroughly by Tad Friend in the New Yorker, has failed to produce much more than a knowing shrug from conservative groups. And with today’s student protests so thoroughly domesticated, the likelihood of a campus movement for social reform grabbing national attention seems close to nil.

But this brings me to Tenner’s third argument. He suggests that the hostile environment on campuses scares off precocious conservatives, meaning that “a larger proportion of conservative talent is channeled into positions of real political and economic power” [italics mine].

Now, we may reasonably dismiss his rather facile assumption that achievement is merely a statistical question. But, if one sense, Tenner is right? Not about conservatives and the academy, but rather about the academy in general. What if universities really are irrelevant, a prospect suggested in the above observation that campus protest fails to rouse popular attention?

In this case, the absence of diversity of opinion in the academy does hurt conservatives, albeit indirectly. To suggest that universities are not places “of real political and economic power” is dubious, but if it is true, it says damning things about the modern university and by implication the society in which it ought to play an integral role. Without its institutions of higher learning serving as centers of creativity, our society is in grave trouble.

We should thus reframe Tenner’s question and ask: good for conservatives how? Are liberal campuses good for conservative students personally? Only if one believes that censorship is ennobling of the soul. Are liberal campuses good for conservative operators politically? There was a time when one could ride a backlash against campus activism, but those days have gone as the broader society has ceased to take campuses seriously.

So finally, we ought to ask if the liberal campus is good for conservatives vicariously by being good for the society as a whole. The answer here, again, seems to be a resounding “no”. Indeed a parochial academy, liberal or otherwise isn’t good for itself. Indeed, it’s good for nothing and nobody.