Foreign Aid Spending Is Crippling Our Budget...NOT

So I wrote a post yesterday about government waste in which I dared to suggest that some Americans may be confused about just what exactly our federal government spends its money on and in what amounts. I still cannot find any survey results in which Americans are asked to apply actual percentages to actual spending categories. But I have dug up some other, related findings.


Before proceeding, let's establish some general baselines of actual federal government spending against which to compare what we do know about American perceptions. The above pie chart, taken from Wikipedia, breaks down spending into more than two dozen programs or cabinet agencies. But we can simplify this a bit by collapsing the eight largest chunks/wedges into three main categories:

1. Welfare for seniors, 34 percent: Social Security and Medicare wedges.
   
   
2. Defense, 22 percent (Defense and Homeland Security).
   
   
3. Welfare for everyone else, 20 percent ( Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance and Health & Human Services.)
   
   
4. Interest, 9 percent (Interest).

First of all, Americans tend to think we spend too much on what they call "welfare," but which in fact limited mostly to category 3 above--welfare for non-seniors. A Kaiser survey conducted a while back (1995) clearly indicates a high level of suspicion toward "welfare" spending, but when asked to clarify respondents clearly meant programs like food stamps, TANF programs (formerly AFDC), Medicaid and public housing. Indeed, although about 90 percent of Americans viewed housing, AFDC and food stamps as welfare, only 30 percent defined Medicare and just 15 percent deemed Social Security "welfare."

Of course, citizens pay into SSI and Medicare with their payroll taxes, but there is still a redistributive effect of spending by the government on these programs. Unemployment insurance apparently didn't even make the list, even though today it's about one dollar in every nine the feds spend. In any event, these definitions have meaning when it comes to budget-cutting. According to a Bloomberg poll two months ago, fewer than one in four Americans thinks we should cut Social Security or Medicare, despite the fact that more than a third of the US budget is spent on these two programs alone.

The Kaiser results further confirm the apparently longstanding belief among Americans that we spend more than we actually do not only on foreign aid, but interest and defense. Though we can't get to actual percentages the way the Kaiser poll asked it, it's clear which parts of the budget Americans think constitute the largest or second-largest spending commitments. About 40 percent of Americans cited two of the following four items as being one of the government's top two expenditures: foreign aid (41%), welfare (40%), interest (40%) and defense (37%). Only if Americans defined welfare as inclusive of Social Security and Medicare would these views be accurate--with welfare thusly combined and defined easily ranking #1, and in which case defense would rank #2.

But again, that's clearly not how Americans define "welfare," and even if they did it's difficult to explain how foreign aid ranks first. And it's clear that "foreign aid" isn't viewed as the effective function of our defense expenditures, or else defense would rank a lot lower.

In any case, given the anxiety we hear about constantly in terms of government spending and deficits, how could all that "waste" be eliminated. Remember, with almost no public support for tinkering with Social Security or Medicare--heck, even Republicans are scare-mongering about cuts to Medicare, the fastest-growing federal program--we start with just two-thirds of the budget in play politically. Of that, clearly there is ample political will to cut welfare that's viewed as going to the so-called "undeserving" poor people. (If you want to understand why Americans hate such kinds of welfare, I suggest reading Martin Gilens book that addresses this question squarely: Why Americans Hate Welfare.) But since unemployment insurance (to which workers also contribute) did not make the list of referents respondents cited when asked by Kaiser to identify welfare in terms of specific programs, 12 percent of that 20 percent should also be taken out of play, leaving just 8 percent of the budget as the "dastardly" kind of welfare.

OK, so for the sake of argument, let's say the government immediately ceased payment of all that remaining 8 percent in "welfare" spending. According to the Bloomberg poll, there also seems to be growing frustration with Iraq and Afghanistan war spending, but that only accounts for about $130 billion right now--and that money is "off-budget" anyway. And while we might wish not to pay interest on our outstanding debts, that's simply not an option--and interest payments couldn't be categorized as "waste" anyway because they're simply debt-service. (I suppose there are some administrative costs to paying those debts--what I classified in the previous post as Type 2 waste--but there's basically zero efficiency savings to be found there.)

So where's the rest of the "waste" that, in Americans' minds, adds up to half of what the government spends? You tell me, because I have no idea. But I do know this much: Given the perception that so much money goes to the so-called "undeserving poor" here at home as well as to foreigners through foreign aid, it's not surprising that people think government spending is wasteful. If half the budget--instead about one-seventh--actually went to such things, I could understand the sentiment.

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White House May Actually Articulate Specific Position on Health Care

This is interesting -- at least for a Slow News Friday:

Dear Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid, Senator McConnell, and Representative Boehner:

We are writing to ask that you join President Obama for a bipartisan meeting at the Blair House on February 25 to discuss health reform legislation. [...]

Since this meeting will be most productive if information is widely available before the meeting, we will post online the text of a proposed health insurance reform package. This legislation would put a stop to insurance company abuses, extend coverage to millions of Americans, get control of skyrocketing premiums and out-of-pocket costs, and reduce the deficit.

Emphasis is mine. I have fairly low expectations for the health care summit in general, but the fact that the White House will apparently endorse a specific policy might give the Democrats some badly-needed direction.

The question is -- just which policy will it be? The Senate bill "as is"? The Senate bill with a few reconciliation tweaks? The Senate bill with a few reconciliation tweaks and a few bipartisan sops like tort reform? Some significantly scaled down measure? Something totally out of the blue? The language in the announcement is sufficiently vague to as to leave open any of these possibilities.

I have no idea, to be honest. But whatever decision the White House makes may be more important than anything that actually takes place during the Blair House meeting.

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For UK Conservatives, It's The MP Ratio That Matters

In the UK electoral context a major concern is the relationship between the national popular vote share and the share of MPs that each party wins as a result. In particular, the former is what is polled regularly, while the second is what actually determines which party controls the House of Commons and therefore the government.

Because the UK has a first past the post system, as we discussed previously, large national parties have an inherant advantage, often out-performing their national vote share numbers by a significant margin. In recent years, this has been to Labour's advantage.

As we should expect, there is a strong positive relationship between national vote share and share of MPs, using the period 1970 to 2005.

Unfortunately for the Lib-Dems, the relationship is quite strong, but yields a very low return on investment in terms of MPs in the end. For Labour, the regression yields a 5-10 point average over-performance over the course of 35 years.

Here's where it gets ugly for the Tories. The three most recent elections -- 1997, 2001 and 2005 -- were the worst three in the sample set in terms of underperformance. While they earned a low but respectable share of the national vote, they got creamed in terms of MP share.

As put by the Wall Street Journal: "The British electoral system does have its problems—chief among them being a constituency map that gives Labour a built-in advantage sometimes estimated to be equal to 10% of the national vote."

Looking back over the last 35 years, it turns out that this claim, commonly made in the US and UK press, is indeed the case for the last three elections, but not beyond that. In fact, from 1979 to 1992, the Tories enjoyed an electoral advantage that inflated their vote share signficantly more than Labour.

Overlaying each election with its eventually winner, we see an important trend. Looking through the sample period of 1970 to 2005, in each of the five elections in which the Tories prevailed, they enjoyed the "built-in" advantage. Similarly, in the five elections that Labour won, it was they who overperformed their vote share -- in recent years by a quite large margin.

As a result, there is a vital factor that has not yet accurately been accounted for in projections of the election's results: In 2010, what will the over/under performance ratio for each of the big three parties be?

Without a good estimate of this, the horserace numbers can give us only a general feel for the national sentiment and perhaps motivation of each base.

1. If Labour can hold the ratio at 1.6 (unlikely due to boundary commission decisions), they would need just 32 percent of the vote to get a bare majority

2. In instead the Tories can edge their bit up to 1.2 as seen in 1992, they could earn a majority with just 42 percent of the vote. If instead it stays at 2005 levels, they would need over 50 percent -- something they remain 10 points away from in polling numbers.

3. The Lib Dems have performed much better in the last three elections than previously in terms of MP ratio. Can they continue to improve on this front, as well as pulling a greater national share?


Moving forward, the key for election observers will be to accurately evaluate demographics, boundary changes, clear voting blocks and the role of regional parties (in Scotland and Wales in particuar) as they impact the final distribution of seat. Rather than looking at the national numbers and applying the "10 point" heuristic the WSJ alluded to, we will need to be more accurate -- particularly in such as tight race, including the possibility of a hung parliament.

For the Conservatives, it will be a two fold fight -- earning more popular votes overall, and making sure they come in districts they can win rather than spread nationally to reverse their under-performance of the last three elections.

Next up in the UK election series: We will do some critical review of the current projection models and estimation techniques for the vote share/seat share ratio.
---
Renard Sexton is FiveThirtyEight's international affairs columnist and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. He can be contacted at sexton538@gmail.com

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Democrats Don't Know the Way Forward

Any notion that the Democrats' "pivot" away from health care and toward more popular programs like a jobs bill and financial sector reform was going to be easy has been rudely disproven over the 48 hours by the goings-on in the Senate, where Harry Reid torpedoed a bipartisan measure touted by Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley after complaints from liberals that the bill contained many provisions that have nothing to do with the employment situation, and may also have required compromise on other, unrelated legislation such as the estate tax.

Reid is correct on the substance of the matter, although his "partisan" version of the bill itself is something of a compromise, as it is quite small and consists overwhelmingly of tax credits. Many of the infrastructure programs, for instance, which were present in the House's bill are absent from the Senate's, although Reid has indicated that he wants to break the jobs "agenda" up into stages and they may be passed under separate cover.

So perhaps Reid is making the best of a bad situation. But this shouldn't be a bad situation for the Democrats! The jobs bill -- specifically, a $100 billion jobs bill that would consist of a combination of tax credits and infrastructure programs -- is favored 72-22 (!) by the public according to yesterday's Quinnipiac poll, including by 70 percent of independents and 49 percent of Republicans. Bloomberg polling has also found that the individual components of the bill are quite popular. And yet, in December, House Republicans unanimously opposed a bill very similar to the one that Quinnipiac described.

This should be a trap, in other words, for Republicans. If you support the bill, you necessarily make it "bipartisan", at least by the Beltway's definition of the term, since bipartisanship in the most narrow sense has nothing to do with the philosophical orientation of a bill but instead simply who votes for it. You also help the Democrats to shave a few decimal points off the unemployment rate by November. And you may be tacitly acknowledging that the stimulus bill wasn't so bad after all, since whatever label the Democrats want to put on it, a well-constructed jobs bill is indeed more stimulus. Or ... you can oppose a bill that 72 percent of the public supports (not that bloviating pundits have noticed), and risk looking like hypocrites after telling the Democrats for months that they should be more focused on the jobs picture.

Instead, Democrats seem hellbent on setting a trap for themselves, breaking up their full house to draw to two pair. Although there's a chance that Democrats could still win a few news cycles out of the debate, for the time being they've let it devolve into yet another process story while at the same time limiting their options to a menu of choices all of which seem inadequate to the scope of the program.

It seems obvious that the Democratic leadership is confused and perhaps even a bit shellshocked after the Masspocalypse. Everyone agrees that, whatever becomes of the health care bill, most of the focus in 2010 ought to be on popular programs that focus more directly on righting the economy and reforming the financial sector. But -- how exactly to do it? Is it more important to reach out to Republicans -- or to let them take their lumps and cast some unpopular votes, at the risk of triggering some process stories about trying to "muscle" legislation through? Why is the public angry -- because you haven't accomplished very much, or because they don't like the things that you've tried to accomplish? Is the public upset about the substance of the legislation you've tried to advance -- or more by the process?

Nobody, certainly including the White House, seems to be in any agreement on these points, and yet having some opinion on them is essential to forging the way forward. And honestly, it may not be as important to come up with the right answer as simply to have an answer, so that you can have some sort of coherent messaging strategy going forward.

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Like Feds, States Deep In Red Too

Amid all the voter hang-wringing about rising federal deficits, the overlooked fiscal story is the budgetary problems handcuffing almost every state government. All but two states--Montana and North Dakota--started the year with a budget deficit, and all but nine state are facing projected shortfalls again so far this year, according to a recent report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.


California, with its direct democracy-fueled fiscal inanity, is in the worst shape; its current budget gap is more than half its general fund budget, the only such state above the 50 percent threshold. But eight other states join California with a combined carry-over and mid-year budget gap of at least 30 percent of its general fund budget. The map above is reproduced from data in Table 2 of the CBPP report. Looking at those states in the most trouble, obviously the mortgage and foreclosure crisis explains why states like Arizona and Nevada join California in the group of nine with the biggest projected 2010 shortfalls. But another 23 states have estimated shortfalls of 20 percent or more.

The report's summary warns that matters will get worse before they get better:

As we look ahead to 2011 and beyond, even as the economy appears to be moving in the direction of recovery, states’ fiscal prospects remain extremely weak. Indeed, historical experience and current economic projections suggest 2011 will be worse than 2010...

Unemployment, which peaked after the last recession at 6.3 percent, has already hit 10 percent, and many economists expect it to rise higher and remain at high levels throughout 2010 and beyond. Continued high unemployment will keep state income tax receipts at low levels and increase demand for Medicaid and other essential services that states provide. High unemployment and economic uncertainty, combined with households’ diminished wealth due to fallen property values, will continue to depress consumption, thus sales tax receipts also will remain low. These factors suggest that state budget gaps will continue to be significantly larger than in the last recession, and last longer.

That's not the end of the bad news awaiting states in the next few years. As the report reminds us, the situation in states would be far worse right now if the feds hadn't taken on additional debt in order to help state budgets--help that may not be there next year:

The amount in [The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] to help states maintain current activities is about $135 billion to $140 billion over a roughly 2 ½-year period—or between 30 percent and 40 percent of projected state shortfalls. Most of this money is in the form of increased Medicaid funding and a State Fiscal Stabilization Fund...This money has reduced the extent of state spending cuts and state tax and fee increases.

But it now appears likely the federal assistance will end before state budget gaps have abated. The Medicaid funds are scheduled to expire in December 2010, which is just halfway through the 2011 fiscal year in most states. States will have drawn down most of their State Fiscal Stabilization Fund allocations by then as well. So even though the 2011 budget gaps may well be larger than those for 2010, there will be less federal money available to close them.

State governments are a long way from getting out of the woods. Rising unemployment and stagnating wages for those who are employed reduce both federal and state income tax receipts, but states also get hit with losses from declining property tax assessments and foreclosures. Meanwhile, with pressure mounting on the Obama Administration to reduce spending, the states can no longer look to Washington for help, or at least not for as much help, in coming years.

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What Is Government Waste?

The new ABC/Washington Post poll will undoubtedly get a lot of attention for its findings about health care, Sarah Palin, the Tea Partiers, and whether or not Americans think Republicans should obstruct President Obama's agenda. But there's a little nugget in there--see question #28--that reflects a common and very durable finding about Americans' attitudes toward government spending: They believe that more than half of what the government spends--53 cents was the average answer--is "wasted." More than half!


Maybe I need to get wasted before I try to unpack what, exactly, the belief that the US government wastes half of all its revenues really means. But before we get to what we don't know, here's what we do know, but I'm embarrassed to admit I had not know about until today: For the past two decades, though increasing slightly, this half-is-waste figure has remained more or less the same, ranging since 1991 between a low of 46 percent and a high of 56 percent in the ABC/Post poll. That means for the past twenty years--including all four combined terms of the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies and one year into Obama's term--on average Americans believe one dollar out of two raised and spent is wasted. Gallup polling over the same period echoes this finding.

The possibilities for what makes government "wasteful" are many, but it seems to me waste can be reduced to three non-exclusive types:

1. Ineffective spending: Spending on programs that do not work;

2. Inefficient spending: Excessive spending or overhead/overpayment on programs that do work; and/or

3. Inappropriate spending: Efficient and effective spending on programs that the respondents normatively view as something the government shouldn't be involved with in the first place.

So, as an example of Type 1 waste, some citizens undoubtedly view certain welfare spending as ineffective because it doesn't eradicate poverty, while others view certain types of defense spending as ineffective because we have weapon systems to defend against threats more imagined than real. As a Type 2 example, even citizens who support welfare or defense spending probably think that red tape, high salaries and pensions and other federal employee benefits, complex billing protocols, duplication of effort, outright fraud (by government officials and/or programmatic beneficiaries) and other bureaucratic problems as inefficient overhead. Type 3 waste might be something that the government does effectively and efficiently, but citizens believe they shouldn't be doing, like subsidizing corporate marketing abroad in the eyes of liberals, or providing services to illegal immigrants for conservatives. Of course, a citizen who believes the government should not be involved in some policy area and thinks what the government spends on that policy isn't doing any good anyway and believes the feds are spending that money inefficiently, might view federal spending as wasteful on all three counts.

What's infuriating is that pollsters do not plumb a bit deeper to get at the underlying causes behind these views. According to one recent Rasmussen Reports study, high government salaries--Type 2 waste--has something to do with it. But surely Americans can't believe that government waste is simply the result of too many overpaid workers leaning on their shovels or gossiping at the water cooler.

I don't know about randomly-selected Americans, but I do know that undergraduates in my POLI 100 classes tend to think the government spends more on defense than it does and less on Medicare and Social Security than it does. In surveys, the median American thinks that we spend about 20 percent of the federal budget on foreign aid, and would like that amount reduced to about 10 percent--when, in fact, actual spending amounts to less than one percent. This may explain why some Americans foolishly believe that tort reform will solve our health care cost problem or that eliminating earmarks will eliminate our deficit problem, even though they will not. I know I'm going to sound like an elitist, but the fact of the matter is that most Americans have a very weak grasp of how the government raises revenues and what it spends those monies on.

Given the misinformation or false perceptions, I think it safe to assume that Americans believe there's not just a lot of Type 2 waste--governments just being inefficient bureaucrats and all that--but a significant amount of Type 1 and Type 3 waste. That is, the believe the feds are doing a bunch of stuff not very well, or doing stuff well it shouldn't be doing at all, like sending more money abroad for foreign aid than it spends at home on Social Security, even though the ratio between OADSI and foreign aid, depending on the estimate, is somewhere between 30-to-1 and 50-to-1. I wish pollsters would ask whether and to what degree spending on Social Security or Medicare payments is wasted.

And although the share of Americans who think we are spending too much on defense has been rising over the past decade, presumably in response to rising spending levels, I wonder how many Americans would categorize our defense spending as "wasteful." Even though we spend more on defense than all other nations combined--timeout: imagine how quickly Sean Hannity's head would explode if that were true of social spending--I suspect defense and security spending has a certain "inelastic quality" to it and, frankly, it's politically incorrect for respondents to say money spent on defense, and specifically the subset of funds spent directly on troops or veterans, is "wasteful."

So where's all the "waste" in a federal budget that, in regular economic times, is about two-thirds comprised of Social Security, Medicare, defense and interest payments? I'd really like to know how Americans do the math on that 53 cents. Or maybe, on the other hand, I'm afraid to find out.

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Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

I don't know that I'd make too much of this, but tracking the Congressional Democrats' approval ratings in Quinnipiac polling over the past six months -- they're now down to just 28 percent overall, including 19 percent (!) among independents -- is interesting in this respect. Both times that the Congress approved a health care bill -- the House on November 7th, the Senate on December 24th -- the Democrats got a bounce from among their own voters without suffering any further harm from Republicans and independents. Meanwhile, the Democrats' approval rating has sunken to a new low among all three groups in Quinnipac's latest poll after three weeks of inaction on health care reform, which most voters no longer expect to pass.



Gallup has also found a very sharp drop in Congressional approval among Democrats since Scott Brown's election, although they don't elucidate whether those Democratic voters are mad at the Democrats in Congress, the Republicans, or pretty much everyone.

The near-term political case for passing health care, again, is not that the bill is magically going to become popular over the next eight months. Rather, it's that the Democrats are already in such bad shape among independents -- partly, no doubt, because of their bungled handling of what has become an unpopular health care bill -- that they may as well go ahead and give their base something to get excited about. Seriously, the Democrats' approval rating among independents in 19 percent. What more do they have to lose?

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Republicans are Conservative -- but are they this Conservative?

Here are the results from five recent polls on the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on gay and lesbian soldiers. These are the number of Republican respondents who want the policy overturned. To repeat, these are Republicans only, and not the broader electorate -- among the population as a whole, repealing DADT is quite popular.



Quite a range of opinions there.

Some of it may be explained by differences in question wording. The ABC/Post poll is a bit quirky in that the question it poses -- "Do you think homosexuals who DO publicly disclose their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the military or not?" -- was immediately preceded by another question which asked "Do you think homosexuals who DO NOT publicly disclose their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the military or not?" The former question may condition responses to the latter insofar as that once the respondent has gone on the record as stating that gays should be allowed to serve so long as they remain in the closet, they may be more reluctant to say that they should be booted from the army if they out themselves. The Quinnipiac poll is also a little different (not wrong -- just different), in that it frames the question in terms of a repeal of existing policy, which arguably requires a stronger sentiment from the respondent.

The other three polls, however, from Gallup, FOX News, and Research 2000 / Daily Kos -- this is the much-discussed Research 2000 poll of self-identified Republicans which revealed very conservative attitudes on many topics -- have rather similar questions. Not exactly the same: for instance, Gallup's wording ("gay men and lesbian women") is probably more humanizing and sympathetic than FOX's ("gays and lesbians"). But fairly similar.

Another difference has to do with the timing of the polls. The Gallup poll was conducted last year, at a time when DADT was not very much in the news and before the tea-party movement and the flailing economy had started to make conservatism fashionable again. The FOX poll, on the other hand, was conducted last week, after the President invoked DADT in his State of the Union address. The Daily Kos poll was conducted last month, with about two-thirds of the interviews coming before the State of the Union and the other third afterward. Any of the following are possible: (i) that the sorts of people who identify as Republican has changed -- become more conservative -- over the past year; (ii) that the same Republican voters have grown more conservative over the past year; (iii) that the President's invocation of DADT in the State of the Union served to 'partisanize' the issue.

Still, it's hard to reconcile the difference between the FOX News and R2K/Kos polls, both of which came out at about the same time, and which featured nearly identical questions. An 18-point difference in the responses is quite large.

To be honest, I'm inclined to agree with some of the critiques of the Kos poll's methodology. In particular, it's hard for me to believe that the questions the poll asked -- they led with questions about whether Obama should be impeached, whether he was born in the United States, and whether he's a socialist -- did not some how condition the responses to the latter questions, or induce some of the more moderate Republicans to drop out of the sample. Honestly, if I'd been up at my aunt and uncle's place in Maine (they're moderate, Olympia Snowe lovin', New England Republicans), and we had this poll on speaker phone and the first few questions were about impeachment and socialism, I'd probably have started to make some funny faces and to wonder aloud about the propriety of the poll. These questions are just very different from the sorts of questions that pollsters usually ask, especially at the beginning of a survey. (Just like a good wine list, the rule of thumb is to work from light and neutral to heavier and more pungent questions.)

Indeed, there was another question that the R2K/Kos poll asked where I found the responses even more surprising. That was the question which asked: "Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?" Only 8 percent of Republicans, according to the poll, said yes!

This seems like a very traditional, almost 1950s style of response. There must be thousands of openly gay teachers, and it's not like there are constantly these huge controversies about whether they should be kicked out of the classroom -- which, if only 8 percent of Republicans thought that they should be allowed to teach, I imagine that there would be in some redder districts. The General Social Survey asks a somewhat similar question -- "And what about a man who admits that he is a homosexual? Should such a person be allowed to teach in a college, or university, or not?" On that survey in 2008 (the last time it was conducted), 75 percent of those who identified themselves as "strong Republicans" thought that the gay person should be allowed to teach. Admittedly, there is an important difference between the General Social Survey, which asked about teaching in college, and the Kos survey, which asks about public schools. But a difference between 75 percent and 8 percent? Color me skeptical.

In short, it appears to me that the Kos/Research 2000 poll -- probably for reasons having to do with the nature and ordering of the questions although other hypothesis are plausible -- wound up with a very and perhaps unrepresenatively conservative set of Republicans. Upon further examination, I'd encourage caution in interpreting its results. I'm happy that pollsters are exploring "politically incorrect" attitudes such as these, but they require a lot of sensitivity to survey design. I'm not sure that Research 2000's methodology, which led by hitting the respondent over the head with a 2x4 with questions about impeachment and socialism, really got it right.

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A First Look at Palin's Primary Math

If Sarah Palin runs for the Republican nomination in 2012 -- and I've been on record for some time as predicting that she will -- what are likely to be her best and worst states? And how do these strengths and weaknesses square with the Republican primary calendar? And what about the other likely candidates?

The first, very, very important thing to notice is that the Republican primary calendar will be different in 2012 than it was two years ago. Although this could change as states jockey for position and rules are amended, for the time being the Republicans have divided the states into five groupings as seen below:



The first states to vote are the traditional early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. These states are shown in light blue. Note that this list does not include Florida and Michigan, which jumped in the queue to try to vote early in 2008 -- although who knows whether they'll be in a more cooperative mood this time around when push comes to shove.

Next to vote are the orange states, which are grouped together by virtue of their small populations. This includes 14 states and several territories, the largest grouping of which is on the prairies and the Western frontier, although there are also several New England states. Notably, no Southern states vote in this group -- the Republican calender definitely de-emphasizes the South.

Finally, there are gold, purple and green groupings of some of the larger states. These groups have some geographical integrity -- for instance, most of the traditional Midwestern Rust Belt states are in the gold group, whereas the purple states tend to be more coastal and the green more in flyover country -- although there are some exceptions. The order in which the gold, purple and green states vote will rotate every cycle and, to my knowledge, has not yet been determined for 2012.

So where is Palin likely to run strongest? Obviously, it would depend on the candidates she's up against and the type of campaign she might want to run, but I think we can make some basic inferences. What I've done is to create an index of how favorable each state is to Palin based on six variables: fundraising totals to date for SarahPAC, and five demographic and attitudinal variables taken from 2008 exit polls.

Fundraising: What I looked at is the ratio of contributions that Palin has received in each state so far through SarahPAC to the amount of contributions received by all Republican candidates in the 2008 cycle. The idea is to see how Palin compares vis-a-vis a typical Republican candidate -- indeed, I've found fundraising data to have quite a bit of predictive power in the past, even if the data is a little rough at this stage. Relative to other Republicans, Palin's best fundraising state is, of course, Alaska. Her fundraising has also been quite strong in the Pacific Northwest, and many of the prairie/frontier states. It has been weakest on the East Coast, as well as several other urban and industrial states located throughout the country. The fundraising data receives double weight in our index.

Variables from 2008 Exit Polls: What I looked at is not what a state's electorate looked like overall, but rather, the characteristics of the McCain (i.e. Republican) voters in each state. This is an important distinction -- for instance, although Oregon is a fairly progressive state overall, the conservatives there are quite conservative and rural, and this is what matters in the context of a Republican primary. Note that, although it would probably have been better to look at exit polling data from the 2008 Republican primaries, a lot of states either didn't have a competitive primary in 2008 or didn't have exit polling data available; thus, we look at McCain general election voters as our best proxy.

Specifically, the exit polling variables that I evaluated were as follows:

Rural and small town voters. That is, the percentage of McCain voters in each state that come from communities of less than 50,000 people. Palin spent a great deal of time campaigning in exurban and fairly rural areas in 2008, and I suspect that it's here -- not necessarily among soccer moms in the collar suburbs -- where her most enthusiastic voters lie. And Palin herself, of course, comes from a very rural area and is appealingly outdoorsy and self-reliant. This variable receives a double weight.

No college voters. Early polls of the 2012 Republican field, such as from Marist and Rasmussen, show Palin overperforming among this group (or, if you prefer, underperforming among college graduates), which certainly squares with my intuition about where her appeal lies. This variable also receives a double weight.

Conservatives. We also look at the number of McCain general election voters who described themselves as conservative in each state, although it receives only a single weight. Although clearly Palin wears the conservative label very comfortably and is liable to be harmed in states where there are a relatively large number of moderates and independents in the primary electorate, there are likely to be at least a couple other capital-C conservatives in the Republican primary field, which means we need to temper this somewhat.

White Evangelicals. Although Palin also polls well among this group, a lot of this may be because a lot of white evangelicals are also rural and lack a college degree. That is, although Palin runs well among the sorts of voters who happen to be evangelicals, it may not be because they're evangelicals. Nor, although Palin has increasingly invoked religious rhetoric in her speeches, does she have the scholarly religious credibility of someone like a Mike Huckabee or a Pat Robertson. It's conceivable that Palin could get outflanked by a Huckabee or lose votes to a Santorum among voters who are evangelicals first and working-class whites second. Thus, although we include this variable, we only give it a single weight.

Energy and Terrorism voters. Lastly, although this is a bit speculative, we look at the percentage of McCain voters in each state who said their votes were determined because of energy or terrorism policy, which appear as though they'll be Palin's core issues. These issues -- particularly terrorism -- lend themselves relatively well to the meta-narratives that Palin prefers and require less policy nuance than something like the economy or health care. This variable receives a single weight.

These six variables are then standardized and the z-scores are added up to produce an overall total, with the first three variables (fundraising, rural, no college) counted twice. Ranked from most favorable to Palin to least favorable, the 50 states rate as follows (red indicates a 'hot' state that is favorable to Palin, while blue indicates the opposite):



We can also plot these on a map:



Palin's strengths, roughly speaking, lie in a diagonal belt that stretches from the northwest corner of the country through the Deep South; she may not do particularly well in the Northeast and the Southwest. Looking at the interplay between these states and the calendar:

First Wave States. Among the first four states to vote, both Iowa and South Carolina should be winnable for Palin. Although Iowa is not a perfect match for her -- not quite as many no-college voters as she'd like -- it holds a caucus rather than a primary, which tends to bring out a more conservative electorate. The most obvious concern for Palin in Iowa, if he runs, is Mike Huckabee, who won there in 2008. She could also conceivably lose a war of attrition if a candidate like Santorum eats away some of her evangelical vote, or if her organization and infrastructure is not up to par. The inclusion of a regional candidate like John Thune or Mike Pence could cut either way for Palin; they are not yet terribly well defined and it's unclear whether they'll run to the right-center (in which case they could cause more problems for someone like Romney) or further to the right (trouble for Palin).

If Palin loses in Iowa, she would almost certainly need a victory in South Carolina, which is a decent enough state for her demographically but which has a quirky political culture and tends to prefer candidates from the South. Huckabee could be tough to knock off in South Carolina, especially if he's won Iowa, and a candidate like Haley Barbour or Rick Perry could be challenging to her (probably less so someone like Newt Gingirch, who is nominally a Southerner but has more appeal to coastal voters). Although the South will be somewhat de-emphasized by the structure of the Republican primary calendar, Palin would clearly benefit from the inability of any bona fide Southerner to gain traction in the polls, in which case she might become the de facto Southern candidate.

Palin is unlikely to perform well in New Hampshire, which apart from being fairly rural does not play to any of her strengths and where she might have to face Mitt Romney or Scott Brown. Nevada, meanwhile, is another caucus state in which Romney dominated in 2008.

Palin is probably fortunate that neither Florida or Michigan will hold an early primary, as we have both rated as below-average states for her. Michigan has a fairly robust track record of preferring moderate Republicans, both in elections to the Congress and in Republican primaries, where the electorate is pushed to the left by the presence of a very engaged set of independent voters in the open primary. Plus, there may once again be the Romney factor to contend with. Florida's Republican voters, meanwhile, are relatively urban and reasonably well-educated, and my hunch is that Palin will not play well with groups like Cuban and non-Cuban Hispanics and Jewish voters who collectively make up about 15 percent of the state's Republican primary electorate.

Second Wave States. If Palin survives the four early voting states, the next wave of states -- the small states indicated in orange on the map -- are potentially very good for her. Five of Palin's six best states, indeed -- Alaska, Wyoming, North Dakota, Montana and West Virginia -- fall into the orange group; she could even do relatively well in a state like Maine, which is quite rural. The one caveat is that smaller states tend to place more emphasis on infrastructure and organization, which may not be Palin's strength (that's why Mitt Romney, who excels in that department, tended to do well in these states in 2008). But demographically speaking, they should be very fruitful territory for her.

Later Wave States. The remaining states are divided into green, purple, and gold groups, and it may be tremendously important to Palin in exactly which order they wind up voting in. Whereas the green states are quite good for her, both the purple states and the gold states are rather poor.

The green group contains plenty of good states for Palin, although there would probably be a lot of emphasis placed on delegate-rich Texas, where Palin will need to do well since she's unlikely to pick up many delegates from coastal states like California and New York. Indeed, Texas may be the most important state on the map for Palin after Iowa and perhaps South Carolina, which may be why she's spending so much time there.

If the gold group comes up instead, Palin's best chance for a big win looks to be Ohio, although Georgia, Florida and Pennsylvania are probably also within reach.

The purple group would be very bad for Palin; she'd likely need to win both Indiana and North Carolina to stay alive, and Tennessee is OK for her, but even so she'd probably lose ground in the delegate count because of states like California, Virginia and New Jersey.

Palin's path to victory, then, would seem to consist of one of the following scenarios:

Palin Plan A. Win Iowa. Win South Carolina. Clean up in orange states. You probably have enough momentum to survive the consolidation of the GOP field which is liable to occur at this point.

Palin Plan B. Lose Iowa narrowly, especially to a Midwestern candidate. Hope that a Southerner isn't running strongly and win South Carolina. Clean up in orange states. Then you anchor in the South, winning Texas (green group), Florida/Georgia (gold group) or Indiana/North Carolina (purple group). At some point, you need to break through and win a big Midwestern battleground like Ohio or Wisconsin.

Palin Plan C. Win Iowa. Lose South Carolina narrowly to a Southern candidate. Regain momentum in orange states. Hope that green states vote next and aim in particular for a big win in Texas. If it's the gold states instead, go all-in in Ohio and Pennsylvania. If it's the purple states, you'll need some help.

Conversely, Mitt Romney's paths might look something like this, and are probably somewhat more straightforward than Palin's.

Romney Plan A. Win Iowa. Win New Hampshire. Game over.

Romney Plan B-1. (If Palin is knocked out) Lose Iowa. Win New Hampshire. Win Nevada. Sweep orange states on the basis of organizational strength. Veer slightly to the left, emphasizing electability and cleaning up in delegate-rich states like California and New York. You probably outlast a Southern opponent like Huckabee, perhaps even fairly easily. A Midwesterner that could win states like Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania might be more challenging.

Romney Plan B-2. (If Palin survives) Lose Iowa. Win New Hampshire. Win Nevada. Split orange states with Palin on the basis of organizational strength. Hope that gold or purple states came up next, in which case you should build up a substantial delegate lead. If so, the party infrastructure may start to close ranks around you. If green states come up instead, Palin is tougher and you're in for a war of attrition with flagging momentum.

Mike Huckabee, if he runs, really only has one path to victory and it isn't a very good one since the calendar makes it tough for a Southern candidate to gain momentum:

Huckabee Plan A. Win Iowa. Win South Carolina. Knock out Palin and perhaps angle for her endorsement. Lower expectations for orange states and hope to at least win a couple contests like West Virginia and Nebraska. Hope that there are at least two centrist candidates remaining in the race while you consolidate the conservative vote. If it's just you and Romney (etc.) one-on-one, you probably need to consistently win border states like Ohio/Florida (gold group), North Carolina/Indiana (purple group) or Missouri/Texas (green group).

Most of the other Southern candidates would have the same problem. Conversely, someone like a John Thune probably has a more versatile set of strategies. If Romney is knocked out (Thune is more likely to pull an upset in New Hampshire than someone like Palin or Huckabee), he can run on electability and is probably conservative enough so as not to feel like a compromise to the base. If Palin and/or Huckabee are knocked out instead, Thune should have some regional strength in the orange states and then would be headed to a key showdown or two with Romney in Midwestern states like Ohio.

It's also conceivable that a strong Northeastern candidate, like Scott Brown, could run. His path would obviously need to involve winning New Hampshire and sweeping Maine/Delaware/Vermont/Rhode Island when the orange states vote. Then the contest probably becomes about the brute force of the delegate math, with big states like California, New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois being key.

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Republicans -- Not Obama -- More Often on Wrong Side of Public Opinion

One of the more commonplace assertions among pundits on the center-right -- made rather carelessly by Victor Davis Hanson and more thoughtfully by Jay Cost, is that agenda put forward by Obama and the Democrats is overwhelmingly unpopular and that Democrats are simply getting their comeuppance for having pushed such a liberal set of reforms forward. These claims, however, rely on selective evidence, invariably citing policies like health care and the GM bailouts which are indeed unpopular (strongly so, in some cases), while ignoring many other issues on which Obama has been on the right side of public opinion.

In fact, a more objective and equivocal evaluation of public opinion on more than two dozen specific issues finds that the Republican Congress has far more often been on the wrong side of it. Attempting to be as comprehensive as possible, I've identified 25 issues that Obama and the Democrats have made an affirmative effort to push forward since taking office a year ago, and summarized public opinion on each of them. Most of the numbers that I've cited come from PollingReport.com.

Afghanistan Troop Escalation. An average of seven polls taken since President Obama's speech on Afghanistan in December show a 54-41 majority of the public in favor of escalating troop commitments. However, Obama appeared to get a bump from his speech, as an average of four polls conducted in November, prior to the speech, had shown a 49-46 plurality opposed to greater troop commitments.

Bank Tax. An NPR poll found a 57-39 majority in favor of the bank tax proposal, which the Congress has yet to consider, after being read arguments both for and against the program. (An ABC/Post poll found a 73-26 majority in favor of taxing financial sector bonuses over $1 million dollars, although the White House has not advocated for that measure.)

Ben Bernanke. The only poll on Ben Bernanke, from NBC/WSJ, found a 37-34 plurality opposed to his reappointment; Bernanke was approved by 22 of 40 Senate Republicans and 48 of 60 Senate Democrats.

Bush Tax Cuts. Although this polling is somewhat out of date, a CBS/NYT poll in April found 74 percent in favor, and 23 percent opposed, to raising taxes on those making more than $250,000 per year, as Obama's budget would do. A Newsweek poll in March, with somewhat different phrasing, found 49 percent in favor of letting the tax cuts on the wealthy expire and 42 percent opposed.

Campaign Finance. The only poll to have asked directly about the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision is from FOX News, which found voters disapproving of the decision 53-27. A Gallup poll conducted last month found that, while most Americans consider campaign finance to be a form of free speech, they nevertheless by a 52-41 margin felt that the ability to place limits on political contributions was the higher priority.

Cap-and-Trade. The last five organizations to release polls on cap-and-trade (AP/Stanford, ABC/Post, CNN, Pew, Rasmussen) actually show it favored by the public by a 51-40 margin, on average. It is likely that a significant fraction of the public does not understand what cap-and-trade is; nevertheless most of these polls provided descriptions of the bill's contents. Eight House Republicans voted for the climate bill in June; the Senate has yet to consider the measure.

Cash-for-Clunkers. The only organization to poll on this was Rasmussen, which found voters opposed to the program 35-54 in June, but a 44-38 plurality favoring the program in retrospect after it had been implemented.

Credit Card Protections. 77 percent of respondents favored the Credit Card Protection Act, according to a poll by Open Congress. The bill was approved 90-5 by the Senate in May, as well as by a 105-69 majority of House Republicans.

D.C. Voting Rights. 58 percent of the public favored, and 35 percent opposed, giving an a House seat to D.C. in a nationwide Washington Post poll conducted last February. The Senate approved D.C. voting rights by a 61-37 margin last February, with 6 Republicans voting in favor and 2 Democrats voting against, although the measure subsequently died in the House.

Fair Pay. Congress approved the Liddy Ledbetter Fair Pay Act last January; it received the support of 3 Republicans in the House and 5 in the Senate. A Rasmussen poll conducted shortly after the legislation passed found that Americans by a 66-24 majority do not believe that women earn equal pay for equal work, although it did not ask about the legislation specifically.

Financial Regulation. A Time/SRBI poll in October found that 59 percent of the public favors more regulation of Wall Street versus 13 percent favoring less and 22 percent the same amount. A CNN poll two weeks ago found 62 percent in favor of greater regulations and 35 percent opposed. House Republicans opposed the financial regulation bill unanimously.

Gays in the Military. Four organizations -- FOX, Gallup, Quinnipiac, and CNN -- have released polls on Don't Ask Don't Tell since Obama's inauguration. They show an average of 58 percent saying that Don't Ask Don't Tell should be repealed and that gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the military, and 35 percent opposed. No votes have yet occurred on DADT in either the House or the Senate, although the House's repeal legislation has just one Republican co-sponsor.

GM/Chrysler Bailout. Quite unpopular: an NBC/WSJ poll in early June showed 39 percent of the public in favor and 52 percent opposed to the bailout, and a CNN poll in April found that 22 percent of the public favored additional assistance to GM and Chrysler while 76 percent would have preferred to let them go bankrupt. (There was no specific vote on GM in this Congress; instead, its funds came by way of the TARP program.)

Guantanamo Bay. Four organizations to release polls on Gutantanamo Bay between last February and last June found an average 55 percent of Americans opposed to closing the detention facility and 39 percent in favor, with the number of those opposed tending to increase over time.

Hate Crimes. Although there have been no recent polls on the subject, a Gallup survey in May 2007 found a 68-27 majority in favor of expanding hate crimes statues to include sexual and gender identity. The Matthew Shepard act, a hate crimes measure, passed the Congress last year, receiving the support of 18 House Republicans and 5 Senate Republicans.

Health Care. It has clearly become unpopular; the latest Pollster.com trendlines show 38 percent in favor of the bill and 55 percent opposed. One Republican voted for the health care bill in the House and none did in the Senate.

Jobs Bill. A CNN poll in December found 74 percent thought Obama should concentrate on creating more jobs "even if it means less deficit reduction." A Bloomberg/Selzer poll, also in December, asked about specific measures that might be undertaken as part of a jobs bill and found 68 percent in favor (and 28 percent opposed) to tax credits, and 66 percent in favor (versus 32 percent opposed) of spending on public works projects, although just 48 percent were in favor of additional assistance to state and local governments. House Republicans unanimously opposed a $100 billion jobs bill in December.

Mortgage Relief. Senate Republican unanimously voted against the Durbin Amendment to provide mortgage relief in April, as did 12 Senate Democrats. However, four organizations which polled on mortgage relief in February through April found an average of 60 percent of Americans in support of additional assistance versus 34 percent opposed.

PAYGO. There is no specific polling on Congressional pay-go rules, which Senate Republicans recently voted against 40-0., but in the abstract moves toward balancing the budget are almost always popular, such as a CNN poll in November which found 67 percent preferring balanced budgets to deficits "even when the country is in a recession and is at war."

SCHIP. Although there have been no recent polls on SCHIP (children's health care), an ABC/Post poll in September, 2007 found it supported 72-25 by the public, and a CNN poll in October, 2007 found that the public wanted by a 61-35 margin for the Congress to override President Bush's veto of the program. Nine Republican Senators voted to extend SCHIP in February as did 40 House Republicans.

Sonia Sotomayor. The last five polls to be released on Sonia Sotmayor in advance of her confirmation showed 52 percent in favor of her confirmation and 30 percent opposed, on average. Senate Republicans opposed her confirmation 31-9.

Stimulus. The stimulus has become somewhat unpopular now -- although most individual elements of the program remain popular. However, the stimulus was somewhat popular at the time of its passage. An average of the last five organizations to release polls in advance of the Senate's vote on the stimulus on 2/9/09 showed 50 percent in favor of the bill and 38 percent opposed. House Republicans opposed the stimulus unanimously; Senate Republicans gave it 3 votes.

TARP. The TARP program began under Bush and was extended before Obama took office, but Obama nevertheless actively lobbied Democrats for its extension. TARP was unpopular from the get-go, and Americans opposed its extension 56-32 last January, according to a poll then from Diageo/Hotline. All but 6 Senate Republicans voted not to extend TARP.

Terrorist Trials. An average of two recent polls from Rasmussen and CBS had 38 percent of the public in favor of terror trials in civilian courts, but 55 percent opposed.

Torture Memos and Investigations. Four polls conducted in April showed an average of 43 percent of Americans in favor and 51 percent opposed into an investigation of Bush-era torture policies. The only poll to ask about the release of the Bush torture memos, from ABC/Post, found 53 percent in favor and 44 percent opposed.

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Of these 25 issues, Obama's position appears to be on the right side of public opinion on 14: the bank tax, repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, campaign finance, the credit card bill, D.C. voting rights, fair pay, financial regulation, gays in the military, hate crimes, the jobs bill, mortgage relief, PAYGO, SCHIP, and Sotomayor. It would appear to be on the wrong side of public opinion on five issues: the GM/Chrysler bailout, Guantanamo Bay, health care, the extension of the TARP program, and terrorist trials. On the other six issues, the polling is probably too ambiguous to render a clear verdict.

Republicans, on the other hand, have been overwhelmingly opposed to almost all of these measures with the exception of Ben Bernanke and Afghanistan troops, both of which poll ambiguously, and the credit card bill, which polled well.

Obviously, this analysis is superficial in certain ways. All issues are by no means created equal, and health care in particular, which is unpopular, has weighed heavily upon the public's perception of the Democrats. In addition, there is probably another layer of 'meta-argument' that goes beyond specific issues, and at which the GOP has tended to excel.

Nevertheless, it runs in contrast to the objective evidence when one asserts, as Hanson does, that "On every issue ... the Obama position polls 5-15 points below 50 percent." Rather, the votes taken by the Republican Congress have far more often been out of step with those of the median voter.

This is not to give a mulligan to the White House or to the Democrats -- as I've written before, their meta-strategy has necessarily had to be somewhat terrible so as to take what has been a fairly popular and centrist agenda and have it regarded as overwhelmingly contentious and partisan by so much of the public.

EDIT: What about EFCA/card check? I didn't forget about it; rather, I excluded it because it's something which the Democrats abandoned early on and which the White House never lifted a finger for. Obviously, there are a lot of policies that the Democrats theoretically have in their arsenal -- card check, legalizing pot, gay marriage, nationalizing the banks, a radically more progressive tax code, etc. -- which are both quite liberal and (with one or two possible exceptions) quite unpopular. But the Congressional Democrats didn't spend much of any effort on those issues, and the White House spent essentially none. The agenda they've spent their political capital on, rather, has been quite centrist -- which is sort of the whole point of this article.

If you did include card check, by the way, the verdict would be rather ambiguous. Ignoring some amazingly crappy (and contradictory) partisan polling on both sides of the topic, the closest we have to a neutral poll is this one from Gallup, which shows 53 percent in favor of a "new law that would make it easier for labor unions to organize workers" but which is probably too vague to be useful. To be clear, my hunch is that card check would indeed prove to become unpopular if it were debated more vigorously -- but that's just a hunch, and we're trying to rely on the objective evidence for this exercise.

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Is It The Process, Stupid?

Because it was Super Bowl week--and I happened to be watching a rebroadcast of the New York Giants' amazing Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots, in which his son Zack made the tackle on the final kickoff of the game--I checked in with Steve DeOssie, an acquaintance of mine who also won a Super Bowl ring for the New York Giants, back in 1991. Steve is very politically active and astute, and although we don’t see eye-to-eye on many issues, I respect him a lot and his opinions.

DeOssie and his former Patriots teammate Fred Smerlas co-own a steakhouse in Providence, Rhode Island. They are sports media celebrities in New England akin to Curt Schilling. They also happen to be friends and political supporters of none other than new Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, and were on hand at Brown’s election night victory party. (For non-football fans, in the picture that's Fred on the left and Steve on the right.)

When I asked Steve what he thought about the Brown victory, he told me that most of the national media misinterpreted what happened in Massachusetts. So I asked Steve what the real message of Brown’s victory is. Here is what he emailed me, verbatim and unedited:

Much of the media seems to be missing the point or the cause of the election. On the right they want to believe it was anti-Obama or anti-healthcare. On the left they try to spin the idea that it was just about the poor performance of Coakley. Having been to at least 20 of Scott's campaign events I can tell you it was none of those reasons. The most consistent attitude was that people wanted to slow down the process. There was a natural reaction even in the most liberal of states to not want anything forced on them the way the healthcare seemed to be. People up here were not anti anything except the healthcare process. They saw it as sneaky and underhanded. Even in Massachusetts, people did not want something that unknown forced on the country. Either way I am glad the process will slow down some but I will not put even a good friend like Scott on that political pedestal like some people are trying to do.

Note Steve's use of the word process three separate times. Now, the most consistent complaints one heard from conservative politicians, pundits and activists about the process of healthcare reform were that Obama held some closed-door meetings; that the backroom deals with senators like Ben Nelson and especially Mary Landrieu looked shady; and, in general, that reform was being sped through Congress without sufficient time for citizens to figure out what the policy reforms would mean for them individually or for the nation in terms of entitlement obligations or overall spending.

Let me take each of these three complaints in order.

1. Closed meetings. From energy to wiretapping to Iraq, the Bush Administration was one of the least transparent presidencies in history, and Obama has surely been more transparent than his predecessor. But conservatives correctly respond to that by saying, “Hey, Obama ran as a guy who said he would change the way politics was conducted in Washington, and if he’s behaving not much differently from Dick Cheney, well, what was the point of electing him?” Though there is a double standard here, they’re right: Obama promised to be different. I think that this complaint is the strongest of the three. If you seem like you are hiding something, whether you are or not, voters become immediately suspicious--and with cause.

2. Congressional deal-making. The deals brokered with members of Congress seem less objectionable. Obama’s election did not obviate the U.S Congress, nor did it somehow eliminate self-interested behavior by pivotal members of Congress willing to prevent otherwise solid majorities--the Democrats, after all, had 60 seats and the states they represented accounted for even more than 60 percent of the country--from passing legislation by logrolling or stonewalling in order to gain their support. Moreover, neither Landrieu nor Nelson were holdouts resisting from the left side of the Democratic spectrum by publicly opposing the president and then negotiating concessions for more liberal versions of healthcare. Landrieu and Nelson are conservative Democrats, and Nelson’s resistance was predicated on his anti-abortion stance. Is it not a little hypocritical for conservatives and Republicans to complain about the Administration’s capitulation to people like Nelson? Had Obama publicly maligned Nelson for being a small-state senator who was manipulating the anti-majoritarian and often very secretive process of Senate holds so he could hold health care hostage in defense of the unborn, would the same conservatives who complained about shady practices have applauded the president for his forthright and transparent dressing down of a pro-life Democrats? I seriously doubt it.

And while we’re on the subject of congressional protocol and shady procedural practices, may I ask: Where were all these "procedural conservatives" back in 2004 complaining about the largest entitlement expansion of the past 40 years being "rammed" down America’s throat, no less their knowing manipulation of costs estimates for a bill that conservative economic Bruce Bartlett reminds us is costing the country MORE annually than the health care reform bill Democrats and Obama are proposing? I recognize that many budget-minded conservatives criticized George W. Bush for the cost of his anti-competitive, Big Pharma-giveaway, cater-to-the-senior-vote-and-the-budget-be-damned Medicare Plan D prescription drug legislation. But it was the House vote on that bill that was held open more than three hours (15 minutes is the standard time) and included what may well have been an illegal arm-twisting of Republican Congressman Nick Smith. Again, I’m not saying that just because the Bush Administration slipped an $800 billion prescription drug package through Congress literally in the middle of the night that the Obama Administration should do the same. But where was the outrage then?

3. Speed kills. Finally, there is the matter of the ramming down America’s throats of healthcare reform. I suppose in terms of the specific legislation in various forms that was working through Congress in 2009, one might say a year is too speedy a process. And there were so many bills it was hard to keep track of them, which was the downside of the Administration’s decision to let Congress take the lead rather than trying a Clinton-style approach by advancing an administration bill. Still, there was ample and many forums for debate. And, to be fair, the broader healthcare reform conservation in America hardly began on January 20, 2009: Both parties, and especially the Democrats, spent the better part of two years during the 2008 presidential cycle arguing about reform proposals. And if you want to take the longer view, the country has been arguing about how to reform our employer-based healthcare system since at least 1993, and really since the Truman Administration. Did we debate Medicare Part D as long? Not even close. But that's a benefit for seniors, who are older and whiter and vote more regularly than the poorer, darker and less insured people Obama is trying to cover. Haste is of the essence when legislating for the former, but patience is demanded when legislating for the latter. Are we to believe that is a coincidence?

Nor do I recall the procedural complaints about the speed with which we went to war in Iraq. Heck, people like Phil Donahue who so much as dared question the decision were mocked and shunted aside. (Mocking those who questioned the “process” back then made one a patriot; mocking and shunting aside Tea Partiers makes one an transparency-hating elitist, however.) Remember: The policy discussion prior to the Iraq decision—as Andrew Card conceded, the political rollout began on Labor Day weekend 2002—was at most six months; and if, in fact, President Bush actually decided privately—and yes, in a very non-transparent way—to invade Iraq in late December 2002 or early January 2003, that process was really only about four months. (Oh, and if Bush really decided well before Labor Day 2002, that means the decision was made *before* the process started.) And do we really need to revisit how much of the information during that national “debate” was manipulated, hidden and misrepresented? If public policy professors are looking for a model of governmental non-transparency, it’s hard to top the Iraq war “debate.”


Steve DeOssie makes some great points, and I wish conservatives in Washington like Charles Krauthammer—who all-too-conveniently would have us believe that Scott Brown’s victory more or less vindicates, well, every idea or belief Charles Krauthammer has ever espoused—would listen a bit more closely at the very moment they are telling the Administration it has a listening problem. And while I appreciate their newfound insistence on government transparency generally and ending political logrolling specifically—a practice, by the way, that hardly began with Mary Landrieu and essentially dates back to the negotiations 223 years ago over the language of Constitution itself—the recent good-government conversions by some conservatives are a bit suspicious and, in some cases, appallingly disingenuous.

Meanwhile, Obama is now participating in a bi-partisan commission and publicly debated House Republicans live on television in their backyard--and without any notes written on his palm. These actions are unlike anything that was done by the Bush Administration, which had to be shamed by 9/11 victims into agreeing to even have a commission to investigate the pre-attack intelligence failures of our government, nor did Bush visit a caucus of House Democrats to defend the claims of Al Qaeda-Iraq connections or how exactly that yellowcake or mobile weapons labs on the back of 18-wheelers managed to get into Saddam's hands. So we will have greater transparency, and that’s a good thing as an end in itself. But does anyone want to bet that a highly-transparent policy process, and certainly one that departs dramatically from the politics of the past decade, will be sufficient to end conservative complaints?

I hope the president and his advisers take careful note of what Steve said above. And I'm also hoping that Scott Brown—who really does seem like an eminently thoughtful and reasonable person—will call out his fellow Republican partisans if and when, by some crazy chance, they ever happen to engage in anything less than good faith bargaining and virtuously transparent politics in Washington. If he does, I'll advocate for his re-election in 2012 to a full term. Of course, if Brown fails to call out non-transparent behavior and other procedural shenanigans, he'll be guilty of becoming corrupted by the very same Washington forces he and Obama both criticized in order to get elected.

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Sarah Palin Needs Help

There's something which, if you've ever been in the business of trying to sell consulting services, you've probably grown accustomed to. It's what I call the "consulting paradox". Namely, it's the idea that the people who are most in need of help are often the least aware of it. Indeed, the range of potential clients who (i) aren't smart enough to solve all their own problems and (ii) are smart enough to know it ... is generally very narrow.

Sarah Palin needs help. So does almost every politician -- but Palin needs it more than most. She is young. She is inexperienced. She's not especially well connected. She's strong-willed and a little impulsive. And call me a hater, but the woman just ain't that bright.

Is it a big deal that Palin wrote some notes on her hand? No, not really. Lots of politicians carry notes with them (if not, as in Palin's case, literally on them). If this were Mitt Romney, it wouldn't have been a particularly big story. Nevertheless, politics is inherently contextual, and this was something that was bound to play into every negative caricature of Mrs. Palin. Somebody needed to take Palin aside and tell her: Honey, this is going to make you look ridiculous. Can't you write on a notecard instead?

Somebody needed to tell Palin that, you know what, it's OK to criticize Rush Limbaugh once in a while. Voters like moments that make candidates look big, mature, above the fray -- Palin took what could have been such a moment and instead backtracked and made herself look petty and hypocritical.

Somebody needed to tell Palin that, if she were hellbent on quitting as Alaska's governor, she at least needed to take the time to develop a competent exit strategy and a coherent farewell speech.

Somebody needed to tell Palin that it wasn't going to do any good to get into a he-said, she-said with an attention-starved 19-year-old who was getting ready to pose nude for Playgirl.

Somebody needed to sit down with Palin and consider whether, for a candidate who gets significant leverage out of the sense that she's been persecuted by the mainstream media, becoming a correspondent for one of the mainstream media networks was going to be helpful to her in the long run.

Somebody needed to make sure that Sarah Palin was ready for the Katie Couric interview, or needed to find some excuse to cancel it.

Somebody needed to tell Palin that using the term "death panels" was probably not going to help her personally at a time when she was trying to demonstrate to her critics that she could be credible about policy.

With the exception of the decision to quit as governor and perhaps the Couric interview, all of these were minor mistakes, at most. But they point toward a candidate who needs to surround herself with good people and has conspicuously refused to do so, instead relying on advice from her husband and her bush-league media spokeswoman, Meg Stapelton.

I've made the comparison before between Sarah Palin and George W. Bush. Neither of them are geniuses -- nor do they need to be. But Bush was at least smart enough to surround himself with a team of exceptionally competent strategists, advisers and consultants. He was smart enough to recognize that it takes a village to get oneself elected President, and ideally one a bit less isolated and insular than Wasilla. Palin hasn't figured that out yet; her ability to become the Republican nominee and have a fighting chance in the general election will depend on her ability to do so.

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Go For It! Saints Understand Value of Aggressive Play-Calling

UPDATE: Congratulations to the Saints and the city of New Orleans! Although it was mostly about the talent on the field, this game could do a lot of good for smarter NFL strategery. Expect a lot more onside kicks next season!

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Let's take a quick look at the Saints' decision to go for the touchdown on fourth down and about a yard-and-a-half with 1:55 to go in the first half. Although Pierre Thomas got stuffed, it was probably the best play by a wide margin.

How come? Because even if you miss, the Colts are pinned inside their own 2 yard line. This makes a lot of difference: having the ball on your own 1 or 2 is worth about -1.5 points, according to David Romer's seminal paper (that is to say, the value of possession is outweighed in this instance by your incredibly poor field position). Conversely, having the ball on the 20 or thereabouts after a made field goal and a kick-off is worth +0.5 points -- your opponent has a positive scoring expectation. (There's also the case of a missed field goal, in which the Colts would have the ball at about their own 9; that's worth -0.5 points.)

Overall, considering both the Saints would score on the play and what they'd do to the Colts' field position, their decision matrix looks something like this:



We say a touchdown is worth 6.5 points, for example, which is the value of the 7 points you score less the 0.5 points in expectation you lose by giving the ball back to your opponent on their 20. The other cells in the matrix are calculated in the same fashion.

Assume that you have a 98 percent chance to make the field goal from the 1-and-a-half. Using the matrix above, that means your expectation from kicking is a net of +2.46 points.

What if you go for it instead? How often would you have to score the touchdown in order to make going for it the right play? Only about 20 percent of the time -- the main reason being, again, that failing to score but sticking your opponent on their own 1 yard line is almost as good as converting the FG but giving the ball to the opponent on the 20.

Certainly, a consideration of the scoring margin (the Saints trailed by 4), the short clock, and the opponent (the Colts can move the ball in a hurry) also deserve consideration here. But those considerations cut both ways and would probably not outweigh the ample mathematical justification for going for the touchdown. Sean Payton made the right call.

UPDATE: How about that onside kick to start the second half?

Once again using the estimates from Romer's paper, giving yourself possession on your own 45 (if you recover the kick) is worth +2.0 points; giving your opponent possession on your 45 is worth about -2.3 points. Compare this with giving the opponent their ball on their 20 after a regular kickoff, which is worth -0.5 points ... although often they'll return the kick and wind up with slightly better field position than that, so let's call it -0.7.

Given those estimates, the onside kick breaks even if you convert it about 37 percent of the time. And according to Football Outsiders, "surprise" onside kicks are in fact recovered in the neighborhood of 55 percent of the time or so. So this, too, looks like a good call -- and probably something that teams should be doing a little bit more often than they do.

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Super Bowl Thread: Take the Points

Depending on where you're betting, you can get the New Orleans Saints as anywhere from 4 to 6 points underdogs, although the average seems to have settled upon 4.5.

This makes for a fairly significant cushion. Between 1999 and 2008, 28 percent of NFL games were decided by 4 points or fewer, and 31 percent were decided by 5 or fewer (see below). So with the Saints side of this bet, you're basically getting them every time that they win as well as about 30 percent of the time that they lose:



Sure, caveats apply: 4.5 points isn't as many in a game between two high-scoring teams as it would be between defensively-oriented ones (and Super Bowls in particular tend to be high scoring.) Still, with anything greater than a 3 point spread, Vegas is rendering a pretty concrete judgement as to which it thinks is the better team: in this case, the Indianapolis Colts. But is this justified on the basis of the evidence?

From my point of view, I don't really see it. The Colts may be the better team and are probably the favorites today, but I don't see them as being definitively and demonstrably better. Throwing out the weeks when the teams weren't trying but counting the playoffs, the Saints have scored an average of 34 points per game and allowed 21; the Colts have scored an average of 28 and allowed 17 -- no clear edge there. The Colts played a somewhat better schedule, but systems which account for that -- see the 'PREDICTOR' version of the Sagarin ratings, for instance -- consider the teams to be about equal.

So do more sophisticated systems. Football Outsiders, who know their stuff as well as anyone, consider the game to be a toss-up. Accuscore thinks that the Colts will win about 55 percent of the time but that they should be just 2 or 3 point favorites, not 4.5 or 5. Meanwhile, computer models developed by the Wall Street Journal and Indiana University give the Saints a (very, very slight) edge.

A lot of the Vegas sentiment, undoubtedly, is because the Colts turned in a considerably more impressive performance against the New York Jets during Championship Week than the Saints did against the Vikings -- a game they were lucky to win. In general, however, it's a trusism that people overemphasize the most recent events when making predictions -- the Championship Game won't necessarily have a lot more predictive value than, say, Week 12. And the Colts' performance also came against the New York Jets, one of the weaker teams to have made the AFC Championship in some time. Had the Saints played the Jets, their performance might have been just as impressive. In fact, they beat the Jets 24-10 -- about the same margin as Indy's 30-17 win -- at home in Week 4.

The Saints and Colts actually have had five opponents in common this season, not counting the Colts' Week 16 and 17 games against the Jets and the Bills, respectively, when they weren't playing their regulars. The Saints won by the larger margin against 4 of the 5 teams -- and the tally would be 5 of 6 if we counted the Buffalo game -- although Indy makes up a lot of ground because they clobbered the lowly St. Louis Rams whereas the Saints had one of the worst games of their year against them:



And yes: I do watch a lot of football. At no point during the season did I think: Wow, Indy is clearly the best team in football (the closest I came to that feeling for any team this year was for the Saints, after they crushed the Patriots 38-17 in Week 12). I thought the Colts were a very, very good team, but were probably a bit fortunate to have gone 14-0.

Again, you can certainly argue that Indianapolis is the better team. Peyton Manning is an incredibly impressive football player, their defense is pretty clearly better, and they've been a bit more consistent from week to week. Were this a pick 'em, I'd probably go with the Colts. But if you're getting the Saints and 4.5 or even 5.5 points, you should take them.

My official prediction, just for fun: Colts 31, Saints 27.

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