Regruntled.com

Larry Summers said the most amazing thing on Meet the Press:

… we are going to recognize that the budget deficit is absolutely crucial.  But so is the deficit in what this country’s done in education; so is the deficit in what this country’s done in, in infrastructure.  There are a number of deficits that we have to address if we’re going to compete going forward, and the president’s committed to doing–to addressing all of those deficits.

Translation: we want to reframe the discussion.  A budget deficit means we’re spending too much.  An infrastructure deficit means we’re not spending enough.  By using two opposite meanings of the word “deficit” in the same sentence, we can claim to be addressing “all of the deficits” while implying that the Republicans are only concerned about “one of the deficits”. 

Yuval Levin’s article in Commentary,  The Meaning of Sarah Palin contains this nugget:

The Republican party has been the party of cultural populism and economic elitism, and the Democrats have been the party of cultural elitism and economic populism.

This immediately reminded me of the Nolan Chart, shown above, a part of Libertarian folklore.  Has Levin rediscovered the Nolan Chart in different terms?  Or has he invented something new?

First of all, “cultural” and “personal” are really the same thing.  Both refer to lifestyle issues.  Libertarians, with their focus on the individual, are naturally going to prefer “personal”.

Next, is the populism-to-elitism spectrum the same as the freedom spectrum?  Elites, by definition, are minorities, outliers on the normal curve, so there is a natural tendency for elites to prefer more freedom, to avoid the tyranny of the majority.  Libertarians do tend to be elitists, or at least wannabe elitists.  So far, so good.

Let’s look at a couple of deficiencies of the the Nolan Chart.  The Left is often willing to censor politically incorrect speech, which is inconsistent with personal freedom of speech.  Elites, however, don’t have to be philosophically consistent, so censoring politically incorrect speech is fully consistent with cultural elitism.  On the other side, the Right is often willing to engage in tax-supported corporate welfare, which is inconsistent with individual economic freedom, but fully consistent with economic elitism.

So, all in all, I think Levin’s formulation is an improvement over the Nolan Chart.  In a representative democracy, almost by definition, we have opposing elites using populist arguments to contest power.  There is a certain symmetry to all of this.

Thanks to reader TTB for nudging me onto this path.  By all means, read Levin’s article if you’re interested in the Sarah Palin phenomenon, but it’s really about much more than Sarah Palin.  I’ll repeat Levin’s words in a larger context:

In American politics, the distinction between populism and elitism is further subdivided into cultural and economic populism and elitism. And for at least the last forty years, the two parties have broken down distinctly along this double axis. The Republican party has been the party of cultural populism and economic elitism, and the Democrats have been the party of cultural elitism and economic populism. Republicans tend to identify with the traditional values, unabashedly patriotic, anti-cosmopolitan, non-nuanced Joe Sixpack, even as they pursue an economic policy that aims at elite investor-driven growth. Democrats identify with the mistreated, underpaid, overworked, crushed-by-the-corporation “people against the powerful,” but tend to look down on those people’s religion, education, and way of life. Republicans tend to believe the dynamism of the market is for the best but that cultural change can be dangerously disruptive; Democrats tend to believe dynamic social change stretches the boundaries of inclusion for the better but that economic dynamism is often ruinous and unjust.

Legoland in California has a Lego inauguration for Obama, complete with little Lego porta-potties for the attendees. 

I’ve often said that it’s more likely that I’ll be run over by a bus on the way to the polling place than it is that my vote will make a difference.  I thought I was joking, but a recent study shows an excess 24 auto fatalities and 800 disabling injuries on Election Tuesdays.  Overcoming Bias does a cost/benefit analysis, with additional discussion.

My latest excuse is that I’m betting on the election, so voting would be a conflict of interest.  I rather like being detached from the political process.  Instead of trying to choose the lesser of two weasels, I can find profitable trades on both sides.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Obama is proposing a welfare program disguised as a tax cut.  The trick is that the tax credits can be claimed by people who don’t pay taxes.  Fill out a form, receive a check.  It’s a transfer payment.

The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama plan, an additional 10 million filers would pay zero taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.

The genius of this is that the transfer payments stay “off the books”.  The books show net revenues on the income side instead of total revenues on the income side offset by the welfare program on the expense side.

Instead of a bureaucracy with case workers, the New Welfare will be administered by the IRS.

I made fun of Obama’s “Yes we can”, and now I’ll make fun of McCain’s “My friends, I know how to do it”.  Obama’s slogan is inclusive (”we”), it’s an affirmation of faith and hope, and it can be chanted by a crowd.  McCain’s slogan is unchantable and too big for a bumper sticker.  It’s personal and exclusive; he knows how, and his friends don’t.  He’s not going to tell his friends how to do it, and he’s not going to show them, he’s just claiming that he knows.

Meanwhile, McCain’s whole life story is about perseverance and maverickiness, not competence or know-how.

• My friends, I know how to fix the economy.
• My friends, I know how to find Osama bin Laden.
• My friends, I know how to reform Washington.
• My friends, I know how to fly planes without crashing them or getting shot down.
• My friends, I have a secret plan to end the war.

OK, the last one was Richard Nixon, but you get the idea.

Shankar Vedantam at the Washington Post  has an interesting article about political views and party affiliations.

“Party identification is part of your social identity, in the same way you relate to your religion or ethnic group or baseball team,” said Gary C. Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego.

Referring to political scientist Marc J. Hetherington at Vanderbilt:

Rather, he said, what has happened in recent years is that partisans have come to identify with their parties in much the manner that sports fans identify with their teams. The strong views they feel on many issues do not drive their party affiliation; it is their party affiliation that drives their strong views.

Isn’t there a chicken-and-egg problem here?  If political views come from party affiliations, then where do party affiliations come from?  We seem to have a cultural assumption that information flows upwards in a political hierarchy (representative democracy, the will of of the people, yada yada yada).  On the other hand, in a religious hierarchy we assume that information flows downwards.  So if we substitute religion for politics in the basic premise:

Religious views do not drive religious affiliation; rather religious affiliation drives religious views.

It sounds perfectly reasonable.  I suspect that in politics, the information flows in both directions, but upwards in some people and downwards in others.

Intrade has a contract that pays off if Joe Biden withdraws, voluntarily or involuntarily, his Democratic VP nomination.  (This contract appeared a few days after the Palin withdrawal contract, so I suspect that someone shamed Intrade into it.)  Thursday morning I noticed that the contract had been bid up to 7.5, meaning a 7.5% chance that Biden will withdraw. 

Biden said on Wednesday:

Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States,. She is qualified to be president of the United States of America. She is easily qualified to be vice president of the United States of America, and quite frankly, might’ve been a better pick than me.”

I interpreted this as a roundabout way of implying that Sarah Palin is not qualified, not because she’s a woman, but because she’s not Hillary.  And maybe Biden was sucking up to the Hillary supporters just a bit.  Apparently others interpreted this as an indication that Biden would step down, making way for Hillary to ride in on a white horse and save the election for the Democrats.  Well, of course I sold a few contracts short, but what fascinates me is that the rumor is not really about Biden.  It’s about Hillary.

Hillary looms over this election, larger than life.  When she lost the primaries, people thought she could capture the nomination with the help of the superdelegates.  People thought her supporters would do something at the convention.  Now that Obama has chosen Biden, they think that Biden might step down.  Intrade still shows Hillary with a 3% chance of winning the Presidency in November.  The recurring theme is that somehow Drama will trump Reality.  People are waiting for the writers to introduce the last-minute plot twist that will elevate Hillary to the position she rightfully deserves.