Experience Really Does Matter

When I grow up (like that will ever happen!), I want to be Gail Collins.

The witty New York Times columnist has an uncanny ability to hit political nails on their pointy little heads. Most recently, she considered the emergence of Presidential candidates like Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson, both of whom are touting their total lack of political experience as a reason to vote for them.

Virtually every elected president in American history — not counting the occasional military hero — made his way to the top by getting elected to other offices first. There are a couple of exceptions who just served in the cabinet, like Herbert Hoover. We can all look forward to hearing a candidate vow to return us to the golden days of the Hoover administration.

(Here in Indianapolis, we have some recent experience with a chief executive who knew nothing about politics or the governance of a city–or even what a city ought to look like– when he was elected. His steep learning curve has cost Indianapolis in numerous ways.)

When she was in business, I doubt that Fiorina would have hired a high-level executive who had no experience relevant to the position being filled, so one wonders why she thinks her own lack of experience somehow qualifies her for the presidency. (I won’t even raise the issue of her ignominious departure from Hewlett-Packard, after controversies which suggest she wasn’t all that successful in the private sector, either.)

I’ll leave the final word to the better wordsmith. As Collins wrote

People who run for president boasting that they aren’t politicians are frequently just trying to compensate for a lack of political skill. Carson (who presumably wants to run government like an operating room) is going to appeal to the folks who think the military is plotting to take over Texas, but otherwise, his only political gift seems to be for making outrageous statements. Fiorina ran for the Senate in 2010 and was beaten by Barbara Boxer, who was thought to be a vulnerable incumbent until Fiorina got hold of her, racking up a grand total of 42 percent of the vote.

On the plus side, Fiorina’s campaign produced one of the all-time great attack videos, in which her more moderate primary opponent was depicted as a Demon Sheep, portrayed by a man crawling across the grass with what looked like a wooly rug over his back and a piece of cardboard on his face. After that it was downhill all the way.

If you’re shopping for candidates with no experience in the business they want to lead, I’d say at least go for the one with the Demon. But really, there are smarter buys.

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Privatization, Truth-Telling and Easy Answers

As I previously noted, I’ve been bemused by the level of interest in prison privatization displayed by my students this semester. The subject of contracting out in general, however, is a staple of my Law and Policy course.

Use of the term “privatization” is a misnomer; the impression is that a service or task is no longer being provided by government. That is rarely if ever the case, at least in the U.S. The term typically refers to a decision by a government agency to contract with a nongovernmental business or organization to provide a government benefit. Government continues to use tax dollars to pay for that service or benefit, and remains responsible for its proper delivery.

Sometimes, contracting out makes a lot of sense. Sometimes it doesn’t. So our class discussions are not “should we or shouldn’t we;” instead, we consider when and how. 

Unfortunately, in far too many venues, what should be a thoughtful consideration of relevant factors has become yet another ideological litmus test, with predictable consequences. An example:

When he was governor of Florida, Jeb Bush privatized veterans’ health benefits. It didn’t go well. As CNN reported

Bush’s experience outsourcing veterans’ nursing homes in Florida was a case study in privatization’s pitfalls. By the time it was over, Florida officials determined the state could provide higher-quality care at a better price for taxpayers.

Despite what should have been a sobering experience (click through for the details), Bush’s campaign continues to insist on the virtues of privatization, and claim it is “the remedy” for the problems experienced by the Veterans Administration.

I’ve picked on Bush, but there are hundreds of other examples, because we voters reward politicians who have bumper-sticker remedies for what ails us–politicians selling simple answers to complicated problems. (Are teenagers dropping out or getting pregnant? Put prayer back in schools! Is the economy underperforming? Cut taxes!) (Actually, “cut taxes” seems to be the one-size-fits-all solution for far too many politicians. Measles epidemic? Potholes? Crime wave? Whatever the problem, the reflexive answer is “Cut taxes!”)

The problem is, simple answers sell. We voters are far too ready to buy snake-oil, and far too reluctant to accept the reality that sometimes–not always, but often–the real answers begin with a recognition that “it’s complicated” and “it depends.”

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Why We Can’t Reform Bad Policies

It’s the end of the semester, and like all professors at this time of the year, I am slogging through research papers and final exams, and complaining about otherwise bright students who can’t write a grammatically correct, properly spelled sentence. Or follow instructions. Or…

I’ll survive. (Although some students probably won’t…)

So long as their papers focus on the intersection of law and policy, I allow my students to explore whatever subjects interest them. For reasons I don’t understand, this often results in “waves” of papers addressing the same topic–in past years I’ve gotten several papers on the death penalty, or gun control, or euthanasia. This year, the favorites have been marijuana legalization and private prisons. (Students endorse legalizing pot; they object to privatizing prisons.)

The papers on private prisons compared inmate treatment, costs, oversight–the sorts of issues you would expect undergraduates to identify. But one of them also focused on a less-obvious consequence of prisons as business: lobbying by the “big guys” for more stringent punishments.

As the Washington Post recently reported

The two largest for-profit prison companies in the United States – GEO and Corrections Corporation of America – and their associates have funneled more than $10 million to candidates since 1989 and have spent nearly $25 million on lobbying efforts. Meanwhile, these private companies have seen their revenue and market share soar. They now rake in a combined $3.3 billion in annual revenue and the private federal prison population more than doubled between 2000 and 2010, according to a report by the Justice Policy Institute….

[S]everal reports have documented instances when private-prison companies have indirectly supported policies that put more Americans and immigrants behind bars – such as California’s three-strikes rule and Arizona’s highly controversial anti-illegal immigration law – by donating to politicians who support them, attending meetings with officials who back them, and lobbying for funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Showing just how important these policies are to the private prison industry, both GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America have warned shareholders that changes in these policies would hurt their bottom lines.

My students are quite properly critical of a system in which the profit motive, rather than public safety considerations, drive criminal justice policy.

I haven’t the heart to tell them that we live in an era when most policies aren’t the result of democratic deliberation informed by evidence and expertise — an era in which public policies are increasingly determined by campaign contributions and well-heeled lobbyists whose primary concern is for the bottom line–and screw the public good.

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A Message for Subscribers

Growth has its challenges…

Those of you who “subscribe” to this blog–who receive an email notice when a new item is posted–may have noticed that over the months, as the number of subscribers has grown, those notifications have come later in the day. The platform being used to send them could only handle 80 or so an hour.

My webmaster–aka my long-suffering and patient son–has migrated the subscription list to a different emailer. Some of you may have noticed a change or disruption this morning, when that change was made. We think we’ve addressed those issues, but please contact me if you fail to receive future email notifications.

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Why Hoosiers Don’t Vote

Yesterday, I took part in a “Pancakes and Politics” discussion hosted by the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce. There were three of us on the panel–yours truly, Beth White (former Marion County Clerk) and Abdul Shabazz (local radio personality and commentator/provocateur).

Abdul has actually posted the whole thing, so if you like beating your head against the wall, you can click here.

The panel was focused on civic engagement–especially voting–and as one might expect, there were a number of explanations offered for Indiana’s continaully abysmal turnout. (A pathetic 7% turned out for yesterday’s Indianapolis primary.) I’ll leave most of those for another day, but today I want to talk about a comment made by Beth White, because it really struck me.

Beth ticked off the numerous barriers that Indiana erects and noted that voting here is thus more difficult than it is elsewhere. Abdul disagreed. (Any election law expert will tell you Beth was right. Sorry, Abdul.) Her response was perfect: she pointed out that Indiana makes it easy to pay taxes, to get your auto license, and to do other things that policymakers want to encourage. It’s pretty clear– given the fact that our Voter ID law is the nation’s strictest, our polls are the first to close, we refuse to establish convenient voting centers or to allow vote-by-mail–that state government is not interested in encouraging people to vote.

Especially egregious is the refusal to allow the use of government-issued picture IDs to verify identity if those IDs don’t have an expiration date.

As Beth noted, it’s perfectly appropriate to ensure that voters are who they say they are–but that interest in preventing (virtually non-existent) voter fraud doesn’t require disallowing identification issued by government agencies that is widely accepted elsewhere. (According to the Secretary of State’s webpage, “noncompliant” identifications  include “An ID issued by the US Department of Defense, a branch of the uniformed services, the Merchant Marine, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (or Veterans Administration), or the Indiana National Guard.”)

It’s just another petty annoyance for those of us with drivers licenses (like Abdul), but a hassle–and a message–for the elderly or disabled or others who don’t drive.

The message? Stay home. (Thanks to the safe districts created by gerrymandering, there’s no contest in most parts of the state anyway.)

After all, if God had intended us to vote, She’d have given us candidates.

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