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John McCain fact of the day
Brendan Nyhan notes that if you use the Keith-Poole methodology for congressional ideology you get the conclusion that John McCain has the most inconsistent record of anyone in the Senate. They write in Congress and Ideology that their model has the least predictive power when it comes to McCain...
Here is the link, here is the Brendan Nyhan post, and here is Virginia Postrel on McCain.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 12, 2008 at 02:35 PM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
Shocker.
This is why he appeals to moderates and independents- people who value open-mindedness far more than constraints such as common sense, economics, psychology, and reality.
Posted by: Andrew at Mar 12, 2008 2:44:56 PM
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Posted by: dcmacdad at Mar 12, 2008 2:45:01 PM
Which is why this supposed 'maverick' doesn't have any conservative street cred with us, apparently now political dinosaurs, the Reagan Conservatives.
Posted by: Varangy at Mar 12, 2008 3:33:28 PM
Inconsistency is a good thing. Better pragmatic than dogmatic.
Posted by: Mike Jenkins at Mar 12, 2008 3:40:08 PM
What is the baseline? How is inconsistency defined? He has his own opinion and does not care too much about what is supposed to be conservative or what do “the others” expect him to vote for. His votes might be volatile with respect to average conservative voting. That does not necessarily mean that he has no consistent opinion.
Posted by: Student at Mar 12, 2008 3:40:18 PM
student,
it's hard to predict his future votes from his past votes. this is quite a different thing from not being conservative or from being a moderate. in fact, i think it would also be hard to spin this as a good thing. thankfully for mccain, the campaigns are probably not going to venture into debates over roll call scaling techniques and their results.
Posted by: anon at Mar 12, 2008 3:51:28 PM
If I got it correctly, the authors try to measure ideology in some scheme. Is it possible that McCain's very individual (and consistent?!) ideology simply does not fit the author's scheme?
Posted by: Chris at Mar 12, 2008 5:29:08 PM
the maverick thing isn't so much of a myth after all then, i suppose.
Posted by: Chris at Mar 12, 2008 6:10:27 PM
My ideology is probably inconsistent by that methodology as well. I filled out an online questionnaire to find out which candidates I'm most compatible with. Top 5 included Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and John McCain.
One example of where I don't fit into the usual categories is on taxation. I favor lower, simpler income taxes (if not none at all), but I don't favor flatter taxes (removing progressiveness is not a particularly significant simplification), and I don't favor the FairTax (a well-designed consumption tax would probably be somewhat better for the country than a well-designed income tax, but I've read the FairTax plan and it either wouldn't really simplify things or it would be riddled with loopholes and unintended consequences).
Posted by: Anthony at Mar 12, 2008 7:05:17 PM
So, is this the four year period where changing your mind is 'mavericky' instead of 'flip floppy'?
Posted by: yoyo at Mar 12, 2008 9:50:15 PM
"Inconsistency is a good thing. Better pragmatic than dogmatic."
Well, whatever. That's an opinion.
Inconsistency can signal pragmatism, or it can signal randomness fueled by cluelessness. With McCain, to this observer, I say it's randomness and cluelessness. To the typical independent, they think it signals pragmatism.
"He has his own opinion and does not care too much about what is supposed to be conservative or what do “the others” expect him to vote for."
That's his spiel (and how he dupes "independent moderates" who want to believe it). But this analysis:
"it's hard to predict his future votes from his past votes."
Shows that it is NOT that he is not consistent with traditional liberal/conservative labels and has his own principles. It indicates he is not consistent with himself and has no political principles (at least as commonly understood) at all.
A previous article linked from this site to Reason Mag about McCain described his "principle" as basically honoring his commitments to the government and his pals and his commitments to what he has said he stands for. This is, in the words of Charlie Munger, "overcommitment tendency" or "bias from consistency and commitment tendency," and certainly not a willingness to turn on a dime for pragmatism sake. Quite the opposite. So, not only are the moderates duped by McCain's act. They get exactly the opposite of what they think they want.
They get a guy who chooses positions randomly, then has to dogmatically hold his views once chosen and expressed.
From Charlie Munger's description.
4. Fourth, and this is a superpower in error-causing psychological tendency:
bias from consistency and commitment tendency, including the tendency to
avoid or promptly resolve cognitive dissonance. Includes the
self-confirmation tendency of all conclusions, particularly expressed
conclusions, and with a special persistence for conclusions that are
hard-won.
Posted by: Andrew at Mar 13, 2008 4:56:24 AM
Andrew, your post itself seems to be inconsistent. First you point out that "it's hard to predict his future votes from his past votes." So then you (incorrectly, in my opinion) say that implies "he is not consistent with himself" (in reality it could just indicate that you are not considering a subtle difference between a past and future vote, or even if the bills are identical that you are not considering the geopolitical environment at the time of the vote). This would just be a difference of opinion, except that you go on to imply that McCain "has to dogmatically hold his views once chosen and expressed". But if that were the case, then it'd be *easy* to predict his future votes from his past votes and he *would* be consistent with himself.
So I'm not sure which it is you're claiming to be the case, but either way I'd like to see some real evidence. I can't find the data points that were used by the algorithm, and it could be it just isn't considering subtle details or isn't considering changing conditions.
Ultimately I think you've got a good argument *if* you can first show the underlying facts. And just pointing to a study using some algorithm created for a totally different purpose doesn't cut it.
Posted by: Anthony at Mar 13, 2008 7:53:45 AM
If anyone actually wants to look at how the NOMINATE scores are created before trashing the measure see: http://www.voteview.com/
If you are more of a Bayesian then there is the Jackman-Rivers MCMC technique. Not sure what their method would say about McCain.
Posted by: goodnessOfFit at Mar 13, 2008 9:45:03 AM
Funny: in illo tempore, the exact same thing was said about Burke - that he was inconsistent, unpredictable and opportunistic.
McCain has the right understanding of conservatism: discrimination in terms of
circumstances trumps consistency in terms of principle and logic.
Posted by: HO at Mar 14, 2008 8:25:38 AM
The problem with McCain is that he was unexpectedly liberal in the aftermath of the Bush-McCain primary bloodbash. So any claims of principled reconsideration are hogwash. McCain is a stallwart conservative... except when he decided to throw a sissy fit after getting smeared by Bush.
Posted by: mpowell at Mar 14, 2008 2:44:08 PM
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Posted by: 租車 at Oct 2, 2008 10:27:27 PM
