Archive for the Politics Category

  • A A A
    • James Ceaser

    Obama, Romney, and Equality

    | May 14, 2012 | 6:00 am

    If the test of a clever orator is the ability to sell two incompatible positions at the same time, President Obama must already rank as one of the most adept rhetoricians in American history. The President steadfastly disavows any intent to foment division between economic classes, even as he works at every step to denounce the wealthy. At Osawatomie, Kansas last December, in what was billed as an historic speech on his governing philosophy, Obama insisted “this isn’t about class warfare,” and then went on immediately to attack “the breathtaking greed of a few” and “mortgage lenders that tricked families into buying homes.”

    These lines were a throwback to the class rhetoric not only of Theodore Roosevelt, whose speech President Obama was channeling, but also of cousin Franklin, who fulminated in his First Inaugural against “the unscrupulous money changers [who] stand indicted in the court of public opinion.” These attacks are ostensibly not on the rich themselves, but on the undeserving rich. These poor souls were formerly characterized mostly by their practices and disposition (unscrupulousness and greed) and their occupation (finance). President Obama has added a political dimension: refusing to buckle to his idea of paying a “fair share.” The good or deserving rich, by contrast, are those like Warren Buffet, George Clooney, and Jon Corzine, who abhor the Bush tax cuts.

    In the selection of Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee President Obama has found a target too rich to pass up.

    Click to read more.

    Print Friendly
    Editor

    Data Matters: A Tale of Two Budgets – Obama & Ryan

    | May 08, 2012 | 3:41 pm

    Today, we add a new weekly feature to Advancing a Free Society. Each week, usually on a Monday, we will highlight data relevant to public policy that Hoover fellows are using in their research.

    Our inaugural data post is a graph generated by John F. Cogan, the Leonard and Shirley Ely Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor in the Public Policy Program at Stanford University. The graph shows federal government outlays as a percent of GDP from 1994 to 2022. The graph presents historical outlays and the striking contrast between two different future scenarios: one that follows the Obama administration’s budget and the other that follows the budget path that would be created under Paul Ryan’s plan.

    Sign up for the Advancing a Free Society RSS feed to follow our data stream.

    Print Friendly
    Bill Whalen

    Exit, Stage Right

    | April 10, 2012 | 12:45 pm

    Gettysburg, Pennsylvania: “High-water mark of the Confederacy” and low water mark of Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign, which came to a sudden halt on Tuesday (technically, his campaign was “suspended”, meaning the former Pennsylvania senator can still raise money and remain on the ballot at the national convention).

    A few thoughts:

    1)  A No-Brainer. This was the only sensible choice facing Santorum. He could have soldiered on, more than likely losing the primary in his native state on April 24. Had he then carried his campaign past that humiliation and into May, Santorum was looking at making a lot of enemies among Republican higher-ups – enemies with long memories. Which leads us to . . .

    2)  2016. So what happens if Romney, now the nominee-in-waiting, fails to unseat President Obama this fall? Santorum will celebrate his 54th birthday next month. That makes him a pup in the dog’s life of Republican presidential hopefuls. George W. Bush was the same age – 54 – when he won the presidency in 2000. Otherwise, it’s an older man’s game – Romney turned 65 last month; John McCain turned 72 during the 2008 general election; Dole was 73 when he was the Republican nominee back in 1996; George H.W. Bush was 64 when he won the presidency in 1988, succeeding Ronald Reagan who was a few days shy of his 70th birthday when he took office in 1981. The point is: Santorum is still young enough to have a future (as some evangelical conservatives have reminded him), which probably factored into his decision to exit gracefully.

    Click to read more.

    Print Friendly
    Bill Whalen

    Plenty of Pizza…But Not Enough Dough

    | April 09, 2012 | 3:03 pm

    Apparently, not everyone’s feeling the pinch of this recession.

    According to published reports, President Obama will travel to Detroit on April 18 for what the local media have dubbed a “$1 million pizza party”.

    The party’s hostess: Denise Ilitch, daughter of Little Caesars’ founders Mike and Marian Ilitch (dad also owns the Detroit Tigers; the daughter flirted with a run for governor of Michigan back in 2010).

    It won’t take a large crowd to hit that $1 million target: invitees are being asked to cough up $40,000 to attend a cocktail reception/dinner/presidential photo-op; $10,000 gets you dinner and a photo.

    And, presumably, all the pizza you can eat – “we’ll be serving it on sterling silver plates,” Ms. Ilitch quipped (hey, at least she didn’t say: “Let them eat pie”).

    (Btw, to show that a change in baseball ownership can also mean a change in political philosophy: the previous owner of the Tigers, Domino’s founder Tom Monaghan, is a staunchly conservative Catholic and donor to Republican causes.)

    Getting back the politics of pizza and campaign dough, you can expect plenty more money stories like this in the weeks ahead. And that’s because:

    Click to read more.

    Print Friendly
    Gary Becker

    Restrictions on Campaign Contributions—A Good Thing?

    | April 08, 2012 | 4:40 pm

    Posner is clearly correct that the analytical differences between “super Pacs” and direct campaign contributions to candidates are not large enough to justify disparate treatments. Yet, because they should be treated the same way does not necessarily imply that spending by super Pacs should also be sharply controlled. I believe that it is very likely  preferable to apply the reasoning in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to direct contributions than to extend the limits on direct contribution to super Pacs.

    I agree with Posner that candidates with political positions attractive to rich individuals may obtain considerable funds that give these candidates political advantages in appealing to voters. Such political contributions may well also affect the policies supported by candidates and elected officials. This is the corruption issue raised by Posner and by much of the literature that supports sharply limiting campaign contributions.

    Sharp restrictions on campaign contributions would make more sense if monetary contributions were the only major force that shapes who wins elections and the policies goverment officials support.Yet that is very far from the situation that prevails in American politics, and in the politics of most other democratic nations. One reason for this is that interest groups can often avoid the intent of restrictions on campaign contributions through other ways to influence political outcomes. For example, many industries hire lobbyists and spend other monies to try to persuade legislators, regulators, and others in important political positions to subsidize their industries, or to reduce the taxes on their industries, or to gain other advantages.

    Continue reading Gary Becker…

    Print Friendly
    Benjamin Wittes

    The Next Ten Years

    | April 07, 2012 | 12:01 pm

    Ten years have passed since the opening of the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the anniversary was marked with much hand-wringing. There were articles by former detainees, a statement by retired military personnel, denunciations of President Obama for his failure to close the site, and tear-stained statements by human rights groups.

    In a decade of policy experimentation at Guantánamo, some efforts have succeeded, some have failed tragically, and some are still in process. But far more interesting than the past ten years is what the next ten will look like. And that subject seems oddly absent from the conversation.

    Make no mistake: there will be another ten years of Guantánamo. (Even if Guantánamo itself miraculously closed, we would have to build it somewhere else.) Our forces already hold more detainees than they can safely release or put on trial before any tribunal to which this country would attach its name. And in any future conflict against nonstate actors, our forces are likely to capture more of such people, and we will have to put them somewhere. If the United States is lucky, we may be able to reduce the number of detainees further than the combined efforts of the George W. Bush and Obama administrations have so far managed. But we will not eliminate it, and even if we could, we cannot guarantee that we will not replenish it all of a sudden in some future, spasmodic set of military operations abroad.

    Continue reading Benjamin Wittes…

    Print Friendly
    David Brady

    Independents’ Day

    | April 07, 2012 | 9:59 am

    By David W. Brady and Douglas Rivers

    More Americans now call themselves independents than Democrats or Republicans. New Hampshire, site of the season’s first presidential primary, is a good example: about 40 percent of Granite State voters were not registered as members of either major political party. Our best estimate is that the share of independents nationally has grown to 42 percent from 35 percent over the past three years. That 7 percent of the electorate is big enough to have changed the outcome of any of the past five presidential elections—and this is not necessarily good news for the GOP.

    Barack Obama carried independents by an 8-point margin in the 2008 exit poll—and Republicans carried them by a 19-point margin in the 2010 midterms. Thus GOP candidates may be tempted to believe that the independents’ disaffection with the president, which cost Democrats control of the House, will lead inexorably to a Republican presidential victory in November.

    Not so fast. In the first place, Republicans benefited from a low Democratic midterm turnout. According to exit polls, there were about equal numbers of Democratic and Republican voters in the midterm, unlike in 2008, when Democratic voters outnumbered Republicans by 7 percentage points (39 percent to 32 percent). Republicans can’t count on a low Democratic turnout in 2012 and there are still more registered Democrats than Republicans. To win in 2012, it would be enough for Democrats to split the independent vote. Republicans need to carry a clear majority. And there are significant policy disagreements between independents and the Republican base.

    Continue reading David Brady and Douglas Rivers…

    Print Friendly
    Paul Peterson

    The Third-Party Temptation

    | April 07, 2012 | 8:30 am

    Every leap year thoughts turn, not just to love, but to a third political party free of the encrustations encumbering Democrats and Republicans. This year, leaders of one self-appointed group, traveling under the moniker Americans Elect, promise that their presidential and vice-presidential candidates, one from each of the two major parties, will be on the November ballot in every state. They plan to host a “secure, online convention” in June but reserve the right to exclude candidates deemed unworthy.

    Third-partyism is tempting. The idea of a middle way has appealed to certain Washington insiders unhappy with the Obama administration but also dissatisfied with those pursuing the Republican nomination.

    As ever in the American two-party system, a winning party must appeal to multiple, sometimes contradictory, constituencies. Democrats must satisfy job-hungry unions and antigrowth environmentalists. Republicans must resolve differences between social and economic conservatives.

    Given such heterogeneities, leaders must be vague and inconsistent. They are wont to change their minds and appear to be lacking in all conviction. By comparison, those who lead third parties can, at least for a while, inspire by their apparent nobility of presence and purity of heart.

    The Third-Party Temptation…

    Print Friendly
    Victor Davis Hanson

    Walking Back the Trayvon Martin Hysteria

    | April 06, 2012 | 8:16 am

    1) If one suggests that there may not be, at least as yet, enough evidence to overturn the initial police decision of not charging Mr. Zimmerman with a crime, then one is a de facto racist.

    In other words, the liberal position of letting all the evidence be reexamined in a dispassionate fashion is now illiberal. And the illiberal one of charging someone with a felony without established probable cause is liberal. But just arresting and charging a suspect to let a judge or jury post facto decide whether there was ever probable cause for such an arrest is neither liberal nor consistent with American jurisprudence.

    2) It is clear now that the African-American civil-rights hierarchy is concerned largely with maintaining power and influence by promulgating the theme of unending white racism — and the need for its exclusive agency to find redress and reparations from that eternal fact. That is a serious charge, but one easy to substantiate — whether we compare the commensurate outrage accorded the Duke case, the Skip Gates mess, the Tawana Brawley hoax, or the present Trayvon Martin tragedy, with the veritable neglect about the carnage of young African-American males in our cities, or the deliberate distortion that white-on-black crime is an epidemic when, in fact, black-on-black crime is — in addition to the fact of vastly higher incidences of black-on-white crime.

    Continue reading Victor Davis Hanson…

    Print Friendly
    Jack Goldsmith

    The President’s Comments on the Supreme Court

    | April 06, 2012 | 8:13 am

    Just about every player in connection with the President’s remarks about the Supreme Court seem to me to be acting oddly or imprudently.

    What a terrible idea for the President to charge the Supreme Court with an “unprecedented, extraordinary step” of judicial activism if it strikes down parts of the health care law.  It was not a bad idea because it constituted bullying of the Court.  It was a bad idea – at least from the President’s perspective – because it makes it harder for the Justices to rule in favor of the President’s position.  After his very public criticism, a vote to uphold the law by the Justices who sharply questioned the law at oral argument will invariably be seen as cowing to the President – an appearance, I am confident, the Justices very much want to avoid.  In other words, by questioning the Justice’s independence, the President made it harder for the Justices whose votes he needs to act in his favor.  That, I suspect, is why the President has tried to walk back his remarks.

    Also surprising to me are conservative protests that the President has crossed the line in criticizing the Court as activist.  President Obama was entirely accurate when he said: “I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.”  However imprudent and impolitic the President’s remarks, he was in essence mouthing a central conservative complaint about the judiciary since the 1950s.  (I realize that matters are more complicated than this, but during the Obama years many conservatives have indeed been moving away from a jurisprudence of restraint.)  Conservatives were on firmer ground in criticizing the inaccuracy of the president’s claim that striking down the health care law “would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”  And of course it is odd for President Obama to implicitly embrace judicial restraint as a matter of principle.

    Continue reading Jack Goldsmith…

    Print Friendly
    Jack Goldsmith

    The President’s Comments on the Supreme Court

    | April 05, 2012 | 10:27 am

    Just about every player in connection with the President’s remarks about the Supreme Court seem to me to be acting oddly or imprudently.

    What a terrible idea for the President to charge the Supreme Court with an “unprecedented, extraordinary step” of judicial activism if it strikes down parts of the health care law.  It was not a bad idea because it constituted bullying of the Court.  It was a bad idea – at least from the President’s perspective – because it makes it harder for the Justices to rule in favor of the President’s position.  After his very public criticism, a vote to uphold the law by the Justices who sharply questioned the law at oral argument will invariably be seen as cowing to the President – an appearance, I am confident, the Justices very much want to avoid.  In other words, by questioning the Justice’s independence, the President made it harder for the Justices whose votes he needs to act in his favor.  That, I suspect, is why the President has tried to walk back his remarks.

    Continue reading Jack Goldsmith…

    Print Friendly
    Michael McConnell

    O’s ugly ‘warning’

    | April 04, 2012 | 8:51 am

    By all accounts, President Obama’s lawyers did a poor job of defending the constitutionality of his signature health-care-reform law in the Supreme Court last week. So he’s rearguing the case himself. On Monday, he declared that it would be an “unprecedented, extraordinary step” for the court to overturn a law “passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

    This statement is puzzling, to say the least. It is by no means “unprecedented” or “extraordinary” for the court to strike down the act of a democratically elected legislature.

    Has the president not heard of Roe v. Wade (1973), where the court invalidated the democratically enacted laws of all 50 states? And even Marbury v. Madison (1803), which struck down a section of the First Judiciary Act?

    How about INS v. Chadha (1983), where the court invalidated over 200 statutory provisions, many enacted by overwhelming bipartisan majorities?

    Is the president unaware that the court in recent years has declared unconstitutional the Line Item Veto Act (struck down in 1998), major portions of the Sentencing Reform Act (2005), the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1997) and two different attempts at campaign-finance law (in 1976 and 2010) — just to name some of the most prominent?

    Continue reading Michael McConnell…

    Print Friendly
    Diana Schaub

    South Africa’s Orwellian Constitution

    | April 04, 2012 | 8:47 am

    The U.S. Constitution is, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has recently reminded us, “a rather old constitution.” In her parlance, old does not mean venerable or worthy of imitation. Speaking on Egypt’s Al Hayat TV, she advised constitution-drafting Egyptians to look to newer models; she singled out the Constitution of South Africa (1996), Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982), and the European Convention on Human Rights (1950).

    Admittedly, the oath she swore to “bear true faith and allegiance” to the U.S. Constitution does not require Justice Ginsburg to recommend its adoption by all and sundry. There might be good reasons—rooted in history and circumstance—why a constitution suited to one people is not suited to another. Laws ought to be in accord with the general spirit of a nation, as Montesquieu, the great theorist of modern constitutionalism, argued. This was not the Justice’s point, however. She thinks there are blueprints worthy of export, just not the one ratified by Americans in 1787.

    Her opinion is the fashionable one. A forthcoming article in the New York University Law Review confirms the declining influence of the U.S. Constitution. The reason?—“it is increasingly out of sync with an evolving global consensus on issues of human rights,” authors David S. Law and Mila Versteeg argue. This focus on rights (the more, the better) is evident in the documents Ginsburg endorsed. Two of them aren’t even constitutions in the usual sense of a plan of government. Instead, one is a supranational convention about human rights; another is a national charter of rights (added to the Canadian Constitution of 1867 when Canada, in 1982, finally became fully independent of the British Parliament).

    Continue reading Diana Schaub…

    Print Friendly
    Bill Whalen

    GOP Spring Training Ends, Spring Break Begins

    | April 03, 2012 | 9:36 pm

    On the last day of major-league baseball’s spring training, it seemed apt that the Republicans held three low-drama presidential primaries that had the look and feel of exhibitions.

    Mitt Romney cruised to easy wins in Wisconsin, Maryland and the nation’s capital (you know it’s a good night when you’re on and off the victory podium by 10 p.m. EDT).

    My only quibble: Romney’s gigantic flag backdrop, which had a Bulworth style to it.

    Collectively, those three contests (total of 98 delegates at stake) pushed Romney’s delegate total to nearly 650, more than halfway to the 1,144 needed for a convention win on the first ballot. Progress, inch by inch.

    First, a warning about the 2012 baseball season: it may be over before it began.

    On Monday night, the University of Kentucky claimed the men’s college basketball crown. The last six times the Wildcats won a national title (1998, 1996, 1978, 1958, 1951 and 1949), the New York Yankees won that fall’s World Series.

    Game over?

    For Romney or Obama?

    Click to read more.

    Print Friendly
    Peter Berkowitz

    How California’s Colleges Indoctrinate Students

    | April 03, 2012 | 7:04 pm

    The politicization of higher education by activist professors and compliant university administrators deprives students of the opportunity to acquire knowledge and refine their minds. It also erodes the nation’s civic cohesion and its ability to preserve the institutions that undergird democracy in America.

    So argues "A Crisis of Competence: The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California," a new report by the California Association of Scholars, a division of the National Association of Scholars (NAS). The report is addressed to the Regents of the University of California, which has ultimate responsibility for governing the UC system, but the pathologies it diagnoses prevail throughout the country.

    The analysis begins from a nonpolitical fact: Numerous studies of both the UC system and of higher education nationwide demonstrate that students who graduate from college are increasingly ignorant of history and literature. They are unfamiliar with the principles of American constitutional government. And they are bereft of the skills necessary to comprehend serious books and effectively marshal evidence and argument in written work.

    This decline in the quality of education coincides with a profound transformation of the college curriculum. None of the nine general campuses in the UC system requires students to study the history and institutions of the United States. None requires students to study Western civilization, and on seven of the nine UC campuses, including Berkeley, a survey course in Western civilization is not even offered. In several English departments one can graduate without taking a course in Shakespeare. In many political science departments majors need not take a course in American politics.

    Continue reading Peter Berkowitz…

    Print Friendly
    Richard Epstein

    Observations on ObamaCare

    | April 03, 2012 | 6:58 pm

    There are a number of constitutional and logical slips in the seductive argument that Paul Krugman puts forward in favor of the constitutionality of the individual mandate.  First, the question why any form of health insurance involves a question of “interstate commerce” at all.  Under the current elastic and indefensible definitions of interstate commerce, any form of local activity that influences the quantity and price of goods in interstate commerce becomes itself a form of interstate commerce, at which point there is precious little that lies outside that domain.

    Note the potential reach of this argument  by the standard definition that Krugman embraces, getting sick and buying insurance influences the ability of the United States to deal with foreign nations, so that Congress can presumably regulate it as a form of commerce with foreign nations.  More impressively, since the health of their populations influences health in this country, why not say that the Constitution gives the Congress the power to expand the health care benefits that Canada, Great Britain and the rest of the world supplies to their own population.  It is a form of constitutional newspeak to treat all these local activities as though they were commerce among the several states, when they are, most emphatically anything but.

    Continue reading Richard Epstein…

    Print Friendly
    Paul Gregory

    Tax Breaks for Big Oil or Big Hollywood?

    | March 31, 2012 | 11:58 am

    Congress rejected the Obama administration’s proposal to “end tax breaks for big oil.” The White House will prominently feature the Republicans as the lackeys of Big Oil in the 2012 election.

    The Obama administration tells us that “tax breaks for big oil” deprive our treasury of billions.  Besides that, the energy giants are making giant profits. They are greedy and don’t want to pay their fair share. Also we hear that tax subsidies are driving up the price of gas at the pump. (I guess no one in the Obama administration took an economics exam. Subsidies increase supply and drive down the price).
    If we dig deeper into the tax code, we learn that “Big Oil” tax breaks apply, in most cases, to other industries, not just to “Big Oil” as we are led to think. These other beneficiaries are not under attack. I guess they are either less successful, less greedy, or give more to the White House.
    Print Friendly
    Bill Whalen

    Republicans and an Age-Young Problem

    | March 29, 2012 | 2:30 pm

    Unless you work or reside in the proximity of the 916 or 619 area codes, odds are you’ve never heard of Nathan Fletcher.

    A second-term Assemblyman from San Diego, Fletcher is the first War on Terror combat vet (Marine Corps Intelligence specialist) to serve in California’s State Legislature.

    Fletcher’s young (turned 35 in December), an active legislator (28 bills enacted, including 2010’s “Chelsea’s Law” targeting sex offenders), politically connected (his wife served as a deputy chief to former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and was a spokesperson in the two Bush 43 presidential campaigns), and very ambitious (he’s currently a candidate for mayor of San Diego).

    And, until earlier this week, Fletcher was a Republican and potentially a rising star in the party.

    But no more.

    On Wednesday, and with only 70-or-so days remaining until a June 5 mayoral primary in which he’s trailing badly, Fletcher stunned California’s political community by announcing that he was now an independent – in California-speak, “decline to state” (here’s his explanation).

    Thus begging two questions:

    1)  Is this the case of a candidate leaving a party . . . or more a matter of the party leaving the candidate?

    2)  What, if anything, does it say about the GOP’s struggles to make inroads into the “millennial” vote – children of the 1970s and later?

    Cynics didn’t waste any time noting that, as recently as earlier this month, Fletcher was touting himself as anti-tax, family-values conservative – i.e., run-of-the-mill Republican talking points.

    Click to read more.

    Print Friendly
    Bill Whalen

    Comedy is Hard, Campaigning is Easy

    | March 28, 2012 | 2:34 pm

    If NBC should decide to resurrect Last Comic Standing, here are three acts you likely won’t be seeing during sweeps week:

    1)  Arlen Specter, the former Pennsylvania senator and moderate skeleton in Rick Santorum’s conservative closet, doing 12 minutes of stand-up at Caroline’s Comedy Club in Manhattan.

    2)  President Obama, trying to deflate accusations that he’ll sell out to Russia on missile defense once reelected, jokingly asking reporters:“Are the mics on?”

    3)   Mitt Romney, in the course of his first 2012 appearance on The Tonight Show, telling Jay Leno that David Letterman would be a good running mate – and Santorum a good . . . press secretary.

    In Romney’s defense, his reason for appearing on the Leno show wasn’t to offer himself as the king of one-liners.

    The goal was laying the foundation for something far more crucial to his chances of becoming POTUS 45: coming across as the more amiable and likeable choice in the fall election.

    If that sounds overblown, consider what’s transpired over the past two decades of presidential contests. The race hasn’t always gone to the man who was younger, or taller, or richer – or, arguably, more accomplished or better tested.

    But, without exception, each election has tilted to the man who seemingly was more empathetic . . . and easier to relate to.

    In 1992 and again in 1996, Bill Clinton better connected with voters than George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole. In 2000 and 2004, George W. Bush was more personable than the sighing Al Gore and the wooden John Kerry. Ordinarily, John McCain – he of the Hanoi Hilton, maverick persona and comfort cracking wise on late-night TV – might have enjoyed the empathetic upper hand.  But he ran into the Obama buzz saw – and a once-fawning media that dumped McCain for a new flame.

    That takes us to 2012 and the question of whether Romney can, in some respects, out-Obama Obama by being the guy who rolls up his sleeves, throws himself into adoring crowds and offers himself as an agent of change versus an unacceptable status quo.

    Granted, there’s an argument to be made that a lot of what worked for Obama in 2008 doesn’t apply to 2012 – good luck selling the American people a second consecutive time on lofty promises and gilded rhetoric in an election defined in part by an incumbent who didn’t live up to his hype (figure it this way: in July 2008, then-candidate Obama drained a three-pointer, on his first attempt, in front of the troops in Kuwait; in 2012, the less-lucky President Obama would probably clang the jumper off the rim, with his aides claiming he was fouled).

    Still, the numbers suggest that Romney has some ground to make up with the national electorate. He’ll soon emerge from March with a comfortable lead in delegates – and, according to various polls, the worst primary-season favorable-unfavorable split of any major-party nominee over the past 36 years.

    How does Romney overcome this? History suggests securing the nomination is a first step: both Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, the last two gentlemen to unseat presidential incumbents, trailed badly in the spring – when they still weren’t nominees.

    However, Clinton and Reagan were able to offer themselves not only as new-direction candidates, but candidates with compelling personal narratives – Reagan, the patriotic/optimistic westerner; Clinton, the product of “a place called Hope”.

    This too has been an importance (and dubious) change in presidential politics since 1992 – the expectation of a Horatio Alger story for each candidate to tell. It began with the story of Bill Clinton’s biological fatherdying in a car crash three months before the future president’s birth, was followed by tales of younger George Bush kicking the bottle at his wife’s insistence, and then continued with Barack Obama as a global metaphorfor breaking through racial barriers.

    No such narrative for Romney currently exists. To date, his campaign has been long on his private-sector skills set and institutional advantages (money, ground game) over his GOP rivals – Romney’s campaign resembling his friend Meg Whitman’s failed gubernatorial bid in California.

    The good news: assuming he’s the nominee, Romney has until the end of August and the national convention In Tampa – at which time he’ll have a big soapbox and a waiting national audience time to offer both a compelling video biography and speeches by the nominee and the nominee’s spouse. It’s his opportunity to put a human face on a campaign that Democrats are certain to challenge as lacking in humanity.

    Romney isn’t the first presidential hopeful to face the challenge of how to show a more personable side. Richard Nixon played the piano and laterappeared on Laugh In.  Bill Clinton donned Wayfarers and tooted his own horn (literally) on Arsenio Hall’s show.  Al Gore did a Top-10 list andsmashed ashtrays with David Letterman. Sarah Palin “raised the roof” onSaturday Night Live.

    So far, what we know about Mitt Romney is he’s definitely not hip-hop, maybe or maybe doesn’t own a pair of Ray-Bans, and sings rather than plays the sax.

    In other words, there’s a lot we don’t know about the candidate – and it’s the candidate’s choice as to what he chooses to tell us.

    Print Friendly
    Richard Epstein

    The Dubitable Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act

    | March 27, 2012 | 11:02 am

    By now everyone knows that the Supreme Court will take up the watershed case of this century, when it examines the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—the ACA or ObamaCare to both the friends and enemies of the Act. I have coauthored with Mario Loyola of the Texas Public Policy Foundation a brief that sets out our case against the constitutionality of the Act.  I have also written elsewhere about the complex historical evolution of the commerce clause.

    I am relieved to learn, after all, that the case against the individual mandate is so trivial that three eminent legal authorities, Jeffrey Toobin, Linda Greenhouse and Dahlia Lithwick, found it easy to put me out of my intellectual misery by announcing that the act is manifestly constitutional on the indubitable authority of Wickard v. Filburn, which in their view has become the constitutional pillar of a boundless federal power.  Indeed, their collective wisdom is such that the case for the constitutionality of ObamaCare is so self-evident that only dark political motives can account for the willingness to overturn a statute whose impeccable social credentials make it the culmination of a long overdue reform movement.

    Let me confess to be one of the unpersuadables.  There is of course a powerful correlation between those who praise ObamaCare and embrace its constitutionality.  There is none of the typical posturing which says that we’ll leave it to Congress to deal with the wisdom of the laws while we merely determine their constitutionality.  However on this question, turnabout is fair play, for we should look at the wisdom of statutes, or their lack thereof,  in order to orient ourselves with respect to their constitutionality.

    Start with Wickard, which in soothing terms had as its objective the “stabilization” of agricultural markets under the Agricultural Adjustment Acts, by allowing the government to even out prices during good times and bad.  All that is a polite way of saying that the government should get into the business of organizing agricultural cartels, which can then reduce output by burning excess crops or forcing land to remain idle in order to reduce supply. At the other end of these cartels lie consumers, who suffer manifestly from the high prices and reduced supply that made it all the harder for them to weather the 1930s depression.  Roscoe Filburn was a cartel-breaker because he sought to escape the regulation and increase supply by feeding his own grain to his own cows.

    Continue reading Richard Epstein…

    Print Friendly
    « Older Entries