A Political Awakening?

Playwright David Mamet wrote an interesting essay in the Village Voice on March 11 that belatedly came to my attention: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'

In his amusing way Mamet confesses a sudden revelation that he has been living in two different worlds - the functioning world of everyday life with work and play and family and fellowship versus the imaginary world where all was teetering on the brink of disaster due to some dark satanic conspiracy of the corporate-government-military complex. He equates the first with a democratic capitalist society and the second with the liberal fantasy world. In his words:

As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.

His revelation was that reality was the exact opposite and he had always recognized this in his work. People are greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, rich and complex human characters. And the constitutional genius of our society has pit the evil wizards of the military industrial government complex against each other, rendering these institutions much more benign than he imagined. Thus, left to our own devices, we somehow muddle through.

Mamet, though coming from the liberal, top-down, government-imposed mindset, has come to see the spontaneous order of a free society and how this insures the autonomy of the individual that permeates the American character and reinforces the community. This is the unifying idea that transcends our political ideologies and prevails over our political destiny. (This is the idea that would have propelled Obama to the presidency.)

I quote this article because this same idea is the basis of my argument in my last post: that the American people want policies and leaders that empower them with autonomy, choice and security from risks they can't control. Other than that, they prefer government to get out of the way so they may pursue their own slice of happiness, however they define it. If there is any "....and yet" for liberals to espouse, it should be to insure that this idea of empowerment and opportunity bubbles up for every member of our society.

How the Voters Win in 2008…and Beyond

As the primary race becomes more conflicted by the day, it’s easy to get caught up by campaign tactics and strategic voting scenarios. Are voters are really so uncertain or confused on the issues that matter? Are we Americans fickle and unpredictable at the ballot box, twisting and turning on personalities and media spin? I would guess not. In this respect, we may gain a better perspective on where the nation is headed from a recent op-ed written by that old liberal warhorse of times past (and future?): George McGovern. In not so many words, Senator McGovern shed some needed light on the middle ground of the electoral battlefield.

On the major issues voters converge on choices that satisfy three guiding principles: freedom of choice, individual autonomy and insurance or protection against life’s contingencies over which they have little or no control. These three principles transcend ideology and partisanship and their application to public policy follows a new paradigm of individual autonomy and communal interdependence. Americans will reject cradle to grave security if it means giving up freedom of choice and personal independence. And they eschew the unchecked promise of free markets and personal responsibility if it means exposing them to risks they can’t control—things like market manipulation and embezzlement, as well as the lack of asset diversification. Nobody wants to see his or her retirement savings evaporate with Enron.

New Deal ideologues may disagree, citing public support for universal health care and entitlements like Medicare and Social Security, but measurable social and economic transformations over the past half century suggest these sentiments are more likely the residual of mid-20^th century politics than a return to same.

After World War II, national politics was dominated by peak associations comprised of labor unions, business associations and government. John Kenneth Galbraith called these “countervailing powers” that provided checks and balances over the “new industrial state.” But the economic landscape has changed drastically since then. Today union members have declined to 15.4 million, which represents only 12% of total workers. In the private sector their share has fallen below 8%. Corporate business also underwent radical transformations with the rise of entrepreneurship and the proliferation of small businesses as new technologies favor the small and nimble. Of course, the government behemoth only grows ever larger, but invites greater skepticism and scrutiny from the post-60s generations.

This paints the big picture of national political trends, but the new paradigm is also confirmed by more narrow policy preferences. Let’s start with health care. Recent surveys show health care ranks up there right with Iraq as a concern. But the problem is not health care per se, but access through affordable health insurance. The quality of care is extremely satisfactory (cancer survivor rates are the highest in the world) – but only if you can navigate the system’s maze to get that care. Recent polls also show that 64% believe government should guarantee health insurance for all, but only 30% think government would do better than the private sector in providing coverage. Americans already experience how a centralized, bureaucratic system works every time they go to the post office or pay their taxes and they’re not dissuaded by selective fictions about socialized medicine. They don’t want a universal program controlled by government—they want a multiplicity of viable options from which to choose according to their individual preferences. Right now their choices are so limited that the “none” option is being exercised to the disadvantage of all.

Next, education. Do the urban poor want free public education that leaves their children mired in ignorance and a cycle of poverty? No—they want choice and the freedom to make that choice. Just ask them. In financial matters Americans eschew unfettered markets that lead to more financial uncertainty and volatility in their lives. Does anybody really want to ride out roller coasters like the S&L crisis, the Long Term Capital meltdown, international currency collapses, the dotcom bust or the most recent housing bubble? Americans also want protection from criminals and foreign threats, especially something as unpredictable as terrorism. And they expect their government to deliver that protection at almost any cost.

Socially, Americans have become more laissez-faire and tolerant in their attitudes toward sex, divorce, drugs and alternative lifestyles, but at the same time many reach back to traditions and family to maintain a sense of continuity and community. There’s no inherent contradiction between these two tendencies as they both reinforce the three principles outlined above. I’d call it tolerant traditionalism.

The bottom line is that American citizens are fairly confident they can take care of most of life’s contingencies themselves and believe the proper role of government is to empower them to do so. They need to acquire resources and then have independent control over those resources. George Bush called this the Ownership Society, but then failed to address its uncertainties and risks; Hillary Clinton mistakenly calls it the “You’re On Your Own Society” and instead imagines a modern New Deal. We’re not sure yet where Senator Obama stands.

Maybe they should all take a tip from George because if one candidate gets it right, he or she will have little trouble attracting votes and the real winner in 2008 just may be the American voter for a change.

A Different Politics?

Think politics will be different this time around? This article should give you a clue. Substance? Hardly. Apparently "taking umbrage," feigning outrage, and politicizing every word is the "new" old politics.

What's Fair?

That's what Democrats are asking now with the increased possibility of the Clinton-Obama contest going all the way to the convention in August. On Chris Matthews yesterday Ron Allen said this was most important factor in picking the nominee, especially if Obama wins more pledged delegates with the popular vote while Clinton wins more superdelegates and insider party support. Then Matthews teased, "You mean, the Democratic party should be democratic?!?"

This is a bizarre box the party has put itself in again and again. E.J. Dionne wrote another article last week laying this out, "Dems' Agonizing Obsession with Fairness." Interestingly, the article's html title of the web page is: "The Dems' Losing Obsession."

The real problem is that our political elites, especially Democrats, have never explained how every social choice voting mechanism is flawed in some way, even majoritarian direct democracy. This has been demonstrated by Arrow's impossibility theorem and Condorcet's voting paradox.

So, what's fair? That depends. In democracy models the outcome usually depends on procedural rules. Unfortunately, the myth persists that merely tallying up all the individual votes across the nation somehow yields the most 'fair' result. The Democratic party has propagandized this view to its own detriment.

A voting mechanism should be chosen according to what the desired result is and then reverse engineered. In democracy the best result is one that arrives most efficiently at a single choice that gains the acceptance of a majority of the participants. The desired result is NOT the maximum happiness of the greatest number of people and there's an important difference. There are winners and losers in elections and everybody's not going to be happy. And in a country divided up so that no candidate gets a majority of the popular vote, such a result is virtually impossible.

We should understand from the difficulties of both Obama and Clinton that identity coalition politics is a disaster for a majoritarian voting system based on such a foggy notion of fairness. The Republicans don't seem to have this procedural problem, even though they seemed more fractured when the nomination process began. In short order they settled on John McCain as the nominee. How? Because they designed a nominating system of winner-take-all, closed primaries yielding a clear winner to most Republican voters. Are all the Republicans happy? Hardly, but they have a nominee the majority can accept. This is going to be difficult for the Democratic party if the split between Obama and Clinton is roughly 50-50. Half the voters are going to feel cheated and nobody knows how they will react. So much for unity.

Another clear case of how Democrats misinterpret voting is the 2000 election result and the subsequent backlash against the Electoral College. The objective of presidential voting is not making the maximum number of US voters happy - it's to pick a president that the broadest representation of American interests will willingly accept. The ultimate objective again is not voter "fairness," but the enduring strength of the union of states. This is why the geographic distribution is just as important as the magnitude of the popular vote. And when the popular vote is split 50-50 (i.e., indeterminant), the distribution becomes the most important factor. This is as it should be, but why that's so is a topic for another discussion.

McGovern's Revelation?

Wow! The Wall Street Journal today has printed an op-ed by George McGovern (paid subscription). The 1972 presidential candidate that sent the liberal left on its long 40 years into the political desert has now admitted to a refreshing new perspective on US politics. To quote a few lines:

Nearly 16 years ago in these very pages, I wrote that "'one-size-fits all' rules for business ignore the reality of the market place." Today I'm watching some broad rules evolve on individual decisions that are even worse.

...Since leaving office I've written about public policy from a new perspective: outside looking in. I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.

...The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else.

This is truly staking out new territory for a Purple Nation!

No more Red and Blue maps in 2008?

There was a very interesting article by Michael Barone a week ago, Throw Out the Maps in 2008, where he argued that the red and blue state maps of 2000 and 2004 were obsolete and the picture would be quite different in November.
In his reasoning he argued that,

The demographic factor most highly correlated with voting behavior in 2000 and 2004 was religion, or depth of religious belief.

But this is not exactly accurate. In studies of demographic factors comparing census data with voting results by county we find that population density, in other words if you live in an urban vs. rural or suburban community, was far more significant in explaining the geographic pattern of the vote. Next came marrieds vs. singles. Exit poll data does not capture the geographic factors, so other attributes of these different lifestyles appear significant, like guns or music preferences.

Church attendance was one significant factor the media pundits latched onto, but this was likely correlated with the two more determinant factors of urban/rural and married/single (which are also correlated). People in rural communities go to church for social as well as religious reasons. Married people with children are also more likely to attend church. To say that church-going is the primary factor of people voting red may be as inaccurate as saying urbanites vote blue because they're single and go to Starbucks on Sunday.

For religious faith there are two components that make it more likely to translate into politics. First is the ideological component between orthodoxy and modernism. We see most Christian denominations have split along those lines and this is what the evangelist movement is all about - returning to orthodoxy. But the secular world is split this way as well between traditionalists and progressives.

The second component is organizational - people who meet in a prearranged place on a regular schedule are much easier to rally to a political cause. Workers' parties discovered this a long time ago and the rising significance of church groups is a reflection of unions' decline and the rise of orthodox mega-churches.

Anyway, nothing has changed much in our national politics that would predict big changes in the geographic distribution of partisan support. The best we can say is that McCain may appeal to many urban Democrats who formerly voted blue. Both Obama and Clinton represent the left liberal governing philosophy shared by Al Gore and John Kerry.

A better interpretation of our situation was offered by Michael Medved a few days later in his article, Our 50-50 political world. Medved recognizes that the US electorate has been residing on a knife-edge split between alternative ideologies for a long time. The party platforms that developed over the past two generations have lined these ideologies up with geography by appealing to different locational constituencies. In other words Republicans have appealed directly to married ruralites and suburbanites while Democrats have appealed directly to single urbanites. While McCain is a slight twist for Republicans and Obama represents a stylistic change for Democrats, reds and blues are sticking to their guns on most substantive policy issues.

Even if they don't know it.