log | tofias dot net

CEO of USA in NYT

Published in the New York Times on January 12th of this very 2012.

If you look back over history, you see that while business success can sensitize a politician to the realities other executives face, there’s little correlation between business success and political success…. In sum, great presidents are often aristocrats and experienced political insiders.

and

Paul Krugman:

[T]here’s a deeper problem in the whole notion that what this nation needs is a successful businessman as president: America is not, in fact, a corporation. Making good economic policy isn’t at all like maximizing corporate profits. And businessmen — even great businessmen — do not, in general, have any special insights into what it takes to achieve economic recovery.

So if you squint really hard Brooks and Krugman are in agreement. Today at least.

Don't Even Try

My colleague Tom Holbrook analyzes the 1948 to 2008 data and warns against using current (fifteen months out) economic conditions and presidential approval polls in forecasting the 2012 election:

Look, it’s perfectly natural to gnash your teeth or get all giddy about your party’s prospects based on how things are going now. I certainly do that. The point is that you should spare yourself the emotional energy and wait until we get closer to the election. Then, you can start to worry (or celebrate), depending on how things are going.

Let’s all just chill out a bit until we figure out who won Republican nomination. Worry about the Red Sox and the MVP award or other fun stuff.

Inside the Beltway

Greg Sargent:

Presidents have plenty of influence in Washington. So does the leadership of the House majority party. Senators, too, are important – each individual Senator can sway policy all by herself, and while majorities in that body can do some things, Senators in the minority party matter too.

After that…well, a lot of other people in and out of Washington have quite a lot of say over public policy. Bureaucrats, judges, and lobbyists all have their influence. Eventually, as you go down the chain of influence, you get way down to the level of cab drivers with their indispensable folk wisdom and headwaiters who legend has it give the best tables to the powerful. And just below them, just above intern coordinators at think tanks, that’s where you find Members of the House who belong to the minority party.

Still, I’m sure most of our problems today are Nancy Pelosi’s fault and related to her choice of suits or hair style.

The Democrats Misallocated Resources

Ezra Klein on Peter Orzag and the Obama administration’s shuffling of the troops:

But the Obama administration did a lot of that kind of thing when they took office. Although you could’ve made a case for Orszag at OMB, as there was obvious value in having a budget director who understood CBO, it was harder to explain why the White House named Iowa’s Tom Vilsack, Arizona’s Janet Napolitano, Colorado’s Ken Salazar and Kansas’s Kathleen Sebelius to Cabinet posts given that they were the most popular Democrats in states where a Senate seat was in-cycle in 2010. The Obama administration tried to hire “the best people for the job,” but it gave short shrift to the consequences of taking those people out of the jobs they were already holding and races they were considering/could be cajoled into entering.

Reflections of a Non-Essential Employee

Seth Masket shares some of his memories from the budget shutdown of 1995.

See WaPo on the demoralizing prospects faced by 800K federal employees today.

Brendan Nyhan on the relationship between economic growth and presidential vote share.

“ Every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made … And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine.” — Barack Obama to House Democrats

via Paul Krugman.

The Popularity of Healthcare Reform

Ezra Klein asks if healthcare reform is popular – and it is if you ask people about their support for many of the components of the reform, but not so much if you ask people to stick their thumb up or down to the whole thing.

I think it’s easy to chalk up these sorts of survey results to the common variability and stupid human tricks we often see with polling. However, I think a good portion of the blame has to go to Obama and the Democrats for failing to market this bill with morality and as a series of regulatory changes (see Canes-Wrone and de Marchi 2002) and allowing the GOP to frame the discussion as a question over the size of government. It’s much too easy to maintain a status quo policy by maligning leviathan and the Democrats let their opponents do just that.

Link via Seth Masket who is quickly becoming one of my favorite bloggers.

More and better said on Ezra K. from frequent co-author and good friend of the log, Michael Ensley:

A big bill leaves too much room for doubt, attack. They took the wrong lesson away from 1993-94. The problem for Clinton was not getting Congress involved early. The problem was setting a modest, focused, and clear bill. We are going to make it better by doing X. Instead they were all over the map. By trying to do a comprehensive overhaul you open up to many avenues. Maybe he had to keep to campaign promises. But why not start by delivering something simple. A health insurance reform bill based on mandates and eliminating discrimination based on pre-existing health conditions.

I’ve frequently espoused the Congress-wasn’t-involved-early-enough story while explaining 1994. But I think Ensley is right, the tack taken in both instances was too sprawling to appeal to an inattentive electorate.

tofias dot net