Month: November 2008

Barack Obama Election 2008 Obama Politics The Web and Technology

The Surge that Took Down the Red Cross

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date November 13, 2008
1 Comment on The Surge that Took Down the Red Cross

[digg-reddit-me]Evan Thomas of Newsweek has written up an excellent series of seven articles from the research of a team of reporters given behind-the-scenes access to the McCain and Obama campaigns on the condition that they not publish anything until after the election. At the end of the fourth article, he explains an incident that demonstrates the sheer organizing power of the Obama operation:

At the end of August, as Hurricane Gustav threatened the coast of Texas, the Obama campaign called the Red Cross to say it would be routing donations to it via the Red Cross home page. Get your servers ready—our guys can be pretty nuts, Team Obama said. Sure, sure, whatever, the Red Cross responded. We‘ve been through 9/11, Katrina, we can handle it.

The surge of Obama dollars crashed the Red Cross Web site in less than 15 minutes.

Tags Evan Thomas, Newsweek, Red Cross

Barack Obama Domestic issues Economics Election 2008 Liberalism McCain Obama Political Philosophy Politics

Obama & Trade

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date November 13, 2008

I’ve heard from a few people that there is a growing concern that Obama is anti-free-trade.

This concern has a basis in Obama’s record – mainly from his rhetoric in Ohio during the primary fight with Hillary Clinton and to some extent the fact that he is a Democrat and needed the support of the labor unions. But to a large degree the exaggerated fears of many businessmen comes from comments made by the Republicans during the campaign – as John McCain’s campaign was first (ridiculously) calling Obama “the most protectionist candidate that the Democratic Party has ever fielded” before his campaign went on to call Obama a supporter of comprehensive sex education for kindergartner, a Marxist, a socialist, and a friend to terrorists.

This has led to a series of conflicting impressions of Obama and his position on trade – from statements during the Ohio campaign that “we can’t keep passing unfair trade deals like NAFTA that put special interests over workers’ interests” to his later point – when asked about his rhetoric about NAFTA during the Ohio campaign that, “Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified.” Indeed – despite the appeal of populist protectionist rhetoric (some 60% of Americans think free trade and NAFTA have been bad for people like them), Obama chose to attack protectionism in the general campaign: “[n]ot only is it impossible to turn back the tide of globalization, but efforts to do so can make us worse off.” At least in part, Obama’s friendlier stance towards free trade has to be understood as a tactical move on his part as he was certain to be to the left of McCain on this issue. McCain has never even made an issue out of any labor or environmental protections relating to the issue and would have had serious problems with economic conservatives if he moved to the left on this issue as they never trusted him to begin with.

Even aside from the change in rhetoric, there is considerable evidence that has led numerous reasonable observers to believe Obama is, in fact, in favor of trade even as he is concerned with some of free trade’s side effects on American workers and the economy. Obama, for one, described himself as a “pro-growth, free-market guy.” Even the arch-conservative Weekly Standard was forced to concede in the midst of the general election campaign that Obama’s two main economic advisors Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee, while liberals, were “centrist, pro-free traders.” George F. Will, my favorite columnist and a paleo-conservative – described Goolsbee as the best sort of liberal economist his conservative leanings could imagine:

Goolsbee no doubt has lots of dubious ideas – he is, after all, a Democrat – about how government can creatively fiddle with the market’s allocation of wealth and opportunity. But he seems to be the sort of person – amiable, empirical and reasonable – you would want at the elbow of a Democratic president, if such there must be.

Naomi Klein attacked these two herself as ideologically impure in a piece in The Nation magazine – and while I find Klein to be provactive, I think a pro-free trader could hardly have a better endorsement than an attack by Klein.

Obama’s official position on trade has remained consistent – even as his focus has changed over the course of the campaign. What has struck me about all of Obama’s positions is the extent to which they begin with an appreciation of conservative ideas – as his health care plan works within the market rather than by goverment fiat; as his stance on affirmative action reflects traditional concerns about whether we are trying to ensure the equality of oppurtunity or equality of the ends. His views on trade seem similar – as he embraces free markets and free trade – but wants to mitigate the negative side effects.

The Council on Foreign Relations, a group with a considerable interest in free trade, vouched for Obama’s support:

Sen. Obama (D-IL) generally supports free trade policies, though he has expressed concern about free trade agreements that do not include labor and environmental protections.

Tim Hanson and Nate Weisshaar of the Motley Fool probably best described the most reasonable concerns about Obama’s record on trade in their piece asking “Will Obama End Global Trade?” (the answer was, “Nope.”):

While Obama’s campaign literature will tell you that his goals are fairer trade, more assistance for displaced American workers, and greater global environmental protections, there is some global worry that an Obama administration might impose and sustain protectionist policies in order to reward labor union support for his campaign and get our economy back on its feet.

As private sector labor unions have been decimated in the global economy, and as Obama and the liberal consensus views them as part of the solution rather than a major problem, it’s hard to see exactly what steps Obama can take to rejuvenate unions.

In the end, the best way to understand and predict Obama’s trade policies is as part of his view of economics in general. Obama’s economic positions are consistent with a broad Democratic consensus that has emerged in the past decade – bringing together the two warring sides of the Clintonian era, short-handed as Robert Rubin versus Robert Reich for Clinton’s Labor and Treasury Secretaries. The Rubin school believed in expanding free trade, reducing deficits, encouraging overall growth without regard to it’s distribution, and deregulation. The Reich school believed in protecting labor unions, mitigating the effects of globalization through an expanded safety net and job-retraining programs, environmentalism, and was concerned with inequality. Over the past decade, many figures on both sides of this ideological divide have found worth in the ideas of their one-time competitors – as David Leonhardt’s New York Times Magazine piece called “Obamanomics” explained.

This Democratic consensus views free trade as a positive force in the world – but one that has numerous side effects that are negative. The role of government in this picture is to try to mitigate the negative effects of free trade – especially those temporary effects of the transition to a more globalized economy. Most of Obama’s domestic agenda is designed to accomplish these purposes – from the investment in a green energy industry to investment in infrastructure to health care reform to financial reforms. His nuanced position on trade reflects this same desire – to mitigate the destabilizing effects of globalization while acknowledging it’s benefits.

Tags Austan Goolsbee, CBS News, Council on Foreign Relations, David Leonhardt, Free trade, George F. Will, Jason Furman, Labor unions, Motley Fool, NAFTA, Naomi Klein, Nate Weisshaar, New York Times, Obamanomics, Robert Reich, Robert Rubin, The Nation, The Weekly Standard, Tim Hanson

Barack Obama History

Words of Advice from an Illinois Politician

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date November 13, 2008

Andrew Sullivan pulls a relevant quote from another moment of crisis.

Tags Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Sullivan

Barack Obama Humor

Which Emanuel Brother Are You?

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date November 13, 2008

Take the quiz on Wonkette.

Tags Rahm Emanuel

Barack Obama Economics The Opinionsphere

Krugman’s Hope: Franklin Delano Obama

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date November 12, 2008

Not being an economist, I find it a lot harder to argue with Paul Krugman now that he has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. That makes him a certified top expect – and I am a mere amateur. And while the other Nobel prizes have made some real boners (Yassir Arafat and the Nobel Peace Prize?), the economics prize doesn’t have the same reputation. (Although the award given to Myron Scholes and Robert Merton, the inventors of the “financial weapons of mass destruction” – derivatives – in 1997, the same year the hedge fund they had helped create went spectacularly bankrupt – seems quite the bad decision today.)

Regardless of prizes though, Krugman’s piece today makes some important counter-points I had not heard regarding the lack of efficacy of FDR’s New Deal. Certainly, my reading of history made it clear that the New Deal had not lifted America out of the Great Depression – but I had never found convincing the traditional conservative explanation that the problem was FDR’s expansion of government. After all, Hoover’s refusal to expand the government had not reigned in the Depression – and it was the massive government expansion called World War II that finally broke America out of the Depression. I’m willing to concede the conservative point that some of FDR’s government interventions may have backfired – such as interference in wages and prices – but as Krugman points out in his column, many of FDR’s reforms have lasted to this day and helped mitigate the effects of the current financial crisis – from Social Security to federal deposit insurance.

Krugman posits that FDR failed to get us out of the Depression because he did too little rather than too much. He points out that overall government spending did not increase as much as is commonly understood:

The effects of federal public works spending were largely offset by other factors, notably a large tax increase, enacted by Herbert Hoover, whose full effects weren’t felt until his successor took office. Also, expansionary policy at the federal level was undercut by spending cuts and tax increases at the state and local level.

Which leads Krugman to the conclusion that:

The economic lesson is the importance of doing enough. F.D.R. thought he was being prudent by reining in his spending plans; in reality, he was taking big risks with the economy and with his legacy. My advice to the Obama people is to figure out how much help they think the economy needs, then add 50 percent. It’s much better, in a depressed economy, to err on the side of too much stimulus than on the side of too little.

Krugman has me convinced of his thesis for now. It certainly makes more sense than the alternative explanations I have heard about the New Deal and the Great Depression. But the last word – and the final prescription – should come from Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself:

It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

This is my hope for an Obama presidency – one that I saw as far back as December when I posted this quote – and one that his campaign has born out.

Tags FDR, Frankling Delano Roosevelt, Great Depression, Myron Scholes, New Deal, Paul Krugman, Robert Merton, The New York Times

Election 2012 Jindal

Jindal 2012 (cont.)

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date November 12, 2008

I wouldn’t want Bobby Jindal to be president. He’s too far to the right for me and seems very sympathetic to christianism (also known as politicized “christianity”), which I find morally repugnant.

But – as a reform-minded governor of a notoriously corrupt state, as a policy wonk, and as someone who has demonstrated fine political judgment – the Republican party has many worse choices.

I do think that Jindal will have some trouble navigating his way past three political realities in the Republican party.

The first is nativism. McCain’s campaign certainly struck a nativist chord at times – and certainly that was some significant part of his electoral appeal – as the extreme remarks reported at many of his rallies attest. I do not think John McCain is personally a racist (or nativist) and I don’t believe most Republicans or McCain voters are either. But some significant percentage of McCain’s support seemed to be based at least partially on racial animus. Certainly there are racist and nativist elements in the Democratic party – and they are part of the reason it was such a struggle for Obama to gain the support of the full party. Jindal would need to face a similar task – except one complicated by the fact that the Republican party has become – especially since this past election – the party for nativists.

The second current within the Republican party that could complicate Jindal’s rise within the party is anti-elitism. Jindal might actually be able to use this anti-elitism as a tool in a general election campaign – calling on populism more easily than the more technocratic-oriented Democrats while still maintaining respectability with his expertise and knowledge. But within the party itself, expert opinion has been demonized – as David Brooks has noticed. The Bush administration itself is a demonstration of the elevation of politics over expertise – as it censored scientists in official reports and ignored even the expertise of the military in it’s ill-planned invasion or Iraq and ignored the nation-building experts at the State Department as it planned for the aftermath of the invasion.

Jindal is – by most accounts – a wonk, a expert with detailed knowledge of arcane policy matters. I don’t know how he incorporates this knowledge into his style – but if he can’t figure out how to make his point, and then, winking conclude, “You betcha” with a smile or a similar faux-folksy tic – it’ll be tough for him to win in the Republican party.

The third factor complicating Jindal’s potential in 2012 is that the Republican party has almost always gone to the next in line in nominations for the presidency. How else can one explain how Gerald Ford beat out Ronald Reagan in 1976 or how Bob Dole beat all comers in 1996? It’s hard to say who is next in line to assume leadership of the Republican party today – but it’s not Jindal. A plausible case could be made for Sarah Palin, or Mitt Romney, or even Mike Huckabee.

Jindal though had the good sense to stay out of this toxic national environment for his party (h/t Andrew Sullivan):

While the official reason that Jindal took his name out of contention was his lack of a desire to leave the Louisiana governorship, there was also real trepidation within his political inner circle that Jindal might wind up as the pick – McCain was attracted to his comprehensive health-care knowledge – and be caught up in what they believed to be a less-than-stellar campaign that could pin a loss on Jindal without much ability to change or control the direction of the contest.

Although this gives Jindal an advantage in the longer term, it puts him advantage in 2012. The smart move would be for him to run for president in 2012 and aim to come up as a strong number two – and presuming a Democratic reelection, this sets him up for 2016 with national exposure and a decently long track record. Of course, if Obama’s presidency is widely seen as a disaster in 2012, Jindal might be wise to aim to win the nomination. But even then – given the difficulties of unseating a sitting president up for reelection, and the unlikelihood of the Republican party turning again to a loser of a national race – it might still make sense for Jindal to aim for 2016.

All that said – Jindal is the candidate who is the best of the field for the Republicans come 2012 – and his fight in the Republican party is one I can sympathize with.

My one non-policy concern about Jindal – from my limited knowledge – is what I understand to be his christianist politics. It seems that this is quickly becoming a requirement for a Republican aiming for national leadership – as John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Fred Thompson found out. But I find this conflation of religion and politics to be discomfiting – and would prefer a more libertarian-minded conservatism. Jindal’s conservatism though seems to owe more to his religious faith than his desire for limited government.

Tags Anti-elitism, Bobby Jindal, Nativism

Law

What’s Next: The Court

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date November 12, 2008

Before the election, some Republicans were trying to gin up some controversy by imputing obscure and extreme judicial views on Barack Obama – focusing especially on remarks he made in July 2007, described here by The Hill:

“[Chief] Justice Roberts said he saw himself just as an umpire,” Obama said. “But the issues that come before the court are not sports; they’re life and death. We need somebody who’s got the empathy to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom.”

Obama said that 95 percent of cases can be judged on intellect, but that the other 5 percent are the most important ones.

“In those 5 percent of cases, you’ve got to look at what is in the justice’s heart, what’s their broader vision of what America should be,” Obama said, adding that justices should understand what it’s like to be gay, poor or black as well.

Steven Calebrisi, founder of the Federalist Society, wrote a very influential piece appearing in the Wall Street Journal in which he combined the most extreme possible interpretations of the statement about empathy (first taken out of context) with a somewhat bizarre (but politically very useful for the McCain camp) interpretation of remarks Obama made in a 2001 radio interview about the Warren Court. This led Calebrisi to the grandiose conclusion that:<

Nothing less than the very idea of liberty and the rule of law are at stake in this election. We should not let Mr. Obama replace justice with empathy in our nation’s courtrooms.

Putting aside the fact that Calebrisi did not find it necessary to raise his voice against those who used his own legal theory – that of the unitary executive – to actually and explicitly place the president above the law, Calebresi’s concern here is misplaced, as I think you can see just by reading the passage above from The Hill.

But if Calebresi’s half-assed op-ed doesn’t help us understand who Obama would appoint to the Court, then what does?

After all, Supreme Court appointments can be a president’s greatest legacy – affecting policy for many years after a president has gone.

Potential Supreme Court Justices

Obama, as a former constitutional law professor, has obviously put a great deal of thought into who he might appoint to the Supreme Court. Many names have been floated – politicians like Jennifer Granholm, Janet Napolitano, Hillary Clinton, and Ken Salazar; academics such as Harold Koh, Elena Kagan, and Cass Sunstein as wel as a number of current judges. With Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens likely to retire during Obama’s term, and David Souter wishing – according to Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Nine – to withdraw back to the19th century lifestyle he enjoys in New Hampshire away from the Court, Obama could get three – and if Obama is reelected in 2012 – even four nominations to the Court. Justice Scalia will undoubtably do everything possible to avoid retiring during Obama’s presidency, but he is getting older as well – and would be 80 by 2016. Justice Kennedy would be 80 as well – but he does seem to so enjoy being the swing vote that it is hard to see him ever leaving the Court.

Superficial factors in choosing the justices

Any justices Obama appoints will undoubtably be younger than is traditional – as Bush recently appointed two conservatives in their 50s in Roberts and Alito.
It is also likely that, as the Supreme Court has traditionally been factionalized by race, religion, and gender – from the mid-1800s when there was a “Jewish seat” on the Court and a “Catholic seat” to focus on keeping women and African Americans since the 1980s – Obama will want to appoint at least one woman and on Hispanic to the Court.

The Dynamics of the Court

Obama has spoken of how Justice Warren – as a former politician – was able to win majorities by winning over the other justices. Jeffrey Toobin, writing about the Court over the past decade, has described Sandra Day O’Conner having a similar role during her tenure. In fact, since the Court’s founding, former politicians have had a way of dominating the stately and apolitical Court – beginning with John Marshall. Which is why the first appointment Obama makes should be a former politician – probably a woman. Especially if John Paul Stevens, the unofficial leader of the liberal wing of the Court, retires, Obama will want a strong personality to take his place. As Janet Napolitano is the favorite to become Attorney General, that leaves Jennifer Granholm, Governor of Michigan and a former state attorney general as the most logical choice.

Beyond this first choice of a female politician, Obama’s options are more open.

For his second nomination I would reccomend an academic – Elena Kagan, dean of Harvard Law, or Harold Koh, dean of Yale Law, would be the logical choices here – as both are young and prominent liberals in academia. Koh’s name has apparently been generating real buzz as a potential Obama pick.

Certain to be on any short list is Cass Sunstein is an important legal scholar and a close friend of Obama’s. He recently wrote a book with the conservative economist Richard Thaler about libertarian paternalism.

There is one potential candidate I have not heard mentioned though – and especially if Scalia were to retire from the bench, this former Scalia law clerk, former Reaganite, and former libertarian would be the perfect choice – Lawrence Lessig, whose innovative work founding Creative Commons and now the Change Congress movement, and whose influential work on internet law, copyright and corruption have made him a legal star.

Libertarianism v. Liberalism

With these four appointments, Obama could profoundly alter the Supreme Court’s ideological make-up – by replacing the traditional statist liberals and Rockefeller Republicans on the Court making up it’s current left wing with a charismatic pragmatist, and other liberal, and two libertarian-influenced liberals.