Dependency Politics

Von Hayek taught that conservative principles are the tested product of an evolutionary social process. He taught that (libertarian) policies which support this trial-and-error progress serve society best. His teachings offer hope and direction to conservatives fearful that "dependency politics" are now permanently entrenched. In the end, truth can be counted on to prevail.

Strauss taught concern with the fundamental alternative: That western culture is the product of centuries of cultivating human nature and that America is exceptional because of the unusual alignment of history and tradition with libertarian principles (and the unlikely marriage of Virtue and Democracy). The classics, according to Strauss, taught that the best regimes came into being only by chance and that history is cyclical not linear. These teachings animate conservative fears that we are close to a tipping point where the culture of too many hyphenated Americans undoes that exceptionalism.

This blog has argued: "to believe in Freedom is to see in American history ample evidence of how malleable and ever-changing "culture" can be and how people, left to their own devices, lift themselves up." It is helpful to remember that Political Conservatism was a minority view for much of the twentieth century. In the end, what Strauss suggested -- and Reagan demonstrated -- is that a Conservatism that that confidently appeals to individual dignity can never be permanently suppressed.

Political (Game) Theory

If one wanted to apply game theory to national politics, as a first pass one could roughly model it as a "board" with N "issues", each issue has 3 positions: conservative, moderate, progressive. Each position has a payoff that is a function of the opponents choices, the rest of the board, what we seem to call "branding", and the "focus" the candidate draws to that issue. Candidates have limited "focus" to spend, and how they spend it determines the election.

On immigration, for example, the conservative position is deport all illegals, the moderate position is to grant illegal immigrants extended, or permanent residency, and a "back-of-the-line" path to citizenship, but stop future illegal immigration, the progressive position would grant illegal immigrants a path to citizenship and do nothing effective to stop future illegal immigration. Romney's position "self-deportation" was understood by the electorate as, effectively, the conservative one, which was helpful in the primaries. In the general, taking the moderate position would not have cost Romney many conservative voters -- who had higher priorities -- and would have forced Obama to clarify better where he stood -- forcing him to alienate some of his own voters. While there is good reason to believe the direct payoff would have been small, there would have been indirect "branding" payoff had Obama, or other Democrats, been cornered into clearly taking the progressive position.

On abortion, Democratic politicians mostly believe abortion should be always and everywhere legal, most voters believe it should be sometimes, or in some places (=federalism) legal and many conservative Christian voters believe it should be always and everywhere illegal. The Obama campaign spent a great deal of its focus and was successful in making an issue of the conservative Christian position taken by two Senate candidates, severely impairing the Republican brand. Almost more than any other issue, this buried Romney.

Romney chose, instead, to spend his focus on Obama's partisan lack of leadership, his unwillingness reach across the aisle to get things done for America. This choice was undercut, fatally, by Sandy and Christie. While its impossible to prove one way or the other, from the polls and the post-election reactions of both candidates, the notion that Sandy/Christie turned the election is credible.

Finally, the results reflected that in spending focus on "branding", Obama helped downstream democrats. Romney's focus spent on Obama's personal failings (and his success, in contrast) offered no such help.

Decisions

Depending on one's bubble, Romney is either neck and neck or has, basically, no chance. People are going to be bitterly shocked tonight.

Republicans' primary causes for optimism -- Obama's inability to pass the 50% threshold in many swing state polls and Romney's upward trend -- seem dampened post-Sandy. The Romney campaign's decision to sit that out, rather than have surrogates (accurately) screaming "Staten Island is as bad as New Orleans", may haunt them. This reflects the general tenor of the campaign in which the President wildly portrayed Romney as being an evil, corrupt man, and Romney, with great discipline and respect, portrayed the President as like-able enough, but, not the right choice. These strategies reflected the reality of the President's like-ability, now largely spent. Should he win, he may wish, in trying to govern, that he had sacrificed it less.

Romney supporters' last hope lies in the idea that the pollsters demographic-adjustments and likely-voter models are biased. Its certainly true that pollsters (like universities) are more concerned with fairly representing "under-represented" democratic leaning demographics than others. But the more one reads of the sophistication of Obama's turnout operation, the less likely it seems Romney is going to win the "ground game". Obama seems closer to the future, where campaigns use big-data to micro-target swayable voters and leverage affinity networks (including families) to deliver their votes.

If Obama wins the election, Tea Party voters can take heart in this: Republicans have nominated the most moderate voice in the room two elections in a row now and lost to a President from the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." In 2016, Rubio or Christie may find themselves too moderate for Republican primary voters. How does "President Cruz" roll off the tongue?

Rape

Somehow, or another, rape has become a controversial issue this election. According to Democrats and their allied Media, it turns out that Republicans, especially those who oppose abortion even in instances of rape, are pro-rape.

Republicans, were they savvy, would have an effective stratagem to expose the truth of the matter: Propose the death penalty for rapists.

To My Democratic Friends...

Passing Health Care Reform was, for your team, a historical achievement. But the President has been mostly unable to sell it to the American people. Partisans left and right hope|fear that the reform will become much more popular once enacted, but that is not likely -- Health Care Reform was far more controversial at inception than either Social Security, or Medicare. More likely, it will become even more polarizing and more bitterly fought over every election cycle on the state and federal level. As such it will be, at best, unevenly implemented.

The tragedy is that there were no shortage of "good ideas" (for example: better aligning incentives by severing insurance from employment or promoting alternatives to fee-for-service), that could have more sustainably passed with some bi-partisan support and, in-turn, built credibility toward more ambitious reform.

To hear your economists, the Stimulus program was too small to possibly succeed, but just large enough to be a political disaster for its backers.

After the financial crisis, there was a national consensus that "too big too fail" and "public risk, private reward" had to end. It is really hard to argue that Dodd-Frank accomplished either. On the contrary, the largest banks today, control more of the economy than ever, and the Government is still subsidizing bankers' bonuses.

Obama argues he is pursuing a savvy, subtle, long-game, foriegn policy. Certainly, running around the Middle East trying to impose Democracy wasn't brilliant. On the other hand, there has to be some sensible middle ground between that and policy that seems oddly complacent in the face of a world that is, in many respects, more dangerous now than it was four years ago.

To take one example: Moderate Muslims, are fighting with Islamicists for the future of their societies. According to the New York Times, "One of the principal goals of the extremists... is to pressure these transitional governments to enact and enforce strict laws against blasphemy. These laws can then be used to purge secularists and moderates." With that in mind, it is hard to see the administration's response to the youtube video protests as either savvy or subtle.

Mitt Romney ran to the left of Teddy Kennedy and to the right of Gingrich and Perry. He is a tactician, not an ideologue. As a tactician, he tracked to the right in the primaries, and back to the center in the general. In the face of conservative pressure in the primaries, he refused to jeopardize his general electibility by dis-owning "RomneyCare". While that should have given conservatives pause, it should re-assure, moderates and liberals. As President, he can be expected to be more like Clinton than Obama: refusing to jeopardize his re-electability playing to the unpopular passions of his base (in Romney's case, for example by dismantling the safety net or bomb, bomb, bombing Iran).

Finally, a Romney win will strengthen moderate Republicans in the way that Clinton's victory strengthened, for a time, "Third Way" Democrats. This would be a good thing.

The Leopard and the Fox

Tonight's debate was a strange one. Romney, stuck precisely to the strategy he telegraphed, and the President had no response. It was like watching a great running back clinching a Super Bowl.

For Romney supporters, this debate was fun. "Look, I got five boys. I'm used to people saying something that's not always true, but just keep on repeating it and ultimately hoping I'll believe it" -- Zap! "you don't just pick the winners and losers; you pick the losers." -- Pow! ": Jim, the president began this segment, so I think I get the last word, so I'm going to take it." (after the Obama tried to get in the last word with "Jim, I — you may want to move on to another topic, but I would just say this to the American people...") -- Bam! "You've been president four years" -- Kapow! "we've gone on a lot of topics there, and so it's going to take a minute to go from Medicaid to schools... to oil, to tax breaks, then companies going overseas. So let's go through them one by one." -- Shazam! Obama supporters are critiquing Romney's lack of specifity, but he drowned Obama in a sea of First, Second and Thirds.

What is most strange, however, is that not long into the debate, neither the President, nor for that matter the moderator, seemed to want to be there. They seemed almost drugged. The President conveyed the clear sense that this debate didn't matter.

That may be the case. The debates closer to the election may matter much more or the number of votes sway-able by gaffe-free debates may be minimal. Or maybe Obama came prepared with a set of canned answers and was unready for the surprising level of back and forth the moderator allowed.

The First Debate

Strangely, Romney is being described as a strong debater. That hardly seemed to be the case in the primary debates, after which the anybody-but-Romney of the month received large bursts.

Romney's strength, and weakness, is that every word out of his mouth feels prepared and tested. Obama appears much stronger extemporaneously. In general, voters prefer boldness and authenticity. In this election, voters may appreciate a candidate who takes his homework seriously.

More strangely, Romney has telegraphed his debate strategy: "casting President Barack Obama as someone who can’t be trusted to stick to the facts or keep his promises". Unless the Romney campaign is more of a rolling calamity than suspected, this will prove to be a bit of psychological gamesmanship. Romney almost certainly understands that to win the debate he needs to visibly rattle the President.

In the end, the premise of the Romney's campaign is his competence and preparation. If an over-confident Obama veers off his own prepared script, a prepared Romney will be ready.