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Keeping Gates Signals Change

November 26, 2008, 10:35AM

Keeping Bob Gates as Secretary of Defense was the most dramatic signal Barack Obama could have sent that he intends to implement major changes in defense policy. That may sound counterintuitive, but it has the virtue of being true. As Josh noted this morning, "cabinet appointees execute policy. They work for the president." So if Gates is tasked to take us out of Iraq and to redouble our efforts in Afghanistan, we can expect him to carry out both tasks with the same degree of competence he's exhibited thus far in his tenure. In a properly functioning administration, the Secretary of Defense is one of several key voices advising the president on where and how to exercise military force. But he possesses primary responsibility for deciding how that force should be structured, staffed, equipped, and supplied. Those are decisions the president largely delegates, and thus where the secretary exercises his greatest degree of autonomy. And it is in those realms of defense policy that Gates has most distinguished himself. In retaining Gates, Obama is sending a clear signal to the Pentagon bureaucracy that their usual strategy of stalling and out-lasting civilian appointees is going to fail; that he intends to pursue Gates' key reforms. And that's a decision which should make us all stand and cheer.

The Nature of Change

November 25, 2008, 10:40AM

Americans have lost faith in the competence of their government. That doesn't sound like news. It's been twenty-eight years since the conservative revolution brought Reagan to Washington, where he declared that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." It's been twelve years since a Democratic president ratified that idea, announcing that "the era of big government is over." But those declarations of government's demise turn out to have been slightly premature. Government had not, in fact, reached its nadir. Instead, government continued to grow over the intervening decades, even as public confidence in government continued to erode.
In retrospect, it seems clear that neither the biting conservative critique of government overreach and ineptitude, nor the New Democratic embrace of those ideas, did nearly as much to undermine public confidence in government as the manifest incompetence of the Bush administration. Americans no longer trust their government because for eight years the government has not deserved their trust. There's ample data to bolster that contention. In May, Pew found that just 37% trust the federal government, and that those opinions closely track the presidential approval rating. Americans' faith in institutions of all kinds, in fact, has declined sharply over the past decade, with faith in governmental institutions leading the way, and approaching or surpassing Nixonian lows.
If that snowballing crisis of confidence is the greatest obstacle facing Barack Obama as he enters office, it also represents his greatest opportunity. Between August and October, the percentage of Americans who believed that the government has the power to fix the economy plummeted from 68 to 56. On the other hand, since his election, roughly two-thirds of Americans have reported that they are confident in Obama's ability to be a good president. His favorability spiked upwards immediately after his election, and has remained high.
So Americans trust Obama, but not the government that he was elected to lead. They are distrustful of partisanship, skeptical of bureaucracy, and suspicious of expertise. They agree that the country has rarely faced a more dire crisis, and that government seems unable to resolve it.

Obama Fumbles

November 24, 2008, 12:14PM

I think any sensible person would say that if you've got a bunch of teams who play throughout the season, and many of them have one loss or two losses--there's no clear decisive winner--that we should be creating a playoff system. I don't know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on this. So, I'm gonna throw my weight around a little bit. I think it's the right thing to do.

-Barack Obama, November 17, 2008

I'll be the last person to defend college football's Bowl Championship Series, a messy arrangement that serves mostly to funnel millions to football powerhouses, while spreading around enough hush money to lesser lights to keep discontent in check. But I have to say that Obama's championing of a college football playoff stinks of rank hypocrisy. There are valid arguments against the BCS - it's probably an antitrust violation, it locks some colleges out of contention and favors those with a national profile - but Obama didn't advance them. No, he mostly seemed annoyed that, as a fan, his season lacks a clear resolution.

It might have been nice for our president-elect to bear in mind that when he discusses college football, the emphasis properly belongs on the first word. Big-time college athletics has, for decades, grown increasingly mercenary. The players are supposedly student athletes, but these days, they're more likely to receive repeated concussions than an actual education. In truth, they're mostly entertainers. And that's tragic. It's true to some degree of all big-time college sports, but football stands in a class of its own. The teams are enormous. The money is bigger. The risk of injury larger. And the need to compromise academic standards more pressing.

None of that is Barack Obama's fault. But here's something that's well-worth bearing in mind. When Obama transferred out of Occidental College after his sophomore year, he didn't go to Georgia, Pittsburgh, or Alabama, despite their formidable success on the gridiron. No, he went to a school that hadn't posted a winning season since 1971, and which would set a record for football futility with 44 consecutive losses, beginning the year he graduated. His wife attended Princeton; they both went on to Harvard Law. The Ivy League withdrew from Division IA in 1981, rather than keep pace in the race to the bottom among top football programs. To this day, it has no conference football playoff, and declines to participate in the FCS championship. When it came to their own choice of colleges, the Obamas put the quality of their education first. So how can our new President, with a straight face, disregard the adverse academic impact of a FBS playoff, and speak as if providing clearer resolution for fans were somehow more important than the interests of the student-athletes themselves?

The Other Guantanamo

November 21, 2008, 10:24AM

There's been a fair amount of speculation in recent days surrounding Obama's plans for the detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. He has recently reaffirmed his commitment to closing the facility, but has yet to propose a comprehensive alternative system for handling detainees. And events seem likely to outpace the new administration's plans. Just yesterday, conservative Judge Richard Leon ruled from the federal bench that the government had held five Algerian men for seven years without cause, and took the unusual step of urging the government not to appeal his ruling: "Seven years of waiting for our legal system to give them an answer to a question so important is, in my judgment, more than plenty," he said. The rebuke was particularly stinging because Judge Leon had previously been extraordinarily deferential toward executive power; it was his ruling against these same detainees in Boumediene that was overturned by the Supreme Court.

There are, in fact, two Guantanamos: the notorious detention facility, and the Naval Base in which it is housed. On their surface, they bear each other little resemblance. One is an international symbol of inhumanity and injustice, filled with wire cages and guard shacks. The other features well-kept homes with neatly manicured lawns, and a town center, complete with a McDonalds and a new coffee-house serving Starbucks. But the key to understanding what went wrong at Guantanamo lies not in the wire cages, but in the idyllic community with which they coexist.

More than seven thousand soldiers, sailors, civilians and their families reside on the base. Young service-members tend to find the station mind-numbingly dull and oppressively small. But senior enlisted personnel and civilians who live on the base with their families more often speak of the base in glowing terms. The high school principal recalls her first impression: "This is like going back to the 1950s." And indeed, that's the reference most visitors to the island employ. It reminds them of "small-town America," a "1950s-style enclave," "a scene from the 1950s," an "Eisenhower-era town," or "kind of an Andy Griffith-Mayberry thing."

It's that final quote which is most apt, because what the community in Guantanamo Bay most closely resembles is not the actual American past, but rather, our collective fantasy of what that past was like. The 1950s brought us Korea and McCarthy, Rosa Parks and Brown v. Board, but that's not what these folks have in mind. They're invoking an imagined past, viewed through the hazy glow of nostalgia. For permanent party, Gitmo is an escapist theme-park, as isolated from the rip-tides of mainland modernity as a Mennonite village. Their expenses are heavily subsidized, allowing them to enjoy a high quality of life. They depend as well upon the exploitation of cheap labor, another point of congruence with the 1950s; those lawns are kept tidy and houses well-swept by a large migrant labor force, mostly composed of Filipinos.

So Guantanamo has, for decades, existed as a sort of conservative fantasyland. Its isolation and ambiguous status enable its residents to ignore the conflicts, tensions, and demands of modern life. Residents on the base don't face the challenges of the modern world; they simply deny them. "No man is an island," wrote John Donne, but that observation seems entirely out of place at Guantanamo.

This is why Guantanamo seemed like an ideal solution for the Bush administration's detainee problem. Few subjects are as complex and tangled as dealing with prospective or actual terrorists and other non-state violent actors, and if there's a perfect solution to the problem, I have yet to encounter it. Civilian trials, ad-hoc tribunals, mass releases - each solution presents its own drawbacks. Life is complicated that way. But instead of grappling with complexity, instead of making tough compromises, instead of coming to grips with reality, the Bush administration chose escapism. The wire cages are every bit as much a denial of reality as the manicured lawns with which they coexist. The Bush administration even advanced a novel legal theory, claiming that the United States does not enjoy sovereignty in Guantanamo - seeking (and to a large degree, securing) juridical sanction for its never-never land.

But sooner or later, everyone stationed at Gitmo rotates back to the mainland, and has to deal with modernity in all its complexity. And as a string of legal decisions (and now, a decisive election) have made clear, so will our government. Denying complexity, retreating from the world, taking shelter on an island - these are not viable long-term solutions. "Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main," Donne reminds us. "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind."

Our eight-year island vacation from reality is now at an end.

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Orszag and Zawahiri and Bair, Oh My! (Wednesday Roundup)

November 19, 2008, 10:26AM

Obamanomics: Here's a name you should know: Peter R. Orszag. News broke yesterday that he's been lured away from his current post, running the Congressional Budget Office, to take the reins at the Office of Management and Budget, a cabinet-level post. Director of OMB is one of the most important and least well-known posts in the federal government. But really, why should you care?

Well, I can think of a few reasons. For one thing, Orszag is an economic wunderkind. He's only 40 years old, and get this: he blogs. His elevation also confirms Obama's strategy of ensuring that the senior staffers most directly responsible for managing his relationship with Congress are drawn from the ranks of experienced veterans of Capitol Hill. And he's been sufficiently involved with health care policy that the Institute of Medicine recently elected him to membership. That prompted him to reemphasize that despite the short-term financial turmoil, the nation's long-term fiscal health rests on reforming our health care system in the near future. So he's a guy who's been advising Obama in his current capacity at CBO, and who shares his major budgetary priorities.

But what makes the pick really noteworthy is that he's a prominent advocate of behavioral economics. Barack Obama seems set to usher into power a new generation of economic thinkers who respect the power and importance of markets, but temper that enthusiasm with a keen appreciation for their flaws. Perhaps even more importantly, they seek to address human behavior as it is, not as their models predict it should be. The best summation of Obama's complex economic thinking is undoubtedly the article penned by David Leonhardt this summer; if you haven't yet had the chance to read it, you should rectify that. Until now, however, these bright young economists had been largely confined to advisory roles - folks like Goolsbee and Furman had been expected to find homes in places like the Council of Economic Advisers. Installing Orszag in a vital executive slot says that Obama is serious about putting his ideas into action.

Warning Shots

November 18, 2008, 12:54PM

II. (2) The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States...

Our new President hasn't even been inaugurated, but already, the push-back from the uniformed military has begun. That's not a new problem; it's bedeviled a string of Democratic presidents who have run up against a military establishment that sees the world in very different terms. (Actually, it's worth amending that. The political and policy views of enlisted personnel look a lot like those of the rest of the American people; it's the officer corps that shows a strong conservative bias, growing stronger with seniority.)

Yesterday, Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivered a remarkable Pentagon briefing. It provided the latest signal that the senior brass is prepared to challenge the incoming administration on a number of key policies, and to take these fights public. That is, to say the least, disappointing. Addressing these challenges, and establishing the terms of the relationship between the President and his military advisors, will be among the crucial early tasks of the Obama administration. I want to highlight two of the warning shots that Mullen fired across the bows of the USS Hope, to illustrate the nature of the challenge.

Of Clinton and Clintonites

November 14, 2008, 11:35AM

Madame Secretary: The rumors keep mounting. Hillary in Chicago. A three-car motorcade leaving Obama's transition headquarters. A secret meeting. And the juiciest of all - Clinton as Secretary of State.

I think the advantages for Obama are fairly self-evident. At one stroke, he would co-opt his greatest rival within the party, gain a secretary of international stature and celebrity, and appoint a woman to a position of power. Those who criticize the prospective pick as more status quo than change still haven't caught on to the Obama style - using existing structures of power to leverage incremental change that proves transformative.

But what, asks Josh, is in it for Hillary?

Hillary Clinton is now 61 years old, having come to the senate late in life. She's tenth in seniority on Armed Services, seventh on Aging, fifth on Environment, and on HELP - the committee she really cares about - she's ranks a dismal eighth. Just this past week, word surfaced that she'd proposed a new subcommittee on healthcare, which she could chair. The idea was quickly quashed by Kennedy. The Senate accords power to seniority, not talent. At the moment, Clinton chairs a single subcommittee: Superfund and Environmental Health.

Notwithstanding her superb performance in office, the Senate has always been a stepping stone, for Hillary, on her path back to the White House. But that path is now effectively blocked. So she can bide her time in the Senate, slowly accumulating power over the decades ahead. If she's lucky, she may even get a meaningful subcommittee to call her own before she's seventy.

But I suspect that's not enough. She's sipped from the cup of executive power, and won't settle for legislative dregs. She'd rather rank first in the cabinet, fourth-in-line for the Presidency, than return to a body in which she ranks 62nd. She knows that such an appointment won't last forever, but then, neither does the Presidency. Hillary has always wanted to be in charge, to be a power in her own right. If this is as close as she can come, it's what she'll take.

Too Many Clintonites: It's not just Hillary that has official Washington abuzz. In story after story, the media has chosen to focus on the between that Obama transition appointees and the Clinton Administration. Politico recently ran a tally, and announced that 31 of 47 staffers named thus far have Clinton ties.

Well, of course they do. During the eight years that Clinton served, his administration was a magnet for bright, talented, public-spirited Democrats. But that's not the same as saying that most of the folks serving in the administration were Clinton loyalists, and that's a crucial distinction. These appointees served in reasonably senior posts - many of them confirmable - but were hardly part of Clinton's inner circle. Obama can now take advantage of their experience in government, a crucial advantage, unthreatened by their association with an administration that has only grown more popular in retrospect.

Two prominent exceptions are themselves instructive. The first is Rahm Emanuel, perhaps best thought of as a Bill Clinton loyalist. It was Hillary, after all, who engineered his ouster from the White House political office early in the first term. And Rahm refused to get behind her White House bid, eventually announcing his support for her rival. His relationship with Obama isn't new; they've served together in the Illinois delegation. And he was a Chicago guy before he was a Clintonite. The lesson of Emanuel's appointment is that some Clinton officials are now better classed as Obama loyalists.

The second exception is John Podesta, the transition chief and former White House Chief of Staff. The key thing to remember is that the transition is not the administration. Vernon Jordan never ended up with a formal role; I'd be surprised if Podesta did. The transition is when prior administration experience is most valuable, and so it's unsurprising that two-thirds of these folks have recent executive-branch experience. Whether a similar proportion of Obama's senior appointments will be drawn from the Clinton ranks is somewhat more doubtful.

But there's a broader point to be made. For the past several decades, executive power has been migrating from the Cabinet to the White House Staff. If you want to take the measure of the emerging administration, that's where you ought to focus. So far, by my count, we've learned of just six appointments: Emanuel, Klain, and Gibbs have been confirmed, with Jarrett, Axelrod, and Russell strongly rumored. Three of those are Obama's core supporters. Klain and Russell have ties to the Bidens that antedate their Clinton connections. And the sixth is Emanuel. These staffers share two crucial traits: they're loyal to Obama and Biden, and they're experienced. It's particularly fascinating that all three chiefs of staff are Washington insiders, and not Chicago retainers. (Remember Mack McLarty?) I suspect the next appointment to surface will be the fourth chief of staff, working for the First Lady. Then they'll start to fill in the Deputy CoS positions, and those with Assistant to the President rank. When it comes to the Cabinet, we may well see Gates at Defense, Hillary at State, and other picks that make Obama's core supporters question his commitment to change. But if his White House staff is any indication, we're just seeing the classic Obama approach to change in action.

Potpourri

November 12, 2008, 12:17PM

A few quick hits for this Wednesday afternoon:

The Case for Lieberman: Yes, Lieberman richly deserves to be stripped of his chairmanship. And yes, revenge is sweet. So why is Barack Obama sending signals that he is, at most, agnostic on Lieberman's future? It may be a purely tactical ploy, designed to enhance Obama's image as a forgiving, conciliatory figure, while leaving the unpleasant task of ousting Lieberman to the caucus. But as the fight drags on, there are increasingly clear signals that Obama actually wants to see Lieberman retain his chair. I can think of three reasons why that might actually make sense for the new administration. First, it's worth remembering that one of the principal complaints against Lieberman's tenure - excessive passivity and ineffectual oversight - may look like a virtue to the incoming administration. On a similar note, if Obama is responsible for Lieberman keeping his chair, it's a debt he can cash in at will. Every president dreams of having a powerful chairman under his thumb; if Lieberman acts up, Obama can count on anger in the caucus to force his ouster. Finally, there's the question of Joe's presumptive replacement, Daniel Akaka. When TIME numbered him among the five worst senators, it called him "living proof that experience does not necessarily yield expertise," and labeled him the "master of the minor resolution and the bill that dies in committee." The new administration may prefer Lieberman, for all his faults, because he actually possesses the legislative skills to shepherd bills through to passage. We've grown used to thinking of Obama as a candidate, free to take principled stands without bearing their consequences. We'd do well to start thinking him as an executive, shrewdly calculating the trade-offs that will be necessary to advance his agenda.

Battle of the Bald: The most interesting succession fight this week is actually taking place in the legislative branch, where Henry Waxman of California is challenging John Dingell of Michigan for the gavel at House Energy and Commerce. The pair are not entirely dissimilar; both are prolific legislators and dogged investigators, and tend toward the liberal end of the caucus on most issues. There are a number of ways to frame the conflict. Some see it as a bellwether for the direction of the caucus as a whole, with Dingell standing in for the moderates, and Waxman championing those who want to use the new majority to pass an unabashedly liberal agenda. Others see simple frustration on the part of Waxman, who despite serving for 34 years remains stuck in the second slot behind Dingell, an 81-year-old whom he hoped would retire, but instead seems poised to break the congressional longevity record at 54 years. But whatever its other dynamics, the big battle here is over the future of the American automobile industry. Dingell has been Detroit's staunchest advocate, fending off decades of efforts to tighten efficiency standards and impose regulation. Waxman, the leading congressional advocate of cap-and-trade, lays Detroit's present struggles at Dingell's feet, arguing that his protectionism encouraged the industry continue down the dead-end path of building gas-guzzling behemoths. If you're looking for a new cause now that the election is over, give your member a call, and let her know which side you think she should take.

All The News They Wish Would Be Printed: Kudos to the Yes Men, for pulling off the cleverest prank of the cycle by publishing and distributing a fantasy edition of The New York Times, complete with its own website. The jokes are a little heavy-handed, and some of the policies a little too far left for my taste, but I have to applaud the shear audacity and imagination of the prank. Who knows? Perhaps some stories will prove prophetic.

City Slickers: The wonk in me loves the fact that Obama is making good on his promise to create an Office of Urban Policy. Sure, it's partly about rewarding and caring for his electoral base. But it also stands to rectify a long-running disparity in the way that government resources are allocated and coordinated. At its inception in 1965, HUD (that's Housing and Urban Development) was intended to fill this role. But that was during the heyday of urban renewal, and the agency has since abandoned the second half of its mission to focus on housing. Putting in place a new coordinator, with an office in the West Wing or EEOB, will be a major statement. More than that, it signals the rebirth of a real partnership between federal and municipal officials. And who will be the first White House Director of Urban Policy? Let the baseless speculation begin.

Changement? Änderung? Cambiamento? There's a fascinating discussion, in today's Times, of European reaction to Obama's election:

In the general European euphoria over the election of Barack Obama, there is the beginning of self-reflection about Europe's own troubles with racial integration. Many are asking if there could be a French, British, German or Italian Obama, and everyone knows the answer is no, not anytime soon.

The most interesting part of the debate, to my mind, is the divide over how minorities can best achieve equality. In France, the debate is particularly fierce. The conservative French establishment finds in Obama's triumph evidence that integration and embrace of a national (and not particular) identity can be a path to success for immigrants and their offspring. As Le Figaro put it: "Obama should be the model to follow for young immigrants who have come to doubt their feeling of belonging to the nation. Minorities, who have chosen their exile, in contrast to black Americans, still have a lot to prove." The left vehemently disagrees on where to place the blame, faulting instead the establishments reification of difference, which "locked [non-whites] inside identities of resentment." But both sides agree that difference is debilitating. There were reams devoted to this question after the riots in 2005. One intriguingly contrary story pointed out how calm Marseille remained amidst the violence, crediting Marseille Espérance, an assembly of leaders of the city's various ethnic blocs, with maintaining order. So what's the better path toward ending discrimination - ignoring differences and urging assimilation, or reifying them and maintaining an uneasy truce through dialogue and compromise? Perhaps Obama's ascension suggests a more complicated narrative. He himself credits the assertive Civil Rights movement with securing opportunity, but then eschewed its rhetoric in his own run for office. That suggests minorities must first be politically empowered, and only then, from a position of strength and security, will they feel comfortable taking their place as equal citizens. It's the classic American model - forging a national identity that uses group identities as its constituent elements - as opposed to the French model - which urges the rejection of the particular in favor of the universal. We've been having this debate with the French for centuries, and until recently, they looked to be on the winning side. It will be fascinating to see what Obama's triumph means for Europe.

In Defense of Gates at Defense

November 11, 2008, 9:16PM

David Kurtz this afternoon labeled the prospect of Obama retaining Robert Gates as his Secretary of Defense "disturbing," and suggested that such a move would be further evidence that Democrats lack spine. I generally enjoy David's posts, and take his argument as reflective of views that are widely held among Obama's supporters. David also linked to Spencer Ackerman, who offers a series of compelling reasons why retaining Gates would make good political sense. As it happens, I think Ackerman's correct. But I also think that he, like Kurtz, is missing the larger picture.

Retaining Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense would make sense even if it were politically inexpedient. That is because Gates has succeeded where almost all of his predecessors have failed. Every SecDef seeks to tame the Pentagon's sprawling bureaucracy; most end up, instead, captive to the very forces they initially sought to master. Gates has shown a rare knack for implementing real reform, and for refocusing the defense establishment on pressing priorities. Moreover, with the notable exception of withdrawing from Iraq, most of his priorities are shared by the incoming administration. That suggests there is a rare window of opportunity, a chance to combine an effective SecDef with a President who will actually throw his weight behind his reforms (which Bush has notably failed to do). That's too valuable a prospect to pass up.

Just this past week, news broke that the Defense Business Board, a crucial advisory panel, has prepared a series of briefings for the presidential transition warning that the current budget is "not sustainable," and calling for dramatic cuts to most major new weapons programs. Given the size of the current federal deficits, the magnitude of the economic crisis, and the scope of the military challenges facing the nation, that warning will grow only more urgent over the next four years. If Obama intends to withdraw from Iraq, refocus on Afghanistan, and reorient the military to address new challenges, he's going to need someone at the helm of the Pentagon who can do all of that for him. Someone willing to attack the sacred cows of military procurement, despite congressional and industry opposition. Someone willing to focus on the troops, even at the expense of popular weapons programs. Someone like Bob Gates.

(Self)-Parody

November 10, 2008, 9:53AM

I'm sure you've seen or heard the stories and studies, over the past few months, agonizing over the difficulty of mocking our new President. Actually, it's not as hard as you might imagine.

On Friday, I witnessed the most devastatingly effective and incisive parody of Obama's distinctive style to date. The pitch, the tone, the mannerisms - all were perfectly replicated. But the application of Obama's dignified, considered, and reserved style to a profoundly trivial subject was pure comedic gold. The actor in question? Barack Obama, discussing his family's search for a pet. Fred Armisen, eat your heart out.

Of Mandates

November 9, 2008, 11:25AM

There's been much discussion as to whether Obama's decisive victory constitutes a mandate. Bob Novak thinks not; others differ. But in the end, Obama will need to convince just a handful of people that his election constitutes a mandate - and if he is unsuccessful, not all the pundits in Washington will be able to reverse the verdict. I speak, of course, of a handful of Republican Senators.

There's no real question that the massive Democratic majority in the House of Representatives will confer on Obama's agenda the backing that it requires. The real challenge will come from the upper house, the saucer into which we pour our legislation to allow it to cool. The bolder the proposal, history shows, the lower its chances of sailing through the senate. And if Obama is to make his mark in his first two years, he will need to push through some very bold initiatives.

The conventional wisdom is that a handful of GOP moderates will provide Obama with the votes he needs to break filibusters. Names like Collins, Snowe, and Specter Hagel surface repeatedly. And, to be sure, they're all prime candidates for placing their nation (or at least their own electoral prospects) above their party. But there's a second group of senators who may prove equally loath to be seen as standing in Obama's way: the GOP class of 2004, who will stand for reelection in just 24 months. And if Obama is to pass his agenda, he's going to need their support. After all, even if he pulls out a nominally filibuster-proof 60 seat majority, he's likely to lose at least a few red-state Democrats on any controversial initiative. He'll need to pick up some support on the other side of the aisle to make good his losses, and there are no better prospects than the 2010 Republicans.

In Transition

November 7, 2008, 12:24PM

In the best traditions of the media, I'll follow up a substantive post with one focused almost entirely on process issues. (Thanks again to all who chimed in; that was a fantastic discussion.) The topic of the day - and likely of the week, and perhaps the next two months - is the presidential transition. So I thought I'd offer a few thoughts of my own:

Eighteen months after Bill Clinton was sworn in as president, he appointed Leon Panetta as his new chief of staff. Panetta asked his predecessor if he had an organizational chart of the White House; McLarty reportedly replied, "I don't think I do." That's pretty much all you need to know about the Clinton transition. Among President Clinton's greatest strengths were his restless curiosity and creativity. But it took him a year and a half to figure out that he needed a chief of staff who could compensate for his weaknesses, not just supplement his strengths. And that's all I have to say about the selection of Rahm Emanuel.

Obama has one structural advantage over the 1992 transition: a deep bench. He's drawing on veterans of an administration many Americans now remember with some nostalgia. The Clintonites, in contrast, weren't about to fill out their ranks with Carter aides. It also helps that Obama comes from Chicago, and not from Little Rock. All Presidents spend years assembling around themselves an entourage of hangers-on and retainers; these tend to be the people who do them both the most harm and the most good once they actually ascend to office. Obama has been fishing in a much larger pool for his talent, and it shows. Finally, the two four years that Obama spent in Washington may have been fewer than his rivals on the campaign trail, but they're the most for an incoming Democrat since Lyndon Johnson, and they'll help.

There's been a surprising amount of hand-wringing over Obama's prospective choices for his financial team. I think it's misplaced. Obama finds himself in a peculiar bind - the economy of the world teeters on the edge of disaster, the markets scrutinize his every pronouncement and appointment for signs of his policies, and yet he won't be able to take any substantive action for another two months. His immediate imperative is to reassure the markets and ease the crisis of confidence. Only naming a trusted and experienced figure can accomplish that goal; Summers and Geithner both qualify. Further out, he'll have an easier time selling substantive changes if his emissary is trusted by his opponents. Who better to make the case for stimulus than a reformed deficit hawk? To push for more extensive regulation than an accomplished liberalizer?

My favorite element of the transition website isn't its hokey address. And it's not the (oddly familiar) invitation to tell your story of this American Moment. (I suspect the prize will be a shout-out in the inaugural address.) No, it's the half-built section entitled America Serves, which promises to connect Americans with opportunities to aid their nation. The notion of national service - of mutual responsibility and collective sacrifice - was a crucial element of Obama's campaign trail rhetoric. We've seen similar initiatives for two decades, and know that they have seldom lived up to their billing. So the inclusion of America Serves on the transition page is doubly encouraging. It signals the centrality of the notion and the strength of Obama's commitment to the program. And, perhaps more importantly, it provides our first solid indication that the Obama Administration will utilize some of the same grassroots tools as the campaign to organize Americans to improve our nation.

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The Orphans of Defeat (and other reflections)

November 5, 2008, 12:45PM

Republican Recriminations: Among the most important ramifications of Obama's resounding victory is the debate now underway on the American right. When Bush was elected, all factions of the Grand Old Party were eager to claim success for their visions of conservatism. His victory enjoyed the proverbial thousand fathers. But his disastrous reign has left the party in disarray. Some find in it evidence that he tacked too far to the center, abandoning his principles. Others, that he didn't go far enough. Versions of that debate are playing out along multiple axes. But on one point, all agree - whatever Bush may have been, he was emphatically not their kind of conservative.

The problem with the modern conservative movement is that it was built around a trenchant and compelling critique of liberal excess. That was the message Reagan rode to office. Heck, a version of that message elected Clinton, too. But the movement always had an easier time agreeing on what it opposed - taxes, regulation, government - than what it supported, other than a strong national defense. As it rolled back the excesses it identified (and, in many cases, went quite a bit further) the party found itself bereft of a positive agenda. On the issues most important to the base, it went ever further to the right; on those most significant to the public at large, it moved to the center. The result was the worst of both worlds: cutting taxes while increasing spending; appointing conservative judges while expanding executive authority; cutting social welfare for the poor while expanding or preserving broader benefit programs. Both left and right were appalled, but for a while, the balancing act was sufficient.

But parties fundamentally skeptical of the ability of government to do good tend not to be effective stewards of the ship of state. And so it has proven again. What's striking to me, on this morning after, is how little appreciation there seems to be on the right for the meaning of Obama's victory. Sure, a few voices - Obamacons like Sullivan, reformers like Reihan and Douthat - seem to understand what has just happened. But there's a vast number out there who seem to have actually convinced themselves that Obama is a closet radical, or at the very least, an unreformed liberal. The best this bunch can manage is a devout prayer that the new resident of the White House turns out to be the Obama of their foes, and not of their fears.

So let me offer them this observation. Barack Obama is a temperamental conservative. He is cautious in his approach, measured in his rhetoric, and consensual in his style. Perhaps even more strikingly, he holds tenaciously to his positions in the face of the vicissitudes of politics. The hallmark of his campaign has been his consistency. These are Burkean virtues. But he applies these personal traits to the furtherance of a decidedly liberal agenda. His goals - expanding healthcare, caring for the environment, widening educational and economic opportunity - are of a piece with the Democratic agenda of the past century. His methods - focused on markets, individual responsibility, and economic growth - might be more aptly labeled conservative.

The Republican Party has, for decades, exploited a gap between the public's support for Democratic goals and its distaste for Democratic methods. Obama's election signals the end of that opportunity. Without addressing that point, plans for a Republican revival necessarily fall short.

A Democratic Generation: There are more than 40 million Americans under the age of 30. This morning, you'll see a lot of focus on the fact that there was no disproportionate surge in youth turnout this election - it was up from 17% to 18% of the electorate. Exit polls are notoriously bad at pegging the percentage of young voters, and even the one-point increase in their percentage of the total may prove illusory.

But that's only half the story. The voting behavior of those aged 18-29 ought to be one of the banner headlines of the cycle. That's because they appear to have favored the Democratic nominee, 66-32%. I don't think it's possible to overstate the significance of that margin. It's unprecedented. Young voters have typically looked a lot like the rest of the electorate, perhaps diverging by a few points. In 2004, when Kerry took 54% of these voters and just 48% of the electorate, that six-point gap was rightly viewed as stunning, and as something of a high-water mark. So the surge of young, Democratic voters was every bit as big a factor as anticipated - accounting for roughly four points of Obama's gains over Kerry.

So what does this mean? There's abundant research that confirms that partisan habits tend to be established early in life. Cast your first ballot for a Republican, and the odds are pretty good that every other presidential ballot you cast will be for the GOP. For now, it looks like the GOP has lost the largest American generation, a group of voters who will swell as a proportion of the electorate over the next few cycles as they grow and mature. If this proves to be a watershed election, that will be an important part of the reason.

The Joshua Generation: If you haven't read or watched the speech Obama delivered in Selma, at the commemoration of the voting rights march - go read it now. It will likely be reprinted in anthologies of oratory for years to come. In the speech, Obama paid tribute to the aging lions of the Civil Rights movement: "It is because they marched that I stand before you here today." But he also identified a Joshua Generation, a cohort that would benefit their advances and take up the struggle, a "generation that finds our way across the river."

It's a beautiful speech, but it packs a hidden punch. In the Biblical narrative, the generation that exits slavery in Egypt constantly doubts and rebels. They are so conditioned by their servitude that they are unable to believe God's promise that they will be victorious. And so they are sentenced to perish in the desert - they "shall not come into the land" - it is their children who will take possession of the dream.

The speech addresses itself to the African-American community; it was Obama's tactful and poetic way of announcing that the old generation of leaders must give way to the new. But its central insight is profound, and applies more broadly. White voters under the age of 30 favored Obama 54-44%, Hispanics of the same age went 76-19%. These voters came of age in a changed world - one in which a Cablinasian golfer is the spokesperson for the official luxury car of old white people. They don't view race the way their parents did. There's only so far that some attitudes can change; ultimately, they must wait for the passage of generations. That's what we witnessed last night - the Joshua Generation crossing the river, their parents unable to follow.

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Just Peachy

November 3, 2008, 12:34PM

One of my obsessions in this election's final stage has been Georgia. It's a very red state that has been tinged positively purple. Its senate race seems poised for a run-off, and could provide the 60th Democratic seat. And it's the swing-state in which I suspect the polling has been most dramatically underestimating Barack Obama's support.

The latest example of this is a release this morning from SurveyUSA that puts McCain up 52-45%, a seemingly unbridgeable chasm on the eve of the election. But here's the thing: the new poll shows Obama leading McCain among early voters, 50-48%. If that number's correct, I'll eat my shoe. As of this morning, more than 2 million voters in Georgia have cast their ballots. And we know some things about these voters. For example, that 34.9% of them are black. SurveyUSA, however, found that just 26% of all voters in this election will be black. For that to be correct, black voters could account for no more than 15% of election day voters - and their overall turnout, relative to their percentage of registered voters, would actually decline from 2004.

That's crazy. So crazy, in fact, that SurveyUSA has taken the extraordinary step of offering a second set of data. It took its polling, and re-weighted the sample to project that black voters would account for 30% of the ballots. That's not terribly outlandish; they currently account for 29% of registered voters in the state, and this assumes that they'll comprise a hair under 24% of election day voters.

The re-weighted sample makes the race too close to call. McCain would lead Obama just 49-48%. Jim Martin would actually outpoll Saxby Chambliss, 47-46%, although the race would still head to a run-off.

So is that mere fantasy? Perhaps not. Simply increasing the percentage of black voters widened Obama's lead among early voters to 53-45%. I have to assume that when SurveyUSA re-weighted its sample, it used the documented 34.9% figure for early voters. To do otherwise would be nonsensical. So more than half of this swing isn't purely speculative, but an artifact of adjusting poll numbers to reflect an actual count of the ballots.

Here's a suggestion. When it comes to Georgia, disregard the polling averages and projections. On the strength of a remarkable and historic surge in black turnout, this race is simply too close to call. And watching the results roll in should provide one of the more entertaining and suspenseful spectacles tomorrow night.

Five Thoughts for Sunday

November 2, 2008, 2:45PM

5) Where Are the Overnights? When McCain pollster Bill McInturff released his now-infamous memo he made it clear that his spirits had been buoyed by a remarkable night of polling on Monday. In fact, the version sent around the campaign he wrote, "Pls pray for another night of tracking like the one I had last night!!!"

Well, since that release, he's traded broadsides with Stan Greenberg as to its accuracy. And I took him to task, as well. But here's the thing - all of that has focused on numbers that were produced on Monday night. And, as McInturff himself notes, those numbers were a sharp departure from what he'd been seeing. In polling, we have a technical term for this - outliers. If McInturff had been able to replicate those results on subsequent nights, much less improve upon them, I expect we would have seen still-more memos, or evidence of it in his responses. But we haven't. So we can safely dismiss McInturff's original numbers as aberrational.

4) And Speaking of Outliers... The much hyped Zogby tracking poll, which showed a 1-point McCain lead in its overnight sample on Saturday, reported a 10-point Obama lead in its Sunday overnight sample. This is why most pollsters won't break out results on a nightly basis - 400 voters, with no multiple-night callbacks, simply isn't large enough sample.

Zogby's explanation sure is entertaining, though:

So what happened to give McCain a one-point lead in the one-day polling on Friday? It was a day of consolidation for him, too. He had been losing support among key groups and began to regain some of his own base. He now leads by 21 points among NASCAR fans, 9 among investors, 6 among voters in armed forces households, and 2 among voters over 65 years old.

Instead of blaming random variation, Zogby doubles down, confidently asserting that McCain had been "losing" support, then had a magical day of "consolidation," before presumably hemorrhaging support again. And he proves it by citing numbers from a motley collection of presumptively friendly subgroups. If it takes guts to report results based on a sample size of 400, breaking out armed forces households takes some serious cojones. With fewer than 3 million adults residing in households with a member of the active-duty military, guard, or reserves, these voters can't comprise more than 3% of Zogby's total sample. So when he says McCain maintains a six-point lead, he means something like 33 voters to 31. But Zogby's not done:

Remember, as I said yesterday, one day does not make a trend. This is a three-day rolling average and no changes have been tectonic. A special note to blogger friends: calm it down. Lay off the cable television noise and look at your baseball cards in your spare time. It is better for your (and everyone else's) health.

The continued presumption that the poll is reflecting actual changes on a daily basis, but that these changes may not represent a "tectonic shift" unless maintained for several days, is breathtaking. But what I really love is the swipe at his most trenchant critic, Nate Silver. When he's not blogging on polling at FiveThirtyEight.com, Nate's day job remains as a co-author of Baseball Prospectus. I'm sure that if Nate wrote a little less about polling, it would be better for Zogby's health, but he's doing the rest of us a world of good.

3) Black Voters: Perhaps the most important demographic group in this election is also the most reliably Democratic - Black voters. In the early voting, they turned out at rates that defied predictions - 35% of voters in Georgia, 36% in Louisiana, and 26% in North Carolina. Each of those numbers far exceeds their percentage of registered voters, not to mention eclipsing all past turnout records. As a demographic group, they're voting fairly monolithically for Obama, and have put a number of reliably red states in play.

Polling, as a science, tests its models retrospectively. When voters act in unprecedented fashion, the models struggle to keep up. Pew, for example, loosened its voter screen just for black voters - it projects them at !2% of the electorate, up from 9% four years ago. (That's one reason why Pew has consistently shown some of the largest leads for Obama.) I'm sympathetic to the impulse, but applying different screens to different populations amounts to guesswork.

The problem for pollsters is that black voters haven't been reporting attitudes that are hugely different from past elections, but they have been exhibiting radically different behavior. Since polls use the former to predict the latter, they're running into all kinds of trouble. Gallup's latest release confirms this, reporting that Black voters are more likely to have been contacted by the Obama campaign, and to express a higher likelihood of voting - but on gauges like registration and interest, Black voters and White voters report virtually identical increases. That's despite the very good objective data on black registration this cycle, from the various and several states, which shows that black registration has actually increased far out of proportion to their share of the population.

The Gallup release also contains this priceless line:

In Gallup's most recent update on likely voters, blacks constitute 11% of both the expanded and traditional likely voter group, higher than the 8% representation in Gallup's final estimate of voters from 2004. If these trends continue through the election next Tuesday, black turnout rates this year may approach or match turnout rates among whites.

That's Gallup's own special way of confessing that, until recently, its likely voter models had been screening out many of these black voters. Now that they tell Gallup they've already voted, though, they score high enough on Gallup's models to make the cut, and their percentage of the total is rising. But here's the key point. In 2004, when Gallup's final numbers put them at 8%, black voters actually accounted for somewhere between 9% and 11% of the total. And this year, with Gallup pegging them at 11%, the write-up is projecting an increase. If they match raw turnout rates among white voters, as the release suggests, they'll account for at least 12% of the total, in line with Pew's figures. Every point that black turnout increases produces (roughly) a 0.9% swing toward Obama. So if polls assume that turnout is at 11%, and it surges to a perfectly plausible 13%, that's a 1.8% shift. And it's amplified by the concentration of black voters in states like Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia that are suddenly in the balance, where a proportionate increase would seal an Obama win.

2) The Keystone State: The fashionable thing to do, among angst-ridden Democrats, is to fret about Pennsylvania. Nate Silver has already done his level-best to talk these folks down off the ledge. And just as he finishes, SurveyUSA releases a new poll that has Obama up just seven points, 51-44%. Since its last poll had Obama ahead 53-41%, that's a big deal. But before you leap, you should note that this latest poll has Obama up 80-16% among black voters, down from 89-10%. So that's almost a two-point swing right there - and unless you believe black voters are abandoning Obama, you can safely discount it. McCain now does better among whites and non-college graduates. But even as he's gained ground among Republicans, and actually lost a little among Independents. And that, I think, is the key to understanding the 'tightening' in Pennsylvania. As McCain ramps up the coded appeals and the fear-mongering, he's bringing home some of his core supporters, who had wavered toward Obama or considered not voting. So his numbers are rising. But he's progressively less likely to win over moderates or independents, and is shoring up Obama's support among his own core voters, so Obama's support isn't actually shrinking. Pollster's neat graph nicely illustrates this dynamic.

Here's the essential point: There's a reason McCain waited until the final days to unleash his nastiest, most divisive message. It's a desperate ploy. He always knew that these attacks would shore up his support and increase his numbers in the polling. But his campaign also understood that to be a Pyrrhic victory - his core support isn't enough to win the state, and these attacks sink his final hope of winning over the moderate swing voters. So the undecideds - mostly conservatives and Republicans who didn't like either candidate - are coming back to McCain. But in the process, he's alienating enough voters to seal Obama's victory. In short, Obama is now less likely to win Pennsylvania by double digits, but perhaps more certain than ever of carrying the state. Ironic, no?

1) Forty-Eight Hours: The polls open in forty-eight hours, and the only question left is the margin of Obama's win. How many electoral votes will he carry? Which red states will turn blue this year? How many senators and representatives will travel to Washington on his coattails?

Is that hubris? Presumption? Am I tempting the fates? No, not really. Perhaps a third of the votes have already been cast, and we have a fairly good idea how they break down. We've got reams and reams of polling data - this isn't 1948 - and the polls have continued right down to the wire. We don't know all of the details, but we can be certain of the headline.

There are reasons good and bad why most observers refrain from calling elections in advance. The risk of humiliation. The danger of discouraging voters from turning out, so corrosive to our democracy. The tightness of most national races, rendering them too close to call. Superstition. The thrill of suspense, and the ratings and readers it garners.

But for better or worse, I'm calling this race. Nothing in life is certain; it's too high a standard to apply. But I can say, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Barack Obama will win the election on Tuesday. And that's good enough for me.

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