Matthew Yglesias raises the interesting notion of political deadlock and wonders about the roots and consequences.
It would appear that all the pandering in the world is not capable of convincing anti-Bush Americans that Bush cares about them, while all Democratic efforts to sell the good-government message utterly fail to convince pro-Bush Americans (even those quite disappointed with his unscrupulous actions) that the Dems would actually perform any better in practice. It’s basically a politics of pure ressentiment with both sides more motivated by the perceived evils of the alternative than convinced of the merits of their team.
He’s puzzled by it.
I’m less puzzled by it, because I have a theory. (…a theory which is mine, for you Monty Python fans out there).Bush ought to be losing on domestic issues, much as his father did.
From the left, a substantial minority of the electorate are opposed to much of what he’s doing on principle.
From the right, a growing number are opposed to much of his domestic and fiscal policy in principle. They ought to abandon him, leaving him with the corporate-welfare queens and those National Enquirer-reading voters who base their votes purely on the number of brand impressions that have been bought.
But there’re two problems with that.
One is domestic, and I’ve pretty much beaten it into the ground. The cosmopolitan left has become the engine of the Democratic Party, and for them, love of country is essentially subsumed to a broader vision of interest-group alliance and worldwide bureaucratic order. The average American, who ought to be for the Democrats if voting a paycheck, can’t bridge the social gap, and isn’t buying the international vision.
The other is foreign, and is simply this: “How do we respond to 9/11, and ensure that there won’t be another one?” I hope this doesn’t require any explanation.
The Democrats are beginning understand that they need to form a coherent vision, but I believe that it gets stuck in two areas – the assumption of easy multilateralism, and overreliance on law-enforcement models.
So we wind up with a bunch of potential voters who ought to be in play, but aren’t because they have two top-level issues (values and defense) that the Democrats haven’t yet been able to neutralize.
Will I support Bush? It depends. I don’t want to. But I think that the damage he can do in his effed-up domestic policy is less than the damage that can be done by an effed-up foreign policy. I’ll take a large national debt and a looming class war over a real nuclear war any day of the week. And while I’m a coastal cosmopolitan, I still cringe when my wealthy fellow Angelinos get together, raise millions, and try and explain how, because they make television shows or manage pension funds, they know so much more about the world than “guys with Confederate flags on their trucks.”
So I’m waiting and watching, and I doubt that I’m alone.
UPDATE: Yglesias responds.
The fiscal hawks are already pounding Bush. The real question is whether or not another Ross Perot will appear. If not for 9/11, I would think it would occur. But because of 9/11, it won’t. In fact the huge deficit is due to 9/11. Most fiscal hawks know this, and while they dislike what Bush is doing, they will give him a little lee way. The real question is next year, once Iraq is “out of the way.” How large will the deficit be then? If it hasn’t shrunk, expect some serious repercussions among the GOP party base. But if the economy improves and Iraq doesn’t suck up the money it does now, then I don’t expect them to bail. Although the prescription drug bill is turning off a lot of people, it must be admitted.
As for other domestic politics, depends on the issue. Being an incumbent helps, and as long as there isn’t a huge problem(like an Iraq fiasco or the economy flopping on the ground) then Bush should win reelection.
FH –
Hey, if someone like me would consider supporting him, I’d say that Bush has a hella chance of being re-elected…
A.L.
My problem with the F’d up foreign policy is that I’m not in the least bit certain that it is effective — Osama bombed the WTC back in ’93, knocked it down in ’01, and we won’t know if we’re really safer or not until we get past 2008 without a significant terrorist act. If we have something happen sooner than then, would it be because of something we’ve done or would we say it was some random, unforseeable act that we can’t properly protect against. WMD is new since 9/11? Saddam had’em way back when. And airplanes aren’t Nuclear, Biological, or Chemical.
From the purely political side, as long as the incumbent adminstration makes a show of acting, no terrorist can cause significant political damage: If something happens, it was unavoidable, and if no terrorist attacks, they can take credit for that.
The Dems are out and can’t win. We’re doomed to lose our vaunted freedoms in this climate.
Well, that’s lifting my spirits.
Let’s see: We can’t tell whether what we’re doing will work or not. Check. We have to sacrifice to do it. Check. So far, you’ve described pretty much all eras in human history, in which certainly and ease come after the fact, as we look backwards.
We make history by living it; certainty is for bad ‘airport fiction’ novels.
A.L.
Hey, Armed Liberal, you forget that workers in particular industries, including and especially unions, favor the corporate-welfare (which includes tariffs, of course) for their particular industries just as much as do the corporations. And those workers vote.
Lots of the things that Bush’s base is upset about (as am I), are things that involve moving to the center. Prescription drug benefit? Other spending profligency? Conservatives hate it, but the only real objection from Democrats have been that they want to spend more, but also cut taxes less. That’s not necessarily a winning combination for the Democrats; could be, hard to say.
Your argument is apparently that Bush would have a better chance of winning re-election if he were more conservative, because the Democrats won’t vote for him no matter how much he moves to the center, but it will upset his base. Could be true.
To put it another way, A.L., the very things that the conservatives dislike (increased spending, especially on entitlements, tariffs to “protect workers”, etc.) are the very things that the Democratic Party advocates to prevent the “class war” you worry about.
FH, exactly how do you arrive at the conclusion that the deficit is due to 9/11? Is this “everybody knows” information?
The CBO doesn’t think so. The impact of expanded military operations this year is around $85B. CBO estimates the recession at an impact of $63B. So what the heck happened, given that the projected debt for 2003 is going to be around $401B, and 2004 will rise to $480B? Massive increases in spending, and massive tax cuts. Did you know that we pay around $170B a year in interest on the national debt? That’s a pair of wars, right there, if you want’em.
Fabulous, actual, real data is readily available for your perusal!
http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpdodt.htm
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=1944&sequence=0
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=1821&sequence=0
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2001789221_spending12.html
The Republican party has done more to rehabilitate John Maynard Keynes than anything the Democrats could have done.
I’m with Ross on the economic front. The best thing Bush has going for himself economically is that, even if he wins election again, he’ll be gone from office before it really dawns on people how bad the coming deficits are going to fuck things up.
On the foreign “policy” front, if we park our pickup truck on the train tracks, we can’t tell for *certain* whether that diesel engine roaring our way is really going to smash our truck to smithereens until impact occurs. But it’s pretty easy to guess the outcome.
The same holds true for Bush’s recipe for quagmire in Iraq (and lets not forget how splendidly democracy is being cooked up in Afghanistan).
The only group of people likely to wind up benefitting from the Iraq fiasco is the favored few giant defense/infrastructure contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel. That’s not a certainty, just my opinion based on what I’ve seen and read of Bush and what I saw, read and experienced during the Vietnam quagmire.
All of which leaves me totally depressed. As a fiscal conservative, I could support a moderate Republican if the neocons would quit alienating them. As an independent, I could support a strong Democratic candidate if one emerged, but Terry McAuliffe and the others in power over at the DNC still think they can win another election by dressing up as Republican Lites.
This is why I have advocated, at first in jest and now almost in seriousness, that the last hope for American democracy is for everyone to forget the Democrats, Greens and other third parties and just go join up as card-carrying Republicans – then outvote the right-wing fringies and toss them out.
There’s only one party in America today. Unfortunately, the Democrats haven’t recognized it yet. And equally as unfortunately, that party is controlled by narrow-minded ideologues and religious fundamentalists who may well damage the Constitution and our checks-and-balances form of government beyond repair if they’re given too many more years to do so.
Climb inside the Trojan Horse before it’s too late, I say.
AL: I’ve made money as a cold-hearted reliability engineer. The biggest part of it is making the tradeoffs between costs and benefits. The costs of this war on terrorism are great, but the benefits are not measureable. Safety is dangerous. It is hard to argue against some nebulous ‘safety’ device or program, but they all have costs, and you never have unlimited resources. The costs we are paying for the war on terrorism are real, but the benefits are only unsupportable ‘certainty’ of improved safety. We are /always/ going to have risks, snake oil salesmen who promise to ameliorate the risks in exchange for some money should be viewed with skepticism. Same goes for politicians looking for increased resources. How much of the bill of rights applies to suspected terrorists, and who gets to do the suspecting?
But I’m an engineer, and safety is an emotional issue. Bush hasn’t made, and his team won’t let him make mistakes which look like he isn’t concerned about our ‘safety’, so he will be reelected. When we are changing him anyway due to the two-term limit, the alternatives will look the same in terms of safety, and we might get a better domestic policy administration. As for my low spirits, my 2004 vote against the administration will be meaningless due to the demographics in my district.
Interesting history probably wasn’t fun to live during. I’m not asking for certain safety, I am asking that our sacrifices be worthwhile.
AC8 –
It’s funny because I spend a lot of my billable time dealing with engineers as well; one of the things I see is that large exogenous events tend to be excluded from their thinking.
Islamist terror is a real thing; the issue is how to respond to it. Broadly, there are three plausible responses that I’ve heard suggested:
1) Buy them off;
2) Arrest them;
3) Defeat them.
‘Arrest’ is different than ‘Defeat’ in a number of ways, which I really ought to detail one of these days.
There is a legitimate (in my mind) set of discussions to have on which response is best, or if there is another response.
But I’m interpreting your comment as being one in which the costs of action are obvious, while the costs of inaction aren’t. I’ll suggest that you’re wrong, …
A.L.
>>>Will I support Bush? It depends. I don’t want to. But I think that the damage he can do in his effed-up domestic policy is less than the damage that can be done by an effed-up foreign policy. I’ll take a large national debt and a looming class war over a real nuclear war any day of the week.<<<< This has got to be the dumbest thing I've read in weeks. There is no more convincing demonstration possible of the basic incompetence of this Administration than its foreign policy, especially the mess they've made in that country they like to call EYE-RACK. The combo of bad intelligence and bad judgement in EYE-RACK has really convinced me that this is one dangerous pack of ninnies. Sure they're making a mess of domestic policy -- they don't care about policy! Not one whit. Policy is nothing more than pay-off for the purposes of re-election. Reality hasn't quite risen up to bite them in the butt on the domestic front, as it has in EYE-RACK, but it will. They're all hacking off pieces of the national pie to live off of when it the game falls apart but most of us are outside that magic crony circle. Internationally, we are the defacto policeman of the world and we are staggering around and shooting blindly, generating a huge amount of hostility in the process. We're having a hillbilly feud with an invisible enemy. Aside from all this... to get to the point: increased violence, war is the fact on the ground in EYE-RACK. That's the tool we used and also the result we got. There is a connection, duh! Our methods and policies have bred more not less terrorism in the Middle-east, and sooner or later that chick will come to roost at a town near you.
Cammile, actualy, I’d suggest that yours is the silliest thing I’ve read in weeks, but I doubt that that would have any more impression on you than your non-arguments have on me…
…so let’s try again.
Other than broad generalities about violence being bad (which can be checked and mated by accounting for the typical monthly toll of victims under Saddam), can you let me know why it was such a horribly bad idea?
A.L.
‘Arrest’ is different than ‘Defeat’ in a number of ways, which I really ought to detail one of these days.
Easy. Symptoms versus root causes. Both are needed. How is debateable.
Maybe I’m excluding exogenous events from my thinking here as well. I’ll agree that it is wrong that the costs of action are obvious and the costs of inaction aren’t. Neither of them are obvious. How much will it cost to buy off, arrest, or defeat the Islamo-terrorists? On the inaction side, the costs might be some terrorist acts, but how do we know that we’d ameliorate or exacerbate those costs by buying off, arresting, or defeating the Islamo-terrorists?
Also, McVeigh-o-terrorists, Anthraxo-terrorists, NK-terrorists, or Unabombers seem independent of what action we take with respect to the Islamist terrorists. Taking an action that doesn’t solve the problem could be worse than inaction.
What problem are we trying to solve in Iraq? Religious conversion? Elimination of Al Qaida? Terrorist WMD? Terrorism in the US? They are separate problems with conflicting solutions. Our war Iraq seems more like a solution in search of a problem than a plan to solve any of these problems.
In one realm, the costs of inaction are clear: If Bush was unresponsive to our fears and failed to do anything, it would be political suicide for him and the Reps through inaction, so we have acted.
Are these the ways you suggest that I’m wrong? Or were you suggesting something else?
And now for something completely different “Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong” — BS
Boy. I can’t write flowing text in these little comment boxes. I’ll try to remember to edit up an answer externally.
Ross,
I think a more interest set of data is in the *whitehouse data* (about 3 MB). The increase in spending is clearly due to social services – see page 51. Social services went from 59.7% of outlays in 1992 to 65.5% in 2002 (up from 30% in 1963).
On the revenue side, after all the huffing and puffing of the Democrats, actually looking at the impact of the *Bush tax cuts* is quite surprising. The following are the totals, in $billion, of the cuts 2004-2008
30 – Accelerate 10-percent individual income tax rate bracket expansion
58 – Accelerate reduction in individual income tax rates
55 – Accelerate marriage penalty relief
41 – Accelerate increase in child tax credit
140 – Eliminate the double taxation of corporate earnings
8 – Increase expensing for small business
25 – Provide minimum tax relief to individuals
43 – various feel-good deductions
13 – simplifications
52 – various expiring provisions (includes estate tax)
441 – total impact
Other than the $140B for dividends and part of the $58B for income tax, that looks like mostly middle class tax cuts. An overall impact of $441B for 5 years compares to $2140B in total deficit over those years. But that’s money we are getting back, so it’s not going down the drain like the overspending. (The $2140B deficit is partially offset by $1056 in social security surplus.)
>>>>Other than broad generalities about violence being bad (which can be checked and mated by accounting for the typical monthly toll of victims under Saddam), can you let me know why it was such a horribly bad idea?
Alright, I’ll bite. It’s a combo of all the following, together, that make this war a “horribly bad idea”:
1. Violence, disorder, crime, chaos caused by violent overthrow of a govt.
2. Unleashing the tensions repressed by Saddam. It’s quite possible that this situation in Iraq will in the medium term degenerate into a civil war. I think that is the most likely outcome, over the next five years.
3. Lack of post-war planning and ignorance of history (in particular of the British occupation of Iraq) and astonishingly poor judgement have combined to make the situation catastrophic and prospects grim not only for the Iraqis but for American interests in the region.
4. If there are free elections it’s absurd to think the Iraqis will elect a govt that is subject to our control or friendly to our interests. It is quite likely that the next stable govt in Iraq, democratic or not, will be hostile to the United States and American interests.
5. The presence of American troops in a Muslim country is deeply provocative to Muslim extremists all over the world. It is a propaganda gift to Al Quaeda. Thanks, Bushies.
6. Bringing ‘democracy’ to people at the barrel of a gun, destroying their civic order in the process, is a setback for real democracy in the region.
7. Our failure to garner significant international support made everything worse.
8. Invading Iraq while making happy face with Sharon alienates the Muslim Middle East beyond belief.
How could anyone regard this war as worth it?
The main goal was eliminating weapons of mass destruction, remember them?
Now they’re back-pedaling and blowing smoke about Iraqi democracy. Since when does Washington care about Middle eastern democracy. Since never, that’s when. It’s pure hokum, they’re covering their asses. The point is simply to shove something, anything forward that the snoozing voters will be able to sleep through so Bush can get re-elected.
Just for background, I lived in Iraq (that’s EER-ROCK not EYE-RACK, please) and I know the country & people better than 99.9% of Americans.
Camille,
Terribly sorry, but you really haven’t adressed the problem of Saddam, his mass murder, and those charming young boys of his-especially the one with the plastic shredder.
For someone who has lived in Iraq, you don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about the people. They have a chance at some form of democracy. Not 1787, but something Iraqi. Can’t you tear yourself away from contempt for George Bush for long enough to realize that people are alive today who would have been dead but for our intervention?
And one last thing. One of the most offensive things about some liberals (not all, just some…) is the way that they worry about Al Qaeda being provoked. I’ve seen this before the Iraq Campaign, during the Occupation, and I promise you that I will see some liberals raise this bugaboo if we should decide to pay a visit to the Northwestern Frontier States and hunt down bin Laden. Now, given the fact that this fine social service organization killed three thousand of our people in our own homeland, why should I give a rat’s ass if they are provoked or not?
Those people are trying to kill us, Camille. Why don’t we stop worrying about what provokes them and focus on how to kill them first?
Camille,
1. As opposed to the 1 million dead in war with Iran, etc. etc.
2 The only group with even a remote a hope of overcoming a majority by the Shiites are the Sunnis, who by starting a civil war would invite participation by Iran.
3 Don’t believe everything you watch on tv.
4 The majority of the Muslims in the world live in democracies already, and most are probably at lot like *this guy*
5 Al Qaeda recently destroyed their recruiting ability by bombing Saudi Arabia.
6 We all saw how bringing democracy to a region with guns failed in West Germany, Japan, S. Korea, and the British Colonies in America.
7 Yeah, all we got were Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Mongolia, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan. France can screw itself.
8. Jews and Muslims coexisted peacefully most of Islam’s brief history. They will again once Europe and the US cutoff funding to the people like Arafat who make billions by fanning hatred.
I would add to JC’s post only the following:
4. The interviews of Iraqis I’ve read, especially of Shia and Kurds, indicate that they realize that the Coalition nations freed them from Saddam while the rest of the world was willing to ignore their suffering. They’re not thrilled with having the U.S. occupying them, obviously, but I seriously doubt that translates to the eventual election of an “axis-of-evil” type government, just as a spite. As we’ve seen in Eastern Europe, often the people who appreciate freedom the most are the ones who can recall not having it.
5. Given the troop concentrations in SA and Kuwait we had in place as a deterrent to Saddam, the provocation value of U.S. troops was going to be present regardless, as long as Saddam was around.
6. I don’t recall seeing this blooming of “real democracy” in the ME which was suddenly damaged by the war in Iraq. If anything, gov’ts in the region are putting through unprecedented democratic reforms in the wake of Iraq – granted, they’re stepping stone measures, but its a lot more than was there before.
“Jews and Muslims coexisted peacefully most of Islam’s brief history.”
Islam has been around for 1300 years – that’s not brief.
Jews in Muslim nations were an oppressed minority, subjected to punitive taxes and restrictions at best and massacres and expulsions at worse, most of Islam’s history, starting with Mohammed’s driving them out of Medina (which is still known by its Aramaic name – the Arabic name is Yathrib). There were a few centuries here and there where this wasn’t true.
All in all, Islam’s treatment of Jews was marginally better than Christianity’s, which isn’t saying much. Let’s not whitewash Islam for ideological purposes.
I’d be a bit kinder on Bush’s domestic policy. The Medicare prescription drug bit was inevitable. With rapidly rising drug costs (and efficacy), there is no alternative consistent with keeping Medicare, and deleting Medicare is not politically possible (nor wise IMHO, given the utter failure of the private insurance market).
Furthermore, Bush has a very split Congress, which makes it hard for him to do his primary job of defending the country, and forces him to trade congressional goodies (i.e. spending) for political capital to use in the War on Terrorism (better named WW IV).
As far as Iraq goes, that was a strategic move. Don’t think of it as the Iraq War. It is the Iraq theater in a world war. There were many reasons why Iraq was the best target:
It is strategically placed in the middle of the region. We now have both Iran and Syria surrounded.
It is relatively secular and its people are sophisticated, giving democracy a better chance.
It was a known possessor and user of WMD’s, and known to assist terrorists, and by far the most critical aspect of the war on terror is preventing the transfer of WMD’s to terrorists.
It had already committed numerous acts of war against the US, ranging from attempting to kill Bush 41 to participating in the first WTC attack to constantly shooting at our airplanes patrolling the world trade zone.
It was ruled by a vicious Stalinist regime, the toppling of which was a humanitarian good and a strong warning to the other despots who harbor terrorists.
It was militarily a push-over, and had a population that could reasonably be expected to welcome our intervention (which they have – see the Iraqi blogs on my blogroll ).
The UN sanctions were going to be lifted pretty soon (due to clever propaganda on Saddam’s part – allowing children to get sick and blaming it on lcak of medicine due to the sanctions, etc), allowing Iraq to return to the business of building nuclear weapons, modernizing its army, arming terrorists against us, and generally causing trouble.
The middle eastern world had long ago concluded that the US was a pussycat, not a tiger, based on our responses starting with the Beirut Marine barracks bombing through the various Al Qaeda attacks on embassies. Bill Clinton’s policies of never putting an American in harms way (like disallowing aircraft in Servia to fly under 15,000 feet, and responding to attacks with cruise missile) created the impression of cowardice in America, which greatly added to the problem of terrorism. We needed to put troops on the ground in the region, and fight mano-a-mano against Arabs to prove our mettle – an important issue in those cultures. Iraq was a good place to do that.
My main question on foreign policy is: what the heck are we going to do about Iran and North Korea and their respective nuclear and missile programs. But I would sure rather trust that to Bush than to any of the nine dwarves.
An even more important question is how we are going to deal with bioterrorism, which is an enormous (even unprecedented) level of threat… but that’s getting off the subject.
Islam has had a number of historical periods where they focused on conquest to expand their domain.
We are in one of those periods.
Islam has historically ened it’s conquest periods when either they were not successful in expanding their domains or when they actually lost ground.
It generally takes 50 to 100 years of defeats for the jihadis to get the message.
That leaves the question of when and how to begin their defeat.
I too have dealt with probabilities of loss in aircraft design. So given the current situation what is the probability of a city getting nuked? Or bio-poisoned. Or chemically poisoned. Or car bombs. I do not believe there is any way to quatify the risk benefit ratio. It has to be a judgement call.
Except, Mr. Moore, Medicare wasn’t a trade-off for votes to defend the country. The Republican party supports both, and small as their majority is, it’s enough. Can you find even one member of Congress about whom it can plausibly be said that the Medicare bill was a payback for some vote taken on Iraq? I don’t think so.
Private insurance has not failed.
What has happened is that before government got involved in health care inflation in that market was an astounding 5% a year. Since government got involved it has risen a much more reasonable 10% a year.
The market failure is caused by government.
Before the FDA mandated proof that a drug works it cost $10 million to bring a new drug to market. All the producer had to check was safety – lethal dose etc.
No the FDA requires proof a drug works and the costs to bring a drug to market are $100 million and up.
Guess who pays?
There used to be a lot of charity hospitals and teaching hospitals. Since government has multiplied costs and driven up paper work requirements a lot of those type hospitals have gone out of business.
If you look hard at “market failure” you will mostly see the dead hand of government.
M. Simon, regarding the cost-benefit ratio of city-nuking, bio- chemical- or car-bob-attacked, I see the Iraq war as possibly counterproductive. The war has a big cost, but the benefit might well be negative.
North Korea, Iran, or Pakistan might be more creditable nuclear threats, and the Iraq war seems like an expensive international ad campaign for american fierceness. These advertising execs have told us Operation Iraqi Freedom will convince the other threats to leave us alone. What lesson is Kim Jong Il going to learn from Iraq? Avoid religious fundamentalists while placing dirty bombs in US cities? What bugs me most about the Iraq war is that our benefits (as opposed to the clear benefits to the Iraqi people) are a bunch of handwaving and wishful thinking. Is the rest of the world supposed to fear and respect us when we have less ability to project power than when Bush was complaining about our ability to project power. We’re spending a lot of resources selling vaporware. That is excellent judgement on the part of those doing the selling, but for those buying or paying, it could be an excercise in poor judgement.