Fareed Zakaria wants to see the debated elevated

I’m tempted to repost the entire Washington Post op-ed, but instead I’ll quote some major points.  He writes:

The presidential campaign has gotten so heated over the attacks and counterattacks from the Obama and Romney campaigns that it’s easy to forget that larger issues are at stake in November. That’s unfortunate because, beneath the froth, there is an important ideological debate to be had about America’s future.

The attacks are, I suppose, inevitable. But let’s be honest: They’re largely untrue or irrelevant.

And goes on to say:

Below all the mudslinging lies a real divide. Obama has been making the case that the U.S. economy needs investment — in infrastructure, education, training, basic sciences and technologies of the future. Those investments, in the president’s telling, have been the key drivers of American growth and have enabled people to build businesses, create jobs and invent the future.

Romney argues that America needs tax and regulatory relief. The country is overburdened by government mandates, taxes and rules that make it difficult for businesses to function, grow and prosper, he says. He wants to cut taxes for all, reduce regulations and streamline government. All this, in his telling, will unleash America’s entrepreneurial energy.

Both views have merit. It would make for a great campaign if our nation had a sustained discussion around these ideas. Then the election would produce a mandate to move in one of these directions.

These are important points to make at this early part of the campaign.  I’m becoming increasingly concerned that, at a time when significant policy discussions need to occur and compromise needs to be reached, this will become an intensely negative campaign environment.  That would be most unfortunate.

Obama’s Moneyball Strategy

Brad Pitt in a room of Romney voters
Source: Columbia Pictures

Anybody who has seen “Moneyball” — or, even better, read the book — knows the story of how Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s outsmarted the baseball establishment by using new statistical techniques called “sabermetrics.” The movie portrays the confrontation between the grizzled scouts, whose time-honored player evaluation methods include rating the attractiveness of a prospect’s girlfriend (an indication of confidence…), and Brad Pitt’s Beane, who only cares about numbers. Not the traditional numbers, such as batting average and runs batted in, but the new sabermetric numbers with acronyms that don’t appear in the daily box score: WAR, OPS, BABIP, and of particular importance to Beane, OBP.

The idea behind sabermetrics is that the conventional baseball statistics are unrepresentative of a player’s true value. Critically, they often obscure or misassign causation. For instance, a batter gets credit for an RBI if a runner scores during his at-bat, even though the run was dependent on a prior hitter reaching base. And when the baserunner scores, he gets credit for a run that was contingent upon the batter’s hit.  At its most basic form, sabermetrics disaggregates the complex team sport of baseball into more accurate estimates of individual performance.

I have long argued that society can learn a lot from baseball, and sure enough, the Obama team has adopted a sabermetric model for the 2012 campaign. Slate got the scoop:

The Obama campaign’s “experiment-informed programs”—known as EIP in the lefty tactical circles where they’ve become the vogue in recent years—are designed to track the impact of campaign messages as voters process them in the real world, instead of relying solely on artificial environments like focus groups and surveys. The method combines the two most exciting developments in electioneering practice over the last decade: the use of randomized, controlled experiments able to isolate cause and effect in political activity and the microtargeting statistical models that can calculate the probability a voter will hold a particular view based on hundreds of variables.

The idea is to precisely evaluate the impact of individual political messages. The campaign starts by running test ads in various media markets. An intensive data-collection effort follows to gauge the effectiveness of the messages contained in the ads. This data is crunched and refined, so that the campaign can follow up with more targeted messaging based on the results. Through a number of iterations of this test-and-refine process, the campaign hopes to acquire empirical evidence for which messages work where and with whom. If all goes to plan, persuadable voters in key areas will receive tailored political communications during the heat of the fall campaign.

Campaigns have traditionally hired political consultants to tell them which messages work and which don’t. They often look like the paunchy, profane, tobacco-chewing scouts of “Moneyball.” Their credibility comes from experience, and, unsurprisingly, most of their analysis is based on a qualitative “gut” understanding of what went right or wrong in past campaigns. To the extent that they use numbers, they are the misrepresentative RBI-type statistics that appear in the top line of polls.

While two old school political vets, Jim Messina and David Axelrod, are managing the Obama campaign, they — like Beane and sabermetrics — have embraced the new models of electioneering. And just as Beane went outside the traditional coterie to deputize a young Yale economics grad, Obama has turned over the EIP programs to political scientists from the Analyst Institute.

For what it’s worth, the Romney folks aren’t exactly Luddites. Romney, a BCG and Bain man if there ever was, was noted for pioneering the use of data analysis in management consulting and private equity. He has brought that empirical approach to his campaign and will be using some of the same microtargeting techniques as Obama.

Nevertheless, the Democrats — like the Oakland A’s — will enjoy first mover advantage during this election. For all of the sophisticated trappings of 21st century baseball front offices, a team still wins by scoring more runs than its opponent. New types of electioneering haven’t altered the precept of successful campaigns, either. The goal is still to build a list of supporters longer than the opposition’s, and then to get those supporters get to the polls. Democrats have a sizable lead in both.

Every contact that recent Democratic campaigns have made with a voter has been recorded in Votebuilder, a powerful database built for and licensed exclusively to progressive candidates. The Obama campaign can instantly call up a voter’s candidate preference (on a 1-5 scale, from strong D to strong R) in each presidential and congressional election dating back, in some cases, to 2004. Information obtained from other sources — internet purchases, magazine subscriptions, club memberships, etc. — can be overlaid and cross-referenced to fit complex voter choice statistical models. The GOP has a similar database (Voter Vault,) but the McCain campaign and RNC were unable to match the Obama field effort in 2008 and consequently have little residual data to offer Mitt Romney. Obama may be tied with Romney in the polls, but he has a much better list of supporters.

Obama also has head start building the massive network of organizers and volunteers who will be tasked with mobilizing those voters on Election Day. Not only is much of the Obama infrastructure still intact from 2008, but the campaign has been able to ramp up staff and offices while Romney was fighting for his life during the primaries. And instead of pumping money into television ads, a consortium of left-leaning SuperPACs have pledged $100 million for door-to-door field operations this fall. The grassroots capabilities of the GOP once struck fear in Democratic hearts. Now it is the Obama campaign’s greatest comparative advantage.

The new empirical techniques will allow the campaign to sharpen the impact of its messages and maximize the efficiency of its resources. But just like the sabermetric revolution in baseball, if it is done correctly, the average spectator won’t notice the difference. She (since women vote more often than men, the median voter will be a she) will only think that the political ads seem a lot more relevant and that Obama is starting to look much more appealing.

Step One for Mitt

Yesterday I wrote a post about the opportunity for a strong centrist campaign season between President Obama and Governor Romney. Step one, for Mr. Romney if he chooses to take a policy solutions campaign strategy ought to involve the tax code. David Leonhardt (whom I linked in yesterday’s AM Reads) offers an outline of the impending tax debacle debate in Washington. This piece of the puzzle will be central to both campaigns and is probably the best opportunity for Romney to distinguish his campaign and vision for America. This could be as simple as a clearly defined revision of the current income tax structure with lower rates, broader bases, and a clearer tax policy towards corporations and capital gains or as bold as a progressive consumption tax to replace much or all of the income tax. Either way it is a way to distinguish the Romney campaign from the Obama White House while increasing revenues to address the deficit in a pro-growth manner. If you need evidence of the ability of a centrist view of taxes to differentiate ideas, see this post by Reihan Salam on the progressive consumption tax.

A “liberalitarian/Rawlesekian” criticizing Santorum

Will Wilkinson, who self-identifies with the two adjectives I used in the title of this post, is pretty critical of Rick Santorum’s tax policy ideas in a post on The Economist‘s Democracy in America blog. In fact he concludes:

If “economic freedom” means “a system rigged to the advantage of petrochemical companies and large middle- and upper-class families”, Mr Santorum’s proposal might have a lot to be said for it. I could be wrong, but I suspect it doesn’t really mean that.

Wilkinson argues that Santorum has a revisionist view of the Declaration of Independence

Will follows his post on The Economist with a post on his Big Think blog specifically dealing with child tax credits in Santorum’s policies. Here he gets into political philosophy much more as he critiques Reihan Salam’s apparent defense of Santorum’s policies because, he asserts, they are pro-growth in human capital. Will responds:

If the idea is to promote growth through human capital, the obvious freedom-enhancing solution is to offer work visas to any highly-skilled foreigner who would like to live in the States. Effects on growth aside, this policy increases economic freedom in a straightforward way: it lifts coercive barriers to U.S. labor markets for a large class of people, allowing economic exchange previously forbidden to take place. Notably, nothing along these lines appears in Rick Santorum’s “economic freedom agenda.”

This really highlights the intra-party debate going on between countless factions of the GOP currently. It is beyond Tea Party versus establishment; after all the Tea Party includes libertarians and members of the religious right. Clearly marrying these two concepts will not work forever. This is the trouble that comes when a group starts trying to create “purity” tests for a party it hopes will represent at least a plurality of the country, it simply doesn’t work for very long. Wilkinson’s comments, as usual, are thoughtful and worth reading; it would be interesting to have him elaborate on what this suggests about the GOP’s factions.

An Elegy for the Huntsman Campaign

On Monday, my favorite candidate and every Democrat’s favorite least hated GOP candidate, Jon Huntsman, announced that he would suspend his campaign ahead of the South Carolina primary. Despite a strong conservative record as governor and two prominent ambassadorships, Huntsman never gained traction among the Republican base due to his apostasies on global warming (it’s happening), evolution (makes sense), and gay rights (they should have some.)

A standard political obituary wouldn’t do his memory justice, so — in a brief interlude from our typical style — Jake and I decided to honor Huntsman’s dashed presidential hopes through verse.

Jake, smugly basking in the Republican Party’s reflexive rejection of anybody or anything mildly reasonable (his words), felt a limerick was most appropriate:

There was a rich man from Beijing,

Who chastised his party’s right wing.

We all knew he was dead,

After five words he said:

“I believe in global warming.”

I, feeling a bit more solemn, chose to model my elegy on “O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Witman (click the title to read):

O Candidate! My Candidate!

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: Republican Debate Edition

Including last night’s debate in Las Vegas, I have now watched the Republican presidential candidates face off six times. That gives me a relatively informed basis for my current judgments about the field of contenders,  but it also probably makes me the most addled person in America — which, to borrow a phrase from “The Big Lebowski,” places me high in the running for most addled worldwide. (Since I am no longer in the country, there is even more evidence for the latter). 

We’ve now seen these candidates in a variety of formats and locations. They have debated in front of tea partiers (Tampa, Sept. 12) and Ivy Leaguers (Dartmouth, Oct. 11). They have sat at Charlie Rose’s liberal media roundtable and taken friendly fire at Fox News’s debatatorium  (which was probably designed with the set of American Gladiators in mind).

Each of these debates has functioned like a stage in the Tour de France. (If you ever want to annoy a Republican, compare them to the French…) So far, we’ve learned who climbs quickly but crashes on the way down (Bachmann, Cain…probably), who does well in the individual time trials but has no endurance (Perry), who is solid in all conditions but can’t pull away from the pack (Romney), and who is permanently relegated to the peloton (Santorum, Huntsman, Gingrich, Paul). Then there’s the rider who was DQ’ed for testosterone doping (Pawlenty).

The following are my thoughts about each of the major candidates, with apologies to Buddy Roemer and Gary Johnson, two former governors who have been excluded from most of the debates due to their lack of “viability.” And yet a former regional pizza chain executive with no political experience is leading the polls. It’s been that kind of year.

Elizabeth Warren’s cri de coeur

This video has probably made its way into more liberal inboxes than anything since the “Yes We Can” song, and for good reason. Elizabeth Warren, the Senate candidate from Massachusetts, represents a new form of intellectual populism in the Democratic Party. A Harvard Law professor, Warren has both the credentials and the unpretentious persona to become a leading champion of the middle class. When she speaks of raising taxes on the wealthy, she employs the rhetoric of values and vision — without slipping into the professorial condescension of Barack Obama (“It’s not class warfare. It’s math.”) She is the architect of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but she looks and speaks like someone who would rather be pruning her gardenias if she weren’t so fed up with the upward redistribution of wealth in this country. In short, Elizabeth Warren gives the liberal wing of the national Democratic Party a Senate candidate they can get excited about in a way they haven’t been since, well, Barack Obama.

Not sure what to make of this…

With the economy not doing so well and the presidential campaigns really kicking off, I did some research comparing incumbent party performance versus economic performance while they were in office, because of all of the election talk kicking off lately. This is interesting. Keep reading after the jump.

Accidentally left this off of AM Reads this morning

The “Morning Money Ben” blog at Politico, written by Ben White, gave Huntsman plenty of shout outs.

Tyler’s AM Reads – September 8, 2011

Today’s AM Reads will all be reactions to last night’s GOP debate.

Glenn Kessler (The Fact Checker at the Washington Post) checks the claims of the candidates.

The Washington Post‘s headline article this morning is a walkthrough of the sparring that happened between Perry and Romney.

The New York Times leads with a debate overview this morning.

Politico offers “Eight Takeaways” from the debate.

Ezra Klein wrapped-up the debate like this:

Mitt Romney looked like he had already won the Republican nomination. Rick Perry looked like he will win the Republican nomination. Michele Bachmann looked like she was beginning to realize she definitely wouldn’t win the Republican nomination.