Stu's Views

It is rare that I rely primarily on another blogger for a post but this one by Mark Schmitt has so many interesting points in an area I find fascinating that I figured I'd make an exception. There have been many references to Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign recently, most of them analogizing it to Howard Dean's campaign last year and highlighting the place of the 1964 campaign in the birth of modern conservatism.

Schmitt nicely separates out what is worthwhile and what is not useful in these arguments. The analogy to the modern Democratic position is useful in that it explains what the Democrats need to do to become a powerful force in politics. What is less often cited (and what I had only realized upon reading the Schmitt piece) is that the conservatives paid a huge price. They had to live through an era of government's greatest expansion, the Great Society. Similarly if the Democrats are to spend 16 more in the wilderness they will have to endure the dismantling of not only the Great Society but also the New Deal. I don't the country can afford that price.

As for the birth of the modern conservatism, highlighting the Goldwater campaign is correct but also too simple. Goldwater did indeed give birth to Reagan and Gingrich but the Bush Administration has learned more from the mistakes of Gingrich and Reagan than the successes. Reagan and Gingrich wanted to roll back the role of government in life ala Goldwater but did little to accomplish it. The Bushies have added a take no prisonners approach to building a majority and intend to accomplish as much as possible while that majority lasts. The next two years will tell whether Goldwater's goals have been achieved by a President that even he would have considered too conservative.

This is the title of a new book by Judith Warner that is getting a lot of attention. The book (reviewed here and excerpted here) describes the immense challenges faced by upper middle class 21st century moms who attempt to raise their children well while also not falling hopelessly behind in their careers.

Warner focuses on the increasingly competitive sport of child rearing and the hopeless feeling it has imposed upon mothers. With new scientific information available on how millions of things affect your child (the day care center they go to, the bed they sleep in, whether or not they use a pacifier, the music they hear etc) every decision a mother makes is fraught with dire implications for her child. A misstep could lead the child to a career as a stripper rather than a Supreme Court Justice (gratuitous Simpsons reference).

Warner correctly notes that these are challenges faced by upper middle class moms (and upper class ones) because moms without money don't have the option of making choices regarding how they raise their children. Despite the limited scope of her argument, it is still powerful, it is these moms that set the cultural tone for the rest of the country and if this class sees motherhood as an impossible task, the repercussions will reverberate through society.

Warner is spot on in her policy prescriptions. I unabashedly endorse her ideas that more paid leave for parents (not just moms), better standards for child care centers, and health benefits that focus more on families would all lead to improvements in the child rearing process. However, I do not think that even these revolutionary policy changes are sufficient.

The changes that need to occur are largely cultural and fall into two broad categories. I've written before about the broader need to involve fathers in the raising of their children. Both women and men need to move from a presumption that women will do most of the child rearing to a presumption that it will be split equally. Policies changing the workplace are doomed to failure without that widespread cultural shift (but still should be tried).

Just as importantly, we need to reexamine our approach to child rearing. The competitive nature that Warner cites, with parents constantly overbooking kids with extracurricular activities from age 0 is a recipe for exceptional stress on the parents and the child. There will always be something that other kids are doing that your child is not. Furthermore the rush to turn children into little overscheduled adults deprives them of their most precious resource, being a kid. We can't force our children to grow up early and then be surprised when they try drugs at 15 and sex at 14. They are forced to become adults when they are emotionally unprepared to do so.

Anna Quindlen has it right, I think. The resource that our children need most is our love and attention and the certainty that that love and attention will always be there. As we raise our child, this is the principle we hope to adhere to without worrying too much about the details. As long as he does his homework, looks both ways before crossing the street, and comes home when he is expected to, the rest will sort itself out.

The debate on the substance of social security reform is a complex one and one that the blogosphere is handling in detail. What interests me almost as much as the substance is the reasoning behind the Bush Administration's decision to push the issue now and in the manner in which they are doing so. The speculation on this question has been nearly as rampant as speculation on what the Bush plan actually is.

I think we can dismiss the obvious arguments on each side. The argument that Bush and Co. are doing this because they genuinely believe that old folks will be better off seems to run counter to everything we know about how the Administration makes decisions. I'm not saying that the Administration doesn't have faith in free markets but that every decision they have made has had sufficiently shifting rationales that it is impossible for the outside believer to take them at face value about anything (because Bush is such a flip-flopper).

Critics of the Bush Administration, myself included, believe that they want to undo the New Deal and limit the role of government to defense and homeland security. This may indeed be the long term strategy but the few modest reforms the Bush Administration has floated (a limited menu of options for beneficiaries to select from and a relatively small portion of the guaranteed benefit going to personal accounts) is not likely to destroy social security.

Rather, I think that the goals are much more subtle. The first as Kevin Drum notes is to undermine support for social security. The program is immensely popular and Bush/Rove know that any plan which destroys it will be impossible to pass in Congress. So instead Bush is paving the way for a future conservative president. Some people (probably those who are already in good shape for retirement) will do very well as a result of Bush's plan. When the news comes out in 5 or 10 years that social security is still scheduled to go broke in xx years, this group of people will now be more inclined to support dismantling the program and replacing it entirely with private accounts.

I also think there is a short term political goal. The Administration knows that while it has a majority in Congress, it is not a dominant one. On the surface it seems like a curious political choice to put Republican Congressmen in the position of defending a mostly undefined plan to modify social security. But doing so while screaming loudly about how big the crisis in social security is leaves the Democrats with a difficult choice. Put up reforms of their own, which the Republicans can use against them in 2006 or do nothing, in which case Republicans can accuse them of being obstructionists without concrete ideas. It is for this reason that I think the Republicans will be equally happy if social security reform fails, as long as they can frame the debate and the discussion of why it failed.

The Democrats have done well not taking the bait yet. It will get increasingly difficult as the months go by however. Harry Reid, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi and others need to continually emphasize that the President has not put out a proposal and goad him into doing so. Meanwhile they need to cultivate Republicans like Lindey Graham and John McCain who will put out proposals that may actually make sense. The longer that this is a debate between Republicans, the better off the Democrats are.

Update: More on the subject from Mark Schmitt.

My favorite movie of all time is Casablanca. My favorite character in the film is the utterly cynical (except when it counts) prefect of Casablanca, Captain Renault, who is played by Claude Raines. When Renault has to find a pretense to close Rick's Place he says he is "Shocked, shocked!" to find gambling going on there as one of the croupiers hands him his winnings for the night.

That is how I would characterize the reaction to much of the reaction to baseball's newly energized steroid scandal. The story has gotten a new life because of the publication of Jose Canseco's book naming names (although conveniently providing no corroborating sources, apparently Jose believed that more than two was a crowd whenever shooting up was involved). Major league baseball of course has put in place a steroid testing policy earlier this spring in the wake of the BALCO scandal.

Despite BALCO, despite Ken Caminiti, and despite Canseco's previous accusations, the media seems compelled to voice a tone of shock both at the players using steroids (why won't Giambi just confess, they plaintively moan) and at the owners who turned a blind eye to the massive evidence that steroid use was rampant. Murray Chass of the Times has written four columns in the past week about how the Yankees clearly knew Giambi was taking steroids before they signed him.

Of course, the Yankees knew. My father-in-law who isn't even a baseball fan has been telling me for years how many players are juiced. You think Brian Cashman and George Steinbrenner have inferior information? Perhaps the media is having a bout of conscience for not reporting on steroids for so long that they feel the need to go overboard now.

The story is simple. Baseball didn't ban steroids and didn't test for them even though many were illegal. As a result, players risked their long term health to juice up. While there is no empirical study saying that steroids makes you a better player, the anecdotal evidence is very convincing. Now as a result of legal and public relations disasters, baseball is testing and punishing for steroid use and use will drop dramatically. As such, the records set over the past decade will always have a cloud over them (though hopefully not an asterisk).

End of story. Pitchers and catchers report this week. Lets move on and lets play ball.

I often complain that not enough attention is paid to the regulatory process by those studying and paying attention to government. However those of us who study the regulatory process do not pay attention to what happens after the regulations are written. How regulations are enforced can undermine their intent just as how regulations are written can undermine the intent of the underlying legislation.

This comes to mind in light of recent revelations regarding a deal between the Department of Labor and Wal Mart. Apparently Wal Mart was accused of violating child labor laws by allowing workers under 18 to operate dangerous equipment. This is a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act which the Wage and Hour Division of is charged with enforcing.

Now keep in mind, regardless of your opinion of Wal Mart (and I refuse to shop there), their reputation for upholding the law is at the very least, spotty. Despite this, Wage and Hour agreed to dismiss the child labor charges for a fine of $135,000. Having no idea of the particular case, I have no idea whether this is an appropriate amount although it certainly sounds low. What makes the deal awful is that Wage and Hour also agrees to give Wal Mart 15 days notice prior to conducting any other inspections regarding any other matter in their jurisdiction.

That means if Wage and Hour suspects Wal Mart of not paying enough overtime, skirting minimum wage laws, or further child labor violations (all of which Wal Mart has been accused of in the past) they will give Wal Mart a call and say "Hey we've heard there may be a problem, see you in a couple of weeks." The managers at Wal Mart are no idiots, one has to believe that Wage and Hour has found its last violation at Wal Mart.

If Wal Mart actually does 10% of what it is accused of doing to its workforce, then this advance notice is worth far more than $135,000 to them. That means that not only did they geot off with dismissing the child labor accusations scot free, but they've received a huge windfall from the government. If this were a criminal matter (say we reached with an agreement with the mafia to let them know two weeks in advance before tapping their phones) the Bush Administration would be up in arms. Instead, the Administration is giving new meaning to the term "soft on crime."

Update (2-14): More information here and the Congressional response here.

Two very different controversial figures from my profession (academia) have recently been in the news. The President of Harvard, Larry Summers, recently gave an unrecorded speech in which he suggested that there may be a biological basis for the difference between male and female aptitudes in the sciences. Ward Churchill, a heretofore obscure professor at the University of Colorado, had attention called to an article he had written in which he called the residents of the World Trade Center "little Eichmanns."

Both debates have prompted outrage. Summers has issued multiple apologies after being attacked as a sexist and ignoramus. Churchill has received death threats and had numerous speaking engagements cancelled. Defenders of each have cited academic freedom and the often misunderstood freedom of speech. The irony of course is that many of those defending Summers' freedom of speech have likely been those deploring Churchill's statement and vice versa. Or is there an irony. My gut reaction was to defend (but mock) Summers and to be ashamed of my profession for Churchill's remarks.

There are a couple of issues here that jump out at me. We (those of us foolish enough to debate these issues) need to disengage these debates from debates over academic freedom or freedom of speech. Of course, Summers and Churchill have the right to say whatever the heck they want (as long as they are not encouraging violence -- and I don't think Churchill meets that test). Criticism of either of them is not intended to infringe upon that right. Just as Churchill and Summers have the right to say what they want, their critics have the right to call them idiots.

As one friend of mine (and commenter here) noted, Summers is also different because of the high profile of his position. When he makes a speech he is doing so not just as an academic encouraging debate (his first excuse) but as the President of the most prestigous university in the country. If he were to lose his job over his remarks, not something that seems likely, then it would be because part of his job was to represent his institution not because he had personally repellent views. Churchill is just representing himself.

I have to admit, I now wonder where I am going with this so let me just sum up my feelings on the two of them. Summers made intemperate remarks given his positiion, that were probably badly delivered. His critics have probably overreacted but over all I would say the debate between the two sides has been if not always intelligent, at least worthwhile. Churchill is a moronic rabble rouser who probably hoped he'd get this attention when he published his remarks two years ago. He should be ignored and allowed to wallow and obscurity and if the University of Colorado decides they don't want to employ him anymore, that should be their business.

There has been much blather about how we are now in an "information age." I say blather not because I disagree but rather because much of the discussion of what it means to be in an information age strikes me as puffery. It has struck me however that in the two fields I follow most closely, politics and sports, there are recent superstars who have emerged who clearly understand that the way of doing business in these fields has changed.

The idea occurred to me when reading an article about Andy Stern, the leader of the Service Employees Union (SEIU)(fee required). Stern has recognized that unions as presently constituted are 50 years out of date and that vast changes are needed in focus and organization to again make unions relevant. The resistance against him within the union movement is fierce but to this outside observer it is clear that Stern is on the right side of this debate.

In politics, several strategists on both sides of the aisle have realized that the information age has changed politics as we know it. Most prominently Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman ran this past election like a marketing campaign. Now that information is available on correlations between habits and voting preferences, the Republicans successfully tracked down those voters who were most likely to vote for them and made sure they came out to the polls. The operation involved old political methods such as advertising on local radio stations and much more fieldwork, used in a new way, specifically to target small portions of the electorate who could make the difference in a close election.

On the left, Howard Dean and Joe Trippi used information technology to revolutionize political fundraising. The internet was used to reach out and touch so many small donors that the Dean campaign became a behemoth overnight. The same techniques were then co-opted by John Kerry to stay competitve with the Bush campaign which was financed largely by deep-pocketed donors. Whether Dean can bring the Democratic party out of the wilderness by a similar ability to use the vast amount of information now available to political parties may be the key question of politics over the next four years.

As for sports, the revolution is also in full swing. Bill Belichik just won his third Super Bowl in four years using a far more analytical appoach to choosing players and making game decisions than football executives are used to. Billy Beane, Theo Epstein, and Paul DePodesta have all had huge success as baseball general managers by using information, crunching numbers and in so doing, offending the baseball establishment. It won't be long before Belichik and the sabrmetric gm's are emulated throughout their sports.

Those in private business probably snicker at these examples, as success stories by utilizing information and analysis in the private sector are probably a generation old by now. But change comes slowly to politics and sports. Politicians face approval every four years (if that for a safe Congressional seat), they don't have to sell product every day. Sports executives are largely insulated from the challenges of competition (except with their ignorant peers). But now that the information age has entered these sectors, each field has changed in what will be a permanent way.

If one were going to design favorable circumstances for giving a State of the Union, one would have come very close to those circumstances surrounding the one on Wednesday. A recent reelection victory in which your party gained seats in Congress coupled with a hallmark moment in your most important (and controversial) first term action make for a nice time to address Congress and the nation.

And Bush took advantage of the circumstances. On style, it was probably his best State of the Union. He used his theme of spreading freedom (except to gay people) well and even I thought the hug between the mother of the dead soldier and the Iraqi woman was extremely touching. On policy grounds I will give Bush a great deal of credit for finally mentioning the need for democracy in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. I can't imagine that this was a unanimous decision within the administration but it was the right one.

Unfortunately from this viewers perspective, the domestic policy discussion ranged from lies to bad ideas. The bad ideas include making his beloved tax cuts permanent, cutting 150 programs (without of course saying which ones but rest assured that they are all wasteful) and the gratuitous reference to the amendment on banning gay marriage which he has no intention on doing anything to pass.

Most importantly however was the discussion on social security. It was hard to find an unabashedly true statement in Bush's discussion of the issue. There is not a crisis. The system will not go bankrupt. It is possible to do things to improve Social Security's long term health (such as raising the retirement age and expanding the income that can be taxed above the ceiling of $90,000) but as with invading Iraq, Bush is not attempting to sell his plan with modest truths, choosing instead grand deceptions (I also loved his "all options are on the table" . . . but the solution better include privatization (excuse me I mean personal accounts)). Right now the prospects for Bush's plan seem poor, but any one who has opposed him up until this point should know better than to count him out.

As the Bull Moose points out it is quite rational to be happy about the events of Sunday in Iraq. Any time that people head to the polls when the safer course of action is to stay home, a good thing has happened. No one should be tying themselves in knots trying to explain why the elections in Iraq were a bad thing.

The harder question is do the benefits of these elections justify our invasion of the country. I think the answer is still an unambiguous no. In the best case scenario these elections will lead to a democratic Iraq that is no more than moderately hostile to the United States. There is no doubt that this is better from our perspective than the tyrannical and fervently anti United States regime that preceded it.

However we did not invade Iraq to spread democracy. Or at least that is not what we were told. We invaded because of falsehoods about weapons of mass destruction and innudendoes about ties between Saddam and Osama. In a democracy, if the President is going to send over 1400 soldiers (and counting)to their death and countless others to debilitating injuries, he owes them the honest reason for doing so. Would Bush have gotten support for overthrowing Saddam and installing a democracy in Iraq? It is doubtful but not certain. He didn't try and that makes the war wrong regardless of the outcome.

And that is the best case scenario. More likely is that the elections will lead to a Shiite dominated regime that, in the long run, is allied with our more dangerous enemy, Iran, and is overtly hostile to the United States. There is a fair chance that we have traded one oppressor for another and that the Sunnis become a beseiged minority without rights and fearing for their lives. And it is hard to believe that there are any good long term prospects for the Kurds in the north under such a regime (although they look to be allied with it in the short term).

The worst case scenario is frightening. It is that despite the postive feeling generated by the election, nothing changes. A weak regime is installed and the conditions for our withdrawal (which are currently a "secure Iraq") are never met. Iraq continues to be the haven for terrorists that we have created and we either have to vastly increase our troop presence or withdraw with our tails between our legs. Anyone who thinks such a scenario is impossible would be well advised to remember their history. Here's some help.