Oratorical Animal

James Arnt Aune: An Intellectual Appreciation

When I learned the news of Jim’s death, I could think of nothing better to do than to read his work. Like Jim, I am a reader. I think he thought as I do: when someone takes the time to read your words, to think about what it is that you have said, it is a great honor. And so, I picked Selling the Free Market off my shelf and settled in for the day. I’m glad that I did because the book reminded me that his voice will always be with us; I could hear him in line after line. But it also reminded me that we have lost a gifted and discerning student of rhetoric.

As a self-proclaimed, old-fashioned curmudgeon, Jim began as everyone should always begin, with a definition: "Rhetoric," he argued, "is the process of justifying decisions under conditions of uncertainty" (4). Both clauses mattered to him. In my experience, little angered Jim more than arbitrary decisions, whether from a president, a dean or a school board. At the heart of collective life, he believed, stood the need for reasoned assent; democracy demanded that people justify their choices and actions.

Equally important, those choices occurred under conditions of uncertainty. Like his mentor and advisor Tom Farrell, Aune viewed rhetoric as a practice that manages contingency–that which sometimes is and sometimes is not the case. There are no eternal truths or narratives, excepting, perhaps, the selfishness of a robber baron’s heart. Rather, rhetoric is a mode of collective action that tries to define and address communal problems under conditions of radical contingency; we simply do not know for sure what will work, what will make people’s lives better. That is why we deliberate.

Yet, as Farrell notes, we do not act in a vacuum, either. We have social knowledge ready to hand, the sets of usually implicit assumptions and languages that craft how we perceive, address and change the world around us. There are many ways and means of social knowledge, but I think Aune emphasized a couple in his work.

He focused on what I would call a broad social exigence, for lack of a better term, as a spur for rhetorical action. In other words, rather than looking to a narrow (Bitzerian) immediate rhetorical problem–say, the need to propose and pass a budget or to proclaim the state of the union–Aune turned instead to persistent cultural and societal issues. In Selling the Free Market, for instance, he addressed the concern animating much of his scholarly life: the transition from mid-century to late capitalism, the need to understand and grasp what he also termed "globalization." This was, he believed, a felt, material phenomenon, one that conditioned and animated a variety of political and cultural rhetoric. We knew our world was changing around us; we needed to understand and address that fact.

If social knowledge offered us stylized arguments for defining societal problems, it also offered set and available languages or ideologies to address and/or resolve them. The one that infuriated Aune through much of his life was that of free market economics or, as he called one aspect of it, "the rhetoric of economic correctness" (4). That ideology, like all ideologies, sought to manage the contradictions it threw up, in terms of its "fit" to the world and in terms of itself as a language. The task of rhetorical criticism, Jim believed, "is to identify the contradictions in an ideology and thus show the opponents of that ideology effective ways to target arguments. In a more conventional scholarly sense, rhetorical criticism of ideology develops an account of how ideologies grow and decay in the presence of internal and external problems" (121-2). Thus, as an "old-fashioned socialist," Jim used the traditional tools of rhetoric (and please note how often he turned to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca in this book) in combination with what he thought was "Karl Marx’s greatest contribution to the human sciences, namely, his unmasking of the strategies used by apologists for capitalism to obscure alternative ways of seeing both the nature of work and the possibilities of justice" (4).

As a rhetorical critic and social democrat, then, Jim sought to demystify the language of capitalism, to expose its contradictions and provide activists with appropriate and useful lines of arguments in the quest for social justice. At the heart of his project was a faith in the people around him, in the people he met in everyday life, from his colleagues to auto mechanics, from philosophers to waiters. He wished to improve the conditions and possibilities of public debate because he believed, with John Dewey (xiii), that the more people understood the public address and material conditions that defined them and their place in life, the more tools they would have to change themselves and their circumstances.

To that project, he brought an extraordinary array of critical faculties. Jim Aune was the most well-read man that I have ever met and this book demonstrates that fact. Equally important, he brought that erudition to bear without bias or prejudice. For instance, as he noted in the Preface, "I have learned as much, however, from traditionalist conservative critics of market rhetoric as I have from those on the left" (xiii). If he could learn from them, Aune cited them.

He also often cited Raymond Williams’s concept of a "structure of feeling." The book reflects Aune’s commitment to exploring patterns of free market rhetoric. He moved from scholarly writing to popular scholarly writing to traditional political rhetoric to cyberpunk fiction. More so than most, he understood the value, similarities and differences that marked the genres of public life, from the philosophical manifesto to the political tract to the science fiction novel. He found ways to bring them all into his analysis while also respecting their respective roles in the culture. In other words, Jim was not a reductionist or a vulgar sort of Marxist.

Yet he was a social democrat and he saw far more clearly than most of us do the institutional and political roots of so much American public address. He often noted, for instance, the "sponsors" of works he studies: "What It Means to Be a Libertarian (1997) was subsidized by the American Heritage Institute and by the Bradley Foundation" (111). An economics textbook was "published by Oxford University Press," but "the writing was financed and the book’s publication was ‘arranged’ by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank based in New York City" (29). Uh-huh. Institutions matter.

His interest in using all that there is to use is readily apparent in Selling the Free Market. His chapter on "Economic Rhetoric and the Realist Style" is worth the price of admission; he sketched not only the arguments of economic realists such as Richard Posner, but also the dancing of the attitude that marked them: "They reflect a world-view that is pleased with itself for ‘seeing through’ the pretensions of poets, dreamers, and romantics. It is not difficult to imagine the right set of gestures for performing these utterances: the controlled, even vocal tone; the ironic shrug; the relaxed physical posture (perhaps accompanied by a few puffs on a pipe)" (40).

And as this passage indicates, Jim believed you could have fun with criticism. Few of us would have dared or imagined a critique of Robert Nozick’s libertarianism framed as a Star Trek: Next Generation episode or characterized the ridiculous "exaggerated sexuality" of Ayn Rand’s work as "something like an intellectual 1950s adolescent’s version of heavy-metal videos." I’ll miss that voice.

Please excuse this long post, but Jim’s work matters. He leaves us, I think, with two challenges. First, as he often indignantly proclaimed, rhetorical critics need to study economic rhetoric; we have sorely neglected the rhetorical history of labor unions, the economic speeches of presidents, the discursive constitution of key economic institutions such as the Federal Reserve or even the Treasury Department. If you want to honor Jim, write about the rhetoric of economics. Second, write about it with the ethical passion he brought to his work. People mattered. Jim never lost sight of the people public address affected. For instance, he made fun of Ayn Rand, but he was also clear about her ethical import: "To recognize yourself in the last pages of Atlas Shrugged, gloating over the ruins of civilization, may be fine if you are fantasizing about schoolyard bullies and snobbish cheerleaders receiving their comeuppance. But to turn such anger into a politics and a religion is not a fit preoccupation for adults. To be an adult is to recognize a sense of obligation: to a partner, a child, a community. Ayn Rand came to America because her relatives in Chicago helped her. They were an ordinary, hard-working, religious Jewish family. I wonder if she ever thanked them" (76).

Thank you, Jim.

P.S. As I finished this post, the St. Olaf Choir came on, singing "Amazing Grace." Thanks again, Jim.

 

Republicans, Rhetoric, Reality, and Deficits

As a professional rhetorician (a-hem, hmmm, fiddle with elbow patches on jacket), I hate the rhetoric/reality distinction so often used on cable news and elsewhere. I believe that we only know reality through language and our language, in turns, reflects, deflects and selects the world in which we live. That said, we still need a way to talk about well-intentioned deception. To coin a phrase.

Thus, we come to the Republican party and the federal government's budget deficit. I want to believe the words of the House Speaker, their presidential candidates, their congressional leadership, their op-ed writers and so forth and so on when they say that they care about the federal budget deficit and that they wish to do something about it. I do believe that they believe it. I also believe that this is a classic case of clashing goods.

Republicans wish to reduce the federal deficit. They wish to lower taxes on all Americans, but particularly on the assets held by wealthier Americans--those are the folks that make jobs through investments. They understand their responsibilities to the least among us and they wish to provide a social safety net. As do all political organizations, the Republican Party also wishes to gain and hold power. Republicans are well-aware that Americans love entitlement programs.

These are laudable goals. They are social goods and, in fact, many Democrats would agree with each one of these goals. In theory. But these goals inevitably come into conflict. Higher entitlement spending means higher deficits. Lower taxes means less federal revenue. To be at all meaningful, budget cuts will likely have to include entitlements. Raising taxes or cutting spending puts your political future at risk. You cannot have all of these goods at the same time.

When forced to choose, Republicans will inevitably abandon deficit reduction. This wasn't always true and it took some time for it to become true. President Reagan's initial tax cuts ballooned the deficit, but, with much assistance from Democrats, he passed a series of tax increases that reduced the deficit, a process that culminated under his successor, George H. W. Bush. He cut a tax and spending deal with majority Democratic support--conservatives denounced and abandoned him. The deficit declined, but Bush faced first a primary challenge and then lost his bid for reelection. Clinton, then, bit the bullet and raised taxes with no Republican help. With some help from Republicans early in his second term, he passed more spending cuts. The budget produced a surplus and we began paying down the national debt.

Since the election of George W. Bush, however, the Republican Party has completed its journey and abandoned any commitment to deficit reduction. Two big tax cuts, two wars, a new enetitlement benefit, none of which was paid for. The budget went from a surplus to a deficit in short order.

Once President Obama took office, Rs immediately blamed him for the deficit. Yet they have had numerous opportunities to lower the deficit and have failed to take a single one. Sure, most of those moments would have involved compromises, deals, trades. There are competing goods--they needed to choose between deficit reduction and higher taxes or lower Medicare spending, for instance. But there have been numerous moments over the past two years when they could have cut a deal with Obama. In fact, he would have cut a deal again over the past couple of weeks.

But each time, Republicans dropped deficit reduction. They rejected tax increases. They demanded entitlement cuts, but refused to specify them. Budget plans, like that of Paul Ryan, were passed that included more massive tax increases and no specified spending cuts. Even voucher proposals for entitlements hide the cuts--they can pretend they're just offering the voucher and gradually lower the amount. They can then say, "Well, it's not our fault that the insurance costs more." Each time, they shy away from actual deficit reduction. 

The plain fact of the matter is that liberals care far less about this--most believe that we need big spending now to goose the economy and deficit reduction later, once the economy has rebounded and we can get a sense of what the budget looks like with "normal" tax receipts. In fact, if that advice had been followed on the national, state, and local level, we'd probably be in much better shape now. But when the economy did boom, it was the Democratic Party that balanced the budget.

All I'm saying is this: if you truly care about deficit reduction, you need to understand the Republican Party leadership does not. They choose other priorities every single time, they've done so for a while, and they did so again with the fiscal cliff (that deal will LIFT the budget deficit). So, if you truly care, you need to change the Republican Party leadership or you need another political vehicle. These guys--and I mean guys--will choose tax cuts and entitlements and political power over deficit reduction Every. Single. Time. They'll talk the talk from Janesville to Miami. But they will not walk the walk.

 

Political Notes on Gun Control

Gun control is hard. Right now, it's likely to be considerably harder than it was in the early 90s when Bill Clinton took on the gun lobby and won. So, as we mourn those who died and think about what we can do about these massacres, several things to keep in mind, some of which I borrow from Jonathan Chait:

1) President Obama is not Gandalf the Grey. Or the White. He cannot wave his staff and end gun violence. I say this because far too many liberals believe that he can do so. During the health care and budget battles, for instance, Rachel Maddow repeatedly displayed her vast ignorance of such ideas as the "separation of powers" and assumed the president could cry, "This far and no farther." He can't. Note that he was careful to say, "within the powers of my office" or some such, in his speech. That line was directed at MSNBC.

2) The Republican Party controls the House of Representatives. They oppose nearly all forms of gun control. In addition, gerrymandering has put many of them in safe districts, places where the only real challenge to re-election comes from the RIGHT in primaries.

3) The Democratic Party controls the Senate but a number of Democrats from red states (Louisiana and Arkansas, for instance) and from gun-friendly swing states (New Mexico, I believe) are up for re-election in 2014. These are going to be very hard votes to get. In general, there are a # of Democratic Senators elected in the 2008 Obama wave, such as Al Franken. Asking them to make too many tough votes is a dicey proposition.

4) The House Republicans, moderate House Dems from swing districts, moderate Senate Dems listed above, and the moderate Rs will also be asked in the next month or so to raise taxes. Particularly for those House Rs, a voting record that includes tax increases and gun control practically begs for a Tea Party primary challenge. 

5) The gun lobby is legendarily effective, trailing only the Israeli lobby, perhaps, for effectiveness. To their expertise, add the Citizens United decision. A billionaire or multimillion gun enthusiast can now hold to account the few House members who might make passage possible, threaten them, and then, if they defy him/her, pour tens of millions of dollars into a HOUSE race. The members are rather aware of this fact.

What is to be done? I think James Madison would provide deceptively simple advice: Make it in the interest of those folks to vote for gun control. How?

1) Imitate the health care strategy--bring many stakeholders into the negotiations early in the process. It's messy, annoying, and screams "compromise" to the lefties, but it disarmed some BIG potential opponents on health care and might do the same here. It also means the package won't be perfect, just as Obamacare was not Medicare for all. It will be a compromise.

2) Provide political cover. Senator Joe Manchin (D--WV) might be a key. He's the most conservative Dem Senator and he LOVES him some guns. He's talking about assault weapons (when we say that, we mean a) semi-auto; b) high capacity magazines; c) small, high velocity ammo) and he could provide much cover.

3) Continuing political pressure from the president--relentless discussion of the issue in every forum. In particular, I think he needs to empahsize the fact, as he did in the speech, that he's now done this 4 times. This can't become the new normal. That has to be the mantra--this is not the new normal. This is not who we are. Calmly, but persistently, make this an identity issue--who are we?

4) Grass roots pressure--activate all kinds of netowrks to show House members that there are people in their districts willing to stand up on this issue, to be as single-minded in support of gun control as others are in opposition. Beforehand, pledge to wavering members and afterward, contribute to those who made the plunge. Show them the money.

One other important note. Those who support gun control are not jack-booted UN terrorists seeking to strip Americans of their way of life and leave them helpless before tyrants. Those who oppose gun control are not babykillers nor are they supporting child murderers. They are--we are--fellow Americans.

 

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance

I am a man of the liberal persuasion, and so my favorite blogs, my twitter feed and my facebook account are filled with cries for change, calls for legislation, claims that now we must act to halt the spread of these weapons. To delay, they say, is wrong, a betrayal of the dead. To argue we must not politicize a tragedy is to politicize the tragedy. "We" must not let "them" delay or defer the cause of justice. If Mike Huckabee is any indication, it's much the same among more conservative circles.

I gently but firmly ask for a pause. I love politics. I understand these impulses and I sympathize with them. But I also want some time--time to see and time to learn. 

I worry that when we rush like this, when we talk like this, when we demand politics, we diminish political life. After all, our fellow citizens suffered and died today. We do not know them but we share a life with them, one familiar in many of its outlines--a school, its teachers, their students, our students. We may not have walked those halls, but we've walked such halls. We may not know them, but we know of them. They are ours, our friends and fellows in the continuing journey of this nation. Before we cry for action in their names, perhaps we should see them and learn of them--their names, their lives, their dreams and cares.

Much as I love rhetoric, when we use tragedies like these as evidence, as "supporting materials" for "larger" claims, we inevitably diminish those who have died. There will undoubtedly be a time for that, as sad as it will be. But now is the time to grant our friends and fellows, our children, their own integrity, to see their lives as they lived them, to feel a loss and mourn the deaths and wonder at the courage and try--try--to ease an unimaginable pain.

There will always be bills, there will always be speeches, there will always be debate, and anger, and charge, and countercharge and us and them. If only for a time, let there also be peace in our hearts, love for our friends, grace for the suffering, and hope for the pained. Amen. 

 

Change and Stability in Campaign 2012

A number of pieces and posts by wonks such as Ezra Klein and others have made me think a bit about the ways in which we understand campaigns. Put simply, rhetorical critics, like political pundits and news anchors, have a strong, vested interest in the volatility of presidential campaigns. If the first debate mattered so much, then we matter when we study debates. If Bill Clinton's speech mattered so much, then we matter when we study such speeches. If rhetorical campaign activities matter so much, then we matter because we are rhetorical critics.

I do not wish to end my ability to make a living. But I do think we have a strong tendency to value change over stability, to see fragmentation where there is continuity, to perceive chaos when there is also linear progression. So, is there a middle ground here? How might we talk about campaigns such that we can also think about the stable discursive patterns or long term movements that help to craft an outcome? Given my biases, I tend to think in terms of linguistic or performative traditions--or, at least, find some way to talk about long, slow change in linguistic patterns and public perceptions. Let me name a few that I think either mattered in this campaign or will matter in the long term.

First, the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, have sought since at least the early nineties and perhaps earlier, to argue that they truly represented the middle class and to root that authority claim both in history and metaphor. For instance, Bill Clinton's 1992 nomination acceptance spoke for those who worked hard and played by the rules; Barack Obama spoke in nearly the same way at Osawatomie, KS in the Dec. 2011 kickoff to his presidential campaign. Significantly, both presidents many times called on the heritage of the Progressive Era--of Wilson and TR--as a warrant for their policies. Neither wished to overturn capitalism, both wished to reform it. The "rules of the game," the Progressive legacy also cast their Republican opponents as robber barons--rule breakers, defenders of wealth and despoilers of the wilderness. There is considerable evidence that this long rhetorical effort has finally succeeded.

Second, as many have commented, the Republicans have now become the party of Clint Eastwood--angry, old white men talking to empty chairs. The most immediate solution offered seems to be immigration reform; Republicans and some pundits now believe if they just change on that issue and nominate Marco Rubio, all will be well. There are always short term events or issues that change elections--9/11 and the 2002 midterms and 2004 general come to mind--but this kind of fix will not be easy. The Republicans spent much of the 70s and 80s pursuing "Reagan Democrats"--white, male ethnics--and they did so by raising the spectre of the Other--of the ghosts of Mississippi, when Reagan kicked off his 80 campaign in Philadelphia, MS, of Willie Horton in 1988, of the hands tearing up a job offer because a black man got it in the Helms/Gant NC Senate race, of welfare queens, of Islamofascists, of illegals, of food stamp queens, of takers. Those decades of discourse stick. Rs can change on an issue or two, but the culture of the party is clear. Much as the Democrats abandonment of gun control has failed to draw the NRA into their coalition, so, too, does it seem quite unlikely that Rubio alone can change the world.

3) A primary political fact of the '00s was, in the wildly misleading and popular metaphor, this: The Democrats are the mommy party; the Republicans are the Daddy party. Republicans have owned national security since roughly 1970. No more. In 2 of the last 3 elections (Bush 2004, McCain 2008), they nominated candidates who believed that the unilateral use of military force should be the first, not the last option. Heck, in the middle of the 2008 campaign, McCain wanted to save Georgia from the Russians--remember that? This year, the Rs nominated someone completely ignorant of foreign affairs, a man who badly fumbled both his trip abroad and his foreign policy debate. Meanwhile, Barack Obama has performed very well in this area; in fact, if anyone can claim the George H.W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft, James Baker mantle of cautious realism, it is Obama. 

No one paid much attention to foreign policy this election. But the long term trend is clear and will likely come back to haunt the Republican party. They simply aren't trusted to conduct foreign policy. That's a major shift in the electorate.

None of this foreshadows a new Democratic majority. These are simply shifts in discursive patterns over periods of time, slow, not fast, change, the culmination of rhetorical projects decades in the making that rhetorical critics should notice alongside a good or bad debate performance. And they are arguably more important than that performance. Or, at least, that performance should be viewed from within such rhetorical contexts.

Lifting The Second Term Curse

The punditocracy has spent the last couple of days advising disconsolate Republicans about the future of their party. Democrats have partied. The roles need to reverse if liberals are to sustain the gains they have made in 2012.

Put simply, second terms suck. With rare exceptions, presidents founder in their second terms and their political parties pay the price. From arrogance to scandal, from bad policy choices to reckless political acts, presidents generally have terrible trouble after they win reelection. There are partial exceptions; Reagan suffered a major scandal, but also signed tax reform into law and negotiated the end of the Cold War with Mikhail Gorbachev. For the most part, however, President Obama and the Democratic Party need to think carefully and move surely in the coming days. In the assurance that David Axelrod always checks in with the Oratorical Animal, I offer a few humble suggestions for securing liberal gains and avoiding political shipwreck.

1) Good administration: Incompetence and scandal often shadow second terms because the president cannot find enough good appointees as his time winds down and because the president and his staff  get fat and lazy. FEMA fails. Mistresses appear. Ayatollahs get arms. Chiefs of staff get fur coats. The list goes on. Running the government is just as hard now as it was when you began. Pay attention.

2) Persuade Americans to love EXISTING policies: In the next two years, the administration will implement two major initiatives from the first term: health care reform and financial regulation. This should not--CANNOT--be a technocratic process. Judging by the polls, Americans trust neither reform. Judging by the policy analysis, they should trust both reforms. Good rhetoric will be needed to close that gap. These are major persuasive campaigns, akin to an election campaign. The administration's most conspicuous and inexplicable rhetorical failure in the first term was its inability to persuade Americans that Obamacare was good. This cannot continue if Obama's legacy is to live and if liberal gains are to be secured.

3) Dance with them what brung you: In other words, look after your core constituencies. Some policies (likely the budget and entitlement reform) will disappoint people who turned out in huge numbers for president and party. Careful thought needs to be given to policies that will compensate for the inevitable harm that will happen. Latino and Latina voters deserve a DREAM act, immigration reform, and perhaps Puerto Rican statehood. African Americans deserve justice reform, especially sentencing reform and an end to the war on drugs. These two moves ought to have bipartisan resonance and yet will rebound to the president's credit.

Liberals are also likely to get cranky and, despite some misgivings, they strongly supported the president at the polls. What's possible there? Appointments. Judicial appointments, administrative appointments. As the Republicans long ago learned, a key way to secure your legacy is to put judges and civil service folks in place who agree with your world view. Obama has shamefully neglected appointments in his first term and, if Eric Holder is the problem, fire him. The president likely has two good years to do this and he needs--urgently--to reverse the lackadaisical attitude of the first term.

Finally, a broad agenda on women's rights--in particular, work to secure reproductive rights but seek to shift the debate also to economic ground. I'm no expert, but what are ways to encourage women's economic success? Education, small business loans, whatever. Make this issue a Democratic issue.

4) Electoral reform: There's all sorts of loose talk out there about constitutional amendments to overturn Citizens United and all sorts of crap. Focus on a few, straightforward reforms that matter and that make people's lives easier. Again, I'm no expert, but is it possible to pass a law requiring a minimum number of polling places per such and such 1000 of the population. Simply requiring states to have enough polling places would help a lot, if that's possible. Offer financial help to strapped states to make this possible and create as powerful a rhetorical campaign as possible for early voting. In other words, focus on the ease of voting as a first step.

5) Don't get complacent about Superpacs: There's been a lot of loose talk and laughter at the billionaires. Hee-hee, look at the stupid rich people. Those hundreds of millions of dollars will be a lot less funny when a) it's a midterm election, people pay less attention, turnout is lower, and it's harder to nationalize the campaign; and b) when the warm and sheltering umbrella of the Obama fund raising operation is gone. Barack Obama has been the best mass fundraiser in the nation's history. Guess what? He's a lame duck. And the bad guys will rev up the air war and carpet bomb Democratic candidates again in 2014.

6) Think about the next two elections: OMG, NO!!!!!! Yes. Don't let the hard-earned knowledge and expertise of the Obama campaign disappear. Dems have a serious social science/technological edge, a conceptual edge, on the Republicans right now, an edge comparable to the early 80s, when the Republicans had mastered direct mail. Those Obama folks need to pay it forward to other causes and campaigns. Make or use think tanks. Institutionalize this knowledge.

Start recruiting 2014 candidates now. Given especially the Senate victories, liberals and progressives are, perhaps, a touch irrantionally optimistic. Good. Use that. Get very good people to commit to run for important seats. Money does matter, but it's also true that you can't put lipstick on a "rape philosopher" and call him a viable Senate candidate. The Dems had a big advantage in candidate quality. Keep it.

There are lots of other issues, of course, and I've purposely ignored the topics that will get tons of press--the fiscal cliff, tax reform, climate change, etc. This is stuff the president, the administration, and the party can do with minimal cooperation from opponents or in areas, like immigration reform, with enormous leverage. Do them. 

Quick Thoughts on Election 2012

Too tired to do more than pretend I'm Larry King and spout off quick thoughts.

1) Political scholars and pundits need to realize that the Democratic Party has developed a durable majority in presidential election years. Democrats have won the popular vote in 5 of the past 6 presidential elections; only an accident of history and Ralph Nader gave us W. Thanks again, Nader supporters. Democrats now appear to have a big Electoral College base as well and a variety of ways to 270; Republicans need to thread a needle to get there. Midterms are a different story, which is why we get divided government.

2) No one should have to stand in line for hours to vote.

3) No contemporary surrogate has affected an election more than former President Bill Clinton did this year. His extraordinary DNC speech heartened supporters and impressed others; he campaigned relentlessly for Obama; he developed arguments of such power that the president adopted them; he did a great job for other candidates as well.

4) President Obama gives great victory speeches. Grant Park 2008 was wonderful; last night was nearly as good, with its echoes of his 2004 keynote and Jefferson's 1st Inaugural.

5) I'll never understand Mitt Romney's rhetorical preparation for this campaign. He's been immensely wealthy for nearly his entire life; he ran a venture capital firm. He was hammered on Bain Capital in his losing 1994 Senate campaign and for the ways he earned that wealth. He's had years to come up with clear, convincing arguments on these issues and his taxes. Instead, he bumbled and allowed the Obama campaign to define him. Why wasn't he ready to go on such concerns?

6) Ten strong women from the Democratic party won election or reelection last night. Certainly, there's room to grow such representation, but it's a great night. And this matters. People bring different life experiences to elected office and it's useful for women to see women in the Senate and for those voices to be heard. Heidi Heitkamp, for instance, has fought breast cancer. Be nice to have that voice when the Senate debates NIH funding.

7) Rhetoric scholars need to think about alternatives to the current debate formats. I used to defend them. No more. They're awful. When both sides are open in 2016, and if nothing changes, we are likely to top 50 total debates, most of them in formats than reward preplanned zingers as opposed to any sort of engagement. I'm honestly going to think about this. Because those things are awful.

 

Moneyball and Political Journalism

The 2012 presidential campaign will go down as a revolutionary moment in political journalism. What Bill James, Sandy Alderson and Billy Beane did to baseball, Nate Silver, Sam Wang, and others are doing to political punditry.

I realized this fact when I was listening to Cokie Roberts and Mara Liasson discussing the election on NPR this morning. They spent roughly 3-5 minutes in a round table discussion with the host and not a single fact arose.

Several articles of late have noted the epistemological--the knowledge--revolution that is now taking place. Roberts and Liasson get their "wisdom" from talking to each other, talking with their friends, and chatting up "old pros." They believe inside information will give them the "dope," the "real skinny."

In that, they're exactly like the old scouts in Moneyball. They thought they could look at a player, they could tell by feel, they could get a sense of the guy. Sure, a bit of that is involved; experience and expertise matters. But as first the Oakland As, and then every team in baseball demonstrated, the numbers don't lie. In the most famous example, walks and on-base percentage are good; sacrifices and steals are bad. They waste outs and outs are the most precious commodity out there. Look at what's happened to steals over the past 25 years.

Similarly, an old pro might believe she can tell where the momentum is or that the race is a toss-up. It's not. The numbers are clear; Obama is the favorite.

Does that mean he'll win? No. As Nate Silver said a few days ago, an NFL team that leads by 3 with 3 minutes left wins 79% of the time. Not every time, but it sure is smarter to make that bet. Similarly, those few days ago, a candidate who leads in the state polls by Obama's margin won 79% of the time.

But it's so close! goes the objection. Yes. Yes, it is and so is that NFL game. But we have a history. We have data. And to say that the race is tied or a toss-up is simply wrong.

I realized this morning that my regular reading of Silver, in particular, has educated me. And he uses only publicly available data. This isn't about inside scoop or relationships. It is about knowing the facts--and having a basic understanding of math. Cokie Roberts and her ilk are heading toward the same dustbin of history currently occupied by that scout (played by Clint Eastwood, interestingly enough, in a recent movie). Conversation will no longer count as research among serious people.

That will make David Gregory, Cokie Roberts, David Brooks and the rest very, very unhappy.

A Quick Nonpartisan Note on Presidential Legitimacy and Popular/Electoral Votes

As of this writing, Mitt Romney slightly leads most national tracking polls while Barack Obama slightly leads most battleground state polls. That suggests the possibility that we could see a split between the popular vote winner and the electoral college winner.

What's curious about that, of course, is that the possibility is becoming common. It happened in 2000. It nearly happened in 2004. It's close to happening now. I'm wondering if we've "built" a system more likely to produce this result.

We have a closely divided, polarized electorate; there's no doubt about that. But that's happened before in American history and yet we seem somewhat more likely to have split results now. What's changed since I've become politically active (1980) is the intense focus on battleground states.

There has always been some level of concentration; no Republican has ever won without Ohio, for instance. But in recent years--at least since 2000 or so, I think--the focus has been overwhelming and the ability of the campaigns to narrowcast or target particular voters has become much more powerful, given advances in advertising and marketing. Or what THEY see as "advances."

As a result, you have one set of voters--in battleground states--who are absolutely saturated with information and persuasive messages. You have another set of voters--in places like Illinois--who might occasionally see a presidential campaign ad on cable, but that's about it. The former are likely to evaluate the candidates, I suspect, through all of those messages. The latter are simply likely to pick things up from time to time.

That may partly explain why one-party regions become ever more lopsided. As voters see or hear only one candidate's supporters around them, they slowly move that way. Their "reality" is such that this is the only thing that makes sense, in the absence of other information. If I live in the south, Romney "makes sense." If I live in NYC, Obama "makes sense," given my lived daily reality.

To take this year as an example, Romney's opened massive 20-22 point margins in southern states and those have been increasing. There are likely explanations for that initial regional bias, but the sheer size of the margin may result partly from the fact that Obama isn't even trying to convince people in the South to support him. As a result, Romney's margins keep growing there--but Nate Silver's model indicates he has less than a 30% chance of winning the election because he's losing the contested areas. Popular vote victory; electoral college defeat.

Pure speculation. But I am wondering about the outcome of elections in which all of the persuasion is directed at 9 states. I would think there have to be some serious legitimacy issues in other regions. Not only did he not win my state, one might say, but he didn't even TRY to persuade me. Why should I regard him as a legitimate president? It's a problem, I think.

China-bashing in presidential debates

Last night's debate continued a rhetorical pattern evident in the two previous debates: China-bashing. Since Ohio is key to the election and home to a good chunk of US manufacturing, both candidates believe it makes sense to hammer China. President Obama tends to cite his record and tout his successes in judgments against China at the World Trade Organization. Obama, in short, implicitly promises to play by the rules of the game--bring China to judgment when it is violating accepted international standards. Mitt Romney says he would change the game--he would declare China a currency manipulator on his first day in office and thereby, most are sure, ignite a trade war between the US and China. But even that extreme position sounds good to many Americans.

Both candidates need to take a deep breath, step away from the sanctions, and think again, especially Governor Romney. Most of all, we need to realize this is not 2004.

First, the renminbi has steadily appreciated against the dollar over the course of the past few years. As a result, China's current accounts surplus has steadily dropped. Some of this may be do to Chinese policy and some may be due to higher inflation in China. Whatever the reason, it's now clear, as even Paul Krugman points out (and he spent years on Romney's side of this issue), that China is no longer a currency manipulator. We could not now make that case at the WTO and we'd probably open ourselves to sanctions if we did so. Romney's position is badly out of date.

Second, China's economy is, in fact, slowing from its breakneck expansion of the past decade and that is bad news for us. Yes, I said bad news. Exports to China have been a small but significant help to our economy--the drop in exports likely shaved 0.1 to 0.2 percent off of GNP growth last quarter, which is no small thing, given that we had annualized growth of 1.3 percent in the second quarter. Add to that the economic troubles in the continent called "Europe" (a mystery to Bob Schieffer) and the economy is suffering. The slowdown in the Chinese economy probably contributed to the loss of 38,000 manufacturing jobs.

Finally, while I'm clear on the need to defend American national interests, I've never been quite clear on why the greatest anti-poverty program in world history is bad news. Millions and millions of Chinese (and Indians) have been lifted out of poverty in the last decade due to their adoption of market-based economics. Yes, their breakneck growth has caused difficulties. Yes, they need to open their domestic markets--much more than currency manipulation or their exports, that's the key--to our firms. But tens--even hundreds--of millions of people no longer suffer from grinding poverty and are contribuiting mightily to the world economy and our economy. As human beings, can we not take some joy in that? 

In short, we have a practical stake in Chinese economic growth and we have a moral stake in a decent life for all peoples. A president should recognize that.