Catching Up

I've had a few pieces run over at Ordinary Times:

First was my experience with the local crow population. I was attacked by a neighborhood crow, and I felt like writing about it.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Rick Perry's remarkable speech on race. I've been bullish on Perry for a while, but that speech even surprised me, and has stuck with me since. It is the only thing in this campaign that really has.

Last night I wrote something on Planned Parenthood and what I see as troublesome incentives.

And last week, I finally took my Master's exam. That won't be linked, mercifully. Results pending.

Media Bias and Fox News

My most recent piece: some thoughts on Fox News, bias, and misinformation:

http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2015/05/22/misinformation-media-bias-and-worldviews

The Not-So Longshot

I figured that the Christie piece deserved a companion, this one on the "not-so longshot" candidate.

http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2015/05/08/the-not-so-longshot

In my estimation, Rick Perry is the sleeper of the Republican race. The top-tier remains Bush, Walker, and Rubio, in some order, but Perry is the most likely candidate not in the top tier to break in.

Chris Christie: The Longshot

I revisit the theme of Christie as longshot over at Ordinary Times this morning.

http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2015/04/18/chris-christie-the-longshot

Attaching Strings to Anti-Poverty Legislation

I wrote a piece attempting to justify "strings attached" in anti-poverty programs over at Ordinary Times. It doubles as a bit of a critique of academia, or at least on analytical overconfidence. Link below:

http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2015/04/13/a-partial-defense-of-strings-attached

Moving!

I'll actually be posting most of my stuff over at Ordinary Times, a pretty cool site with a vibrant commenting community. The site leans Left, but it's a thoughtful sort of liberalism, in my estimation, and they seemed to want a somewhat-conservative perspective over there as well. I posted a brief introduction where I tried to lay out where I come from and what I try to do when I blog. At least to start things out, I'll be cross-posting here as well.

Six Really Good Books on the History of Disease

I'm almost finished with a very long reading list (40+ books) on the history of disease, and I am starting to look back on them for an upcoming exam. I wanted to highlight, briefly, the six books I've read on disease that were most illuminating.

1. William McNeill - Plagues and Peoples

William McNeill's book is foundational. Not all of the conclusions hold up 40 years later, but the nature of the analysis, to me at least, is what we should be striving for in the area: how do microorganisms affect the flow of history? So it's probably the best point of departure for the field itself.

2. J.R. McNeill - Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914

William McNeill's son, JR McNeill, is a stellar historian in his own right. McNeill zooms in on mosquito-borne disease and poses a very compelling argument about its significance in the colonization process. His observation about the American campaign in the Mexican War is absolutely eye-opening; things could have gone very differently there.

3. David Arnold - Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India

David Arnold's book is the best example of what I'd deem "post-Foucault" analysis. It's very much informed by Foucault's arguments about language and power, but it grapples with the biology and reality of disease much more so than its intellectual cousins. If you're read Arnold, you can predict what a lot of related books will say about different geographical subjects.

4. Peter Baldwin - Contagion and the State in Europe, 1830-1930
5. Paul Weindling - Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe, 1890-1945

Peter Baldwin's book is an absolute tour de force in terms of exploring increases in state power in Europe. I think it pairs nicely with Paul Weindling's book that focuses more explicitly on the use of state power after it developed. Baldwin's book is more about change throughout the 19th century, and Weindling's is more about continuity from the 1890s forward, so they really do pair quite well. These books are long, depressing, and expensive, but both absolutely illuminating.

6. Carlo Cipolla - Faith, Reason, and the Plague in 17th C. Tuscany

Microhistory in the vein of Natalie Zemon Davis's excellent Return of Martin Guerre. It focuses on a very small, very poor town in Tuscany and its experience with an outbreak of plague in the 1630s. I think it would make a great movie, at the very least, but it is a valuable perspective on the lived reality of disease in the time period. Carlo Cipolla was the master; you really can't go wrong with his books.

Response to a Comment on the Jeb Bush Piece

I'm having a bit of a productive moment right now, so I'm trying to strike while the iron is hot. I tried to push some of my Jeb Bush thoughts a bit further in a response to a particularly thoughtful comment on the first piece over at Ordinary Times.

http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2015/03/28/more-on-the-jeb-bush-barack-obama-comparison

Four Questions for Jeb Bush

I have a piece up over at a cool site called Ordinary Times, with some initial questions that I think Jeb Bush will need to answer in his 2016 campaign. Summary: Jeb is sort of getting a raw deal thus far on the merits of his record, but I suspect that the millions of dollars he's raising will fix all of that. Regardless, there are some important questions that he will need to answer to the Right's satisfaction.

http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2015/03/23/four-questions-for-jeb-bush

Opposing Hillary Clinton and "Permission Structures"

Regardless of her motives, Hillary Clinton's use of a "homebrew" email system is deeply troublesome for a couple of reasons. For one, any home-operated server would presumably not be up to the exacting security standards of the US government, leaving her vulnerable to the whims of hackers of varying levels of capability. Equally troubling is the "transparency" issue: a homebrew system would give the public figure total control over disclosures, which is a complete violation of records retention laws and regulations. Even if Clinton discloses everything, we can never be sure that it was really everything.

And yet Clinton still has her defenders:

This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen: pic.twitter.com/p2z9cDXUwn
— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) March 11, 2015

Obviously, an "Ed Show" text poll is not "scientific," but it is fair to say that Clinton hasn't lost her base, yet. It is almost as if the base needs "permission" to rebuke Clinton. President Obama discussed this idea back in 2013, talking about Republicans trying to reach a deal:

... there are common-sense solutions to our problems right now. I cannot force Republicans to embrace those common-sense solutions. I can urge them to. I can put pressure on them, I can, you know, rally the American people around those -- you know, those common-sense solutions, but ultimately they themselves are going to have to say, we want to do the right thing. 

And I think there are members certainly in the Senate right now and, I suspect, members in the House as well who understand that deep down, but they're worried about their politics. It's tough. Their base thinks that compromise with me is somehow a betrayal. They're worried about primaries. And I understand all that. And we're going to try to do everything we can to create a permission structure [emphasis added] for them to be able to do what's going to be best for the country. But it's going to take some time.

Obama's theory is that Republican voters hate him so much that they need special "permission" to support a policy that Obama supports, even if the policy is in their interests. I reject that explanation of why Republicans have been so intransigent under Obama--I think it comes down to genuine disagreements and the president's inability to propose policies that Republicans can actually defend to their voters. But the idea that people sometimes need "permission" to support something that their ideological opponents support strikes me as valid.

Using the logic of Obama, then, most liberal voters need a "permission structure" to rebuke Hillary Clinton. They're not going to get it from the scattered critics from the mainstream media or interest groups that are expressing displeasure. They're certainly not going to get it from Republicans.

They could get it, though, from Elizabeth Warren.

Warren is currently the only Democrat with the juice and clout on the party's Left to challenge Clinton. Even if we accept the fact that Warren really does not want to be president, she should be troubled by the Clinton coronation, considering the Clintons' deep ties to major corporations and financial institutions. The e-mail scandal is a great opening for Warren. She could release a statement, something like:

I was deeply troubled by recent revelations of former Secretary of State Clinton's use of a private e-mail server while serving as Secretary. Ms. Clinton--who is a trailblazer and hero to women everywhere--should immediately turn the e-mail server over to a special bipartisan Congressional committee, so that malicious intent can be disproved. Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike should demand impeccable ethical conduct from our public representatives; only public-spirited people can fight the corporations that have poisoned our politics.

My language is clunky, obviously. But coming out against the Clintons--even just in part--would establish a "permission structure" that would allow liberals to express displeasure at this conduct. (Which, frankly, they should; liberals would be justifiably apoplectic if President Marco Rubio set up rubiomail.com to conduct official business.) That could spiral into other expressions of discontent, which might lead enough liberals to demand another candidate who is actually more in line with their preferences. That could be Warren herself. It could also be Amy Klobuchar or Deval Patrick, two candidates who would (presumably) be closer to Warren's ideological preferences than Clinton.

If Warren were to endorse another candidate early on, it would give that candidate a genuine shot at breaking into Hillary's liberal support.

This is not to say that Warren--or a Warren-backed liberal alternative to Clinton--would defeat Clinton in a nomination contest; Clinton would still be the heavy favorite. But Warren can actually challenge Clinton rhetorically and get some traction, based on her popularity on the party's Left. Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley may be running already to Clinton's Left, but they do not have the attention of the base like Warren does.

If Elizabeth Warren has a problem with Clinton waltzing to the nomination uncontested, it is time to act. If Warren speaks out, at the very least a future "Ed Show" poll about trusting Clinton would see support at lower than 90 percent.

Combining my various interests into one blog post

I submitted a piece for publication to the Federalist, a site that seems to specialize in thoughtful conservative commentary while engaging in the discussions of the day. The piece argues that the Right should feel free to embrace Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" in the context of 2016, regardless of the party's problematic history surrounding the song. Link is here.

Quick Assessment of GOP Nomination, February 2015

Here's how I rank them, by plausibility of winning the nomination. I've assigned percentage values to each off the top of my head. This is extremely unscientific, but this is how I'm seeing it currently.

1. George Pataki (0%): No chance in hell. Not a bit.
2. Carly Fiorina (0.1%): Appears to be running for VP. Might gain traction in that, but winning the nomination outright is probably a bridge too far.
3. Lindsay Graham (0.25%): I would say "not impossible because of South Carolina's position in the nominating process." But I think "extremely unlikely" is accurate.
4. Ben Carson (0.4%): Very popular on the Right. Might have actually had a shot in 2012, if he ran a good campaign. But there are too many plausible candidates in the Tea Party space.
5. Rick Santorum (0.75%): Santorum got so good on the trail by the end of the 2012 cycle that I give him points just because he's become such a solid retail campaigner. But he has so much ideological overlap with Mike Huckabee that I think he will struggle to find space this time around.
6. Bobby Jindal (1%): He's a very good VP choice or HHS choice for a Republican nominee, particularly an establishment choice. But his low approval ratings in ever-redder Louisiana make me think he's going to have trouble gaining traction.
7. Mike Huckabee (3.5%): I was more bullish on Huckabee a few months ago than I am now. If the 2008 version of Huck ran in 2012, I think he would have been the favorite for the nomination. The updated version of Huckabee, though, appears to have become a bit less of a happy warrior and a bit more venomous. The Huck strategy was always about taking a loyal base of support from Evangelicals and expanding it to potential sympathizers who were at least a little skeptical of GOP economics. He can do the former and may well win Iowa, but I don't think he'll be inclusive enough to gain traction this time around.
8. Chris Christie (5%): I think he's been overrated for a while, and Jeb Bush boxing him out with his best potential donors is essentially slamming the final nails in his coffin. But I'll give him a shot on the grounds of his potential debate performances and potential to connect in New Hampshire. Christie's best shot was a full-throated endorsement from Romney as soon as Romney announced he wasn't running. It didn't happen.
9. Rand Paul (5%): Paul is interesting, certainly, but I think the emergence of threats like Russia and ISIS will reactivate the Tea Party's Jacksonian soul. (As far as I can tell, the Tea Party lies at the intersection of Jeffersonian small government and Jacksonian populism.) Paul's non-interventionism just won't play this time around, I don't think. He should probably just run for Senate again.
10. Ted Cruz (6%): Cruz's best chance to emerge would be in a long-lasting slog for delegates after a lot of the other conservatives simply stopped competing. It's hard to gauge the likelihood of that. The super-divided field actually makes the chances for someone like Cruz to pull off a win in Iowa pretty good; all he needs to do is find 20 percent of the caucus-goers that support him, and he'll have it. But the establishment will absolutely revolt if Cruz starts to gain ground.
11. Rick Perry (11%): The most underrated of the candidates in question. Stellar governing record for conservatives. The 11% is misleading, in terms of odds, because it is absolutely a hedge based on the debates. If Perry rocks the debates, he is probably right there in the top tier. If he falters--even a little early on--he's at the back of the pack.
12. The Field (11.5%): I'd throw the Midwestern governors who haven't made as much noise as Scott Walker into this area: guys like Rick Snyder (MI), Mike Pence (IN), and John Kasich (OH) all belong here. I could even see a dark horse rising, like a Susana Martinez (NM), Nikki Haley (SC), or the self-funded Rick Scott (FL). 
13. Scott Walker (17%): Certainly the initial "flavor of the month" of this cycle. His poor handling of the slew of "gotcha" questions and Q&A in general, though, signifies potential trouble down the road, if he doesn't improve as a candidate. (Conservatives defending him so vociferously counts for something, but I see it as a potential leading indicator of problems deflecting tough questions.) I wouldn't put it past Scott Walker to improve, but the early returns on the unscripted portions of campaigning are not positive. Still, on paper, he is the strongest candidate for 2016.
14. Jeb Bush (19%): I've moved Jeb up slightly in my mind based on the overwhelming support that the establishment has sent his way, which exceeded my expectations. Some of his rhetorical choices of late have reminded me of Jon Huntsman, but Huntsman never approached the level of establishment support that Bush is seeing. Critically, though, the establishment, on its own, will not be enough. Can he expand? (Addendum here: why on Earth do so many establishment Republicans want to run Bush v. Clinton??? We lost that race in 1992. We'd've lost that race in 2000. And Clinton is a far more popular former president than W. Why do we think that the result will be any different this time?)
15. Marco Rubio (19.5%): This is a bet on a couple of things: Rubio's sheer political talent, and his potential to emerge as a "compromise" pick late. Put it this way: if Jeb falters, he will almost assuredly throw his support to Rubio. And among conservatives, even with his immigration heresy, Rubio can play the role of "whistleblower" about Obama and Congressional Democrats ("They can't be trusted! I know because they lied to me!"), so I think he can actually neutralize that weakness. He's not higher because I'm not sure there will be enough space for him to fit into the broad field. But if I absolutely had to pick a frontrunner, it would be Rubio.

The Maddening Vaccination/Global Warming Comparison

In the most thoroughly unsurprising news of the week, the New York Times tried to make the facile, misleading comparison between the GOP's stance on global warming and the recent, ill-advised comments about vaccination.

The vaccination controversy is a twist on an old problem for the Republican Party: how to approach matters that have largely been settled among scientists but are not widely accepted by conservatives. 

It is a dance Republican candidates often do when they hedge their answers about whether evolution should be taught in schools. It is what makes the fight over global warming such a liability for their party, and what led last year to a widely criticized response to the Ebola scare.

That the Times would make this comparison was both inevitable and deeply frustrating.

Let's move beyond issues about whether people "believe" in global warming to the more relevant issue: what people actually want to do about global warming. For policy purposes, it is basically equivalent to believe that global warming is a hoax and that global warming is happening, but that doing anything to stop it is not worth it.

Let's also avoid discussing the complex ideological and political mix of the anti-vaccine population. (The Times is insinuating that opponents to vaccination come from a largely conservative population, but polling data is much more ambiguous.)

Conservatives (rightfully) almost universally cite Jim Manzi when talking about climate change. I'm going to quote a piece he wrote a few years ago for The New Republic that I think holds up fairly well:

The only real argument for rapid, aggressive emissions abatement, then, boils down to the weaker form of the uncertainty argument: that you can’t prove a negative. The problem with using this rationale to justify large economic costs can be illustrated by trying to find a non-arbitrary stopping condition for emissions limitations. Any level of emissions imposes some risk. Unless you advocate confiscating all cars and shutting down every coal-fired power plant on earth literally tomorrow morning, you are accepting some danger of catastrophic warming. You must make some decision about what level of risk is acceptable versus the costs of avoiding this risk. Once we leave the world of odds and handicapping and enter the world of the Precautionary Principle—the Pascal’s Wager-like argument that the downside risks of climate change are so severe that we should bear almost any cost to avoid this risk, no matter how small—there is really no principled stopping point derivable from our understanding of this threat.

[snip]

So what should we do about the real danger of global warming? In my view, we should be funding investments in technology that would provide us with response options in the event that we are currently radically underestimating the impacts of global warming.  In the event that we discover at some point decades in the future that warming is far worse than currently anticipated, which would you rather have at that point: the marginal reduction in emissions that would have resulted up to that point from any realistic global mitigation program, or having available the product of a decades-long technology project to develop tools to ameliorate the problem as we then understand it?

The best course of action with regard to this specific problem is rationally debatable, but at the level of strategy, we can be confident that humanity will face many difficulties in the upcoming century, as it has in every century. We just don’t know which ones they will be. This implies that the correct grand strategy for meeting them is to maximize total technical capabilities in the context of a market-oriented economy that can integrate highly unstructured information, and, most important, to maintain a democratic political culture that can face facts and respond to threats as they develop.

Manzi is basically taking a cost/benefit approach to global warming, and finds that the emissions reductions that are needed to prevent it are simply not worth the cost. If the "worst case" scenarios hit, he believes that we will be better off if we had spent resources on developing technologies that could mitigate their effects, rather than by targeting emissions targets that will dramatically reduce people's standards of living.

I find Manzi highly persuasive. You may not, but the bottom line is that this is a principled, reasonable argument against emissions targets that accepts that the climate is changing, and that human activity is part of the cause. The core reason why Manzi's arguments are at least justifiable is because of the uncertainty in modeling. To use another Manzi frame, climate modeling is a domain of extremely high causal density: it is very difficult in areas of high causal density to disaggregate cause and effect. We think that carbon emissions result in incremental increases in global temperature. But we also think that solar activity changes temperature. And we think that volcanic activity changes temperature. And we think that the oceans absorb a lot of carbon. There's a lot of complexity in all of this; it is very hard to get to the bottom of it. Climate modeling is not like math, physics, or chemistry. Or, for that matter, vaccination.

Like the environment and climate, the human body is a complex system that we're still learning a lot about. But we have managed to reduce some of our uncertainty about the body--and learn about medicine and health--because we can at times control confounding variables and do experiments. Vaccination is one of many health benefits that have come out of this experimental process. We have been field testing vaccines for over 200 years, going back to Jenner and cowpox. The idea of variolation--which is basically the same principle--goes back even longer, having been practiced with some regularity in China and Turkey, among other places.

The widespread use of vaccines targeting very specific diseases coincided with dramatic drops in the incidence of those diseases over the 20th century. Pessimistic climate models may be entirely right about the negative effects of carbon emissions, but the bands of uncertainty are much, much greater.

Moreover, the collective action problem is far less significant with vaccines than it is with the environment, because there is an immediate benefit to the individual who gets vaccinated. True, as Megan McArdle points out, there is a collective action problem at high levels of immunization, as people free ride on herd immunity rather than facing whatever health risks come with vaccines. But in a world where herd immunity was not an option--say one where vaccines were scarce and limited by randomized drawings--there would still be strong, selfish incentives to vaccinate. Emissions cuts to fight global warming are precisely the opposite, in that the only benefit kicks in after we reach a critical mass of people or countries cutting emissions.

Lastly, the cost of vaccines are quite minor: low health risks, small financial expenditure (often paid for by the government or a third party, these days), a brief sting of pain in the arm, and perhaps some soreness for a few days. Consequential emissions cuts would require dramatic costs and lifestyle changes for billions of people, with an unknown benefit.

So, we have three critical differences:

• Vaccines have a proven level of effectiveness, while the effectiveness of various emissions targets remain in question.
• Vaccines produce significant individual benefits, in addition to the social herd immunity benefit. Emissions targets largely require individual sacrifice before reaching a potential collective benefit.
• Vaccines are low cost; emissions targets would be more costly and disruptive.

These differences are so material that they make any direct analogy--or narrative surrounding the two together--fall somewhere between uncharitable and deliberately obtuse. The Times should be better than that.

Anti-Vaccinators and Issue Salience

Basic American Government 101 test question:

Why might politicians find it useful to express sympathy for people who oppose vaccination?

Although most anti-vaccination campaigning is on the far left, it is really something of a bipartisan phenomenon.

Here's Chris Christie:

Speaking in Cambridge, England, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he vaccinated his four children — “the best expression I can give you of my opinion.” 

But unlike other officials, Christie also said parents should have a choice in whether to vaccinate. 

“It’s more important what you think as a parent than what you think as a public official. I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well. So that’s the balance that the government has to decide,” Christie said, according to multiple press reports.

Here's Rand Paul:

Republican Sen. Rand Paul is standing by his statement that most vaccinations should be "voluntary," telling CNBC that a parent's choice not to vaccinate a child is "an issue of freedom." 

In an interview with the network Monday, Paul said that vaccines are "a good thing" but that parents "should have some input" into whether or not their children must get them. And he gave credence to the idea - disputed by the majority of the scientific community - that vaccination can lead to mental disabilities. 

"I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines," he said.

On the Democratic side, here's Barack Obama from 2008:

"We've seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it's connected to the vaccines. This person [not Obama] included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it."

Here's Hillary Clinton:

Senator Hillary Clinton, in response to a questionnaire from the autism activist group A-CHAMP, wrote that she was "Committed to make investments to find the causes of autism, including possible environmental causes like vaccines." And when asked if she would support a study of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated children, she said: "Yes. We don't know what, if any, kind of link there is between vaccines and autism - but we should find out."

You can parse the exact meaning of the quotes, but the tone of each says everything you need to know: these politicians--at the very least--do not want to alienate this constituency. (Rand Paul is probably more enthusiastically on their side, but Christie, Clinton, and Obama all tread very carefully on this issue.)

The key factor that has gotten left out of most discussions is issue salience. For the vast majority of the population, vaccination is just something you do. It's not controversial; it's just part of having children and getting them ready for school. So they don't think much about it. For most of recent history, they probably didn't know very many people who admitted to not vaccinating their kids.

But for the subculture of the country that is opposed to vaccination, it's a much different story. This medical choice becomes a major part of their life; it has to. It comes up in medical visits, presumably all the time. They probably face a fair bit of social shame from experts who are involved in medical treatment. Moreover, they're the ones whose status quo is at risk from government coercion: in theory, the government could compel vaccination. (Legally, you'd be looking at a framework something like the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, where the government needs a compelling interest to force action. Public health qualifies, certainly, and vaccination is a far easier sale for the government than, say, birth control.)

So the politician that offers the full-throated endorsement for vaccination risks alienating this subculture that takes the issue seriously, for only limited political gain.

This is the standard political calculation, I'd hazard, for most politicians who wade into this thicket. But the calculation changes in a country with an active measles outbreak, particularly if we see vaccinated kids start to come down with the disease. All of a sudden, the complacency of the broad majority--those who support vaccines--is challenged, because the activities of the subculture officially begin to disrupt the mainstream's plans and health. Right now, what we're seeing is the transformation of a low salience issue into a higher salience issue. The hostility from the pro-vaccine crowd towards the anti-vaccine now is much more visceral, now that we see the consequences for ourselves. (We may have thought about these risks in theory, but it's a lot different when childhood diseases that we thought we'd largely eradicated come roaring back.)

So it wouldn't surprise me if we start to see more public pushback from politicians who sense the ability to jump on this wave of public anger. Indeed, it is sort of Chris Christie's stock-in-trade, so I was surprised by his equivocating comments. And, in fact, if Republicans don't jump on board and reject this forcefully, they're going to pay a political price.

On Scott Walker's Message

A Midwestern governor with conservative credentials and an ability to relate to working-class people: formidable in a primary campaign, right?

Tell that to Tim Pawlenty.

Pawlenty got squeezed out a bit in the 2012 campaign on three sides: Michelle Bachmann got him from the Right, Mitt Romney got him from the Left, and Rick Perry slammed him with the frontal assault; it was Perry's entrance into the race that forced Pawlenty out. But he made some bad choices, and he did suffer, basically, from his struggle to find a really compelling message. Pawlenty's rhetorical style and lack of a compelling message made him "boring."

One of the reasons Scott Walker has faced skepticism from the pundit class is because people are making a Pawlenty analogy. Pawlenty was bland; Walker is bland. Minnesota and Wisconsin governor, same thing. But if his initial campaign speech is any indication, Walker will not have Pawlenty's messaging problem. I noticed that his rhetorical choices in the speech were perfectly calibrated for his conservative audience. So I wanted to do a bit of analysis on his basic argument here. It will form, I suspect, the basis for a very compelling primary campaign.

After offering some local color to the audience (touting his Midwestern bona fides and his appreciation for new hero of the right, Joni Ernst), Walker immediately pivots to his recall election and he thanks everyone for their support, with their time, money, and prayers. But Walker's real focus in the first part of this speech is on the conduct of the opposition. In particular, he highlights some of the more indefensible actions of the protesters:

The bigger challenge for us--at least for me personally--were all the death threats and visits to our home. You see, you've heard about those protests, but you may not know at one point in all this, there were literally thousands of protesters out in front of our family home in Wauwatosa, where my two sons were still going to high school, and where my parents were living at the time. In fact, my kids were targeted on Facebook. At one point I remember my mother in her 70s and my youngest son Alex were literally at the grocery store where protesters followed them down the aisle just to yell at them even though it was me that was doing the policies out there. 

Even moreso than just the visits in front of our home was the fact that at one point the threats were just overwhelming. Most of those death threats were appointed at or directed at me. But some of the worst were directed at my family. I remember that one of the ones that bothered me the most was someone literally sent me a threat that said they were gonna gut my wife like a deer. Another time, a protester sent a threat directly to my wife that said if she didn't do something to stop me, I would be the first Wisconsin governor ever assassinated. The writer went on in greater detail to point out where exactly my children were going to school, where my wife worked, and where my father-in-law was still living at that time. You can see what they were doing, and so I tell you today, that, thanks to all of you for not just the grassroots support and donations, but most importantly, thank you for those prayers, 'cause you can see how important they were in dark days like that. 

Time and time again, time and time again, the protesters were trying to intimidate us. But you know what? All they did was remind me how important, how important it was to stand up for the people of my state. They reminded me to focus on why I ran for governor in the first place.

This is not a normal political speech! Most politicians don't talk about the death threats their family received, let alone have it be a central theme and part of their argument.

I love Arnold Kling's "three axis" construct, and I think this speech directly activates that "civilization/barbarism" axis that conservatives often have as a prism for seeing the world. To a conservative audience, there is only one way to react to this: "Those barbarians." So Walker's audience is now primed to see the opposition as fighting dirty and standing in the way of what needs to be done.

Then Walker moves to the rest of his speech, which basically is a rhetorical victory lap about how his programs have been successful in Wisconsin: he won his fight with the unions, the state is economically strong, districts can pay teachers for performance, etc. Whether we accept these things as true or not, they are compelling for conservative voters.

So the audience leaves the speech with two ideas: the opposition fights dirty and is absolutely intransigent, and Walker defeated them.

This is a potent case for a right-wing audience, and it is one that no other conservative can make. (Ted Cruz fights, but he loses. Rick Perry fights, but he's from right-wing Texas. Rick Santorum fights, but he lost in Pennsylvania by 20 points.) A few other things stand out:

1. Walker links the Occupy movement to the Wisconsin protesters, which standard right-wingers denigrate on principle. "Those hippies." It's a useful way to gain sympathy.
2. Walker did this speech without a teleprompter, which will attract some favor from parts of the Right that mock Obama for his reliance on them.
3. Walker has an extended riff on bargain hunting at Kohl's. He's not a candidate who is going to ever risk getting caught in a "bitter clingers" moment, where he seems detached from the voters he's trying to persuade. Moreover, this is a useful "homespun" anecdote that working-class and middle-class people can relate to.

But perhaps most importantly, Walker absolutely does not have a "conservatism as a second language" problem. He understands conservatives and can talk to conservatives in terms they understand. His use of the Wisconsin protests--turning a potential weakness into a major strength--confirms that better than anything else.

A few challenges remain: I think it is pretty evident that Walker will be able to win a substantial share of the more conservative voters in the Republican primaries, but blue state Republicans remain important in the process. The "establishment" types and more moderate conservatives might shy away from his combative record. It also remains to be seen whether Walker can transition from the primary campaign to a general election, when the protest movement is such a key part of his stump speech. He should probably have someone thinking about that message; it would make sense for him to reach out to some reform conservatives to help him prepare a policy message that will address the interests and needs of working-class Midwestern voters. This should be a bigger part of his message, even in the primary campaign, so he can pivot more easily. (He should be walking around with a copy of Room to Grow and should call Yuval Levin and Mike Lee like, yesterday.)

Put it this way, though: say Walker manages to win Iowa, and Jeb Bush wins New Hampshire. Is anyone really prepared to give Jeb Bush a win over Scott Walker in South Carolina?

Walker will be formidable. Underestimate him at your peril.

Romney should play kingmaker, not candidate

I like Mitt Romney. I think he's a decent human being who happens to be a terrible politician.

I was reading the Washington Post's excellent reporting (really, Robert Costa owns the Right, and no other reporter is in the same league, much less ballpark) on Romney, and I was struck by the closing.

Another GOP bundler received a phone message from Romney on Monday in which he said, “What you saw in the paper is true.” Romney added that he was giving “some consideration” to running again “for a lot of reasons.” Among the factors he cited: “I have a strong sense of duty.”

One could certainly have said that Romney's decision to run in 2012 was borne out of a sense of duty. The 2012 Republican field was the weakest of my lifetime. The only two good candidates on paper--Tim Pawlenty and Rick Perry--crashed and burned in devastating fashion. And a handful of viable Republicans with relevant experience--guys like John Thune, Mitch Daniels, and Bobby Jindal--opted out of running entirely. That left a field of also-rans. That field, without Mitt Romney, could have produced a true disaster for the party. Romney could have argued that he was needed.

But that is most clearly not the case for 2016, when Republicans have at least seven or eight particularly strong candidates. Two in particular stand out.

- Marco Rubio, the junior senator from Florida, is a wonderful speaker and has a great backstory. He has also engaged with domestic policy issues moreso than most senators, embracing the ideas of thoughtful "reform conservatives" like Yuval Levin and Ramesh Ponnuru. On paper, Rubio is a star.
- Scott Walker, the second-term governor from Wisconsin, is a less compelling speaker than Rubio, but his stylistic contrast from Obama--a move, let's say, from sizzle to steak--could be exactly what the country wants in 2016. Walker has gone through the "fire" three times, winning in Wisconsin while taking on the entrenched teacher's union and a robust, powerful Democratic machine. Walker is basically The Man, when it comes to getting things done on the right.

The truth is that both Rubio and Walker would be impressive nominees. I have my own biases towards governors, so for now, I would support Walker over Rubio. But they are far stronger candidates than Romney.

Meanwhile, Romney's negatives remain substantial. He has had two bites at the apple and lost both times. His unfavorable ratings exceed his favorable ratings. He doesn't speak conservatism as a first language, so he often ties himself into a pretzel while making conservative arguments. His major policy accomplishment as governor was the health care plan that Republicans are desperate to destroy. He is largely distrusted by the base. He'll be 69 years old in 2017, throwing away an obvious opportunity to showcase youth and vigor against Hillary Clinton, who has been in national politics for what feels like forever.

In 2012, Romney may well have been the indispensable man for the party. But in 2016, he is clearly not.

Romney and his supporters may argue that only his network and his resources can defeat Jeb Bush and then Hillary Clinton. This may be true. This, however, neglects the role that Romney himself can play: he can throw his support, immediately, to one of Rubio or Walker. An endorsement from party heavyweight Mitt Romney would make a huge difference. It would legitimate a so-called "second tier" candidate. It would help direct some of Romney's donors. Moreover, Romney is rich. He could use his own considerable personal wealth to fund a SuperPAC on their behalf.

If Romney really feels a sense of duty to the party and country, he should pick one of these two candidates to back. He could easily win a spot as Secretary of the Treasury, or Secretary of Commerce, or domestic policy chief, or any other high-profile position. It's not president, but if his goal is actually to win, it's a much better option. But it doesn't seem like that's his goal.

One More Thing on Chris Christie

I've been saying for almost a year that I think Christie is a longshot at best for the nomination; in fact, I've used "doomed" as my word of choice, and I still believe that. Two prominent commentators--Nate Silver and Larry Sabato--have offered related thoughts. Yet both have focused on the Christie/Cowboys thing as a negative, to some extent at least. Sabato writes,

Christie’s over-the-top performance in Jerry Jones’ box last weekend, with his bear-hugging of Jones and his jumping up and down while squealing like a schoolgirl, infuriated and disgusted millions (our considered estimate). Still, it would be probably unwise, though somewhat just, to take out the nation’s massive dislike of the Dallas Cowboys on Christie. Yet Christie’s demonstrated aversion to Detroit, and his snubbing of New Jersey-area home teams, may earn him the voters’ rebuke in the Lions’ Michigan, the Giants’ and Jets’ New York, and the Eagles’ Pennsylvania.

Sabato is being tongue-in-cheek here, but there's a kernel of truth to it, I think, at least from his perspective, if I'm reading it right. Silver is more serious, writing,

So, what to make of something like Christie having been spotted in a luxury box in Arlington, Texas, on Sunday, where he joined Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones ­­to watch the Cowboys’ 24-20 comeback win over the Detroit Lions? (Unlike certain politicians, Christie doesn’t seem to have mastered the art of rooting for a team from a swing state.) It seemed like a silly controversy until it was revealed that a company co-owned by the Cowboys was recently awarded a contract by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. 

Whether there’s actual impropriety or just the appearance of it, it was a dumb place for Christie to be seen if he’s contemplating a presidential bid. A presidential campaign is a long and mostly dull thing, and reporters chase down the serious and silly stories alike.

I have my own issues with Christie and the Cowboys, as I've written. But in terms of his chances at the nomination, I think that it doesn't hurt him, and might actually help him, marginally.

Although he is considered a frontrunner, Christie is best thought of as a longshot candidate. Frontrunners can sustain risk-averse strategies; in fact, they may well be the optimal ones. But longshot candidates have to do things that are risky. Christie's best argument at this stage may be something like "refreshing, radical authenticity." It is unlikely to resonate, but that does not mean that it is completely impossible. The governor of New Jersey rooting openly and loudly for the hated Dallas Cowboys could be taken as a sign of that authenticity. Jumping around like an idiot after the Cowboys clinched the win? Definitely authentic. What politician does that, ever?

To win the nomination, at a minimum, Christie needs a bunch of New Hampshireities to say, "Man, Christie's the guy I'd like to have a beer with!" Christie's not going to get votes via issue fidelity, or being the most conservative electable candidate in the very deep field. But he might get there by the sheer force of his personality, if it resonates.

Again, this is a low-likelihood play; Christie is severely disadvantaged by a bunch of things, at this point. But considering his position as a candidate, it is his best chance.

Christie should be himself.

On Chris Christie, the Dallas Cowboys, and Two Americas

As I watched the depressing end to a football game between the Lions and the Cowboys, I saw something that frustrated me more, from the perspective of an American, rather than as a bitter supporter of the New York Giants.

(photo from SBNation.com)

That's Chris Christie, the governor of the state of New Jersey, palling around with the very wealthy owner of the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones, in the owner's suite at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Christie claims to be a lifelong Cowboys fan, and I believe him when he says that. I also believe that his enjoyment of the game is genuine, and his jumping in on the hug was entirely normal. (Sports do this to people who really care about them. We jump up, hug, scream, and sometimes even cry, when exciting things happen. To mock someone for that is not really fair.)

So I have no qualms with Christie getting emotional about the Cowboys, or the Mets, or the Rangers, or whatever other sports teams he cares about. And if he wants to share his feelings about sports with us, I have no problem with that, either. (Frankly, I like Christie as a political figure, even if I am very unlikely to vote for him in the Republican primary in 2016. I think he's basically as good a governor as New Jersey will get, and the track record of governors of the state of New Jersey in my lifetime basically bears that out.)

What does bother me, though, is Christie in that owner's suite. (He even went to the locker room after the game.) If Chris Christie were just a regular old attorney in the state of New Jersey pulling in $175,000 a year, there is zero chance that he would ever be in that booth. As governor, though, he has access to situations that he would not be able to get in another line of work.

One of my major objections to politicians these days is that they often take liberties and receive perks that ordinary people cannot even imagine. I see three different categories where this happens, but they are closely related.

1. Politicians hobnob with celebrities, athletes, and other so-called very important people.

Christie is particularly guilty of this, in my judgment. But he's not alone. President Obama is friends with Jay-Z. John Boehner once offered Billy Joel a cigarette. Half of the Democratic Party has spent time with Bruce Springsteen (as has Christie, post-Sandy).

I know that this is the expectation these days, as athletes who win championships visit the White House as a matter of course. But I am asking for us to use a more modest standard. Presidents and politicians can have social lives, but why must they be with famous musicians and actors?

These encounters privilege both the celebrities and the politicians. We would be better off if we stopped offering our tacit approval. 

2. In traveling on campaigns and for fundraisers, security standards result in massive inconveniences for ordinary folks.

Joe Biden's vice presidential motorcade closed the Lincoln Tunnel, New Jersey Turnpike, and Interstate-280 for a fundraiser for Jon Corzine in 2009. In Portland, OR, Biden's campaigning--and some basic planning errors--resulted in the near-total shutdown of the all-important TriMet light rail system.

We see this with lesser VIPs, with teams getting disruptive state police motorcades between hotels and stadiums.

Security concerns are what they are. But there is a line between prudence and disruption. Frankly, "security at any cost!" is not a realistic standard. Hiding in plain sight, in a nondescript car on a highway with an armed guard or two, covers most potential security risks. If a low probability thing like a fatal car accident--or even a planned assault--happens, that is an incredible tragedy. But the country will survive it, and has survived worse. No single politician--besides maybe the president--is so indispensable that citizens should accept massive dislocation so that said politician can get to a fundraiser. The single parent who gets stuck in traffic and has to pay an extra hour to the babysitter does not deserve that. Nor, for that matter, does the person who simply wants to get home to watch Jeopardy, or Monday Night Football, or The Big Bang Theory.

3. As much as we try to avoid it, we see the well-connected avoid prosecution, even in cases where the law is clear.

There was a minor story on the Right a couple of years ago, when David Gregory, then-host of Meet the Press, exhibited a high-capacity gun magazine on his program. Possessing the magazine was illegal in the District of Columbia, where the show was taped. Pretty clear violation, no? Not exactly:

NBC’s David Gregory is off the hook for showing a high-capacity gun magazine on “Meet the Press” and will not be prosecuted, D.C.’s attorney general announced on Friday. 

D.C. attorney general Irvin Nathan on Friday said he would decline to prosecute in the case involving the Sunday show host and any NBC staffers. In a letter to NBC’s attorney Lee Levine, Nathan wrote that after reviewing the matter, his office “has determined to exercise its prosecutorial discretion to decline to bring criminal charges against Mr. Gregory, who has no criminal record, or any other NBC employee based on the events associated” with the broadcast.

The Right blasted the hypocrisy and demanded Gregory's prosecution. If we take a step back, though, it seems pretty clear that Gregory was not violating the spirit of the law, and that the clemency he was shown was a good thing, in terms of justice.

Meanwhile, Shaneen Allen, a law-abiding gun owner from Pennsylvania, acknowledged having a gun in her car during a routine traffic stop in New Jersey. Possessing the gun, unfortunately, violated NJ's gun control laws. After a threatened prison term, a public outcry, and almost a full year in legal limbo, the charges were dropped. But it wasn't like with Gregory, who immediately got the benefit of the doubt from the justice system. Gregory is part of the elite, and Allen is not.

We see this all the time with well-connected people. Drug offenders who are politicians (or related to politicians) get clemency, or suspended sentences, or rehab. Minorities get jail time.

As commentator Sean Davis wrote, in the aftermath of the Eric Garner grand jury decision:

John Edwards was right: there are Two Americas. There’s an America where people who kill for no legitimate reason are held to account, and there’s an America where homicide isn’t really a big deal as long as you play for the right team. 

Unfortunately Eric Garner was a victim in the second America, where some homicides are apparently less equal than others.

In the case of Garner, the police officer gained the benefits of being in the right America. Politicians are in that America. The well-connected in general--and politicians in particular--exploit their status to gain personal benefits that are not available to ordinary people. It is one thing when a rich person spends their money to gain great benefit; it is quite another when a politician gains the trappings of wealth simply because of their elected position.

We cannot stop all of these incidents. But we should be vociferously critical when politicians use their political positions for their own benefit, rather than for the benefit of their constituents. We elect politicians as leaders, but they are ultimately servants in our republic. Ideally, at the end of their terms, they'd quietly return to their farms. We are the bosses. We're not electing them to hang out with the Dallas Cowboys.

If Chris Christie wants to watch the Cowboys, he should do it at home with his family, or with friends, or in a bar, or by himself, just like the rest of us. I fully support him in that. He can jump around and hug whomever he wants. But if he wants to go to the game, he should buy a ticket.