Brendan Nyhan

People often forget how nasty politics used to be, especially before the Progressive Era. Here’s part of amusingly vicious article from the May 6, 1896 edition of the New York Times that I came across in my research:

Now that is bad press.

The odds are good that the next president will be a senator, which raises an obvious but important question: why are Warren Harding and John F. Kennedy the only two presidents who won election as sitting senators?

The most complete treatment I’ve seen of the subject is Barry Burden’s 2002 Political Science Quarterly article (PDF), which was picked up by David Broder in the Washington Post. Here is Burden’s conclusion:

Contrary to the conventional wisdom found in newspaper stories and academic journals, senators have been poorer presidential candidates than one might expect. Many of them have run for president, but surprisingly few have earned their parties’ nominations and even fewer have won the general election. Former senators do well, though much of their success is attributed to being selected as vice-presidential running mates. The group of presidential candidates most analogous to senators — governors -— make up the second largest share of the contender pool and perform better than senators when they run. Though senators are probably at least as likely as governors to harbor progressive ambition for the presidency, I argue that their differing success rates are due in part to deeper campaign investment by the typical governor. Governors also benefit from more careful self-selection, with those from larger states, especially in the South, more likely to run. It seems evident that senators, especially sitting senators, have not done as well at the nomination and general election stages as they should have, given what we know. The Senate has seldom been the presidential incubator or nursery it ought to be given the ambition, visibility, resources, and records of both current and former members of the institution.

Of the four general explanations offered for the gap between expectations and performance, some have received more support than others. The “authority and the issues” and “expectations” arguments seem the least potent. There are at least two reasons to be skeptical of these. First, all members of Congress do not perform equally well. Representatives and senators do have similar success rates in the long run, but members of the House differ significantly from senators on several predictors of success. Cabinet officials, business people, activists, and mayors have done about as well too, so there does not appear to be a liability unique to legislators. Representatives should be less successful than senators, since their constituencies are smaller. They serve in a chamber of 435 rather than 100 and have generally spent less time climbing the hierarchy of offices to get where they are. Second, current senators are less successful than former senators. If there is a congressional aura that hurts legislators when they run for president, it does not extend to members who have left Capitol Hill.

I am more optimistic about the “office structure” and “candidate pool” arguments. They have clear connections to the investment and ambition theory and garner tentative support in the rudimentary analysis done here. They explain why the pools of senators and governors are not quite the sizes that we assumed if former office-holders are included. Both arguments also rely on notions of supply and demand and strategic decision making by elites, two crucial elements of any study of presidential selection. Mysteries about ascension of particular candidates to the White House remain of course, but revealing new facts and proposing explanations for them that are tied to theory have proved useful.

Other theories? Should we expect 2008 to be different? Right now, the Tradesports market puts a 56% probability on McCain, Obama, or Clinton winning the general election.

My friend Chris Mooney, the author of The Republican War on Science, has posted an excellent takedown of a misleading Bush administration statement on global warming:

There was an absolutely incredible letter from the White House yesterday concerning Bush’s record on climate change. It is signed by Office of Science and Technology Policy director John Marburger and Council on Environmental Quality chair James Connaugton, both of whom, with this letter, are guilty of deceiving the public.

The letter says: “Beginning in June 2001, President Bush has consistently acknowledged climate change is occurring and humans are contributing to the problem.” False. I need only point out, yet again, that just last year, Bush claimed there was a debate over whether global warming was “manmade or naturally caused.”

The House and the Senate need to compel both Marburger and Connaugton to testify, and confront them with quotations like this.

MOREOVER: The White House letter provides a skewed and misleading quotation from Bush’s 2001 speech on global warming, so as to suggest it endorses the scientific consensus. The speech in fact ducked the central issue.

Here’s how the White House quotes Bush:

“First, we know the surface temperature of the earth is warming…There is a natural greenhouse effect that contributes to warming…And the National Academy of Sciences indicates that the increase is due in large part to human activity.” – June 11, 2001

In the context of the actual speech, the “increase” being referred to here is clearly the increase in greenhouse gase concentrations, not the increase in temperature. Read in full what Bush actually said, and you’ll quickly see how deceptive the White House is being, by literally misquoting the president himself:

First, we know the surface temperature of the earth is warming. It has risen by .6 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years. There was a warming trend from the 1890s to the 1940s. Cooling from the 1940s to the 1970s. And then sharply rising temperatures from the 1970s to today.

There is a natural greenhouse effect that contributes to warming. Greenhouse gases trap heat, and thus warm the earth because they prevent a significant proportion of infrared radiation from escaping into space. Concentration of greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have increased substantially since the beginning of the industrial revolution. And the National Academy of Sciences indicate that the increase is due in large part to human activity.

Yet, the Academy’s report tells us that we do not know how much effect natural fluctuations in climate may have had on warming. We do not know how much our climate could, or will change in the future. We do not know how fast change will occur, or even how some of our actions could impact it.

For example, our useful efforts to reduce sulfur emissions may have actually increased warming, because sulfate particles reflect sunlight, bouncing it back into space. And, finally, no one can say with any certainty what constitutes a dangerous level of warming, and therefore what level must be avoided.

The White House’s shameless attempt to rewrite history simply cannot, and will not, stand. This 2001 speech is not an endorsement of the scientific consensus. It’s an attempt to dance around it.

P.S.: Also last year, Bush claimed there was a “fundamental debate” over whether global warming is human caused or natural….This record cannot simply be made to disappear.

Continuing my series on the wacky cartoon mascots of government websites for children, here’s my latest find — “A. Bill” from the House Clerk’s website for kids:

A. Bill is a little bland for my taste — he doesn’t even compare to my personal favorite, Thermy the Thermometer:

More generally, do you think any kid has ever visited the House Clerk’s website voluntarily? The websites-for-kids mandate seems like a classic government boondoggle.

(Note: Don’t miss my original post on why these were created, which includes pictures of my favorite mascots. It’s one of my all-time favorites.)

Here’s a great example of legislative grandstanding.

When he was a member of the House, Ted Strickland introduced a bill that “[p]rohibits the importation for sale of foreign-made flags of the United States of America.” It’s not a tax or a quota; he would ban the importation of flags. You will never see a less dignified pander (although George H.W. Bush’s visit to a flag factory in 1988 comes close).

And while we’re at it, do we import apple pies? I demand action!

Update 2/7 12:41 PM: Per the comment below, I removed an incorrect reference to Ted Strickland as a senator. He is, of course, the governor of Ohio. Apologies.

National Journal regularly conducts an “insiders poll” of elite pundits and/or elected officials, who are offered anonymity in exchange for (hopefully) honest responses. The aggregate results are typically reported by party.

The results are generally not widely reported outside the Beltway, but the most recent insiders poll has made an unusually big splash. Here’s the key question, which was asked of members of Congress:

Drudge is currently running the headline “POLL: Only 13% Of Congressional Republicans Believe Global Warming Caused By Man…” and Kevin Drum noted that the percentage of Republicans saying yes seems to have gone down from last year:

It’s not just that Republican members of Congress aren’t convinced that global warming is a man-made problem — gotta keep those campaign donations from Exxon rolling in, after all — it’s that the number who believe this has actually gone down over the past year.

Down! What could possibly have happened over the past nine months to make them less likely to believe in human-induced global warming?

However, the sample sizes on the poll are (necessarily) tiny. We have no idea if 13 percent is accurate for the GOP caucus as a whole. Only 35 Republicans voted in the 2006 poll and 31 in the current version, and those that vote may not be representative.

Also, if you consider raw votes, the number of Republicans believing global warming is a man-made problem went from 8 out of 35 to 4 out of 31 — not a big difference, especially if different members responded each time. In terms of Drum’s comment, we can’t statistically rule out the null hypothesis that the probability remained constant between polls.

Of course, I’m troubled by these numbers on a deeper level — they’re surely far too low with respect to the scientific evidence. But we should be careful about how literally we take the results of this type of poll.

In a recent post, Kevin Drum strangely grants the premise that George W. Bush had a mandate for tax cuts in 2000:

The first is George Bush’s tax proposal of 2000, and it was right in the sweet spot: detailed enough to demonstrate he was serious about it but not so detailed that it drew the fire of every special interest group in the country. It got plenty of attention and was clearly something that people were voting for. Result: a solid mandate and a big tax cut in 2001. (And 2002, 2003, and 2004.)

But how could Bush have “a solid mandate” for anything when he lost the popular vote in 2000? In addition, voters didn’t back his plans for a tax cut — the 2000 exit poll showed that when asked about their priority for the surplus, only 28% of voters said tax cuts, compared with 24% for debt reduction, 35% for Social Security, and 5% for other programs.

I’m generally skeptical about all mandate claims; as I’ve written, I think they’re a social construction. But any mandate claims coming from the 2000 election seem particularly suspect.

Back in 2005, John McCain praised discredited Jim Crow nostalgist Trent Lott, saying “of all the majority leaders we’ve had in the United States Senate, I believe that Trent Lott was the finest leader we’ve had.” (McCain also endorsed George Wallace, Jr., who spoke four times to a racist hate group.)

Today, Lott returned the favor, sending out an email trying to bolster McCain’s conservative credentials by linking him to Ronald Reagan (PDF). With this kind of pandering to the base, it won’t be long until McCain’s media-fueled reputation as a “maverick” comes crashing down.

In other news, you can get your very own John McCain fleece if you give a mere $200 to his campaign (PDF):

Is it a PBS fundraising drive or a presidential campaign?

NPR reports that Democrats are already abusing phony sunset provisions to game Congressional budget rules, a tactic that Republicans repeatedly abused over the last six years:

For the past few years, Democrats in Congress have not had much power in the minority. In that time, Republicans have used a budgeting technique called a “sunset” — which can often make a new initiative look like it costs less than it does.

Today the two parties swapped roles. Republicans are too weak to swim against the tide of bills that Democrats are bringing to the floor under what’s called closed rules. That means that Republicans can’t even offer amendments to the bill.

The Democrats’ bill would reduce interest rates on college loans for low- and middle-income students, by stepping them down slowly, from the current 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent in five years. And then, six months after loans hit the lowest rate, the whole bill sunsets, and rates go back to 6.8 percent.

No one thinks that’s actually going to happen — but on the other hand it will require Congress to do something prevent it from happening. The sunset serves to make the bill look cheaper over the long haul — a tactic Republicans used many times on big tax cuts.

There is a key difference, though: Democrats have eliminated subsidies for private banks and others to pay for the student loan rate drop, so it will not add to the federal deficit.

Sunsets are a cheap way to build a constituency for a policy and then make it politically painful to cut later. And while this student loan bill seems like a good idea, the hypocrisy of the Democrats will make it even harder to condemn these tactics when Republicans use them on tax cuts.

As with his various “plans” to cut the federal budget deficit in half, President Bush’s budget makes a series of implausible assumptions in order to project a return to surplus by 2012, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes:

* The budget implicitly includes the assumption that the Alternative Minimum Tax will be allowed to explode and will affect more than 40 million households in 2012, something no one believes will happen. The budget includes the cost of AMT relief only through 2007, but omits the cost of AMT relief in the years after that. The Congressional Budget Office says that the cost of continuing this relief is $93 billion in 2012 alone, if the President’s tax cuts are extended.

* The budget also rests on the shaky assumption that the deep cuts scheduled under current law in payments made to doctors for services they provide to Medicare patients will actually take effect. No one believes this will happen either. This assumption makes up to $20 billion in additional 2012 costs disappear.
* The budget also omits all costs for the Global War on Terror after 2009, which could run into the tens of billions of dollars in 2012.
* Finally, the budget employs rosy revenue assumptions; it assumes at least $150 billion more in revenue in 2012 than CBO does for the same policies.

The Financial Times has an appropriately skeptical article:

This deficit dynamic is substantially driven by the way the budget accounts for the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It accounts for these costs in full in 2008 and sets aside $50bn to cover unforeseen war-related expenses in 2009, but makes no provision for one-off war costs in 2010 or beyond.

Whether actual war-related spending will follow the path set out in the budget is debateable, raising one source of uncertainty as to its fiscal forecasts.

More broadly, most of the deficit reduction is supposed to take place after Mr Bush leaves office and achieving this is cause for some scepticism.

The White House set out to show that it is possible to balance the budget by 2012 while making the Bush tax cuts permanent. The budget indeed does this, though the fiscal maths rests on certain assumptions, some of which – like the rapid decline in war costs – look optimistic.

The biggest assumption is that it is possible to hold non-security discretionary spending growth to 1 per cent in nominal cash terms. That means real terms cuts every year for five years – a degree of sustained spending restraint which is unprecedented in recent times.

Then, the White House assumes the economy will grow faster than the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates in 2007 and again from 2011 onwards.

The budget has growth averaging 3 per cent from 2008 to 2012, which is probably a small fraction faster than the Federal Reserve now thinks is sustainable.

In addition, the budget makes no allowance for the cost of indexing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) beyond 2008 to prevent it drawing in an increasing number of middle class Americans.

This is legitimate in one sense, as Mr Bush has called for a “revenue-neutral” AMT fix. But it would be politically very difficult for Congress to find revenue increases to offset fully the cost of an AMT fix.

If Congress continues to patch the AMT year by year, as it has in recent years, the deficit will be significantly larger in each year from 2009 onwards than the budget forecasts.

The changes to Medicare and other entitlement programmes – which are significant in fiscal terms at the 2012 mark and hugely important thereafter – may also be difficult to get through Congress.

On the plus side, the budget includes an allowance for the cost of moving to private accounts in Social Security, which is unlikely to happen, leaving some cash on the table.

Also, the White House has not made very aggressive assumptions about growth in tax receipts in the light of the positive revenue surprises of the past couple of years.

This is in line with mainstream economic thinking, but it remains possible that there could be more tax buoyancy ahead, because of the share of income gains going to corporations and higher rate taxpayers.

Even if this materialised, though, it would very likely not be enough to make up, for instance, for any ongoing post 2009 war costs, inability to hold non-security discretionary spending growth to 1 per cent or failure to implement a cost-neutral AMT fix.