Matt Yglesias

Obama and the Realists

The publishers of The National Interest — the policy journal of traditional Republican realist thinking — offer a split decision on the presidential election. A split is a bad result for McCain since, as they note, “Senator McCain would be a natural choice for both of us, as a fellow Republican and a friend who served with distinction on The Nixon Center board for many years.” The other point is that their complaints about Obama are overwhelmingly concerns about his domestic policy agenda, which I wouldn’t expect any kind of Republican to be enthusiastic about. But both authors are primarily national security people and their publication is primarily about foreign policy, and on this front they clearly prefer Obama, with their main reservation being that some Democrats (Richard Holbrooke is their example) are too neoconnish for their taste.

Clearly, this isn’t going to be the difference-maker in next year’s election. But in terms of the competition among elites and interest-groups that does a lot to shape the actual policy environment once the electoral die is cast, this is a sign of important things to come. Obama has a real opportunity to eschew the excesses of the neocon-lite wing of the Democratic Party and add the bulk of realist practitioners to his coalition. Alternatively, realists might do some work inside the Republican coalition and try to make a serious effort to retake control from the neocons.

Spreading the Wealth, Wooing the Base

Reader B.L. got Gallup to give him the partisan breakdown behind their recent polling that shows most voters want to spread the wealth around. This chart compares the number of people saying they “feel that the money and wealth in this country should be more evenly distributed”:

Granting that you can’t demonstrate causation based on correlation, but what seems to have happened here is that McCain started articulating an unpopular, anti-egalitarian message. But his endless repetition of the message “taught” a significant number of self-identifying Republicans than their previous egalitarian views were “wrong” and brought them around to the orthodox conservative position. A small number of independents seem to have gone along for the ride as well, which isn’t surprising since we know many independents are covert partisans and there’s also the possibility of statical noise. And Democrats didn’t move at all. But in essence, McCain’s message seems to be persuading his base to change their minds about an issue, rather than persuading undecided voters to turn against Obama. The underlying oddity is that both before and after McCain seized on the idea that spreading the wealth around is bad, the public appears to be broadly supportive of the idea of spreading the wealth more equally.

Tax Revolt

Back in 2007, Mark Schmitt wrote a column arguing that we were nearing the end of the great “tax revolt” launched in the late-1970s that’s made it so difficult to do big progressive change. Kevin Drum has some big doubts:

So how’s that going? At the time I remember thinking that Mark’s piece was fairly persuasive, but the 2008 campaign sure doesn’t seem to bear it out. Barack Obama, the progressive candidate, has certainly not campaigned on tax increases. In fact, he has loudly and consistently based his campaign almost entirely on a promise to cut taxes for 95% of Americans. He could probably fund the national debt for the price of the ads touting his tax cutting credentials. Amidst all that, the only teensy weensy concession he’s made to higher taxes is an increase — all the way to 1990s levels! — for the highest earning 5%.

This is, of course, about as moderate a tax policy as you could possibly hope for. But even so, he’s only barely gotten away with it. The response from the McCain campaign to that teensy weensy increase has been to go completely ballistic, accusing Obama of everything from socialism to Marxism to wanting to firebomb Joe the Plumber’s cozy little Ohio cottage. In the end, it looks like this barrage of inanity won’t work, but conservatives are sticking to it and they really do seem to be getting at least some traction with it. If Obama had nodded even slightly further in the direction of tax hikes, there’s a good chance McCain would be making serious inroads on him right about now.

I think Kevin’s reading this evidence backwards. Obama’s tax proposals are a pretty clear piece of defense crouch politics, a proposal carefully crafted out of a desire to raise a bit of revenue without being tagged as a tax hiker. And Kevin’s right that it doesn’t seem to be working — Obama’s still getting slammed as a tax hiker. But the important part is that the slams aren’t working. John Chait points out that by a 50-44 margin, voters tell pollsters that they expect Obama to raise their taxes. Of course that’s wrong, Obama’s plan would cut taxes for the vast majority of Americans. But conservatives have persuaded most people that either that’s not what Obama’s plan would do, or else that Obama is just lying and he’ll go back on his pledge and offer a bigger, broader tax hike than he’s officially proposed. So Obama’s losing the argument. But he’s winning the election anyway which is perhaps an indication that he could have gotten away with a plan that did more to boost revenues.

That said, it’s everywhere and anytime politically difficult to raise taxes. Probably the greatest blow Ronald Reagan struck against American liberalism was changing tax law so as to index income tax brackets to the Consumer Price Index. Before that, each and every year inflation created a small tax hike. Consequently, the default scenario was for revenue to grow. That created a situation where for three decades following the end of World War II, politicians steadily increased the volume of public services while also offering the occasional tax cut. And until the economic malaise of the 1970s, voters liked the outcomes just fine. But by seizing the opportunity provided by the 1980 election to change this, Reagan was able to shift the structure of American politics in a fairly significant way. In many ways the biggest challenge facing an incoming progressive administration backed by progressive congressional majorities is to find some equivalent measures — things you can pass at a moment of political strength whose impact will continue to be felt long after that political moment fades.

Duberstein for Obama

Via Tim Fernholtz, a Newsweek article from 2000:

About two years ago McCain began talking to Ken Duberstein, Reagan’s last White House chief of staff and a close friend of Gen. Colin Powell’s. McCain wanted to know: was Powell thinking of running? Left unstated was the reality that there wasn’t room for two American heroes in the presidential race. Duberstein assured McCain that Powell would stay out of the campaign, and the two men began talking about “upping McCain’s profile,” says Duberstein. McCain, who had a book coming out about his own military career, had watched with fascination as Powell ran a book tour in 1995 that resembled a coronation parade. “How did Colin do it?” McCain wanted to know. The senator also quizzed Duberstein about President Reagan. How had the Gipper won over so many Democrats as well as Republicans? Duberstein offered contacts (his corporate clients include Goldman Sachs and General Motors) as well as sage advice. He began to quietly expose McCain to corporate bigwigs (and potential campaign donors), hosting a breakfast for 25 business leaders with Henry Kissinger in New York that December.

Today, Duberstein says he’s voting for Obama:

Former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria this week he intends to vote for Democrat Barack Obama on Tuesday. [...] Duberstein spoke with Zakaria about his final days in the Reagan White House. The Reagan official, along with Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, also discussed the transition process to a new administration.

On some level, I sort of regret seeing people like this hop onto the Obama bandwagon. Realistically, at some point the Republicans are going to come back into power and I’d prefer that to be a less-crazy version of the GOP. That’s going to require less-crazy people, people like Duberstein, to exert some influence and have some credibility.

The New C-Webb

Bill Simmons nails this:

4. Gilbert Arenas will become the new C-Webb.

Not in a basketball sense, but in a “My God, why did we commit such a staggering amount of money to a guy who clearly has knee issues and might have already peaked as a player when nobody else could have come within $30 million of our offer?” sense. The Chris Webber contract murdered the Kings; Gilbert’s contract could murder the Wizards. And by the way, C-Webb was better than Gilbert — a healthy, happy C-Webb made you a title contender, whereas a healthy, happy Gilbert makes you a 5-seed in Round 1 at best. Big difference.

(When I asked for a one-sentence defense of Gilbert’s $113 million contract from my buddy House, a lifelong D.C. fan, here’s what he sent back: “I would prefer not to, as I think it is a franchise-crippler and thus indefensible.” Well said. When do you think sports franchises will break out of the “We need him to put butts in seats!” mindset and realize winners are the only things that put butts in seats? 2015? 2020? 2030? Hey, that reminds me …)

Exactly. Agent Zero made what’s got to have been one of the most rapid ascensions from underrated to overrated — from a guy nobody had heard of but who was actually good enough to be the best player on a so-so basketball team, to a guy who was on the cover of video games even though he was only good enough to be the star of a so-so basketball team. Now he’s hurt (again) and we’re getting our asses kicked by the Nets at home.

Obama on Infrastructure

Good stuff:

I guess we’re off the point in the campaign where people are supposed to talk specifics, but if you’re interested Obama’s specific infrastructure proposal is for the creation of a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank.

Obama and the Jews

Ethan Porter has an interesting piece on “Why the Jews finally came home to Obama.”

When thinking about this kind of issue, though, it’s worth recalling that what normally happens in elections is that people vote the way they normally vote. Nobody’s surprised to see Barack Obama getting a huge share of the black vote, and Bill Clinton was always wildly popular in the African-American community, but of course black voters also overwhelmingly pulled the lever for John Kerry. But at one point in the spring and summer of 2004, it was thought that Kerry might have trouble motivating black voters for various reasons. That’s not to say that the worrying was useless or unnecessary, but it is to say that research shows that the main thing that campaigns do is “remind” partisans of the reasons that they’re partisans and bring them around to voting for the party that they always vote for. Thus, when we started this general election cycle there were certain traditional Democratic demographic groups (Jews, Hispanics) that seemed skeptical of Obama, while McCain was a widely popular “maverick” views skeptically by conservatives. But over the course of the campaign, Jews and Hispanics came to like Obama, conservatives came to like McCain, and both candidates saw their cross-partisan appeal fade. Campaigns are important because if you didn’t actually do the campaigning this stuff might not happen and then you’d be in a world of pain. But it shouldn’t come as shocking to anyone that a presidential campaign was able to bring its party’s traditional voters along.

One to Watch

The Franken-Coleman race in Minnesota should have us all on the edge of our seats not only because the polling is so close but because the public polling shows such a large third-party vote. Over ten percent of Minnesotans (and in some surveys closer to twenty) are currently telling pollsters they’ll vote for Barkley, but the historical pattern is for third party voters to fade away at the last minute once it becomes clear that their man is stuck hopelessly in third. Will that happen? If it does, which way will his supporters break?

The Iron Cage

Ezra Klein suggests that people might want to stick it to the smear artists by purchasing a copy of Rashid Khalidi’s The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. It seems like a good idea. Publisher’s Weekly calls the book “A first-rate and update-to-date historical and political analysis of the Palestinian predicament.” Anthony Lewis says “Khalidi uses history to provide a clear-eyed view of the region and assess the prospects for peace. He strives successfully for even-handedness.”

What’s more, it costs just $10.20 and it’s eligible for Amazon Prime. I just placed my order.

UPDATE: Note that when you can’t get Marty Peretz to jump on your Arab-bashing bandwagon, you’ve got a bit of a problem:

Wednesday’s Jerusalem Post has an article about the Times’ refusal to make the clip public. But the news story reports exactly what Obama did say about Khalidi, and frankly it is utter pabulum. Read for yourself.

I assume that my Zionist credentials are not in dispute. And I have written more appreciative words about Khalidi than Obama ever uttered. In fact, I even invited Khalidi to speak for a Jewish organization with which I work.

I would never assume that anyone’s Zionist credentials are not in dispute when wading into this sort of territory. You’d be surprised who can get labeled an anti-semite when someone decides that’d be a good way to advance their political gambit of the day.

On the Road Again

Brad DeLong says I was right the first time about The Road to Serfdom and that the 1976 preface’s disavowal of the claim that postwar western Europe was on a slippery slope to totalitarianism is a post hoc revision. He observes that the 1956 preface certainly seemed to be arguing that Britain was, yes, on the road to serfdom. Which would, of course, be a logical thing for a book titled The Road to Serfdom to argue:

Of course, six years of socialist governmnet in England have not produced anything resembling a totalitarian state. But those who argue that this has disproved the thesis of The Road to Serfdom have really missed one of its main points; that the most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people. This is necessarily a slow affair, a process which extends not over a few years but perhaps over one or two generations. The important point is that the political ideals of a people and its attitude towar authority are as much the effect as the cause of the political institutions under which it lives. This means among other things, that even a strong tradition of political liberty is no safeguard if the danger is precisely that new institutions and policies will gradually undermine and destroy that spirit. The consequences can of course be averted if that spirit reasserts itself in time and the people not only throw out the party which has been leading them further and further in the dangerous direction but also recognize the nature of the danger and resolutely change their course. There is not yet much ground to believe that the latter has happened in England.

Of course I suppose Hayek would say that Britain was on the road to serfdom from the mid-1940s through to the end of the 1970s and that the election of Margaret Thatcher then represented the resolute change of course necessary to prevent the UK from becoming a totalitarian dictatorship. But even that seems pretty slipshod and absurd. I think it’s fair to say that the UK, like most countries, was experiencing some serious economic problems by the end of the seventies and that Britain’s were perhaps more severe than usual. But the country was pretty clear not on the verge of becoming a Stalinesque totalitarian dictatorship on the eve of Thatcher’s election. Nor has a country like France that never really followed the US and UK down the neoliberal path become a totalitarian dictatorship.

Interpretive issues aside, clearly Hayek’s general critique of central planning as economics was essentially right and has proven extremely influential over the decades. His political views, on the other hand, look to me to have been pretty alarmist and off-base.

Dancing McCain

CAPAF released the following policy report today:

Never say this isn’t a serious, substantive think tank.

Netflix and Tivo

For a while now, one of the oddities of modern life has been that the most popular, most transformative digital movie distribution mechanism has integrally involved sending small physical objects back and forth through the US Postal Service. The “net” is right there in the same of the service, but it’s actually a phenomenally un-webby thing. Recently, though, Netflix has started unveiling some video streaming services and now comes the announcement that dual Tivo-Netflix subscribers (like me) will be able to get videos through our Tivo boxes. Still, it seems that the physical discs aren’t quite obsolete yet:

Separately, CNET has confirmed that Netflix’s nascent HD streaming capability will soon be coming to all Netflix-compatible devices, not just the Xbox 360. However, the Netflix HD library will be starting with a very small selection (just 300 titles), and will require significantly higher bandwidth than the standard-def streaming that’s currently available.

Since I recently shelled out for a Blu-Ray player (trying to do my part to stimulate the economy) I guess I’m sort of glad to see that widespread high-definition movies on demand haven’t rendered the technology useless yet. But it can’t be long.

Spreading the Wealth Around

I think it’s totally fair of John McCain to criticize Barack Obama for wanting to spread the wealth around. Indeed, though the “Joe the Plumber” debate hasn’t been the most substantive thing in the world, it’s in the neighborhood of some real issues. Recently, the wealth has gotten more and more concentrated in the hands of the very wealthiest individuals. Many people think it would be a good idea to try to change that and create more broadly shared prosperity. McCain, evidently, disagrees. It’s a good argument to have.

I’ve been puzzled, however, by the willingness of some in the press to refer to Obama’s statement as a “gaffe” as if rather than a contested issue in the political debate this was some kind of no-brainer where most Americans take a strongly pro-inequality view. The data suggest otherwise:

What you see here is that traditionally a large majority of Americans have favored spreading the wealth around. By harping on this point, McCain seems to have succeeded in making his position less unpopular presumably by “educating” Republican partisans that the pro-inequality view is the “right” one. At the same time, he’s succeeded in increasing the salience of a topic on which he draws the short end of a 37-58 split. My sense is that this is traditionally a topic on which conservative politicians have tried — successfully — to remain ambiguous, drawing votes from both a pro-inequality base and also a large egalitarian-minded swing bloc.

The 99 Percent Solution

Barack Obama says that frequently differences in judicial philosophy aren’t going to matter because in “ninety-nine percent of cases [because] the Constitution is actually going to be clear. Ninety-nine percent of the cases, a statute or congressional intent is going to be clear. But there are going to be one percent, less than one percent, of real hard cases” where differences in judicial philosophy do matter. See this:

Ed Whelan deems this absurd:

What an idiotic statement. If Sarah Palin said something so stupid, she’d be pilloried from coast to coast. As I explained months ago (when Obama used a figure of 95% for the same general proposition):

As Obama ought to know, the unanimity rate on the Supreme Court is nowhere near 95%. According to the Harvard Law Review’s statistics for the past three terms, cases with dissents accounted for 64.4% (2006 term), 45.7% (2005 term), and 62.0% (2004 term) of all cases. Indeed, last term, cases dividing 5-4 accounted for over a third of all cases, and the three justices that Obama cited as justices he likes—Breyer, Ginsburg, and Souter—agreed in the disposition of non-unanimous cases only 61%, 60%, and 63% of the time, respectively.

Obama, far from being an idiot, is very intelligent. And, “as somebody who taught constitutional law for ten years” (as he tells us in the interview), he surely knows that what he is saying is false.

This seems to totally miss the point. The reason Supreme Court decisions are rarely unanimous isn’t that cut-and-dry legal issues are rare. The reason is that the Supreme Court has absolute discretion over which cases to hear, and they disproportionately choose the “hard” cases. There are lots of cases where the Supremes could choose to offer a 9-0 affirmation of a Circuit Court decision, but that would be a waste of time. Meanwhile, in his eagerness to call Obama a liar, Whelan is completely misrepresenting what Obama is saying — he’s not, at all, denying that judicial philosophy is important. He’s just making the point that the cases where it comes into play are a minority of the total docket that sits before the federal judicial system.

UPDATE: Ed Whelan has a response here that I do agree makes his point of view on this look a bit less ridiculous, but I would still stand by the contention that he’s completely misrepresenting Obama’s fairly clear and basic point here.

Fighting Recession With SUPERTRAINS

UK Transportation Minister Geoff Hoon knows how it’s done:

In a statement to MPs, Mr Hoon, who took over the transport brief earlier this month, said: “In order to stimulate Britain’s economic growth and support our position as a leading world economy it is essential that we make the right long-term investments in our transport infrastructure and that we plan for future growth, in a way which is consistent with reducing greenhouse gas emissions overall.” [...]

Mr Hoon said he wanted to “accelerate” the work his department was doing on both long and short-term planning for the future of road transport, with more hard shoulder-running to increase capacity, and rail.

Note also that UK residents have the privilege of living in a country with a non-insane right-wing political movement. Thus:

The Tories, who have pledged to build a high-speed rail line and scrap Heathrow’s third runway plan, said the “non-announcement” was “empty words”.

Ah to have such complaints from our GOP.

Eagelburger: Palin’s Not Qualified

Lawrence Eagelburger is a rock-ribbed Republican, a McCain supporter, someone listed as a McCain adviser, etc. And he says this:

The remarks took place during an interview on National Public Radio that was, ironically, billed as “making the case” for a McCain presidency. Asked by the host whether Palin could step in during a time of crisis, Eagleburger reverted to sarcasm before leveling the harsh blow.

“It is a very good question,” he said, pausing a few seconds, then adding with a chuckle: “I’m being facetious here. Look, of course not.”

It’s all old hat at this point.

But here’s a different point. Recall when Palin was first picked? I recall reading at the time various dire warnings from hither and yon — from friends of mine, even — that liberals attacked her at our own peril . . . that the American people were secretly yearning to be led by a dim-witted, far-right, scandal-plagued first term governor of a weird state. What ever happened to that? I think it’s easy to overstate the role the disastrous Palin pick has played in creating John McCain’s problems, but I don’t see any way to deny that it’s been a net negative for exactly the reasons it seemed like a problematic choice on the day she was announced.

Tinfoil Time

The Corner hits a new low of absurdity:

Now here’s a subversive little thought about that Khalidi tape that the Los Angeles Times is guarding like a cargo of plutonium.

* Item: The Los Angeles Times is owned by the Tribune Co.
* Item: The Tribune Co. is based in Chicago.
* Item: “In 2008, Tribune is struggling under a $13 billion debt load, much of it incurred in taking the company private in 2007, and from plummeting advertising income at its newspapers.” (Wikipedia. A business friend tells me the current figure is actually $14.7 billion.)
* Item: Tribune Chairman and CEO Sam Zell is a major Republican donor. Why would he not want his paper to release the Khalidi tape?
* Item: The federal government is sitting on a bailout fund of $700 billion.
* Item: It’s not likely the Treasury can disburse more than one or two hundred billion of that before the next administration comes in.
* Item: The next administration will therefore have at least half a trillion greenies to hand out to anyone it deems worthy of being bailed out. Anyone — there are no hard and fast rules.
* Item: 14.7 billion is a very small proportion — less than three percent — of half a trillion.

Again, the tape is not being released because the LA Times was given the tape under the condition that they not release it. The only reason anyone knows of the tape’s existence is that the LA Times wrote a story revealing its existence and describing its content. If the LA Times were conspiring to keep the tape covered up, all they would have had to do would have been to not run the story. But they did run the story. Because they’re not perpetuating a cover-up.

Secret Tape

Daniel Larison has a great post on this nonsense:

It seems that the only reason why anyone suspects that there is something “damaging” (i.e., something not reflexively “pro-Israel”) on the tape is that the Times won’t release it because of an agreement it made with its source(s), but if the Times were to break its agreement with the source(s) and release the tape it would then presumably be accused of violating ethical standards in order to vindicate its preferred candidate. This is a very odd case of a newspaper being accused of “suppressing” evidence after having published a report on the very thing it is supposedly suppressing. Had it acquired the tape and never reported on it, that would be one thing, but it did just the opposite. What is most bizarre about all of this is that from everything we do know about what Obama said, his remarks about Khalidi clearly implied that he didn’t agree with his colleague, which is why in classic Obama fashion he applauded Khalidi for challenging him and making him face his own biases. Presumably, if the Times had always been trying to follow the directive, “do and say nothing that hurts Obama,” it would never have reported on statements made at the party by other attendees. As it is, these other statements don’t count for much, and they have nothing to do with Obama’s views on Israel and Palestine. Perhaps Joe the Plumber can return to worrying about incipient socialism and leave foreign policy to others.

Might I also add that it seems we’re a pretty sick society where a person can be seriously accused of the being acquainted with someone (an Arab someone!) whose views on Israel are unpopular as if it were a hanging offense. Do I agree with all the opinions of everyone I’ve ever said something nice about? I’m not a libertarian, but I still think taking a class with Robert Nozick was a worthwhile experience and I have nothing but good things to say about the man.

New Transit Proposal

SuperShuttle drivers in the DC area ought to be able to get from Dulles Airport to Georgetown University without getting a whole van full of people badly lost. Just saying. Thanks to my trusty USB 720 I can do some backseat blogging, but honestly I’d rather get home. It’s late!

Petraeus’ Road to Damascus

Don’t tell Bill Kristol, but it seems David Petraeus wanted to go to Syria to try some of the old appeasement diplomatic engagement and Bush told him “no.”

It’s a reminder that, ultimately, Petraeus’ tactics in Iraq have had a very hefty dose of “seeking pragmatic compromises with oft-unsavory adversaries” about them. In the particular context of Iraq, at the particular time he was put in charge, that was a tactical approach in service of a strategic concept that most liberals had lost faith in some time ago (I certainly had). But in Iraqi terms, it was roughly the strategy that liberals were urging us to adopt back in 2004 and more to the point, the general blueprint has a lot in common with the way liberals see the world and relatively little connection to the manichaeanism of the contemporary right.