Left Flank

Michael Merritt expressed his preference for divided government, and here's a cautionary tale against a President McCain and a Democratic-controlled Congress.

Far from confounding the parties, divided government has enabled them to adhere to dogma. Democrats have succeeded at increasing spending and Republicans at holding down revenue, with credit and con games making up the difference. The result: the state budget, signed 10 days back by Mr Schwarzenegger, may not last the month. On Thursday the governor wrote Hank Paulson with an urgent request for $7 billion, without which the state may not be able to pay its bills in the short-term.

Like Mr McCain, Mr Schwarzenegger campaigned as a centrist who could check the ambitions of a Democratic legislature with the strength of his personality and principles. A President McCain might do better with a Democratic legislature than Governor Schwarzenegger has, but a Republican identity and fearsomeness don't guarantee that he will.

And, I was just going to argue something about remaining principled during a financial crisis.

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We've reached that time - the last month, mercifully! - when invective-laden rhetoric starts streaking the campaign battlefield like battery fire. Michael van der Galien launches a salvo: «The Democratic ticket is one straight out of hell. Neither Biden nor Obama have what it takes to lead the U.S.». I beg to differ.

Firstly, economists from the National Bureau of Economic Research don't think a President Obama a bad deal.

A survey of academic economists by The Economist finds the majority—at times by overwhelming margins—believe Mr Obama has the superior economic plan, a firmer grasp of economics and will appoint better economic advisers.

Our survey is not, by any means, a scientific poll of all economists. We e-mailed a questionnaire to 683 research associates, all we could track down, of the National Bureau of Economic Research, America's premier association of applied academic economists, though the NBER itself played no role in the survey. A total of 142 responded, of whom 46% identified themselves as Democrats, 10% as Republicans and 44% as neither. This skewed party breakdown may reflect academia's Democratic tilt, or possibly Democrats' greater propensity to respond. Still, even if we exclude respondents with a party identification, Mr Obama retains a strong edge—though the McCain campaign should be buoyed by the fact that 530 economists have signed a statement endorsing his plans.

Secondly, as much I agree with certain McCain positions - freer trade, immigration, and half of health care reform - a Republican presidency is an endorsement for divided government. As a pragmatic centrist, I recognize 2009 is a year for reform - combining a Diocletian-inspired approach to structural problems with a Gracchi-like sensitivity to welfare. If infrastructure reform in energy and transportation, social security, health care, and education were not pressing enough, now there's financial sector reform. McCain might get my vote in a plump year.

Thirdly, Senator McCain's decisions to nominate Governor Sarah Palin for his running mate and his impetuous, flip-flopping actions during the past weeks of the Wall Street debacle just frighten me.

Lastly, as a guide, I offer also The Economist's special section on the 2008 elections. That publication has not itself endorsed any candidate yet.

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Tonight's presidential debate (.mp3 file) was newsworthy, yet ultimately irrelevant. Principally devoted to foreign policy, with a timely addition related to the current Wall Street financial crisis, neither candidate strayed far beyond previously consumer-tested talking points. That late edition favored Senator Obama, and he scored well before surrendering his advantage to McCain's one and only policy strength. And, as far as the performance aspect, although both candidates avoided their worst caricatures - McCain's grumpiness, Obama's lecturing - both also displayed stylistic weaknesses and strengths. John McCain often appeared unnecessarily rude and patronizing to Obama, but also put in his best live performance; Senator Obama spoke haltingly in response to attacks and often deferred, but also, like his nomination acceptance speech integrated bullet arguments within the flow of his presentation. Obama needs to punctuate his prose with stronger ledes and he is still as aloof as Fate. In that famous Kennedy-Nixon debate on September 26, 1960, television viewers pronounced Senator Kennedy the telegenic winner, while radio listeners noticed Vice-President Nixon's arguments. Tonight, Senator McCain is the performance winner, but the transcripts will reveal Senator Obama's nuance. National security prompts an unconscious sentiment to favor the aggressive, regardless of the merits of that disposition, and McCain, I believe polls will show, seems more commanding.

Yet, in the transcripts is where I will probably be most disappointed. Admittedly, as an expatriate and a student of International Relations, even my American foreign policy views take cues from a global, not a national perspective. American foreign policy since the fall of the Soviet Union has drifted, and after September 11, 2001, lurched from tense bipolarity to a jingoistic bravado about just how confident America is about its place in the world. It's a transitional period from bipolarity to multipolarity, and presidential campaigns are not the time to debate where America sits on the continuum. Energy independence, which means something in elections, is absolute nonsense in reality. Campaigning against the State Department and direct negotiations works in the election, but is nonsense. Wars, like World War Two and the Cold War, are good as rallying cries, but not as models for the August war between Georgia and Russia. Israel is always America's ally in the Middle East, but since its occupation of the West bank and Gaza and its acquisition of nuclear technology, its support and existence is no longer an unalloyed asset. Beijing's importance is controversial. Iran is a fact with nuclear technology. And, American foreign policy goes beyond all the topics in tonight's debate, including the Iraq War, to how the White House views the whole world, not just an episode at a time. President Bush had a terrible vision of the world fighting against «Terror», but now Washington's view of the world is no broader than the borders of Iraq. An accelerating frequency of crises resulting since 1992 from news cycle politics has forced the commander-in-chief to trade global priorities for pragmatic compromises, just to clear the weekly schedule. Neither McCain nor Obama challenged this myopic fixation focused on the one place where Washington is still important, the opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Finally, the Wall Street debacle hijacked this debate. I was listening for what the candidates would do about the financial sector, and I was really dismayed by the unrealistic responses to Jim Lehrer's repeated queries about the impact of the debacle on the two candidates' platforms. But, in a broader sense, the Wall Street debacle has already done what the debates are billed as doing; it has become a test of leadership styles. These past two weeks are more instructive (and, I will blog later) about the two candidates than these debates could ever be. John McCain eventually won tonight because he should have. Foreign policy is the only topic where he has ever shown passion or ability. Where his instincts and boredom take him in subsequent debates is an appealing entertainment item, but the results will be foregone conclusions. Unless Obama foams at the mouth or stutters in tongues, or if McCain channels his inner grumpiness, the talking points, the attacks, and the sometimes irrelevant anecdotes about his itinerary will only increase, until Obama sounds like a German philosopher by comparison. Or, like my mother says, Cindy McCain will steal the spotlight with a $10000 dress, jewel, and cosmetics set. Hank Paulson gave us the October surprise in September, and now America can watch as all candidates reprise the best lines from this horrendously long, incredibly- and now foolishly- expensive, ultimately pointless election. The next four years are mortgaged to irrelevance.

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Firstly, I just have to confess: I'm not an issue snob. I don't want more talk. I want a mother-fu*@in' massive tornado just to rip institutions like TV and newspaper media into stinking rubble. I want a cross between the Gracchi and Diocletian to ass-fu*@ all the usual suspects and give the empire another 150 years.

With that said, Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat do an excellent job of not trivializing how disappointing, from a standard focus on parties and personalities, media coverage is in 2008. Klein puts the blame squarely where it belongs.

None of this, of course, absolves McCain of what he has done. He has sacrificed his honor and dignity with astonishing enthusiasm. He has become much worse than «just another politician.» He is a politician who was once more than that, and used that reputation to go lower than the rest. But the fact remains that he wouldn't be doing this, that no one would do this, if the media ignored or censured the behavior. If lies were covered as lies and an allergy to substance was treated as evidence of an unfitness to govern, the tenor of campaigns would lift. These are, at the end of the day, rational beasts, and they hunger for good coverage. THe McCain campaign has found its best coverage comes from its worst campaigning. And so they are following the incentive structure laid out by the media.

Douthat attacks McCain more directly.

John McCain's attempt to run a «different kind of campaign» earlier in the year was largely a matter of symbolism and procedure rather than substance, and to a certain extent the media gave it the treatment it deserved. McCain went to places Republicans don't usually go, and proposed a series of informal debates that represented a departure from what presidential candidates usually do ... but when it came to those policy speeches, he didn't seem interested in taking big risks or making hard choices, and this no doubt affected how (and how often) the press covered his campaign. In their first races for the presidency, both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton promised to take their parties in new directions, and both offered substance to back these promises up; the press treated them like new-model candidates because there was actually good reason to think that they were. McCain, by contrast, has promised to take his party in a new direction, but the centerpiece of his reform agenda is ... cutting earmarks. Maybe that's a laudable goal, but «compassionate conservatism» or «ending welfare as we know it» it sure isn't, and you can't fool reporters into thinking that it is. The press is allergic to policy detail, but they do respond, at least to some extent, to innovation and unconventional proposals - and if McCain's agenda had been bolder, his attempt to run a more high-minded campaign in the early going might have earned him more press coverage than he ended up receiving. Any politician can claim to be running as a new kind of a candidate - but unless you're Barack Obama, who wears his newness in his name and on his skin, you need to prove it, and then prove it again, before the media will take you seriously.

Klein is right: 'This is what we have come to!'

Cross-Posted at PoliGazette

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Donald L. Luskin says it's so, and Don Boudreaux agrees.

This would suggest that anyone who says we're in a recession, or heading into one -- especially the worst one since the Great Depression -- is making up his own private definition of «recession.» And probably for his own political purposes.

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I did manage to sneek a few glances at some news while upgrading.

1. Happy Anniversary, DPRK: Aside from rumors of the Dear Leader's demise, or bad health, there was this concrete sign today.

South Korea's military said the North had been massing weapons for days to shown them off in its capital in a spectacle that would be closely watched for any appearance by reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il, following a report he may be seriously ill.

But a South Korean National Intelligence Service official said there was no sign that any parade had taken place early in the day, when Pyongyang typically stages such events, though he added it was too early to read anything into the apparent delay.

There was also no mention of any parade in the secretive North's official media although it has mentioned other festivities being held to mark the anniversary of the communist state's founding in 1948.

2. Did I Learn Martial Arts with the ITF: I would never think of Taekwon-do as a deadly art after watching all those Olympic matches.

North Korea infiltrated an international taekwondo group, using it as a front to send out spies and plot the killing of a South Korean president who ruled for much of the 1980s, newspapers said on Tuesday.

The Korea Times quoted Choi Jung-hwa, son of the late Choi Hong-hi who founded the International Taekwondo Federation (ITF) in 1966, as saying North Korea ordered overseas ITF masters, including himself, to assassinate President Chun Doo Hwan.

«After taking control of the ITF, the North trained spies and sent them overseas, disguising them as taekwondo masters,» the Korea Times quoted Choi as telling reporters on his return to South Korea on Monday after living overseas for 34 years.

The Korea Times quoted Choi as saying he plotted to kill Chun on a visit to Canada in 1982, but Canadian police got wind of the plan and Choi fled to North Korea.

3. A Good Soldier: Andy Jackson does his pundit-spinning best to follow GOP guidelines to «attack, attack, attack!»

I watch the local news, in my hometown of Baltimore and my parents' residence in Florida, for national news. Here's what I see.

Professional fundraisers for McCain?

Coale has long shared money and connections with Dems. But he showed up at the Republican National Convention last week and announced plans to woo high-profile Dems to «Citizens for McCain.» «A Leading Hillary Supporter Defects to McCain,» read the headline as Newsweek.com broke the story.

«First, I'm surprised it's any kind of big deal at all,» Coale told me later by phone from Minnesota.

«And second, I told McCain that I am doing nothing to help [down-ticket] Republicans. John and I go back. We worked together on the tobacco stuff when he was chairman of the commerce committee. I've known him a long time.

«And I like him a lot. ...

«I'm a true-blue Democrat. But look, I don't know Barack Obama. I had one one-on-one for 30 minutes once. I've worked with McCain. He has a tremendous record of compromise in putting deals together in the Senate.

«I made it very clear this is about John McCain, not Republicans and not Republicans in Maryland,» he added. «I will be supporting Martin O'Malley for his re-election and all Democrats, especially in the state of Maryland. I'm holding a fundraiser for what's-his-name on the Eastern Shore.»

So, the man has more money than sense.

Tax cuts are an easy sell?

Back then, candidates from both parties -- from Crist and his Democratic challenger, Jim Davis, to county and city commissioners -- campaigned on the mantra of delivering property-tax and insurance relief to a steamed electorate.

This fall, though, those pitches are nowhere to be heard. Lawmakers trying to get re-elected seem more interested in running away from Tallahassee's track record than embracing the results of the past two years.

For the most part, they've concluded deep tax cuts can't be achieved as long as the citizenry also expects decent public schools and services.

«What we proved to ourselves is we're so dependent on services, that to reduce taxes so largely in one area we have to raise them somewhere else,» said Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Lakeland, who speaks frankly because he's term-limited.

«We have had a lot of failed attempts at tax reforms, but that doesn't mean it necessarily can't be done.»

Service, and competence? Florida can't have that, so it might as well just fire all the legislators! And, the fundraisers!

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