Brendan Nyhan

Brad DeLong flags an important post by Michigan political science/law professor Dan Herzog on Left2Right in which Herzog catches Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia making the following astonishing claim:

JUSTICE SCALIA: And when somebody goes by that monument, I don’t think they’re studying each one of the commandments. It’s a symbol of the fact that government comes — derives its authority from God. And that is, it seems to me, an appropriate symbol to be on State grounds.

MR. CHEMERINSKY: I disagree, Your Honor. For the State to put that symbol between its State Capitol and the State Supreme Court is to convey a profound religious message….

JUSTICE SCALIA: It is a profound religious message, but it’s a profound religious message believed in by the vast majority of the American people, just as belief in monotheism is shared by a vast majority of the American people. And our traditions show that there is nothing wrong with the government reflecting that. I mean, we’re a tolerant society religiously, but just as the majority has to be tolerant of minority views in matters of religion, it seems to me the minority has to be tolerant of the majority’s ability to express its belief that government comes from God, which is what this is about.

As DeLong says, this claim is drastically inconsistent with the history of American political thought:

Here in the United States, we are all children of Thomas Jefferson. God does not give us rulers. Instead, God gives us rights: to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We then institute governments to secure these rights, and they derive their just powers from our consent, not from God’s decree. Moreover, it is not the YHWH of Revealed Religion but instead “Nature’s God” and Nature itself that are the source of these rights.

Herzog elaborates:

[What Scalia said] is emphatically not the premise of our Constitution, which of course opens:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Yes, yes, the Declaration of Independence opens differently:

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Not even that language, though, means that government comes from God. At most, it means a morality underwritten by God permits the colonies to split away from the British empire and declare independence. But they will then be establishing their own government.

Here in the US, we as citizens give consent to our government. For public officials to identify government with God’s authority is a drastic and dangerous step that should be repudiated.

Despite the bluster and threats of public reprisal against Democrats, the reality is that private accounts are dead. The media is pretending that the issue is still alive, but the new Washington Post numbers tell the tale better than I can (full poll results):

Three months after President Bush launched his drive to restructure Social Security by creating private investment accounts, public support for his program remains weak, with only 35 percent of Americans now saying they approve of his handling of the issue, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

While the White House has helped convince more than two-thirds of those polled that Social Security is heading for a crisis or possible bankruptcy without change, 56 percent disapprove of his approach, a survey of 1,001 adults conducted March 10-13 shows. By comparison, 38 percent approved of his handling of the issue and 52 percent disapproved of it in mid-December.

Moreover, 58 percent of those polled this time said the more they hear about Bush’s plan, the less they like it. The latest polling, combined with detailed interviews last week, shows that Bush’s drive to significantly alter the 70-year-old national insurance program has run into significant hurdles with every age cohort.

35 percent isn’t “weak” support; it’s catastrophic. But the administration appears to still be pretending otherwise:

“The president knows it’s a challenge and is taking it head-on,” White House spokesman Trent Duffy said. “He is just getting started, and he’s going to keep traveling, pushing and explaining to people of all ages why Social Security needs to be fixed permanently and why it’s best that personal accounts be part of the solution.”

I’ll keep repeating it from now until this debate is over — the president of the United States generally cannot move the numbers on a domestic issue like this. Coming back from 35% support is near-impossible. When will everyone involved face facts?

Update 3/16: A commenter below and a blogger quoted by Glenn Reynolds both point to the following question in the Post poll:

Would you support or oppose a plan in which people who chose to could invest some of their Social Security contributions in the stock market?

Support 56%
Oppose 41%
Unsure 3%

Several points should be made here. First, this is a superficial question that makes it sound like there are no tradeoffs involved with the creation of private accounts. Questions that incorporate those tradeoffs show very low support. Second, Bush’s “plan” or “approach” to the issue is viewed negatively by most of the public, and that is a broader question that incorporates all of his proposals (or quasi-proposals), not just private accounts. Finally, questions that specifically poll about other aspects of Bush’s plan, such as benefit cuts, show overwhelming opposition.

If you don’t believe me, just read down the Social Security page on PollingReport.com, which includes all the recent national poll questions about the issue. With just a handful of exceptions, you’ll see a pattern of low and declining support for private accounts.

In an op-ed supporting drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that ran in the New York Times Monday, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton deployed one of the Bush administration’s trademarks — misleading statistics:

If approved by Congress, the overall “footprint” of the equipment and facilities needed to develop the 1002 area [ANWR] would be restricted to 2,000 acres, an area about the size of a regional airport in a refuge the size of South Carolina.

We debunked this claim, which was previously made by Dick Cheney, in All the President’s Spin (p. 100-101):

[T]he Vice President failed to note that the 2,000-acre figure he cited had been calculated by counting only the amount of space that would be taken up by equipment touching the ground, not the total land area that would be affected by oil exploration and transport. For example, the space “affected” by an aboveground pipeline was measured according to the size of each of the stanchions that hold it up. While ANWR drilling platforms and material might only touch the ground over a total of 2,000 acres, the “amount of land affected” would likely be significantly greater.

The Cheney speech in question was made on April 30, 2001. Here we are almost four years later and Norton is still repeating the same spin. How dumb do they think we are?

Via Josh Marshall, more bluster on the supposedly imminent surge of support for private accounts:

“Once Americans understand the choices they have — that they will own their personal retirement accounts and will be able to pass them on to loved ones, they will flock to personal retirement accounts,” said Rep. Paul D. Ryan, Wisconsin Republican.

Any minute now!

The latest issue of the Weekly Standard has an article by the “humorist” P.J. O’Rourke that begins “John Kerry effectively ended his political career on February 28, 2005…” That’s a big claim, but O’Rourke doesn’t back it up. Here’s his account of the allegedly unforgiveable comments Kerry made during a discussion of the 2004 campaign:

Addressing the audience of tame Democrats, Kerry explained his defeat. “There has
been,” he said, “a profound and negative change in the relationship of America’s media with the American people. . . . If 77 percent of the people who voted for George Bush on Election Day believed weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq–as they did–and 77 percent of the people who voted for him believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11–as they did–then something has happened in the way in which we are talking to each other and who is arbitrating the truth in American politics. . . . When fear is dominating the discussion and when there are false choices presented and there is no arbitrator, we have a problem.”

America is not doctrinaire. It’s hard for an American politician to come up with an ideological position that is permanently unforgivable. Henry Wallace never quite managed, or George Wallace either. But Kerry’s done it. American free speech needs to be submitted to arbitration because Americans aren’t smart enough to have a First Amendment, and you can tell this is so, because Americans weren’t smart enough to vote for John Kerry.

“We learned,” Kerry continued, “that the mainstream media, over the course of the last year, did a pretty good job of discerning. But there’s a subculture and a sub-media that talks and keeps things going for entertainment purposes rather than for the flow of information. And that has a profound impact and undermines what we call the mainstream media of the country. And so the decision-making ability of the American electorate has been profoundly impacted as a consequence of that. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

Kerry is hilariously bad as a demagogue. A low subculture and its inferior sub-media are thwarting the will of the sacred mainstream? His small sparks of malice were blurred by vast, damp clouds of Kerry-fog–murky budget critiques, hazy pronouncements on Social Security and health care, foreign policy vaporings, leaden anecdotes, and an obscure protest that 45 percent of West Virginians lack sewer hook-ups…

First of all, what’s “unforgiveable” about pointing out the obvious fact that the media has failed to clarify, and in some cases disseminated, a lot of misinformation over the past five years? (Much of it, of course, originated with the Bush administration — I co-wrote a whole book about this — though Kerry spread some myths of his own.) That is undeniable. Yet O’Rourke glosses right over the fact that millions of Americans falsely believed that WMDs had been found in Iraq, and instead pretends that John Kerry wants to appoint an “arbitrator” to regulate political discourse.

I don’t believe that there’s a regulatory solution to this problem — Kerry mentions the Fairness Doctrine, but as he points out, it’s not coming back (nor is it clear that it should). Still, we have to talk about this issue as a society. Democratic debate works best when both sides are arguing their cases from a common set of facts. If millions of voters base their decisions on bad information — and the media doesn’t help them realize their error — then we have a problem. While Kerry is not the ideal messenger for this issue, what he said is not crackpot demagoguery.

In the midst of an interesting critique of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in the Weekly Standard, Matthew Continetti offers the best debunking I’ve seen yet of the much-hyped “investor class” thesis that stock ownership will magically turn people into Republicans:

Conservatives used to cast a wary eye on class politics. But that was when the classes involved were sullen proletarians and priggish patricians. Today a whole cottage industry has sprung up to promote the “investor class” as the keystone supporting the Republican majority. As magazine publisher and political strategist Richard Nadler, who popularized the idea of the “investor class,” put it: “It stands to reason” that the investor class’s “growth would benefit Republicans,” because “high-income voters trend Republican.” To enter capital markets, so the theory goes, is to undergo a transformative experience. If you own stock, the investor-class theorists preach, you’ll save more, spend less, start reading the Wall Street Journal, and no longer support government intrusion into the economy. If you are bald, you’ll grow hair. If you are a Democrat, you’ll vote Republican.

Actually, if you are a Democrat who owns stock, you probably won’t turn into a Republican. Consider: According to the 2000 Rasmussen Portrait of America exit poll, 51 percent of voters who owned more than $5,000 in “equities, bonds, and mutual funds” cast their ballots for George W. Bush. Al Gore, by contrast, received the support of 45 percent of investors. Now compare those numbers to last year’s. According to the 2004 Investors Action poll, Bush received the votes of 52 percent of investors last November. John Kerry received the votes of 46 percent of investors. Which is to say: Over a period of four years in which the number of stock-owning households no doubt increased, there was no significant change–close to no change at all, in fact–in investor voting patterns.

The theory of the investor class, it turns out, is long on assertion and supposition but short on evidence. And yet, conservatives–who are normally alert to the limitations of crude economic determinism–have tended to swoon over the investor-class thesis. “Rather than 52 percent of Americans owning stocks and bonds,” writes Stephen Moore in his new book Bullish on Bush, “the Bush [Social Security] plan would rocket that share up to 80 or perhaps even 90 percent.” To which the average conservative reader these days may react: “Think of all the new Republicans there will be!”

But while universal stock ownership may be desirable for other reasons–most economists believe that lower-income Americans would benefit from having at least some of their savings in stocks–it hardly guarantees political catnip for Republicans. For one thing, if 80 or 90 percent of Americans own stocks and bonds, “investors” will no longer be a class at all–unless it’s the class of all voters, in both parties. Furthermore–and more immediately–there’s a corollary to the investor-class thesis that favors Democrats. As more people enter the market, they may turn to politicians who offer protection from rapacious capitalists and irresponsible money managers. Burned by market downturns, they will want politicians to go after those who did them harm. And those politicians, in turn, will say they are “saving” markets in the process. Politicians like Eliot Spitzer.

Media Matters catches Fred Barnes in a profound display of ignorance about Social Security. During a discussion with Brit Hume on the March 9 edition of Fox News’ “Special Report,” Barnes didn’t appear to understand that private accounts do not improve the solvency of Social Security. The reason is obvious: every dollar diverted into private accounts is one less dollar that can be used to pay current benefits. This is an elementary point for anyone following the debate, but not Barnes:

BARNES: In truth, they [private accounts] are part, not the whole, but they are a part of the solvency issue. And they do —

BRIT HUME (anchor): In what sense?

BARNES: Well, in the sense that eventually people getting — rather than money from the Social Security system and from taxes, their retirement will be funded in part by their earnings from where they’ve invested their money.

HUME: In private accounts.

BARNES: BARNES: Yes. Their payroll tax money in private accounts.

HUME: So a different part of Social Security —

BARNES: So it means that the unfunded liability of Social Security shrinks, and less money has to come out of the system, which is financed by taxes. And more money will come out of being earned in the regular economy in America.

MORT KONDRACKE: But there’s a —

BARNES: So they are a part of it. They’re just not the whole part.

Meanwhile, liberals have their own tricks. One is to pretend that nothing bad happens fiscally until the Social Security trust fund is exhausted, which Media Matters used to criticize former RNC chairman Ed Gillespie:

On MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie claimed that Social Security faces a “financial calamity” in 2018, when the trust fund “begins paying out more than it takes in,” and asserted that “[w]e better be prepared as a country to deal with it.” But government studies show that Social Security will be able to pay out full promised benefits for several decades. The program will have sufficient funds to pay full benefits until 2042, according to a report by the Social Security trustees, or until 2052, according to a study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

But of course, the funds used to pay benefits between 2018 and the date of trust fund exhaustion will come from the general federal budget as Social Security redeems the bonds it has accumulated. Those bonds may represent real financial commitments, but they will pressure the federal budget nonetheless.

And Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, in an exchange with New York Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent, wrote this misleading sentence:

“Private accounts” was the accurate term used by both sides of the debate until Republicans realized it wasn’t polling well; they then started calling them “personal accounts,” a deceptive term because citizens already have personal Social Security accounts that keep track of their individual contributions.

Individuals do have Social Security records tracking their contributions, but they do not have “accounts” in the financial sense of separate, interest-bearing accounts that contains each person’s contributions. FAIR is obviously exploiting this common misconception.

(More on Fred Barnes / More on FAIR)

One of the things that’s struck me about the Social Security debate is how badly our political system deals with the question of opportunity costs. The idea is simple — money and influence are finite. When we devote resources to proposal A, we can’t use those resources to address priorities B-Z. But government is terrible at grappling with complexity. It can only devote sustained attention to a few issues at a time, and those issue are invariably framed as A vs. the status quo, not A vs. B-Z.

This is the fundamental dilemma of social choice, and it works to the advantage of those in power who can set the agenda, particularly when they make a new proposal where the opportunity costs are not obvious (cutting established programs has far more obvious consequences, and is thus much harder). For example, President Bush got his first tax cut through Congress in large part because it was seen as popular. When faced with the choice of A (tax cuts) or the status quo (no tax cuts), the public generally chose A in polls. However, it turned out that when you presented them with an array of issue priorities, tax cuts weren’t very high on the list.

Here’s where public relations comes in. You simply pick a recognized problem, frame what you want to do anyway as the solution, and then construct a set of logical-sounding “reasons” to justify your decision. Even if the whole process is disingenuous, the system takes you at your word, and portrays the issue as a serious policy debate focused on the “problem” that has been selected. Allies in Congress then try to manipulate the legislative agenda to keep the debate structured around the proposal for A. Meanwhile, the heavy institutional emphasis on the “problem” in Congress and the media’s faux-objective “he said, she said” reporting style, which refuses to assess whether the “problem” is pressing or whether the “solution” solves it, obscure the opportunity costs of the proposal.

Thus, Bush strategically shifted rationales for his first tax cut, which began as a taxpayer refund and ended up as a supposed recession-fighter (see All the President’s Spin). As each rationale was presented, the Washington establishment constructed a debate about the “problem” and the “solution,” which were inevitably framed around Bush’s proposal, not all the other, more popular things that the money could have been used for.

And of course, the same thing happened with Iraq. When Bush rolled out a strategy to define Iraq as a problem that demanded immediate attention and was somehow linked to Sept. 11 (again, see ATPS), the institutions of Washington focused almost all of their attention on the reasons to go into Iraq or not – once again, A or the status quo. The massive opportunity costs of that decision for reconstruction in Afghanistan, the hunt for Al Qaeda, and other foreign policy priorities were not given serious attention. In the post-9/11 atmosphere, opponents of the invasion were inevitably going to lose to a President determined to take out a country he viewed as a threat.

That brings us to the Social Security debate. As Jonathan Chait points out in The New Republic, we’re seeing the same dynamic play out today. He writes:

The consensus among the capital’s chattering classes holds that the Social Security debate primarily concerns the program’s solvency. Therefore, the questions center around political courage, and the greatest threat is that the parties will not agree on a solution. This consensus is wrong in every particular.

By setting up the debate as a serious policy dispute over how to address Social Security’s solvency, the Washington establishment plays into Bush’s hands. They (a) present private accounts as a solution, when in fact they make Social Security’s funding problems worse, and (b) define away the question of opportunity costs by focusing attention on a “problem” that the institutions of Washington have geared up to solve. I would never deny that the funding shortfall that Social Security faces is a serious policy issue that should be addressed, but we face huge deficits over the next two decades as Bush’s tax cuts kick in and Medicare costs spiral. Is this our first priority? We don’t know because the system can’t handle the question.

It looks like bluster is winning as the private accounts strategy de jour. Any minute now, supporters say, the public is going to rise as one and turn out everyone who opposed the President’s plan. Any minute! Just you wait! In the meantime, well, they’re going to make stuff up about the impending doom that Democrats face.

Just last week, it was Lindsey Graham warning of “a death blow to the Democratic Party” and “more Republicans up here [in Washington] than we can handle.”

Now, even as the Washington Post head-counts a filibuster-proof group of senators opposed to private accounts, President Bush is getting into the act. During a speech in Louisville, he said:

See, if Congress doesn’t think there’s a problem, nothing is going to happen. But when Congress realizes people all over the country say, we’ve got a problem, then I pity the politician who stands in the way of the solution.

Watch out! 30-45% of the country supports Bush’s approach to Social Security! It’s a mandate!

In all seriousness, this shows that Bush has no understanding of the (lack of) power of the presidency on domestic policy. The president can put an issue at the top of the national agenda. People will usually agree that there is a problem. But research shows that the chief executive is rarely successful at changing public opinion in favor of his preferred solution (or “solution,” in Bush’s case). If it’s not there when you start, it won’t suddenly materialize weeks or months later. Sorry George.

My post on Robert Byrd is quoted by Russ Smith in his New York Press column this week:

Brendan Nyhan, a committed Democrat who’s fallen under the spell of fellow blogger Josh Marshall in the ultimately futile War to Save Social Security As We Know It, nevertheless wrote on March 3 what the Times couldn’t bear to. Excoriating Byrd, Nyhan said, “We need to get Robert Byrd out of the Senate. Comparing the ‘nuclear option’ to Hitler’s takeover of the German government is only the latest of many, many stupid and offensive things he’s said over the years. And yes, he carries a copy of the Constitution around, knows lots of parliamentary procedure, and quotes Cicero. I don’t care. Get him out of there.”

(I’m not under anyone’s “spell,” but hey, all press is good press.)