My Bloody Blog Header

Okay, I was hoping the tendency of the picture in my header to disappear, and the frame to then descend into the blog text, was a fluke connected to my currently questionable internet connection, or late night network maintenance, or something. But it seems to be happening with more regularity and at all hours of the day. I may have to rework the design. (Blast. I liked this one.) Stay tuned…

I Am An Incorrigible Paternalist

Will Wilkinson finds inspiration in this video of Joe Wurzelbacher (the now-famous “Joe the Plumber” cited by McCain) declaring Social Security to be “a joke.”

The argument grown ups should be having is between getting rid of the Social Security system and replacing it with means-tested welfare benefits for retirees, or forced savings programs. I’m on the forced savings side, which Joe might see as unduly paternalistic. But there’s not really a serious argument for not getting rid of the status quo Social Security system. It’s just darn effective democratic politics for the Democratic Party to continue defending it as if it was the last bulwark against Hobbesian brutality.

Tyler Cowen has an old post going over the ins-and-outs of forced savings programs. He notes that every country which has attempted privatization has held on to some kind of secondary safety net as well, and indeed, IRAs and 401Ks work in America precisely because we have Social Security to act as a supplement if need be. The plain fact is that lots of people either don’t save enough, spend it too quickly, enter retirement with too much debt, or simply live longer than they anticipated. Forgive me for being paternalistic (hey, you saw the post title) but human beings tend to be flawed creatures of limited information, so they don’t always handle money well. Which indicates what the real plus of status quo Social Security is, namely, that’s it’s a set check which comes at regular intervals from the day you retire to the day you die, no matter what.

The Case Against The Little Squiggly Lines

Those would be the orange and green ones at the bottom of CNN HD during the debates, which Wolf Blitzer just has to keep pointing out, and which apparently measure the moment-to-moment reaction of a focus group to the debate.

The problem is not simply that the focus groups are made up of undecided voters. Though given what we know about that elusive demographic, anyone who hasn’t made up their mind by this late date is probably the least likely of all to have an opinion or reaction of any informational worth to the rest of us. No, the real problem lies in the moment-to-moment bit.

A presidential debate is the last thing on earth that should be digested moment-to-moment. It is, or at least should be, the application of a series of arguments to the question of the day. Such a thing must be mused on after it is over. Fact checks must be done, contradictions must be pointed out, and, even more deeply, the philosophies at work must be brought to light and weighed for their quality. We must come to see the underlying structure of thing before we can know what to learn from it, and that takes time. Like any judge worth their salt, we must retire before rendering our verdict.

Those squiggly little lines are a slap in the face to all of that. They treat the debate not as a series of arguments but as a series of free-floating stimuli. They indulge the worst kind of self-satisfaction amongst the American people, treating us as pristine sages waiting on high to deliver an instant thumbs up or down. And they confirm the worst suspicion we harbor about our politics, that it has degenerated into nothing more than a substance-free game of signaling.

So yeah, I don’t like ‘em. Same goes for those bloody “analyst scorecards” on either side of the screen.

UPDATE: Matt Zeitlin has a more mellow take on the squiggly lines than I do. He also links to a TAP article with some interesting possibilities for where dial-testing could be headed.

The Killjoys vs. The Schwarzeneggers

In her latest Bloggingheads with Daniel Drezner, Megan McArdle floated the idea that the shared economic approach of libertarians and Republicans may have been better served if Gore had won in ‘00 or Kerry had won in ‘04. Under that scenario, we’d have had a Democratic president when the financial crisis hit, and we would currently be talking about deregulation rather than regulation. The Republican economic ideology would now be ascendant rather than shuffled to the sidelines.

I don’t really buy it. McArdle’s argument hinges on the “blame the guy in charge” syndrome, which I don’t deny is quite real and indicative of an often silly and uninformed populace. Presidential administrations have relatively little to do with the health of the financial sectors, which tend to come apart only after years of bad decision making has built up. I’d certainly be much more willing to tar Bush ideologically with the current mess than McArdle, but even that argument involves logic a-few-steps-removed. (Namely, that the current administration supports an economic ideology which made the mess far more probable, etc.) At any rate, the policy contributions of the Bush administration and the current congressional Republicans to this crisis were partial at best. But most voters don’t know that. So they hang this thing around Bush’s neck because he’s currently the guy behind the podium on TV.

But I think there’s more going on. Which is that, per the “conventional wisdom” and as plenty of pundits have pointed out, voters tend to swing Democratic in times of economic hardship. Why? It ain’t because voters understand economics very well, so my guess is there’s a kind of narrative-based emotional intuition going on.

The Enemy of My Enemy

As a quick and generalized sketch of the dynamic McCain has inspired within the Republican party, this bit by Daniel Larison is quite helpful:

McCain’s mainstream conservative critics never expected anything good from him in terms of policy, and have rallied to him primarily to stop Obama and so they seem most intent on encouraging the campaign to obsess about Obama’s character and associations.  Meanwhile the “reformists” held out some hope that McCain’s reform mantra would turn into a coherent policy message that would address present challenges, and they are therefore annoyed or perhaps even embarrassed by the triviality and aimlessness of the campaign.  The “reformists” are much more likely to hold McCain responsible for squandering what they saw as a real opportunity, while his long-time critics had no illusions about McCain and cannot be disappointed in him.  Regardless, they are preoccupied with vilifying informing voters about Obama.

In the end, McCain confirmed many of his own critics’ arguments with his message-free, incoherent, largely negative campaign, but he is doomed to disappoint them as well because he will never be willing to go quite as far as they want him to in attacking Obama.  If former admirers have turned to criticism or even decided to back his opponent, this is a measure of how badly McCain has failed, even if their expectations of him were far too high.  He has alienated some of the people who are normally most sympathetic to him and his kind of Republicanism and he has been winning the half-hearted support of those who never wanted him and who tolerate him only because it is necessary.

Og And Ug Play The Neanderthal Market

Not surprisingly, about 90% of what I now know about our financial industry I learned in the last three weeks. So this is really apropos of nothing, other than my desire to share. But Jim Manzi has just written one of the best layman’s explanations I’ve ever read of both our financial system and what kind of crisis can befall it.

His definition of government – “groups of big guys who like to be in charge and carry spears” – is a bit Ambrose Bierce, and could just as easily be applied to private business, but is worth keeping in mind nonetheless.

Beating Up On The Little Guy

My TV watching habits basically boil down to The Daily Show, The Shield, C-SPAN, and occasional dollops of MSNBC. (Watching Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow is sort of the political equivalent of having a Snickers bar.) So Ezra Klein’s roll out of blog posts today, on Fox News’ attempt to push the meme that poor black people and ACORN are going to steal the election for Barack Obama, came as news to me.

For the curious, ACORN is the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, and has long been engaged in voter registration drives among poor minorities. As no good deed goes unpunished, this has made the group a target for conservative and GOP accusations of voter fraud.

Ezra’s take on the matter:

Your Regular Hair Metal Allowance – Bon Jovi / Scrubs Edition

I have been to at least five weddings at this point in my life. At practically every one, I have heard Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On a Prayer” and “You Give Love a Bad Name” being played during the reception party. I have never once heard “Bad Medicine.”

I do not know why that is, but it seems to me a regrettable oversight.

(Set to clips of Scrubs, as whoever posted the official video apparently isn’t inclined to permit embedding. Boo. But hey, a bit more Scrubs never hurt anybody.)

The Trust Issue

“I don’t trust him” has become a common refrain amongst Republicans and conservative Democrats who remain unwilling to vote for Obama. This is usually followed by vague, almost free-floating invocations of Wright, Rezko, Ayers, or in the uglier circumstances his (often imagined) ethnic decent. That Obama “is not what he appears to be onstage” is also tossed around quite a bit – a charge which, if proven true, would mark the candidate as one of history’s all-time greatest hucksters, given the sustained and intensive public scrutiny he has received. And this is all, of course, being egged on by the thematically linked, “Who is the real Obama?” nonsense coming from McCain and Palin themselves.

But what really bothers me about the sentiment is that it strikes me as a kind of intellectual dodge or hustle. To say you don’t think Obama is ready or sufficiently competent to be commander-in-chief is an incorrect and stupid argument to make. But it is, I think, a fundamentally legitimate argument, in that it says what it means and stakes out a meaningful, specific position that is deserving of rebuttal. In contrast, saying you don’t trust Obama is fundamentally illegitimate, in that it is none of those things.

Let’s break it down.

First off, applying a question of “trust” to a presidential candidate at all is a bit odd. Trust is the kind of thing you extend to the people who, say, babysit your kids or look after your finances. Presidents are functionaries. They aren’t our friends or neighbors or even our co-workers. It’s actually rather difficult to associate “trust” with presidents in a robust as opposed to a purely rhetorical sense, as what concerns us is their competence and their policies. Which is why the whole choice of words just strikes me as bizarre.

To the main issue, the reasonable (sort of) things I could imagine “I don’t trust him” to mean are; You don’t think he’ll manage US security well; You think his leadership of the Iraq War and his plan to get us out will prove disastrous; You think he’ll bring affirmative action and racial grievance politics back with a vengeance and thus make life harder on white Americans. Or something to that effect.

The Man Is Back In Town

Or, at least, I think I am.

The big summer trip to Virginia and then New York City (first time in the Big Apple, actually) is now behind me, as is my move from Austin to Los Angeles, which entailed a great deal of physical, social, and personal dislocation. But now I’ve settled into my new digs, and after a long hiatus due to all that activity, the arrival of both Sarah Palin and the nuclear meltdown of our financial sector has brought me back to surfing the blogosphere.

I feel as though my blog consumption has been improved by the break. My reading seems to be more focused and intentional, as opposed to the old scattershot approach. I’m not skipping from idea to idea as much. (Trying to figure out why your country’s economy has suddenly imploded tends to streamline the use of one’s attention.) Hopefully my blog writing has improved along similar lines.

At the very least, I think I have a better idea of where my strengths lie, and what topics I should be giving a wide berth.

Time will tell.

In the meantime… It’s been too long, I’m glad to be back!