Archive for April, 2008
VIDEO UPDATE: Proft: Engendering a Republican Renaissance in Illinois
I have had the good fortune to speak at many county GOP Lincoln Day dinners and before a number of Republican organizations around the state over the past several months. The speech I have linked to here was last week before a great group of concerned Republicans in Yorkville (Kendall County) as represented by the Kendall County Women’s Republican Club.
Click here to watch the video…
My talk breaks down into four component parts and is, in part, my contribution to the important discussions and debates Republicans across the state are having as to how to make our party relevant and competitive again in Illinois. The four parts: (1) Where are we? What is the landscape?; (2) How did we get here?; (3) Where do we want to go? What kind of party do we want to be?; and (4) How do we get to where we want to go?
I want to again thank the Kendall County Republican Women for their indulgence as well as offer my thanks to the many other GOP county chairmen, township GOP organizations, and rank-and-file Republicans throughout Illinois who have welcomed my thoughts and observations (and who, of course, have expressed their undying devotion to WLS-AM 890 and the “Don Wade & Roma Show”).
I would welcome your feedback and your ideas as to the policies and practices the Illinois GOP must embody in order to be successful again.
–DP
The Dulling of Obama’s Luster
In much the way that Charlie Murphy was awed by the aura of Rick James, so too the electorate has seen an angelic aura surrounding Obama . . . at least until recently. I have predicted for many weeks, but neglected to publicly post, that no politician can endure a competitive presidential election with their luster and aura in tact. I no longer consider that to be a prediction but rather a description of Obama’s present reality.
Mini-scandals have compounded and eroded the mystery of Obama. Reverend Wright converted Obama from a person of ambiguous race to a full-fledged African American, which has harmed him with the less progressive elements of moderate voters, especially white moderates. The God and Guns bitter comment converted Obama from an optimistic unifier to an elitist liberal who looks down on the lives of middle America. Ties to Rezko have eroded him too. To be clear, these are the perceptions of the voters, not my own feelings. I think that both sentiments have logical difficulties but in politics logic is rarely vital.
Even Brian, the once faithful servant and worshiper, wrote to me, “Both candidates are over-hyped. Obama is over-hyped b/c people think his above-average qualities (good speaker, etc.) are more important than they are.” Brian also admitted that just as he views McCain as a “normal politician,” so too he views Obama in the same light.
McCain has lost it too. In 2000 he created the template for Obama’s current campaign, but in the eight intervening years he lost his luster from the cruel barrage of speculation and accusation that stabs at every public figure. All great politicians were during their time just another normal politician. George Washington’s military and political abilities were constantly assaulted. John Adams was viciously hated and attacked by Hamilton, Jefferson and others. Controversy swarmed Jefferson during his presidency. Lincoln endured lies and personal attacks.
If Iraq stabilizes and Middle Eastern democracy flourishes, it’s possible that even Bush will be viewed favorably in the future. It’s possible that McCain and Obama will be viewed with luster and glow in the future, but it is impossible for them to be viewed as such now. This impossibility is sad in some sense, we all yearn for a politician capable of fundamentally changing politics. Someone honorable and brilliant and moderate in the right ways and progressive in the right ways and conservative in the remaining ways. Perhaps that person exists, but lacks the political fortitude and pragmatism to survive the political tournament. It is only once our immediate passions have been tempered by the steady logic borne from the passage of time that we view a politician as a Statesman and a Great.
Money Buys Happiness: Solving the Easterlin Paradox
A long standing finding in economics is the Easterlin Paradox, which is that there is no correlation between happiness and money above a certain base level. Easterlin found that once humans, no matter their country, reach a certain level of income (I believe it was $15,000), their level of happiness stagnates. New research by Justin Wolfers attempts to hack down the Easterlin Paradox. Wolfers claims that greater wealth does in fact make people happier. This research gets at the old question of whether money can buy happiness. It is interesting to think of happiness as a commodity and as the production and consumption of happiness rising with a country’s wealth in the same manner as cars or computers.
Wolfers has done four great posts summarizing his research on the Freakonomics Blog. Actually, the first post on that link is actually one by Arthur Brooks who claims that conservatives are happier than liberals. It is possible that one contribution to this phenomenon is that some American liberals seem to hold guilt about their privileged position in life. Furthermore, religious beliefs and church communities tend to make people happier and conservatives are more likely to be religiously active.
Change Needed in U.S. Incarceration Philosophy?
The New York Times published an article entitled Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’. Author Adam Liptak wrote:
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.
First, I think it’s a fallacy to believe that the trend of an increasing prison population will continue. It’s on an unsustainable, financially and politically, path. Second, America ought to reconsider its broad philosophy of incarceration. Morally and financially it makes more sense to rehabilitate than it does to punish in the hopes of sating some schadenfreude or of some ethereal notion of retributive justice. I am a pragmatist and a utilitarian. What makes the most sense though is fixing what might be the biggest problem in the United States and the root of many evils: poor rural and urban education systems. I’m too busy to find the data, but there is a high correlation between lack of financial prospects because of lack of education and likelihood of imprisonment.
We have a higher rate than Russia: 751/1000 vs. 627/1000. However, I have to wonder how much of our higher incarceration rates are attributable to us being unduly harsh and how much is attributable to our superior law enforcement abilities? We also have a higher financial capacity to imprison lots of people. In other words, perhaps other countries would be imprisoning more people if they had the resources to do so.
The U.S. dominates in many arenas, but in this one we would be wise to be humble and look for solutions from overseas.
Health Care Costs Are Core Fiscal Problem
Peter Orszag, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, spoke at the University yesterday. He has been uniquely aggressive, compared with past heads of the CBO, in promoting the notion that the federal budget is on an unsustainable path and that our core fiscal problem is the rising costs of health care, not any of the issues that get more media attention like Social Security or home mortgages or Iraq. Here is a choice excerpt and graph from the CBO’s Long-Term Budget Outlook:
Significant uncertainty surrounds long-term fiscal projections, but under any plausible scenario, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path—that is, federal debt will grow much faster than the economy over the long run. In the absence of significant changes in policy, rising costs for health care and the aging of the U.S. population will cause federal spending to grow rapidly. If federal revenues as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) remain at their current level, that rise in spending will eventually cause future budget deficits to become unsustainable. To prevent deficits from growing to levels that could impose substantial costs on the economy, revenues must rise as a share of GDP, or projected spending must fall—or some combination of the two outcomes must be achieved . . . The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that under current law, federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid measured as a share of GDP will rise from 4 percent today to 12 percent in 2050 and 19 percent in 2082—which, as a share of the economy, is roughly equivalent to the total amount that the federal government spends today. The bulk of that projected increase in health spending reflects higher costs per beneficiary rather than an increase in the number of beneficiaries associated with an aging population.
The graph below represents the long-term budget forecast under two different scenarios:
Thanks to Professor Richard Kaplan for pointing me to this data, for those who do not know him, he is one of the most brilliant, devoted and knowledgeable professors at the University of Illinois, or anywhere for that matter.
Facebook Lexicon "Talkin’ Bout My Generation"
Facebook has a new feature called Lexicon that “counts occurrences of words and phrases on Walls over time.” It might be a good tool for judging my generation. Obviously there are statistical problems with it, but it’s fun to play around with nonetheless (for instance, people are probably less apt to talk about sex on a public message board than they would be in a private setting). I’m pretty sure that it was just recently launched, but there’s already the Unofficial Facebook Lexicon Blog. Google has a tool similar to Lexicon called Zeitgeist. Below are some interesting searches that I ran.
Clinton vs. Obama – Obama has significantly greater numbers, probably because of his relative popularity with youth. But notice what should be of concern to Obama supporters, activity for both Obama and Clinton has dropped to nearly match pre-primary levels. Interest is waning and fatigue is numbing the short attentions of youth. The graph of McCain vs. Obama looks similar.
Sex vs. Book – Surprisingly, “book” gets more mention than “sex.” However, sex ties in sex vs. books.
Love vs. Hate – Love dominates hate. Notice the spike in love near Christmas and Valentine’s Day. Also notice the slight recession of hate near Christmas.
American Idol vs. President – Mentions of “President” shockingly outperforms American Idol. Obama beats out Idol as well. McCain ties.
The Story of the Pennsylvania Primary
I admit it. I have Kerry disease. I admit I am flip-flopping. I have no idea who will come out. Every time I feel like I get confidence on one position, something changes.
Per CNN, Hillary won by an expected 10% of the popular vote, or about 215,500 votes at the time of this post. In and of itself, not a big deal, considering Obama’s pledged delegate lead.
However, per RealClearPolitics count (and sorry if the info changes by the time you check, they will probably update soon), Hillary will still be down about 284,000 votes, which is less than 1% of the vote. If you include the Florida votes, Hillary is ahead.
Again, let’s go through the remaining states. Hillary will lose, and lose big in North Carolina, but will probably win huge in WV and Kentucky. I think that combination will essentially cancel itself out. Hillary will lose in Oregon, but by single digits, but Hillary should win in Puerto Rico by a comparable amount, so she will lose some ground. However, the amount of more votes counted will mean that while the total deficit Hillary will face might be 300 or 400,000 votes, the amount of votes counted will mean that the difference between the two on the popular vote will be less than 1%…probably. (Although, note, all of this could be thrown out with timely support by Gore or Edwards).
That leaves the May 20th primary in Indiana and the June 3rd Primaries of South Dakota and Montana as the states that might determine who the nominee is. According to RealClearPolitics, Hillary has a 2.2% lead, although the differences from the component polls show that that prediction is hardly set in stone. Who knows what Montana and South Dakota would vote for.
Here is my point though. These are the three states that are left that are legitimate battle ground states. However, all three states have voted consistently for Republican presidents in recent history, and by generally large margins (Indiana, South Dakota, Montana). Indiana and Montana have open primaries.
This means, that if the Republican Party in Indiana and Montana really wanted to throw a wrench in the Democratic primary, they could go out and vote for Hillary, win her those states and decrease the overall popular vote lead Obama has, if not totally erase it. Indiana had 1.5 Million Republican voters in the last election, and 266,000 in Montana (of approximately 450,000 total). It would take 15% of the people who voted Republican in those states last year to come out and vote for Hillary and to totally erase Obama’s popular vote lead. And then, it becomes a question of do you base the nomination on an incomplete computation of delegates or the popular vote, which leads to an active convention.
The next couple of months should be fun to watch.
Great Moments in Political Journalism
So I’m watching MSNBC for the Pennsylvania results, and Rachel Maddow makes the sensible and largely uncontroversial point that how Barack Obama performs against Hillary Clinton in a Democratic primary has little relation to how Barack Obama might perform against John McCain in a general election. Pat Buchanan then responds by calling this a “Marxist dialectic.” Maddow then looks at Buchanan like he’s a mental patient. Priceless stuff.
Preparing for a Constitutional Convention
One of the chief arguments against a constitutional convention is the statement that there has been no preparation for the upcoming question that will be on the ballot in November. In 1968 and in 1988, preceding the question being on the ballot there were several committees, organizations and legal groups that produced numerous reports on various aspects of the constitution and what the advantages and disadvantages are of several reforms. None of this preparation has been present for the upcoming 2008 vote, it is true to a small degree.
Largely, the preparation for a constitutional convention has been done by the same two individuals (with the valued assistance of many other individuals) who are pushing for a yes vote on the con-con question: myself and Bruno Behrend. We’ve been talking about this for years, identifying the flaws in the current constitution, the reforms that are sorely needed in
In addition to a book we’ve written that will be coming out in May called “Illinois Deserves Better: The Ironclad Case for an Illinois Constitutional Convention”, we’ve written a draft constitution which we think covers the deficiencies in the current constitution, reforms those aspects of the constitution that assist corruption and truly empowers the voters.
You can view our work at http://www.myillinoisconstitution.org and comment on each section of our draft constitution individually. It is time to open up the political process to the public so that we can truly participate in the governing process and that should start with the drafting of our new constitution (or the amendment thereof). Feel free to leave comments and feedback, we want to know what you think.
Help Us.
Our readership might think it’s all fun and games here at Urbanagora, but the reality is far more brutal and disturbing: