Brendan Nyhan

In his column today, Paul Krugman says the White House didn’t make unsupported claims about tax cuts increasing revenue:

[E]ven the administration of former President George W. Bush refrained from making extravagant claims about tax-cut magic, at least in part for fear that making such claims would raise questions about the administration’s seriousness.

In reality, however, Bush officials frequently suggested that tax cuts increase revenues despite being repeatedly contradicted by administration economists. Here’s a timeline I compiled in 2006:

President Bush, 11/13/02: “Well, we have a deficit because tax revenues are down. Make no mistake about it, the tax relief package that we passed — that should be permanent, by the way — has helped the economy, and that the deficit would have been bigger without the tax relief package.”

President Bush, 1/7/03: “This growth and jobs package is essential in the short run; it’s an immediate boost to the economy. And these proposals will help stimulate investment and put more people back to work, is what we want to have happen. They are essential for the long run, as well — to lay the groundwork for future growth and future prosperity. That growth will bring the added benefit of higher revenues for the government — revenues that will keep tax rates low, while fulfilling key obligations and protecting programs such as Medicare and Social Security.”

Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, 1/8/03: “The entire [tax cut] package the President does believe will lead to growth, which will over time grow the economy, create additional revenues for the federal government and pay for itself.”

Vice President Cheney, 1/30/03: “The President’s proposals will reduce the tax burden on the American people by $670 billion over the next 10 years. By leaving more money in the hands of the people who earn it, people who will spend and invest and save and add momentum to our recovery, we’ll help create more jobs and ultimately increase tax revenues for the government.”

President Bush, 5/7/03: “[T]he other way to deal with the deficit is to put policies in place that increase the revenues coming into the Treasury. And the best way to encourage revenues coming into the Treasury is to promote policy which encourages economic growth and vitality. A growing economy is going to produce more revenues for the federal Treasury. The way to deal with the deficit is not to be timid on the growth package; the way to deal with the deficit is to have a robust enough growth package so we get more revenues coming into the federal Treasury.”

President Bush, 8/6/05: “The tax relief stimulated economic vitality and growth and it has helped increase revenues to the Treasury. The increased revenues and our spending restraint have led to good progress in reducing the federal deficit. Last month we learned that the deficit is now projected to be $94 billion less than previously expected. I set a goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009, and we are ahead of pace to meet that goal.”

President Bush, 2/8/06: “One of the interesting things that I hope you realize when it comes to cutting taxes is this tax relief not only has helped our economy, but it’s helped the federal budget. In 2004, tax revenues to the Treasury grew about 5.5 percent. That’s kind of counter-intuitive, isn’t it? At least it is for some in Washington. You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase. See, some people are going to say, well, you cut taxes, you’re going to have less revenue. No, that’s not what happened. What happened was we cut taxes and in 2004, revenues increased 5.5 percent. And last year those revenues increased 14.5 percent, or $274 billion. And the reason why is cutting taxes caused the economy to grow, and as the economy grows there is more revenue generated in the private sector, which yields more tax revenues.”

Vice President Cheney, 2/9/06: The President’s tax policies have strengthened the economy, as we knew they would. And despite forecasts to the contrary, the tax cuts have translated into higher federal revenues… Nobody’s perfect, but when revenue projections are off by 180 degrees, it’s time to reexamine our assumptions and to consider using more dynamic analysis to measure the true impact of tax cuts on the American economy. Recognizing this, the President’s recently submitted budget would create a new Dynamic Analysis Division within the Treasury Department to analyze major tax proposals. The evidence is in, it’s time for everyone to admit that sensible tax cuts increase economic growth, and add to the federal treasury.

President Bush, 7/11/06: “Some in Washington say we had to choose between cutting taxes and cutting the deficit. You might remember those debates. You endured that rhetoric hour after hour on the floor of the Senate and the House. Today’s numbers show that that was a false choice. The economic growth fueled by tax relief has helped send our tax revenues soaring. That’s what’s happened.”

Krugman’s point is that today’s Republicans are making more extreme claims about the benefits of tax cuts than during the Bush administration, but I don’t think that’s correct — the pattern is consistent over time.

One of the problems with Twitter is that people can easily take what you write out of context. Last Friday, for instance, Nate Silver criticized me for “poor political punditry” because of a tweet in which I said “A few more jobs reports like this and Romney et al. are going to be measuring the drapes for the [White House]”:

The jobs numbers are awful, but they’ve also provided fodder for some poor political punditry.

I won’t name names, since the people in question are normally thoughtful writers. But you can already find an article keyed off the news with the headline “How a one-term president is made.” And a political scientist in my Twitter feed wrote of how numbers like these will have Mitt Romney “measuring the drapes” in the White House.

I do not mean to suggest that the unemployment numbers are unimportant as a news story. To the contrary, recent polls find that four times as many people list jobs rather than the budget deficit as a top priority, even though the latter issue has gotten more press attention lately.

But if you’re going to write about the jobs numbers as a horse race story, you ought to do it right, and that means keeping an eye on the big picture.

Silver goes on to lecture us about how it’s only one jobs report, we should keep an eye on the big picture, and that unemployment is a lagging indicator and a relatively weak predictor of presidential outcomes. I agree! That’s why I wrote “a few more jobs reports like this,” why I’ve repeatedly written about the lack of a strong relationship between unemployment and presidential outcomes (though see Carlisle Rainey), and why I’ve closely tracked the forecasting models, (lack of) personal income growth, etc.

To put my tweet in a larger context, the point I was making is this: Obama needs the economy to start turning around soon or the lags involved could doom his re-election campaign. One jobs report is unlikely to make a difference on its own, especially given that jobs are a lagging indicator, but he’s in increasingly big trouble each month that we don’t see signs of a significant recovery. That opinion doesn’t fit into 140 characters, but it’s consistent with what I’ve been writing for months.

In recent years, growth in elite polarization has broken down a series of bipartisan norms in Washington, but the GOP’s brinksmanship over the debt ceiling (which will continue today in a meeting at the White House) is historically unprecedented. It’s worth underscoring what the stakes are.

Unlike other commentators, political scientists are often relatively sanguine about polarization. The US had very high levels of polarization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and survived intact. The depolarized mid-20th century norm that so many in Washington idealize was an artifact of the divide over race, so recent increases in polarization can be seen as a return to historical norms. In addition, high levels of partisanship can be clarifying for voters, who get clearer choices between the parties. The comparative experience also suggests the need for a more nuanced view — many other rich countries function perfectly well despite highly partisan politics.

The problem, however, is that the US political system is choked with veto points (both constitutional and procedural) that can be targeted by opposition parties. The costs of those tactics can be extremely high. Consider this plot of partisan polarization in the US (as measured by the distance between the House party medians in DW-NOMINATE) against estimates of the US share of world GDP (using data from Angus Maddison):

The post-World War II economic system was built around the US economy at a time when partisan polarization was relatively low, which increased stability and gave elites substantial room to maneuver in economic policy matters. Now, however, growth in polarization has fueled a debt ceiling standoff that threatens to destabilize financial markets at a time when US still makes up a substantial proportion of the world economy and plays a crucial role in bond and currency markets.

Obama and the Republicans may yet cut a deal before the ostensible default deadline of August 2. Even if they do, though, will every future debt ceiling increase be held hostage by the opposition party? As Jonathan Chait and Matthew Yglesias note, this prospect is a major threat to US economic and political stability, and it threatens to spill over to the rest of the world as well. Democrats may denounce the GOP’s debt ceiling tactics now, but they will be hard to resist if, say, President Romney passes a big tax cut that drives up the debt.

Update 7/7 12:00 PM: In comments, Rob objects to my claim that “the GOP’s brinksmanship over the debt ceiling . . . is historically unprecedented,” citing President Obama’s 2006 vote against increasing the debt ceiling, which his aides say he now regrets. My argument is that the default threat is greater now than at that time given GOP filibuster threats and the precarious state of the global economy. The same principle applies to the 1995-1996 debt ceiling fight — the threat to economic stability is far more significant today.

Update 7/7 3:17 PM: More from Matthew Yglesias:

A related point I would emphasize is that not only does the United States play a much larger role in the global economy than it did during the Gilded Age, but the federal government plays a much larger role in the domestic economy. A lapse of appropriations leading to a “government shutdown” had relatively modest implications in 1911 compared to what it means in 2011. Another point about this is that a lot of us who spent much of the past decade noting that rising polarization was simply a return to the pre-New Deal status quo have actually missed the part where polarization has, in fact, rocketed to the highest level on record.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Chris Wallace asked Michele Bachmann “Are you a flake?,” prompting a backlash that forced Wallace to apologize:

Some commentators have suggested that Wallace’s question was sexist. I agree that “flake” is a pejorative term that seems to be disproportionately applied to women, but it’s worth noting that in presidential politics the term has mostly been directed at men.*

Most famously, former California governor and presidential candidate Jerry Brown was labeled as a “flake” throughout his political career and even asked the same question Bachmann. According to a February 21, 1989 column by Charles Paul Freund in the Washington Post, Brown was once asked “Are you a flake?” on MacNeil/Lehrer. A quick Nexis search shows that many other presidential candidates have been derided as flakes, including Texas businessman Ross Perot, former Floria governor Bob Graham, Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich, Republican gadfly Alan Keyes, magazine publisher Steve Forbes, and former Illinois senator Carol Moseley-Braun. In terms of presidential candidates, the term is typically used to either mean personally eccentric (Graham, Perot) or a non-serious candidate who is unlikely to win (Forbes, Moseley-Braun) and/or has fringe/extreme views (Kucinich, Keyes).

Ultimately, however, the most important problem with Wallace’s question is not the gender politics, but the journalism. As Conor Friedersdorf argued, if Wallace wants to press Bachmann on whether she’s a “serious person” or someone who makes “questionable statements,” his question did a terrible job of forcing her to engage on specifics. Instead, it allowed her to reiterate her credentials without addressing her long record of false and misleading statements.

* Of course, until recently, almost all presidential candidates were men. It remains to be seen how this pattern will change as more women become serious contenders.

Matthew Yglesias takes heart in polling showing many Americans still blame President Bush for the state of the economy:

One gripe I hear fairly often around DC is the idea that President Obama has failed to do an adequate job of reminding the public about the disastrous legacy of the George W Bush administration. The latest NBC/WSJ poll showing resilience of Obama’s political standing in the face of a bleak national mood suggests that this isn’t really the case and the public still puts lots of blame on Bush:

A third reason is that the American public isn’t blaming Obama for the current economy, with more than six in 10 respondents still saying he inherited the country’s economic problems from his Oval Office predecessor. Also, while a combined 47 percent believe George W. Bush and his administration are “solely responsible” or “mainly responsible” for the current economy, just 34 percent in the poll say the same of Obama and his administration

I wouldn’t put much stock in this. Campaigns are giant engines of political accountability that drive election results toward what we would expect given the fundamentals. For better or worse, Obama will own the economy by next fall, though it’s possible that he will be judged less harshly since Democrats just took back control of the presidency in 2009.

Yesterday’s Thomas Friedman column featured this clunker of a lede:

While President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have gotten a lot of things right on foreign policy, they’ve made quite a mess in Israeli-Palestinian relations… Then again, the actors they’ve had to work with were both lemons…

But you know what they say to do with lemons? Make lemonade.

Given Friedman’s fondness for hackneyed clichés, I figured this couldn’t have been the first time he deployed the lemons/lemonade frame. But he surpassed even my expectations. As it turns out, lemonade have also been or should be made from lemons in the Soviet Union, Bosnia, Iran, and Iraq:

7/28/91: “The cold war may not have ended with a single Appomattox, but if the conventional arms treaty and the German unification agreement of last November are put together with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact last month and Mr. Gorbachev’s trashing of Marxism-Leninism before the Soviet Communist Party last week, they add up to the diplomatic equivalent of a conditional surrender. Still, from such lemons Mr. Gorbachev has made lemonade.”

8/28/96: “Richard Holbrooke, the former Bosnia negotiator. Strengths: Smart. Creative. Energetic. Understands American power and how to wield it. Proved in Bosnia that he can turn lemons into lemonade.”

10/13/97 (imagined dialogue from Bill Clinton): “Look, I’m dubious about Khatami’s prospects… Still, it’s worth a try… So we might as well use this mess with France and the oil companies to test Khatami. Hey, when you’ve got lemons, make lemonade.”

1/31/98: “Option 3 is: When you’ve got lemons, make lemonade. Approach Russia and France and tell them that the U.S. is ready to lift all economic sanctions on Iraq immediately if the two of them can persuade Saddam to accept a total, and permanent, weapons inspection regime.”

3/19/03: “But here we are, going to war [in Iraq], basically alone, in the face of opposition, not so much from ‘the Arab Street,’ but from ‘the World Street.’ Everyone wishes it were different, but it’s too late — which is why this column will henceforth focus on how to turn these lemons into lemonade. Our children’s future hinges on doing this right, even if we got here wrong.”

11/30/03: “But here’s why the left needs to get beyond its opposition to the war and start pitching in with its own ideas and moral support to try to make lemons into lemonade in Baghdad.”

Who’s next? My money is on Afghanistan.