By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Mickey Kaus, pretty much alone among the commentators I've been reading, indicts "Wagner Act unionism" for the decline and fall of the U.S. auto industry. The problem, he argues, is not just the high level of benefits that the United Auto Workers has secured for its members but the work rules—some 5,000 pages of them—it has imposed on the automakers. As Kaus points out, unionism as established by the Wagner Act is inherently adversarial. The union once certified as bargaining agent has a duty not only to negotiate wages and fringe benefits but also to negotiate work rules and to represent workers in constant disputes about work procedures.

The plight of the Detroit Three auto companies raises the question of why people ever thought this was a good idea. The answer, I think, is that unionism was seen as the necessary antidote to Taylorism. That's not a familiar term today, but it was when the Wagner Act was passed in 1935. Frederick Winslow Taylor was a Philadelphia businessman who pioneered time and motion studies. As Robert Kanigal sets out in The One Best Way, his biography of Taylor, he believed that there was "one best way" to do every job. Industrial workers, he believed, should be required to do their job in this one best way, over and over again. He believed workers should be treated like dumb animals and should be allowed no initiative whatever, lest they perform with less than perfect efficiency.

By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.

Here is my Creators Syndicate column for this week. It's on the Rod Blagojevich scandal. And here is quite a good piece by Dan Rostenkowski in defense of Chicago politics.

By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.

I'm a little late, thanks to jury duty and other matters, to weigh in on the incredibly juicy Rod Blagojevich story. Blagojevich was arrested Tuesday morning on the basis of a criminal complaint issued by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. That Blagojevich has been under legal investigation and has been in danger of indictment has been widely understood by all serious political actors in Chicago and Illinois for some time: This wasn't entirely a surprise. "Our worst fears were realized," was the official reaction of state Attorney General Lisa Madigan, a critic of Blagojevich who has been contemplating challenging him in the 2010 Democratic primary for governor. But it was a surprise that Blagojevich made so many impolitic and indictable statements when he had every reason to believe that he was under surveillance. The always shrewd Jennifer Rubin is on to something when she asks whether Blagojevich is "just plain crazy." She is "intrigued by the mendacity, bordering on insanity. How does someone function in a high office with such a loose grip on reality?"

By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

It takes a while for our states to tally up the total number of votes cast in the presidential election, so only now is it possible to say something reasonably close to definitive about turnout in the 2008 general election. Overall turnout, as currently reported, seems to be 130.7 million, about 7 percent more than the 122.3 million of 2004. That's a much smaller percentage increase in turnout than between the 2000 and 2004 elections, which was 23 percent. Turnout increase in 2004-08, at 6.9 percent, was higher than population increase 2003-07 (as estimated by the Census Bureau and which I take as a reasonable proxy for the population increase from which increased numbers of voters could be drawn) of 3.9 percent, but not by much.

One of the things that have struck me as I have been crunching numbers from the 2008 election returns is how variable turnout increases/decreases were. In states that were seriously contested in 2008 but not 2004, turnout tended to be way up (example: Indiana, plus-12 percent, in a state with 2.6 percent population increase), but in states that were seriously contested both years, turnout was not up and, in one significant case, was down (example: next-door Ohio, minus-3 percent, in a state with a 0.3 percent population increase).

By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

I don't ordinarily publicize political flacks' press releases. But the following release, from backers of recently re-elected Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, strikes me as worthy of some note. Sure, it's self-promoting, but from what I know, it's also pretty factual. And, without saying so, it makes a case for Mitch Daniels as a possible presidential candidate. Daniels's experience is not confined to Indiana state government; he was George W. Bush's first director of the Office of Management and Budget, which gave him a fine overview of the federal budget and government operations, and served as an aide to Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar in the 1980s. Of course, Daniels's critics, opponents, and other observers are welcome to add their comments; this is just one side of the story:

Despite the anti-GOP hurricane force headwinds this election cycle, Governor Mitch Daniels not only won, he won big, 58%-40%. Hoosier voters sent a clear message they view Mitch Daniels as a change agent and reformer who gets results.

By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Will the enviros allow big public works projects to go forward? Hugh Hewitt, who has been defending landowners in environmental lawsuits, says no. Environmental restriction groups exist precisely to stop economic development, for whatever reasons they can think of. That's why their direct mail and big contributors give them money; that's what keeps their (often six-figure) salaries coming in; that's what they believe in. Advocates of major public works spending like to look back on the projects of New Dealers like Harry Hopkins, Harold Ickes, and Fiorello LaGuardia. All well and good. But Hopkins, Ickes, and LaGuardia were unusually gifted at getting things done; there's no assurance that their present-day counterparts will be so hugely competent. And Hopkins, Ickes, and LaGuardia didn't have to face an array of environmental restriction groups adept at using legal processes to prevent them from building the things they wanted to build. LaGuardia Airport and the Pentagon were each built in less than a year. The enviro groups won't let anything get permitted that fast in our time.

By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Perhaps the most astonishing result in this year's many elections was the victory in Saturday's Louisiana runoff of Republican Anh "Joseph" Cao in the Second Congressional District of Louisiana. Results here; background on Cao here; more analysis here. Obviously, there were special circumstances operating here that enabled a Republican to win in a 64 percent black congressional district: Incumbent William Jefferson is under indictment; the election was postponed, because of Hurricane Gustav, to December 7 when Barack Obama was not on the ballot, so turnout was very low; Cao, a Vietnamese immigrant, had an interesting story to tell. Nevertheless, it underlines for me a lesson for Republicans for the 2010 elections: The way to make major gains is to run out-of-the-box candidates in districts where by standard metrics your party has little or no chance to win. It may not work, but nothing else will. 

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