Liberal condescension

Gerard Alexander complains of liberal condescension. Charles Krauthammer agrees, praising America's bedrock common sense. Jake Weisberg says no, the problem is not condescending liberal politicians (or politicians of any kind, in fact)  but the country's childish and ignorant masses. Mike Kinsley offers Weisberg support -- "brilliantly," says Weisberg disinterestedly. "Which is more condescending," asks Kinsley, "to tell citizens they are behaving like children or fools, or to praise them for their 'bedrock common sense'?"

Far from clarifying the issue, as I think he wished to, Kinsley has obscured it.

The confusion actually starts with Alexander's use of the term condescension, which is narrower than the complaint he wants to make. To condescend is to patronize. You do not patronize somebody when you call him an idiot, whether it is true or false. That is not condescension. It is, on the other hand, disdain. Alexander used that word too, and probably should have stuck to it. In the main, liberals are not condescending to middle America. But they are very often disdainful.

Condescension is a subset of disdain. A good example was Obama's understanding remark about bitter voters clinging to guns and religion.

Kinsley says that the main thing is to be honest. I agree. But then he gets muddled. He says that calling somebody stupid is to treat him as an equal. If you are going to test that idea on a stranger, I suggest you choose somebody smaller than yourself. If I frankly told somebody, "You are not my equal," would that also be treating him as an equal?

True, there is a difference between calling somebody a fool, and telling somebody whom you respect that he has said something foolish. Sensible people, even brilliant columnists, sometimes say stupid things. Is the progressive worldview that middle America is basically wise, but gets some things wrong now and then? Not that I can see. It is that middle America is stupid: parts of it, in fact, would be better fenced off and renamed Dumbfuckistan. But I'm sure progressives who say that mean no disrespect.

In my world, unlike Kinsley's, calling somebody stupid is to call him your intellectual inferior. Condescension cloaks that sentiment. Saying it straight out, however, is no more of an expression of respectful disagreement. It seems an unproductive way for politicians to talk to people they might wish to represent. Most important, it is likely to end the conversation rather than advance it, if that was something you were interested in doing.

What about conservative condescension? Isn't it condescending, as Kinsley says, to praise middle Americans for their bedrock common sense? Yes, it would be, if you thought they were stupid, as Kinsley perhaps takes for granted. But I dare say Krauthammer and many conservatives sincerely believe in the bedrock common sense of middle America. (So do I, as it happens.) In that case, they might be wrong, but they are not condescending.

I thought Alexander's piece, by the way, made many good points but was far too one-sided. Progressives do hold conservatives and their values too much in contempt. But conservatives return the compliment, going light on the accusation of stupidity and doubling down on the charge of wickedness. When it comes to creating a space for discussion, they are no better.

I also think Weisberg is partly right. This column of mine made some similar points. He just gets carried away. Some of his supposedly self-contradictory poll findings aren't. For instance, he complains that majorities think (a) finance needs heavier regulation and (b) business is already over-regulated. Far from being self-contradictory, that position is correct. I'm for lower taxes; I'm also for smaller deficits; and universal health care. If you want an intelligent answer, ask an intelligent question.

Weisberg is right that America is reluctant to think about the hard fiscal choices it has to make. That is true, and a huge problem. The question is, are voters hopeless, as he says, or would they respond to better leadership? Maybe they would not. Good leadership is, among other things, about being straightforward, framing the issues correctly, and challenging the electorate. Has anybody tried that lately? I agree with Evan Thomas: it might be worth a shot.

Republicans and the politics of No

The Republicans' main achievement has been to contain their own internal conflicts. The trouble is, they have done this entirely by uniting against their self-wounding opponents rather than by forging an alternative program.

The problems that the Democrats are trying to address - the struggling economy, the approaching fiscal breakdown, the broken health care system, the transition to clean energy - are not imaginary. They require solutions. The Republicans have none, and as soon as they try to get some their unity will collapse. 

Some links

Democrats need a latte claque. Joe Queenan, Guardian. Some good observations about the tea party activists, though I disagree that this is "basically Nixon's silent majority in a less reticent mode". The silent majority is still silent. It has more important things to be doing than politics.

America is not yet lost. Paul Krugman, NYT. Krugman is absolutely right about political nihilism and Republican abuse of Senate rules. But his apparent nostalgia for "traditions of comity, courtesy, reciprocity, and accommodation" surprises me. That stuff was always bogus, surely. The first rule of politics is you stick it to the enemy every way you can. He'll be calling for bipartisanship next.

Why China is waging war of words with US. Bill Emmott, Times. It's a diversionary tactic.

How to do the second stimulus. Roger Altman, FT. Unemployment benefits, tax cuts, tax credits for new jobs; easy on help for the states, and no more infrastructure: the pipeline is already clogged.

Death of the IPCC

A turning point has been reached when in the space of a few days the chief scientist at the UK environment ministry complains about the IPCC's ever-lengthening list of blunders; the head of Greenpeace UK calls for the IPCC's head to step down; and, following a series of commendably forthright Guardian pieces on the scandal, The Observer, no less, attacks the Climategate cover-up.

[I]t is bad science and bad politics to counter scepticism with righteous indignation. In the long run, public confidence will be inspired more by frankness about what science cannot explain.

Exactly. My only gloss on that point would be to say that the main damage to the credibility of climate science was done not by the Climategate emails, nor by the principals' efforts to justify themselves. The main damage was done by the many climate scientists who affected to see nothing troublesome in what was disclosed, and the far larger number who decided it was best to say nothing. That was the really shocking thing. If climate scientists had united in criticising the methods and practices revealed by Climategate, the scandal might very well have fizzled. In saying they saw nothing wrong, they impugned their own work and that of all their colleagues, and brought the whole enterprise under suspicion.

And indeed, as a result, the scandal has widened. Despite the IPCC's endlessly repeated insistence that it was dutifully reporting nothing but first-rate peer-reviewed science, we now find that it was also scouring a so-called grey literature of mountaineering magazines, activist position papers, and masters dissertations for nuggets of material to support its purpose--which, patently, was not to present policymakers with a disinterested scientific appraisal, but to propagandize for a particular, colossally expensive, course of action. The agency and its work needs root-and-branch reform, not just a new leader.

Matt Ridley's piece on the role blogs played in all this is very good. Everything he says is right.

When Climategate broke, the mainstream media... mostly ran dismissive pieces reflecting the official position of the Consensus. For example, they dutifully repeated the line that the University of East Anglia's global temperature record was vindicated by two other 'entirely independent' records (from Nasa and NOAA), which was bunk: all three records draw from the same network of weather stations. Editors then found -- by reading and counting the responses on their blog pages -- that there was huge and educated interest in Climategate among their readers. One by one they took notice and unleashed their sniffing newshounds at last: the Daily Express went first, then the Mail and the Sunday Times, last week the Times and this week even the Guardian.

For those few mainstream journalists who had always been sceptical -- like Christopher Booker -- it must be a strange experience, like being relieved after living behind enemy lines. Who knows, one day even BBC News may ask tough questions. But it was the bloggers who did the hard work.

By all means, credit where it's due--but it is not enough to praise the bloggers, salute the carcase of the IPCC, and move on. Policymakers need a repaired IPCC, not a discredited IPCC nobody believes. This is something governments need to attend to urgently. And in attending to it, they should acknowledge how deeply implicated they are in the IPCC's failure. The panel gave them what they wanted. Give us the useful science, governments said. Give us a clear message; let's not dwell on stuff that's unhelpful. If governments had wanted disinterested science, without the cosmetic surgery, they could have insisted on it. They are very much to blame for the whole mess.

Why is health care reform unpopular?

Obama isn't giving up, but efforts to revive health care reform seem to be failing. It is worth remembering that Democrats could still pass the bill if they chose to. I still think they should. House Democrats could use their big majority to pass the Senate measure. But they cannot bring themselves to do it. Democrats with substantive objections and Democrats who fear an electoral backlash have fallen in with Republicans to block the reform.

The politics is complicated but fear of electoral reprisals is plainly one critical component. Should it be? Megan McArdle thinks that Democrats would be crazy to press on with an unpopular bill. Nate Silver questions this. He thinks the bill's unpopularity is suspect. He thinks many people are misinformed or mistaken, and will come round once they see it working. He says it is "better to be strong and wrong, especially when you're actually right." It would be political suicide for Democrats to abandon a cause they have championed for so long.

From my point of view, this is the equivalent of a Republican saying: "You know what, my opponent is right - lower taxes are a bad idea on principle."

Americans liked the idea of health care reform well enough in 2008. What changed their minds? And how easily might they change them back?

Opinion polls offer little guidance. Gallup's Frank Newport says that his research indicates no great failure to understand the bill. Silver, looking at the numbers, is unconvinced: the polling, he says, is consistent with the idea that opposition to the bill is misinformed.

My take on Gallup's numbers was different. Like Silver, I'm sure people are confused. But I'm not so sure they would like the bill more if they understood it better. Only 25% of people opposed to the legislation are concerned about higher costs, for instance. More information might drive that number up. It probably ought to. (I support the reform despite believing that it will raise costs.) The same goes for the 28% who said they were worried about greater "government involvement" in health care. Silver sees this category containing "incorrect beliefs" about death panels and socialized medicine. Sure. But it includes valid concerns too. This is a bill which increases government involvement in health care.

I think opposition is driven less by specific concerns of this sort and more by general disgust and exhaustion. As this saga has dragged on and on, it is incredible to me that nobody has tried to explain and justify any specific reform to the general public. The process has been unfathomable, and entirely inward-looking. People see that a major complex change in the works. This promises to transform services that most of them (remember) are satisfied with, so they have something to lose. But nobody is in charge. Nobody is even talking to voters about it, except to pat them on the head now and then and say "trust us". I'm surprised that the majority opposed to reform is not bigger.

I do think opposition would eventually subside if the bill were passed, and that some of its provisions would in the end be so popular that there would no going back. But the bill is an unfinished work. It will need to be fixed almost as soon as it is passed. So the issue does not go away. Meanwhile, costs as well as (prospective) benefits will be apparent. The pendulum would not swing back by November, that's for sure. Meanwhile the party would have stuffed an unpopular measure down the country's throat.

Is Silver's argument about repudiating a core belief the clincher? Not at all. Democrats do not need to repudiate a core belief. They could say, "We are right, and you know we are right. But we have failed to make our case and do this well. We need to work on this. We remain committed to comprehensive health care reform, and will come back soon with a better, simpler plan, capable of commanding wide support." What's wrong with that?

Politically, nothing. That's the trouble. That's why health care reform may fail. I still think the House should seize the moment and pass the Senate bill. But I'm not running for election.

Dalrymple on Galbraith

In a novel approach to memorial lectures, Theodore Dalrymple sets about JK Galbraith, who is once again in vogue. It is an excellent essay (not that I needed much persuading).

Galbraith's egotism and condescension toward most of the human race is evident in his admiration for Franklin D. Roosevelt-or rather, in the grounds for that admiration. Here he is in the preface to Name-Dropping, a singularly uninformative book of reminiscences of the great whom he met: "I turn now to Franklin Roosevelt, the first and in many ways the greatest of those I encountered over a lifetime. And the one, more than incidentally, who accorded me the most responsibility." I think you would have to have a pretty tough carapace of self-regard not to recognize the absurdity of this, or to have the gall to commit it to print.

If your reaction to that is, "How unfair. Surely Galbraith was joking," I can only say that you have not read much Galbraith.

At another point, Galbraith writes that Roosevelt saw the United States "as a vast estate extended out from his family home at Hyde Park, New York. For this he had responsibility, and particularly for the citizens and workers thereon." A tree-planting program that Roosevelt initiated in the Plains states, for instance, was "the reaction of a great landlord, an obvious step to improve appearance and property values, a benign action for the tenantry." Galbraith meant this as praise, which is not surprising, because his own attitude toward the country was similar. The people were sheep, and government, with Galbraith as advisor, was the shepherd.

I could just keep quoting. Better read it for yourself.

Some links

In praise of populism. Larry Sabato, Crystal Ball. He makes a good point: populism in moderation is a good thing. (See also: Obama should try populism. David Paul Kuhn, RCP.)

Tom Hoenig for Treasury. Simon Johnson, Baseline Scenario. But as I said the other day, Geithner's position is unassailable.

Freeze tax expenditures. Len Burman, Washington Post. Good idea. But would it be any easier than a VAT?

Alito was right. Kenneth Gross, Foreign Policy. Obama was wrong to say that, thanks to Citizens United,  foreign corporations can spend without limit in US elections.

Volcker on the Volcker rule

Paul Volcker's written testimony to the Senate Banking Committee yesterday put the Volcker rule in a clearer perspective. The theatricality of Obama's earlier announcement - not to mention its vagueness (as yet unresolved) and populist spin - led a lot of observers to think that the White House was advocating a return to Glass-Steagall as the cornerstone of its approach to financial regulation, or at least as one of its most critical components. I thought Volcker tried to correct that impression.

[T]he first point I want to emphasize is that the proposed restrictions should be understood as a part of the broader effort for structural reform...

The first line of defense, along the lines of Administration proposals and the provisions in the Bill passed by the House last year, must be authority to regulate certain characteristics of systemically important non-bank financial institutions. The essential need is to guard against excessive leverage and to insist upon adequate capital and liquidity.

It is critically important that those institutions, its managers and its creditors, do not assume a public rescue will be forthcoming in time of pressure. To make that credible, there is a clear need for a new "resolution authority", an approach recommended by the Administration last year and included in the House bill.

If that focus on better regulation of non-banks can be maintained, then I have no strong feelings one way or the other about Volcker's proposed restrictions on deposit-taking banks. Whether they make sense will depend on the details and the implementation. I note, by the way, that Volcker seems to envisage plenty of regulatory discretion:

Most of those institutions [big commercial banks doing proprietary trades] and many others are engaged in meeting customer needs to buy or sell securities: stocks or bonds, derivatives, various commodities or other investments. Those activities may involve taking temporary positions. In the process, there will be temptations to speculate by aggressive, highly remunerated traders.

Given strong legislative direction, bank supervisors should be able to appraise the nature of those trading activities and contain excesses. An analysis of volume relative to customer relationships and of the relative volatility of gains and losses would go a long way toward informing such judgments. For instance, patterns of exceptionally large gains and losses over a period of time in the "trading book" should raise an examiner's eyebrows. Persisting over time, the result should be not just raised eyebrows but substantially raised capital requirements.

Well, well. So much for simple rules and clear-cut prohibitions. When the regulator judges it appropriate, raise capital requirements!

So long as the rest of the agenda is not forgotten, fine. My worry has been that the Volcker rule will be a distraction from what the great man himself calls the first line of defense: more demanding capital requirements, liquidity requirements, leverage caps and early resolution authority for all systemically important financial institutions. Distraction and delay are still the risk, I think: see these FT and NYT reports. But I am glad that Volcker, at any rate, does not see his commercial-banking rule as any kind of substitute for those other measures.

We seem to agree on the main thing, after all. Which is good. I hate disagreeing with Volcker.

Climate change, ripped bodices, and the precautionary principle

This, from the first paragraph of an Observer piece, made me laugh:

The climate secretary, Ed Miliband, last night warned of the danger of a public backlash against the science of global warming in the face of continuing claims that experts have manipulated data.

A danger, you say? Call me an alarmist, minister, but I'd say this was more than a danger. I'd say the backlash has happened. I wouldn't go so far as Walter Russell Mead, who writes that the global warming movement is dead, but it looks crippled, and the Climategate scandal, which is still unfolding, is a principal reason. I am not a climate change denier; I am an IPCC sceptic. I think it is important to fix what has gone wrong at the IPCC and its feeder groups, restore the credibility of climate science, and devise intelligent policies in response to the threat. Miliband has other ideas, apparently:

[I]n the government's first high-level recognition of the growing pressure on public opinion, Miliband declared a "battle" against the "siren voices" who denied global warming was real or caused by humans, or that there was a need to cut carbon emissions to tackle it.

If he wants to bring moderate public opinion round, the battle Miliband should wage is with the people who have brought climate science into such disrepute. To begin with, how about calling for the resignation of Rajendra Pachauri? Speaking of things that made me laugh, I see that the IPCC chief has a second career all mapped out: despite his crushing official workload, he has written a novel (mainly about breasts, apparently). A second Nobel prize cannot be far behind. I'd say climate science can spare him.

In addition to Pachauri's novel, I've another reading recommendation for Miliband. The Observer quotes the minister as saying:

Everything we know about life is that we should obey the precautionary principle...

I don't think so. As Cass Sunstein has pointed out:

The precautionary principle takes many forms. But in all of them the animating idea is that regulators should take steps to protect against potential harms, even if causal chains are unclear and even if we do not know the harms will come to fruition... [I]n its strongest forms, the precautionary principle is literally incoherent, and for one reason: There are risks on all sides of social situations. It is therefore paralysing; it forbids the very steps that it requires. Because risks are on all sides, the precautionary principle forbids action, inaction, and everything in between.

This would be a good thing for a minister of energy and climate change to understand.

Squaring America's fiscal circle

The challenge is to flip the all-party, pro-spending, anti-tax coalition. One way might be to link specific spending more closely with specific taxes. The question to ask voters is not whether they want guaranteed health insurance, which they do, and higher taxes, which they do not. It is whether they are willing to pay higher taxes for guaranteed health insurance.

Slowly, very slowly, interest in a US value added tax is spreading beyond public-finance academics. Comeback America, an excellent new book by David Walker, formerly US comptroller-general and until 2008 head of the Government Accountability Office, includes this among its recommendations. The purpose is partly just to raise money. The book argues that tax increases and spending cuts will both be needed, and the hollowed-out US income tax system cannot deliver. If a VAT were tied to public spending on health, however, it would do more than raise money.

Unlike income tax, which more than 40 per cent of Americans no longer pay, a VAT would ask everyone to pay something. No part of the electorate could vote for guaranteed health insurance entirely at other people's expense. Some Democrats would recoil at this idea, but there is something in it for them: revenue to support the services they value.

An idea like this needs a champion. Mr Obama would be ideal, but seems unlikely to step forward. Most likely, the existing coalition would prevail, Democrats denouncing an unfair regressive tax, and Republicans opposing any kind of tax. But maybe, just maybe, Democrats could see a way of supporting needed public services. And perhaps Republicans, searching deep into their collective memory, could find a trace of the fiscal conservatism they once represented, and regard a modest broad-based VAT as the lesser evil.

If not, there is always going bust.