Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

The Documented Trump

I recently read Joe Conaston’s book “The Longest Con”–a deep dive into political corruption. It was an admittedly partisan dive, focused on Republican officeholders–I’m not naive enough to believe that Democrats are all saintly do-gooders. But Conaston’s reporting did “bring the receipts” as the saying goes; the last quarter or so of the book was a comprehensive list of resources.

When he got to Donald J. Trump, the sleaze went off the scale. From simple laziness and inattention to the job (Trump spent one out of every three days of his presidency on visits to his resorts, hotels and golf courses), to his direction of millions of public dollars to his own businesses (he arguably violated the Constitution by encouraging foreign governments seeking favors from the U.S. to stay at his hotels and resorts), Conaston concluded that Trump kept his business enterprises solvent with taxpayer dollars.

It was a portrait of the grifter as President. 

None of those observations would surprise those of us who follow politics closely. But a recent column in the Washington Post focused on an element of Trump’s tenure that did surprise me, although it was obvious once Matt Bai, the author of the article, pointed it out: unlike virtually every other President, Trump didn’t show signs of aging while in office.

Watch any video of Biden four years ago, and you’ll have the odd sensation of having turned back the clock by a decade at least. It was the visual effects of Biden’s aging, rather than evidence of any cognitive decline, that doomed his candidacy from the moment he appeared on the debate stage in June.

Why does the presidency have this effect? It’s not the late nights and endless flights (although they probably doesn’t help). It’s the physical burden of awesome responsibility. Every decision seems to involve bad options and worse; some cost livelihoods, others, actual lives. Add to this the toll it all takes on a family (in Biden’s case, the very public prosecution of his only surviving son), and you can see why a normal person isn’t built to withstand it.

But this is where Trump is truly not normal. I’m trying not to be cruel here, but it’s not exactly breaking new ground to say that he seems to lack for something innately human: the basic capacity to internalize other people’s pain. As president, Trump never betrayed remorse or apologized, never seemed to take personally the 800,000 Americans who died of covid-19 on his watch. Tragedy breeds in him only defiance. Trump’s motto might be: “Don’t worry, be angry.”

At another point in the essay, Bai points to a behavior that reinforces Conaston’s perspective on what really matters to this very twisted man:

When Trump and his children talk about the sacrifices their family made to serve the public, they aren’t talking about his anguished nights spent roaming the halls of the White House. They’re talking about money.

The point is that empathy and self-doubt — the feeling that we’re failing to meet the critical needs of others — are the things that really take a toll on us. Whereas clinical callousness may well be a fountain of youth — from which Trump has been guzzling his entire life.

This analysis goes a long way toward explaining why people thought of Biden as much older than Trump, despite the fact that, at 78, Trump is less than 4 years younger, and is now the oldest person ever to run for President. Anger and hostility can manifest as energy. Not caring about others–certainly not the people he was elected to serve–protected Trump against the dramatic aging we almost always see in Presidents after they’ve served a term. 

What anger and extreme entitlement/narcissism cannot mask, however, is increasing senility– loss of even the minimal control Trump was once able to muster. After Biden’s withdrawal and the surge in support for Harris, an increasing number of articles have asked whether Trump is “losing it.” (That assumes he ever had “it,” but I quibble.)

As one such article noted,

Today in New Jersey, Trump tricked reporters into covering a “press conference” that turned out to be a lengthy speech to his supporters at his golf course. Low-energy Trump read from a thick binder that included a string of outrageous lies, including the ridiculous claim that more than 100% of new jobs created in the U.S. are going to migrants….

“He lacks self-control. He lacks discipline,” Republican donor Eric Levine told the New York Times. He’s focused on a “very strange victimhood and grievance,” said Republican strategist Liam Donovan.

Yet millions of Americans will vote for this deteriorating con man–presumably, because he gives them permission to be as hateful as he is.

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That Electoral College

There’s been no lack of political commentary as the Presidential campaign has heated up, much of it thoughtful (and lots of it not), but I was struck with a point made in the Bulwark–a point about the systemic, structural issues that so often muffle or stymie the electoral voice of We the People.

In a commentary on the competing theories of the two campaigns, Jonathan Van Last noted that

Trump is running to get to 47 percent. Harris is running to get to 52 percent.

But there’s something deeper going on here.

The reason Trump is aiming for 47 percent is because the Electoral College makes minority rule possible for the rural party. Which incentivizes the rural party to be insular and to focus on energizing—not expanding—its coalition.

By disadvantaging the urban party, the Electoral College incentivizes it to broaden its coalition. Which means that the Democratic party of this moment must be constantly seeking to expand its reach and bring in new constituencies if it is to have a chance at holding executive power.

In other words: The Electoral College distorts the character of our parties, nudging one of them to be a majority-seeking organism and the other to be a base-pleasing organism. The character of our two parties today flows from the system architecture used to allocate power.

Which explains why Trump’s campaign is focused on maneuvering to win the Electoral College, not on trying to build a national majority. Trump doesn’t think he needs to expand his base, despite the fact that it is a minority of American voters. He just needs to energize them. America’s systemic “allocation of power” protects government by the minority. That’s what allowed Donald J. Trump to “win” the Presidency while losing the popular vote by some three million votes.

The Electoral College substantially advantages white rural voters. Research suggests that every rural vote is worth one and a third of every urban vote. Small states already exert disproportionate power by virtue of the fact that every state–no matter how thinly or densely populated–has two Senators. This system adds to that undemocratic advantage.

Trump likes to claim that our elections are rigged. They are–but thanks to the Electoral College and “winner take all” state election laws–they’re rigged in ways that unfairly benefit him. As legal scholars have reminded us, no other advanced democracy in the world uses anything like the Electoral College. 

It isn’t just the existence of the College–there’s also the way states implement it.

If we fall short in the current effort to neuter the Electoral College with the Popular Vote Compact, we should mount a national effort to address a less-understood aspect of it’s unfairness: statewide winner-take-all laws. Under these laws (which states adopted to gain political advantage in the nation’s early years, even though it was never suggested by the Founders) most states award all their electors to the candidate with the most popular votes in their state.

That erases all the voters in that state who didn’t vote for the winning candidate. Even if only 50.1% of voters in a state vote for candidate A, the 49.9% of voters who opted for candidate B are unrepresented–all of that state’s Electoral College votes will be cast for candidate A.

It would be far fairer to award Electoral votes proportionally. If 60% of the votes are cast for candidate A, candidate A should get 60% of the state’s electoral votes–not 100%. People in the political minority in a state would suddenly have an incentive to vote–an incentive that doesn’t exist now. Today, absent a “wave” election, a presidential vote by a Democrat in Indiana or a Republican in California simply doesn’t count.

Think about it.

Today, 48 states use winner-take-all. That’s why most are considered comfortably safe for one party or the other.  That “safety” leads to the current disenfranchisement of voters in states like Indiana. The only states that matter to either party in a national election are the so-called “battleground” states — especially bigger ones like Pennsylvania, where a swing of a few thousand or even a few hundred votes can shift the entire pot of electors from one candidate to the other. We saw this in 2016, where Trump’s incredibly thin wins in three states (just under 80,000 votes in total over the three states) gave him the White House.

If newly hopeful Democrats can produce a “wave election” in 2024–if they can manage a trifecta at the national level–this systemic unfairness can be changed. The John Lewis Act can be passed. Gerrymandering can be outlawed. Winner-take-all laws can be addressed.

If enough of us vote Blue, we can restore small-d democratic accountability.

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We Need To Listen To Joseph Stiglitz

Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman are my two favorite economists–probably because, despite both being Nobel Prize winners– both of them are able to explain their conclusions in language I can (mostly) understand, and because those conclusions usually strike me as eminently reasonable.

Stiglitz recently took on the neoliberalism that has characterized American governance since Reagan. Neoliberalism has been described as an economic system generally opposed to the provision or expansion of government safety nets, and highly skeptical of regulation, extensive government spending, and government-led countercyclical policy.

As Stiglitz notes,

On one side of the economic debate are those who believe in largely unfettered markets, in which companies are allowed to agglomerate market power or pollute or exploit. They believe firms should maximize shareholder value, doing whatever they can get away with, because bigger profits serve the common good.

The most famous 20th-century proponents of this low-tax/low-regulation shareholder-centric economy, often referred to as neoliberalism, are Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. These Nobel Prize-winning economists took the idea beyond the economy, claiming this kind of economic system was necessary to achieve political freedom.
The strongest argument advanced by neoliberals is that economic freedom translates into political freedom. As Stiglitz points out, however, “not quite.”
We’ve now had four decades of the neoliberal “experiment,” beginning with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The results are clear. Neoliberalism expanded the freedom of corporations and billionaires to do as they will and amass huge fortunes, but it also exacted a steep price: the well-being and freedom of the rest of society…
Friedman and his acolytes failed to understand an essential feature of freedom: that there are two kinds, positive and negative; freedom to do and freedom from harm. “Free markets” alone fail to provide economic stability or security against the economic vagaries they create, let alone allow large fractions of the population to live up to their potential. Government is needed to deliver both. In doing so, government expands freedom in multiple ways.
Stiglitz’ basic argument is that the “Road to Serfdom” isn’t paved by governments that do too much; loss of freedom–serfdom– is a consequence of governing that does too little. He points out that populist nationalism poses a greater threat in countries like Israel, the Philippines and the United States than it does in in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. In those Scandinavian countries, high-quality public education, strong unemployment benefits and robust public health provide an economic floor that shields citizens from what he calls the “common American anxieties over how to pay for their children’s education or their medical bills.”
Discontent festers in places facing unaddressed economic stresses, where people feel a loss of control over their destinies; where too little is done to address unemployment, economic insecurity and inequality. This provides a fertile field for populist demagogues — who are in ample supply everywhere. In the United States, this has given us Donald Trump.
We care about freedom from hunger, unemployment and poverty — and, as FDR emphasized, freedom from fear. People with just enough to get by don’t have freedom — they do what they must to survive. And we need to focus on giving more people the freedom to live up to their potential, to flourish and to be creative. An agenda that would increase the number of children growing up in poverty or parents worrying about how they are going to pay for health care — necessary for the most basic freedom, the freedom to live — is not a freedom agenda.
Champions of the neoliberal order, moreover, too often fail to recognize that one person’s freedom is another’s unfreedom — or, as Isaiah Berlin put it, freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep. Freedom to carry a gun might mean death to those who are gunned down in the mass killings that have become an almost daily occurrence in the United States. Freedom not to be vaccinated or wear masks might mean others lose the freedom to live.
Stiglitz provides examples of the various ways government regulation can enhance, rather than impede, individual freedom, and he ends by defining what he calls “progressive capitalism” (what I would call the “mixed economy.”) The goal of any economic system ought to be the creation of a broadly shared prosperity. The Isaiah Berlin quote captures the essential problem we face in today’s crony capitalist economy: we have a government that has been solicitous of the freedom and well-being of the wolves, and we’ve ignored the negative effects on the sheep.
Only government can (1) provide a social and political infrastructure accessible to all, and (2) prevent the wealthy and powerful from dominating and harming others. Neoliberalism fails on both counts.
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Let’s Talk About Economic Performance

One of the recurring questions on presidential polls asks respondents for their perceptions of economic performance.
Although Kamala has bested Trump in a couple of recent polls, it has really rankled me that so few Americans have recognized and/or appreciated either the damage Trump did to the economy or the Biden administration’s incredibly successful management of it–management that financial markets and economists acknowledge was masterful, and brought the U.S. out of the pandemic downturn faster (and better) than any other country.
Knowledgable observers compare Biden’s performance to that of FDR. He will go down in history as one of America’s most consequential Presidents. In my humble opinion, the lack of popular recognition of his performance is attributable to his relative lack of oratorical skills–if Biden had the oratorical gifts of an Obama, perhaps a general public fixated on celebrity, salesmanship and hype (and too lazy to consult evidence and data) would have appreciated the extent of his administration’s accomplishments.
The Democratic convention got underway Monday, and in his speech, Biden justifiably reminded listeners of his “greatest hits.” In a column about the convention and the speech, Jennifer Rubin focused on Biden’s economic and foreign policy performance, noting the historic pieces of legislation Biden managed to pass even when the House of Representatives was in the hands of a partisan–and looney– GOP: measures on infrastructure, microchip manufacturing, and green energy investment. Cost controls on insulin and a variety of prescription drugs for Medicare patients. A massive operation to immunize Americans against the coronavirus, despite what Rubin called–accurately– “irrational and destructive” Republican opposition. That operation saved thousands of lives in addition to allowing the U.S. economy to recover. 

These domestic successes accompanied equally impressive foreign policy accomplishments: “repairing and expanding NATO, arming Ukraine, reestablishing the United States’ credibility on the international stage, new and reinvigorated alliances to check China’s power).”

Kamala Harris has been part of the Biden administration, and can be expected to continue the policy approaches that have been so successful. There will be some “tweaks,” but she has administration “bragging rights.” She is running on four years of demonstrated, excellent performance.

So, you might ask, what are Donald Trump’s “bragging rights?” My sister recently listed them, and seeing them all in one list was–shall we say–edifying:

First President in history to serve a full term and increase the deficit every year he was in office.

First President in history to maintain a debt to GDP ratio over 100% for his entire term

Highest annual budget deficit.

Most added to the national debt in a single term.
Most new unemployment claims.
Largest single day point drop in the history of the Dow.
First President in almost a century to lose jobs in his first term.
Longest government shutdown in history (and he did that while his own party controlled both chambers of Congress).
In addition to that dismal economic performance, Trump was also the first President to lose the popular vote twice, the first to maintain a net negative approval rating for his entire term, first to be impeached twice (with bipartisan support for his conviction after both impeachments) and, as we know, the President with the most indictments, guilty pleas, and criminal convictions of members of an administration.
The first to be a convicted felon.
The only people who cheered Trump’s economic policies were the super-rich, who benefitted from his tax cuts–cuts that placed the tax burden squarely on the middle class, and further enriched the wealthiest Americans.
You know what to do. VOTE BLUE.
Listen to the nuns….
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Why Red States Are In the Red

A recent column by Michael Hicks in the Capitol Chronicle focused on a data-point that is far too often overlooked. It seems that calling Republican-led states “Red” is entirely appropriate, because most of them are in the red.

(Before going into the details of the column, I want to note that the Chronicle is part of an encouraging trend here in my city–a trend that is also showing up elsewhere. As I have repeatedly noted, the dearth of local reporting has had a very negative effect on democracy and the sense of community. In city after city, local newspapers have either disappeared or–as in Indianapolis–turned into “ghost papers” that no longer cover the sorts of things citizens need to know about their local institutions. Recently, however, we’ve seen several new media entrants that propose to fill the gap–including Axios Indianapolis, The Mirror, State Affairs, and the Chronicle.) 

But back to Hicks. He begins this particular column by noting that from the end of World War II up until about 1980, economic differences among the states bore little relationship to the partisanship of those states.

In fact, if you picked just one variable that best measured prosperity — per capita income — the was no correlation with political party. There were rich states led by Republican and Democratic governors and poor states led by both as well.

Over the past 40 years, that changed. Today, 19 of the 20 richest states are solidly Democratic, while 19 of the 20 poorest states are solidly Republican. It is clear that the GOP has become the party of poor states, while the Democrats have become the party of prosperous states.

The question, as usual, is “why?”

One big culprit is that political parties changed, erasing regional differences. Up until the late 90’s, there were conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans. That is no longer the case, so as states began to align with national politics platforms.

This trend more extreme today. Even races for local government tend to be highly nationalized. State and local issues are often ignored in primary or general elections. This homogeneity of national politics naturally tends to cause parties to have success in places that are more similar – polarizing states between parties.

A second trend is the sorting by politics increasingly effects household location choice. Though much sorting happens at the local level, the nationalization of politics means that state borders now effect household location choice.

The nationalization of politics means that each party has been staking out positions that appeal to majorities in key states. In this way, politicians are choosing their voters. The sorting of households reflects voters choosing political landscapes they prefer, on economic, fiscal and cultural issues. This trend appears to be accelerating.

That last paragraph reminded me of the demographic observations in Bill Bishop’s 2009 book The Big Sort.

Hicks acknowledges that there is never one simple reason for economic performance, but he also hones in on what appears to be the largest cause of the disparity between Red and Blue states: public education.

The cause of the economic divergence is because human capital — education, innovation and invention — replaced manufacturing and movement of goods as the primary source of prosperity. This means that places that grow will necessarily need to develop and attract more human capital. But the educational policies pursued by both parties are vastly different, with very different outcomes.

The GOP has largely tried to adopt broad school choice, and cut funding to both K-12 and higher education. The Democrats have largely eschewed school choice, but amply funded both K-12 and higher education. Seventeen of the 20 best funded states are Democratically controlled and 17 out of the 20 lowest funded states are GOP strongholds. Educational outcomes between these states are stark.

Educational attainment differences alone explain about three quarters of the difference in per capita income between states….

Voucher programs haven’t just failed to generate superior test scores. They’ve impoverished our critically important public school systems –and kept Red states like Indiana poor. As Hicks concludes,

Economists have been saying this for three decades, without any effect in poor states. The prognosis is simply that poor states — like Indiana — are going to get poorer for decades to come. While rich states will grow richer.

Not that Indiana’s terrible legislature will take note….

I recently discussed the abysmal effects of voucher programs on the podcast co-hosted by Morton Marcus and John Guy: Who Gets What? 

If you have some time, tune in.

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