The Art of the Possible
[Posted by Karl]
At New York magazine, Jonathan Chait asks, “When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable?“, while David Frum asks, “When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?” After accounting for the bias inherent in putting up Frum to write about the right, a common theme emerges, i.e., movement ideologues are almost invariably disappointed by the failure of the parties to sufficiently enshrine their respective ideologies in policy (Note: I’m not using ideologue as a pejorative, but to distinguish movement-types from basic partisans). This happens for a variety of reasons, from petty corruption to the checks built into our Constitution.
This is the basic backdrop against which my recent back-and-forth with Ramesh Ponnuru occurred. He and I are in basic agreement that Republican losses in 2006 and 2008 had much less to do with the GOP being insufficiently conservative than with the deteriorating popularity of invading Iraq and the deteriorating economy (underscored by the Wall Street panic of ’08). We disagree over whether a different policy emphasis would matter much. Ponnuru’s examples tended to be drawn from 2000 and 2004 — very close elections in which many factors may be argued to have mattered. In 2012, the economy is likely to be so dominant an issue that second-tier issues are unlikely to be decisive.
I suspect we may also disagree about the degree to which Ponnuru would be disappointed if the GOP took his advice on wage stagnation and policy appeals to the middle class.
One of the most obvious reasons for wage stagnation is the growth of health care costs. Ponnuru backs disconnecting health insurance from employment, but realizes how many people would resist that big a change to their health insurance arrangements, just as they resisted Obamacare. Thus, he backs an incremental approach offering an insurance tax credit to those not covered by their employer.
However, when Ponnuru writes about appealing to the middle class, he occasionally advances a more ambitious policy of expanding the child tax credit from $1,500 per child to something closer to $5,000. This is taken from a proposal by Jacob Stein, who proposed raising the credit to $4,000, offsetting both income and payroll taxes of middle-class families. Ponnuru’s column did not price the policy, but Stein estimated his lesser version as reducing revenue by about $200 billion per year. Like Stein, Ponnuru would make up the difference by eliminating tax breaks and lowering the floor on the top tax bracket.
But a little cocktail napkin math suggests the difficulty of turning that proposal into law. Stein’s proposal is roughly $2 trillion over a decade; Ponnuru’s would exceed that by a non-trivial amount. Most of the budget reform plans (a la the Simpson-Bowles recommendations) get only about half that amount from eliminating tax breaks. So the other half has to come from tax increases, which may explain why the GOP hasn’t jumped on the proposal (while the Dems need the revenue from eliminating tax deductions to stave off entitlement reform).
Stein acknowledges that “[g]iven the loss of the state and local tax deduction, his proposed tax hike will hit upper-middle-class taxpayers who do not have children in the home and be particularly acute for high earners from high-tax states.” I could cynically chuckle at the degree to which this sticks it to Blue state demographics. But if I was being cyincal, I would also recognize that upper-middle class professionals are a demographic the GOP would like to wrest back from the Democrats, and that it’s a demographic that disproportionately votes and donates. Moreover, the elimination and/or scaling back of the tax code’s vast web of deductions presents the basic political problem Ponnuru recognized when he was faced with just the tax-deduction for employer-provided health insurance, but multiplied.
In sum, if GOP candidates stopped tossing out red meat proposals to eliminate the EPA and started pitching Ponnuru’s proposals to address the concerns of the middle class, we might find selling and enacting the latter not all that much easier than enacting the former.
I make this point not to elicit another round with Ponnuru myself, but to suggest it as a useful basis for wonks to better understand and dialogue with people like Stacy McCain. The other McCain, rebutting Frum, nods in the wrong direction of blaming George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism for GOP losses in the 2006-08 period (though he rightly gripes that movement ideologues take too much of the blame for Bush’s more statist impulses). And McCain is too glib in his view of the invasion of Iraq (though there’s certainly a case it was not conservative, there’s also a case against too much hindsight). But McCain has a stronger point:
Frum is a wonk very much concerned with the question of what legislative and policy initiatives can be feasibly enacted (and politically defended) by Republican elected officials. That’s a very different thing than declaring, broadly, what the ultimate objectives of the conservative movement should be.
Although I much prefer Ponnuru over Frum as wonks go, it’s a point Ponnuru should consider. As McCain notes, progressives (and Democrats) have pushed socialized medicine for well over 50 years, even though it’s not a popular plank — and get big bites like Medicare or Obamacare when the historic opportunity presents itself. Conversely, McCain may want to rethink his disdain for more incremental reforms of bureaucracies he opposes on principle, as progressives and Democrats work hard on smaller increments when historic chances are not present — and even then, enacting incremental reform can be tricky.
Ideologues should expect to be disappointed. Wonks should expect ideologues to be disappointed. Both should expect to be disappointed with each other. That sort of acceptance ought to help keep the focus on the far worse alternative presented by the left.
–Karl
“One of the most obvious reasons for wage stagnation is the growth of health care costs.”
Ding!
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 11/22/2011 @ 8:56 amIn the long run, I’d much rather deal with the problem of reconciling GOP ideologues and wonks than to figure out how to bring together the Democrats’ competing interest groups.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 11/22/2011 @ 9:58 amCompromise, as Rubio put it, is pointless when the result is not a departure from the status quo in any helpful sense.
The Collective is just a Kabuki theatre, a Potemkin exercise in representative republicanism. In fact, Goldman Sachs now has control of Italy, Greece, a controlling interest in the US and other countries.
We provide the safety net to the rich taking risks. The outcome is not a dialectic in any truthful sense.
Governments, nations, tribes and unions are all beyond cooperation, there’s no money in it. War and conflict is near, e.g., Egypt, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Libya, and Turkey.
gary gulrud (d88477) — 11/22/2011 @ 10:05 amBreaking News…
Rezko sentenced to 10-Years!
AD-RtR/OS! (031141) — 11/22/2011 @ 10:37 amAny major change of the tie between employment and health-care coverage will require a massive, and complete, overhaul of the Internal Revenue Code;
AD-RtR/OS! (031141) — 11/22/2011 @ 10:41 amand everybody’s Ox will be gored to one degree or another.
But, that result will be much better than the ultimate collapse that is just over the hill.
The flaw in your analysis lies with thinking that wonk, ideologue and partisan are different when in fact they’re pretty much the same thing. They’re different only in the sense that white is different from eggshell and from ivory.
They advocate policies because that is what they want. Because they think the world is better with, for example, restrictions on abortion… or intervening militarily overseas… or high tax rates on those who make a lot of money. While the policies they push may vary, their motivation in pushing those policies are the same, they do so for the sake of having that policy in place.
And when the mushy middle hears this, they’re left asking what no salesman should ever hear from a prospect: what is in it for them? What is in it for me from privatizing social security? How do I benefit from getting the federal government out of the housing market? In what way is my life better if American troops stay in Afghanistan? Or taking away the state tax deduction?
And that is the big problem facing the GOP (you knew I’d come to this): they haven’t closed the sale. They haven’t convinced the public that their lives will be better if the GOP gets its way. No matter what policy a particular GOP candidate is pushing, none of them have connected the dots for voters. They’re getting support from those who buy into the philosophy, but from almost no one else… which is why they’re stuck below 30%.
steve (369bc6) — 11/22/2011 @ 10:45 amVoters bought what the Democrats were selling but it turned out to be a lemon, steve. However, your “buying the car” analogy only works so far. It’s really more like “driving the car.” People don’t have to buy a car every 4 years but voters have to choose a President every 4 years, and they basically have 2-3 choices. Obama has proven himself a lousy driver so even if voters haven’t totally bought into the GOP’s policies, maybe they will decide to let a Republican drive in 2012.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 11/22/2011 @ 10:52 amBreaking News…
Rezko sentenced to 10-Years!
Comment by AD-RtR/OS! — 11/22/2011 @ 10:37 am
Forgive me for being off-topic here, but I just checked out the article about Rezko on the Chicago Tribune website. Guess which prominent Chicago politician with ties to Rezko is NOT mentioned at all in the article. Hint: he now has a very national and international profile. (What, too easy?)
JVW (4d72aa) — 11/22/2011 @ 10:54 amDRJ:
As a marketer, I would rather have customers choose to buy my car because they like what my car has to offer and how good they think they’ll feel driving my car, rather than having to hope they’re so unhappy with the car they now have that they may consider buying something else in another year.
And aren’t you buying a new car every two years? C’mon, you have to do your part for the economy!!
steve (369bc6) — 11/22/2011 @ 10:58 amThe battle is not convinceing people how much better that they will be with “A”;
but how much worse things are going to become by continuance of policies now in place.
Dems are adament that Medicare/SocSec cannot be altered, yet ultimately, the current course of both will result in collapse.
They accuse the GOP of wanting to destroy these programs, but their refusal to contemplate change consigns them to destruction.
BTW, didn’t we have this same argument over the sub-prime mortgage scheme (the GSE’s), and how did that turn out?
AD-RtR/OS! (031141) — 11/22/2011 @ 10:58 amComment by JVW — 11/22/2011 @ 10:54 am
Tribune?
AD-RtR/OS! (031141) — 11/22/2011 @ 11:00 amIsn’t their motto: All the news that Axelrod wants printed!
AD-RtR/OS: given the choice, I would rather sell with a greed theme than a theme based on fear. It’s a lot easier. And in this case, with so many people unhappy with the way things are, it is a relative waste of resources to harp on the negative (there’s no need to spend time and money telling people what they already know). Back in 2008, when people weren’t happy with things, Obama successfully convinced them that their lives would be oh-so-much better if he won. The GOP candidate needs to do the same today… convince the public that the cure to what ails them is to vote GOP. I want my doctor to tell me I’ll feel great if I take the magic pills… it’s not enough for him to tell me I’ll feel bad if I don’t.
steve (369bc6) — 11/22/2011 @ 11:05 amsteve,
I’d like it if swing voters would buy more conservative products but I think there’s a solid 20% of voters who aren’t going to become partisan at this point in their lives. Maybe they were partisan at some point in the past and/or maybe they will become partisan at a future point, but they will probably be replaced by other swing voters. In other words, I think having 20% of the electorate as swing voters could be as permanent as having an 80% partisan vote. Like the chicken-and-the-egg, I don’t know which came first but as long as this is the case, both Parties will have to be content with 20% voting for who drives the car, even if they won’t buy the car.
As for buying new cars every two years … I wish!
DRJ (a83b8b) — 11/22/2011 @ 11:06 amsteve #12,
I completely agree.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 11/22/2011 @ 11:10 amSo, since Obama successfully sold “snake oil”, we just need a better “snake oil salesman”?
Just tell them what they want to hear, whether it’s the truth or not?
That repulses me.
“We will not lie, steal or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does.”
AD-RtR/OS! (031141) — 11/22/2011 @ 11:20 amI will bet Rezko hopes Obama loses in 2012 so his pardon shows up earlier.
SPQR (d54ee3) — 11/22/2011 @ 11:29 amWhen Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable?!? Sorry, did I miss something? Is this supposed to be a new phenomena? Just take a listen to some of the ravings of the left’s favorite author – must be a shortage of tin foil up there in Bangor … http://bit.ly/qVdDUt
ombdz (2a81ef) — 11/22/2011 @ 11:29 amhahahaha
Great insight, actually. You’ve been paying attention to politics for at least 12 years, I see.
Dustin (cb3719) — 11/22/2011 @ 11:30 amDustin, I figure it bis no accident that Holder is AG.
SPQR (d54ee3) — 11/22/2011 @ 11:33 amWell, not to give too much away, but King no longer has the view of causality that he had in the Dead Zone, Frank Rich though is still a strigoi
narciso (ef1619) — 11/22/2011 @ 11:35 amWhy the hell does David Scum get such a hard-on when he backstabs conservatives?
DohBiden (ef98f0) — 11/22/2011 @ 11:40 amPeople want to hear that their lives will be better than they are now… and the candidate that does the better job of appearing to be the one who can and will deliver will be the candidate that wins.
That doesn’t mean we peddle snake oil. We peddle substance. We push the policies we think will give voters what they want: a more secure environment for them to work and live.
And here’s the key: we don’t push the policy for the sake of pushing the policy. We don’t assume voters can connect the dots and figure out why, for example, a balanced budget, makes things better. And we stay away from anything and everything that isn’t directly tied to improving our
customers, oops I mean, voters lives.We connect the dots, over and over again. We make it clear that cutting government spending will improve the job climate. That getting government out of housing will speed the recovery. That keeping tax rates low is critical. And so on.
There is one four letter word that matters: jobs. If I was advising any of the candidates, I would tell them that they better not advocate a single proposal without tying it directly to that policy improving the economy.
That is what the wonks that Karl is so fond of don’t do. They argue stuff, almost for the sake of argument. They talk policy in a vacuum. They assume everybody is as bright as they are and thus don’t need to have things spelled out for them. The public isn’t that tuned in (how else could they have voted for Obama?). We need to deal with them as they are, not as we’d like them to be.
steve (369bc6) — 11/22/2011 @ 11:51 amsteve, they were told what the alternatives to doing nothing would bring,
and they rejected that course because it would cause them to actually have to do something; to engage in activities now that would, if they were fortunate, ensure a better life tomorrow.
Too many, for too long, have rejected that Calvinist Work-Ethic that built this country as the corrupt thinking of DWEM,
led by our vaunted intellectual class in promoting a “if it feels good, do it” nihilism/libertinism.
Now, they will find that to regain what we threw away will be harder work than what would have been required to maintain what we had.
Too many just want to “get by”, doing as little as possible except to complain when someone else has more
(usually because they actually worked – and hard – to make something of themselves).
We have become a Nation of risk-averse couch-potatos, who do not want to extend themselves –
AD-RtR/OS! (031141) — 11/22/2011 @ 12:15 pmIt is the Publisher’s Clearing-House Generation, writ large.
President Obama – As I have consistently said, America needs to learn how to live within its fiscal means, some time after I leave office.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 11/22/2011 @ 1:13 pmI will bet Rezko hopes Obama loses in 2012 so his pardon shows up earlier.
Comment by SPQR — 11/22/2011 @ 11:29 am
Forgive me in advance, SPQR, but I will almost certainly “borrow” this quip myself at some point. I’ll try my hardest to remember that it came from you and give you proper attribution. If I fail, let it be known here and now that SPQR originated this great bon mot.
JVW (4d72aa) — 11/22/2011 @ 1:36 pmsteve (22)
In fairness, wonks are likely not the best salesmen of policy in the first instance. And I think wonks do want pols — the ones with the marketing skills — to connect those dots for voters.
As for your initial comment, there is overlap in the elements of a movement, but it’s certainly not all the same. For example, Bob Shrum could no more be a wonk than he could sprout wings and fly to the moon. And he may lack the mental capacity to be a true ideologue; he’s just rooting for Team D.
Karl (f07e38) — 11/22/2011 @ 2:28 pmKarl: I’ll grant that from your view, there’s a difference. But from the view of the mushy middle, there’s little perceptible difference. Sorry.
And I’m not a wonk, but I too wish that our pols did a better job of connecting the dots. Watch tonight’s debate and see how
manyfew candidates provide the A-B-C on any given topic.For example, on Iran, how many will say we don’t want Iran to have a nuclear weapon assuming listeners know why it is so important that Iran doesn’t get one? How do they expect to have people rally to their proposal if the listeners don’t know what they’re going to get out by doing so?
Repeat after me: policy, benefit. policy, benefit. Never talk about the former without including the latter.
steve (254463) — 11/22/2011 @ 2:59 pmI think the one voice we can depend on to do a lot of dot-connecting belongs to the ex-Speaker of the House.
AD-RtR/OS! (031141) — 11/22/2011 @ 3:04 pmJVW, I steal shamelessly so you should too.
SPQR (26be8b) — 11/22/2011 @ 3:28 pmRomney names Ayotte among 15 names on his not-yet-short list for VP.
What a shameless lyin’, pandering crud. No way he names a governor or anyone else from the NE.
He’s an inevitable loser.
gary gulrud (d88477) — 11/22/2011 @ 4:41 pmAyotte endorsed him.
Anyways rejoice in the fact Rezko will be Bubba’s toy while in prison.
DohBiden (ef98f0) — 11/22/2011 @ 6:22 pmComment by gary gulrud — 11/22/2011 @ 4:41 pm
As a putative resident of MA, why would Romney select as VEEP someone from New England?
AD-RtR/OS! (031141) — 11/22/2011 @ 6:45 pmThe purpose of “ticket balancing” – either geographically or philosophically – is to add strength where you are light by selecting a running mate that accomplishes that (See: John McCain – Sarah Palin).
Perhaps I’m being too simplistic, but since the 2000 election my main criteria in voting has been to not vote for the one I catch lying to my face. There are many things I do not know, but when I know something and know I’m being lied to about it… it would be a very sad day if I thought that person was still the better candidate.
I think a review of the one’s promises and their fulfillment (or lack thereof) would be very effective, starting with his promises that the oceans would obey him and the sick would begin to be healed. Along with that, a review of his first assistant’s promises about watching over the spending of the stimulus bill, revealing among other things, how “the shovel ready projects weren’t so shovel ready” (so we used the money to fill public employee union pension reserves).
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 11/22/2011 @ 7:03 pmI will bet Rezko hopes Obama loses in 2012 so his pardon shows up earlier.
Comment by SPQR — 11/22/2011 @ 11:29 am
— Cute, but there is absolutely NO WAY that Obama pardons Rezko.
Icy (61f618) — 11/22/2011 @ 7:20 pm31. Rezko’s pleasure is too good for Holder and Bent D*ck.
gary gulrud (d88477) — 11/23/2011 @ 2:53 amYes, the social security shortfall isn’t steep enough
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/195261-senate-dems-ready-to-move-400-billion-in-new-bills
narciso (ef1619) — 11/23/2011 @ 4:43 am