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Why politics cannot be captured by the intelligent, installment #45,869
It seems the Barack Obama campaign is distancing itself from Austan Goolsbee, who is indeed a first-rate economist. Samantha Powers, who wrote a highly intelligent and heart-rending book on genocide, was dismissed last week for speaking her mind about Hillary Clinton. Of course no one doubts that such actions may be necessary, given that a Presidency can function only with some amount of message discipline. But think about the economics of message discipline. How many people are receiving the message? 300 million, plus some number abroad as well. What kind of messages do these people desire? What must be done to make these messages understandable and then to show that the promise behind the message has been met? Which kinds of advisors will flourish best in a "message consistency" environment? Independent and critical minds, able and willing to speak the truth to power?
Here is my question for the left-wing bloggers: How good would The Wire be, if it had to appeal to 300 million plus viewers? While it is obvious that politics is a form of mass culture, this point is not made with sufficient frequency for my taste.
Addendum: Arnold Kling comments. And Matt Yglesias responds.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 10, 2008 at 04:55 PM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
That is both disturbing and disappointing. I don't particularly agree with what seems to be Goolsbee's choice of economic policy tradeoffs, but at least he understands what those tradeoffs are.
Essentially Obama is discarding the thing I find most appealing about him, namely that he is at least willing to listen to an actual PhD economist, unlike his competition. Now he is just another bum who doesn't understand the seen and the unseen.
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at Mar 10, 2008 5:37:29 PM
I think you over-estimate the level of political interest in this country if you think all 300 million people care about this or that message and whether it came socialist A, socialist B, or socialist C.
Posted by: mith at Mar 10, 2008 5:50:34 PM
The difference between good politicians and bad politicians is not how much freedom they give their staff to talk to the public, but how much freedom they give their staff to talk amongst themselves and with the politician. Intelligent people get in trouble when their words suddenly acquire power where previously they had only influence. If they can't adjust, they must return to being merely influential.
Posted by: David at Mar 10, 2008 6:17:02 PM
The difference between good politicians and bad politicians is not how much freedom they give their staff to talk to the public, but how much freedom they give their staff to talk amongst themselves and with the politician. Intelligent people get in trouble when their words suddenly acquire power where previously they had only influence. If they can't adjust, they must return to being merely influential.
Posted by: David at Mar 10, 2008 6:18:17 PM
I am wrestling with this question just now (or always, where the title of my blog is concerned :). If public officials and pronouncements are to deliver pablum designed for the lowest common denominator, then they deliver little value. The most-useful debates are those where radically-opposed opinions collide and engage. (Some people consider opinion itself to be radical, but I am trying to lay down a general rule that includes the "minor deviation" opinions we see in politics.) Everyone can choose what to take from these transactions. Although the policies that result will probably be in the middle, they will take radical opinions into account (a good thing per se, if you've ever just wanted to be heard!)
In a culture of status quo where "debate" consists of nothing, people stop paying attention. When they do, the "Deep State" takes over and makes policy to suit itself. In a real democracy, we need real debate and opinion, and we seem to have lost a little more today...
Posted by: David Zetland at Mar 10, 2008 6:23:16 PM
"Samantha Powers, who wrote a highly intelligent and heart-rending book on genocide, was dismissed last week for speaking her mind about Hillary Clinton."
I suspect it was more her hedging about unconditional withdrawal from Iraq than the Hillary comment that got her the ax.
This is unfortunate as I was hoping that Obama was lying both in the NAFTA demagoguery and the "as fast as possible" pullout from Iraq. Sigh.
Posted by: Slocum at Mar 10, 2008 7:24:23 PM
Goolsbee's mistake was to suggest that Obama's real policy choices might be different from his rhetoric. Obama has sold himself as a man of absolute integrity, and can't afford to have his associates publicly question that.
Posted by: Cyrus at Mar 10, 2008 7:50:34 PM
Good riddance to Samantha Powers.
Posted by: TGGP at Mar 10, 2008 8:30:52 PM
For me to evaluate this at all, you'd have to explain "back channel" diplomatic communications to me (as they really exist), and tell me if Goolsbee did them normally (or skillfully) or naively.
Posted by: odograph at Mar 10, 2008 8:33:46 PM
What does message discipline have to do with having advisors who speak truth to power? Samantha Powers may be highly intelligent, but she called a fellow Democrat a "monster". It's too bad that ice cream makes you fat and that people have to die, but that the way it is. It's also too bad that intelligent advisors who stick their foots in their mouths have to leave the campaign. C'est la vie.
I haven't been following the flap about Goolsbee, but you have a lot of work to do before proving that firing a good economist means you don't have good economic policies (ala happyjuggler). Democrats on the other hand have a strong case that McCain's economic policies are loony: "Tax cuts, starting with Kennedy, as we all know, increase revenues." Yeah, right.
Posted by: MostlyAPragmatist at Mar 10, 2008 8:53:11 PM
Gotta love MostlyAPragmatist, that person hasn't done the homework in the Goolsbee incident but wants you do your work before you say something about it. Perfect example of many (not all) Obama supporters. If Obama made the decision, it must be right. How dare you question the authority of Obama?
Posted by: Mo at Mar 10, 2008 9:38:16 PM
I'm shocked, SHOCKED to hear that Sen. Obama is actually a politician rather than a cross between Jesus Christ, Keanu Reeves' character in "The Matrix," and Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Mar 10, 2008 11:28:07 PM
Being pro-free trade has simply gone the way of being irreligious; it's intellectually reasonable but it's clear that it loses far more votes than it gains. I'm guessing that the leak from Harper's official was pure bad news for Obama.
However the recruitment to and resignation from the campaign of Samantha Power [sic] is much more interesting. She was *always* likely to be a loose cannon, and an extremely high profile one at that. But having her on board was a very effective signal to young progressives that Obama shared their views, in contrast with Clinton's hawkishness, and they have repaid that amply. Even now, it's unclear if she's been permanently let go or would join his administration. This "creative ambiguity", leaves everyone free to believe the best of Obama, one of his greatest skills.
Posted by: jonm at Mar 10, 2008 11:33:40 PM
I thought that The Wire was quite popular in the US. I was not aware that it was some kind of "subterranean" piece of culture like, I don't know, those uncollected writings of Salinger that have not been officially compiled and published in a volume...
Posted by: Olivia at Mar 11, 2008 5:52:57 AM
I'm sure Plato would have agreed with you, Prof. Cowen.
Posted by: Brock at Mar 11, 2008 9:05:03 AM
Do people intentionally get Samantha Power's name wrong? Is this like Democrat Party? This is a serious question, by the way, not snark.
Posted by: Ari at Mar 11, 2008 9:46:50 AM
This goes along with my idea that maybe that in an advanced democracy, like our government has become, the most corrupt politicians may be the best electable option. E.G. Bill Clinton ran against free trade and NAFTA but when he governed he did not want to do anything that might cause economic damage so he was very free trade. He deftly also avoided addressing global warming and he waited until just before he left office to sign other potential damaging environmental legislation knowing the Bush would have to get rid of it.
Richard Vedder and some others looked objective at how the country did under various administrations and it came out that the country did best while Warren G. Harding was president. A corrupt president can talk tough and still avoid wars by secretly dealing with thugs. He can placate all kinds of protectionists with talk but act only symbolically. If congress is bought by business we can avoid certain economically crippling legislation for the price of some corporate welfare.
So here’s to hoping the candidates are corrupt enough that they are just lying when attacking free trade and NAFTA. I am pretty confident of this in regards to Hillary, she is most likely following Bill’s example but Obama too seems less that genuine in regards to NAFTA.
And may the most corrupt candidate win.
Posted by: Floccina at Mar 11, 2008 10:03:02 AM
Aren't we talking about the basic irrelevance of academics to political life? Sometimes useful as window dressing, but thrown overboard as soon as they become inconvenient? Should anyone be surprised at this? Isn't the only surprise that some academics actually are surprised?
Posted by: Kent Guida at Mar 11, 2008 10:58:52 AM
It isn't the consistency of the message that is the problem per se its that the message itself is dependent on which groups form the governing coalition. Arguing about the limitations of mass appeal will only take you so far, because by far the most significant factor is 'who in my coalition can bring the votes, and what do they want to hear'. The end result is the same, that intelligent consulting is expendable but 'reframing' specialists are not.
Posted by: JasonL at Mar 11, 2008 11:43:47 AM
The Wire isn't popular with everyone, and certainly wasn't for the first one or two seasons. You can maybe imagine some reasons why that was so.
Posted by: at Mar 11, 2008 12:15:57 PM
If The Wire had to appeal to 300 million viewers, they would have to get rid of a lot of black people on the show.
Posted by: RICKM at Mar 11, 2008 12:37:51 PM
Floccina,
Bill Clinton did NOT run against free trade or NAFTA, nor did Al Gore. Gore made mincemeat
of Ross Perot over the issue of NAFTA during the 2000 election. The person who has a problem
is Hillary going against Bill on the matter.
The real problem here aside, from Obama being caught with an adviser making more sense than
Obama's public statements, is how it is that the Democratic Party has simply gone totally
protectionist. This is one of those historical flip flops. Historically, it was the Federalists/
Whigs/Republicans who tended to be more protectionist than the Democrats, although politicians
in both parties always tended to listen to local interests first, ready to support free trade
if the most powerful economic interests in their state/district were exporters and vice versa
if vice versa.
The shift seems to have come in the 1980s. Reagan retained his pro free trade stance from his
days as an FDR liberal Democrat (although he implemented some protectionist policies when it was
convenient). The recession of 1982 hit the auto-steel-coal complex hard, and was viewed by AFL-CIO
as due to imports. This pushed organized labor to be protectionist, which it had not been generally
before then. When the Republicans swept both the Congress and the presidency in 2000, most of the
big business PACs fled to the GOP, leaving the Dems much more dependent on organized labor, with
only Lieberman being clearly pro-free trade in the 2004 Dem primaries. By now, the shift has been
complete, and one cannot run for president as a Dem without mouthing support for protectionism to a
serious extent, even if one knows better (which I suspect Goolsbee is right in asserting that Obama
does, as does Hillary also, probably). The spectacle in Ohio of Hillary and Obama playing "who is
the most anti-NAFTA?" was truly depressing, but not all that surprising, I guess.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Mar 11, 2008 12:59:08 PM
Sadly, this means the penny will still only be worth 1 cent rather than 5 at the end of an Obama administration.
Posted by: anpat at Mar 16, 2008 3:41:51 PM
Posted by: sf at Mar 31, 2008 1:58:29 AM
Posted by: tft at Jun 24, 2008 10:06:41 PM
