Ezra calls this “our lost decade in one graph,” and although economics is not my area of specialty, I have to agree.

It’s not just that over the seven years depicted here we lost $2000 in median income. That’s bad, but to some extent understandable. The 90s were very good. But as the new technology economy settled into place there was bound to be a plateau. Of course, when the technology economy was rising, people kept betting on it to rise more. Which naturally meant over pricing and a subsequent bursting of the tech bubble. What you see happening in 2000 to 2005 is the hyper correction of that over pricing and then between 2005 and 2006 a correction of the hyper correction. From 2006 to 2007 the graph is fairly flat, at least compared to the decline and subsequent rise.

It’s not all the tech burst either. Manufacturing has been in decline, but construction was up in this time. Industrial was down or flat but finance was up.

But we were in the beginnings of a potential recession at the end of 2000 Q1 that became a full blown recession by late 2001. And that was largely a readjustment period as people previously laid off because of technological advances–and a second group of people laid off during the burst, retooled and found new work.

But, as Ezra points out, this chart stops in 2007, just before the current recession began. Although the story here looks like a promising start back toward the 2000 high, to think that’s how it ended would be like Phoebe thinking  Old Yeller turned out well. The part of the chart we don’t see is where Yeller has to be put down because he has the hyrdophobe.

I will begin studies in three days at the University of Indianapolis pursuing my Masters in International Relations. I will be focusing my attention there (and thus here) on the development of international black markets as unintended consequence of domestic and (mostly) foreign policy. So, if you have any excellent reading tips on the topics of human, drug, and arms trafficking be sure to send them my way. (bigporch@porch-dog.com)

More soon.

I think Weigel’s analysis is off by degrees rather than just being wrong. Referencing a Ramesh Ponnuru column from pre-November 2008 which claimed that, if Obama had lost the general election, it would set race relations in this country backward, at least as far as it concerned the potential future election of elite African-Americans running for the highest office in the land/world, Weigel concludes that the question has changed and becomes “If Obama fails, will that set race relations back?” I don’t think so even though I agree with much of what he has to say.

It turns out that Ponnuru’s hypothesis lost its test because Obama won. But, for what it’s worth, I think he was wrong too. I, for example, had anticipated a larger Geraldine Ferraro effect on Clinton’s candidacy that never materialized. And indeed the post-Ferraro era of politics women have done quite well for themselves, at least in Congress if not in the Senate. It isn’t perfect, but it was less perfect 25 years ago, so it’s not as if Ferraro’s breakdown and the subsequent Reagan landslide hurt women too much in their pursuit of elected office. It hasn’t hurt them with the Democrats who have Pelosi running the show in the House; and it doesn’t seem it has hurt them with the Republicans who have seen fit to elevate both Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin to be key figures in their party.

I would go even further and say that Ponnuru missed the mark entirely. If Obama had lost when the academic literature predicted him winning with ~53% of the vote, then I think, rather than blame Obama or his race, we could have gone backward and blamed the miserable performances of the less-than-center African-American Democratic primary candidates before him: Jackson and Sharpton. The fact that their collective poor showings did not drag Obama down, I think, is a key tell in why I think Weigel is wrong now.

The party likely to elevate a black man with a Kenyan father to high office is also one not real likely to extrapolate his failures onto all blacks. I think Weigel is right that a lot of the conspiracy talk circulating about Obama is probably related to a general mistrust of him and his policies that is rooted in the continuing recession. But the people who are mostly likely to mutter racial epithets or say things like, “Well, if Obama can’t fix this I guess none of his kind could,” are the kind of people that 1) would never have voted for Obama in the first place (regardless of their previous party affiliation) and 2) already harbored thoughts of that nature before he took office. That is, his failure will “prove” racists right, but not add new racists.

Indeed, half of the Democratic/Liberal project in this country is protecting the image of its prior leaders and denigrating the image of their conservative counterparts. And the same is true for Republicans/Conservatives. The fact that Jimmy Carter had a more-or-less failed presidency was not proof that Georgians couldn’t lead. Nor was it proof that white people, southernors, or guys with big smiles couldn’t lead. It was however, proof that Democrats couldn’t lead. It was proof of that, that is, to everybody but Democrats.

And I think the same can be said of Obama. No Republican is going to stand up and say that Obama is doing a kick ass job and he should be allowed to advance his agenda unimpeded. And when he is gone, whether that’s in 2012 or 2016, they will begin the project to convince us that 1) he was horrible and 2) they always knew he would be, not because he’s black, but because he was liberal. They will do this even if we begin adding 400,000 jobs a month with no inflation starting tomorrow. They will do this even if a grant he personally champions, signs, and delivers results in emission-free, fusion-based, perpetual energy machines. They will do this even if we discover that he is a magical goose that literally craps golden eggs.

Not to say that Bill Clinton was any of those things but you can see what I’m talking about in his case. I don’t have to repeat the party line on this but I will anyway. Under Clinton several key conservative policies were promulgated including a large deficit reduction, a large cut in welfare and increases in military spending. The economy (although Clinton deserves little to no credit) saw its largest growth since World War II; and, crime and unemployment both went way, way down. And yet, almost literally crapping golden eggs hasn’t turned Republican/Conservative hardliners from their decades-old parlor game of “Who did Clinton have murdered in Arkansas?” and its conspiratorial ken.

Like I said, it’s just matters of degree my disagreement with Weigel, but I think that regardless of what happens to his presidency in the next 2 or 6 years, having a black president is still going to be an overall plus for race relations.

So superstore chain Target donated a whole bunch of cash to a far-right candidate in Minnesota. The candidate in question, Republican Tom Emmer, hates teh gayz. Target on the other hand is sort of famously pro-gay. So when the pro-gay groups started a little uproar, threatening a boycott and whatnot, Target balked and issued an apology reaffirming their “unwavering” support of gay equality.

A lot of political analyst have jumped on the chance to say something that links this donation to the Citizens United decision that allows corporations more freedom in donating to campaigns. And I suppose that’s an important thing to make clear to readers.

Others have decided to point out that the donation and the immediate walkback are an examples of how fraught with danger political donations are and how Citizens leaves companies open to criticisms for the choices they can now make and how divisive both gay rights and Tea Party politics are.

To me, what’s astounding is that Target didn’t have the good sense to not back a candidate that cold be described as “far right” or, for that matter, “far left.”

It’s just not good PR policy to go around donating $150,000 to any sort of extremist, because no matter how much you like the politician’s opinions on one policy, you’re almost certain to disagree with them on some other one and it might just be a very big one.

In this case, Target (apparently) loved Emmer’s pro-business stance but realized too late that his homosexual bigotry interfered with a big part of Target’s social positioning.

I’m not wholly convinced that Citizens United will prove to be as devastating to progressive causes as I was when I first heard about the decision oh those many days ago; but, one would think that smart, successful companies like Target would know to choose their fights a bit more judiciously.

Besides, it’s not like any candidate is really anti-business, despite what  you  may heard.

There were some primaries in districts no one cares about last night, and soon we will have some freaking mid-term elections (woot!). And as always, we will hear stories about how this or that victory bodes ill or not for President Obama in 2012. And as always I’ll link to some political science bloggers that try desperately to correct the misperception. They (I) will say that (re-)electoral science is based on fundamentals (war and the economy) and that midterm elections in all but two very special cases have always been bad or the incumbent party.

But the comment on the economy is important. Boiled down simply, if the economy is good, the incumbent should sail easily past his opponent at a predictable vote share. But that’s only half true and if weighted too heavily, wrong. Al Gore in 2000 is a good example which Jonathan Bernstein tackled in a recent post. I don’t think there’s any question that in 1999 and early 2000 the economy was “good.” But a front page April 2000 Wall Street Journal (no link because I actually remember this one from memory) indicated that there were red skies on the horizon. And in fact, by the time November rolled around growth in disposable income had flatlined.

As Bernstein notes in his review of Gore’s defeat, voters have short memories.

It wasn’t the relative soundness of the economy throughout most of the year, or even in November, it was the voters’ perception of how the economy was going. And to be sure, we did enter a tiny recession at the start of the Bush presidency. Which is kind of funny when you think about it; the groupthink nailed the economic forecast but switching parties didn’t (couldn’t) stop the retraction.

At any rate,  I’m questioning how well the notion that “recent increases in disposable income will be the largest determinant in presidential elections” will play out in 2012.

It seems to me that this model has a lot going for it, even predicting a 50/50 vote share split for Gore in 2000 when conventional wisdom had him in a waltz over Bush. But Obama isn’t and won’t be in normal economic times. When the average unemployment is within its baseline of between 4-6% and the outliers are barely out of this range, I think we can assure ourselves that national and state averages of disposable income can still tell us a lot about what the votes will look like.

But recent figures, shall we say, don’t look that great. The median unemployment (DE and WV) is 8.5. The average is 9.5%. Even with the modest improvement that’s predicted, there’s a lot of people out there who, despite average increases in disposable income, will see no improvement at all.

More importantly there are severe regional differences. Nevada is listed as a swing state. It went Republican in 72, 76, 80, 84, 88, 2000 and 04. But it went for Clinton in 92 and 96 and it went Obama in 08.  It’s a hotbed of Tea Party activity right now which we can say is a response to Obama’s presidency, or we could say that disaffection with Obama is related to Nevada’s staggering 14.2% unemployment. Even if there’s modest growth in the overall economy, I doubt Nevada will be going for Obama in November. There will be just too much unemployment for national gains in disposable income to mean much there. And if Obama loses Nevada, he loses 5 electoral votes he won in 2008.

And then there’s the question of race. Unlike a lot of commentators, I don’t think that Obama won because of his race. H0wever, the excitement in  the black community over Obama is hard to dismiss outright. Will black voters still be as excited to re-elect Obama if unemployment numbers are only slightly better in 2012 as they are today. As we know, as bad as the overall unemployment numbers are, they are way worse for black Americans. From the lede of a January Washington Post article by V. Dion Haynes:

Unemployment for African Americans is projected to reach a 25-year high this year, according to a study released Thursday by an economic think tank, with the national rate soaring to 17.2 percent and the rates in five states exceeding 20 percent.

While a lot of TARP, Recovery and Unemployment monies will end up in the hands of low-income, low-skill minority laborers, the point remains that without good prospects these groups, at the very least, will not be as energized to get out and vote as they were two years ago. While this won’t hurt Obama in southern states with high African-American voters which he lost anyway, it could hurt his chances in Midwestern and eastern states with high numbers of African-American voters in certain districts. Virginia is a good example. I don’t know the exact vote figures in VA, but it is 20% black and it has 13 electoral votes. Further it wasn’t a lock for Obama in 2008 and only ended up giving him 53% of the vote even when excitement for him ran high.

I suppose this amounts to no more than another, “doesn’t look great for Obama in 2012 posts,” which fits the conventional wisdom already. But with so much wonk talk out there predicting that Obama will do OK as long as the economy is growing, I’m just hoping to toss out an equally plausible prediction that growth won’t matter if unemployment remains too high.  How high is too high? I’m not sure. We’d have to know what percentage of likely voters are currently unemployed and which way they lean. But with blacks making up a substantial portion of the unemployed it’s hard to say that Obama won’t be affected by current or predicted levels of unemployment regardless of any perceivable economic growth between now and Election Day.

There are hacks on both the political left and right…and in those not-quite-left and not-quite-right ideologies too. Humans, as we are learning (or confirming) through advances in psychological testing and assessment, are sort of inclined this way. It’s hard, if not impossible, to be critical and skeptical all the time. We have to rely, sometimes, on the expertise of others, or the supposed expertise of others in order to develop opinions on anything.

That’s the nice way of saying that sometimes we’re hacks when we don’t even know it. The test of intelligence, or at least a test of intelligence, is not whether you are always skeptical, or that you are always skeptical at the right times, but whether, when the opinion you hold has been shown to rest on unstable if not inaccurate foundations you adjust accordingly and not just double down on your own ignorance(s).

I guess what I’m curious about is why someone might consciously choose to be a hack. So as not to confuse the argument with current-current events, let’s take Rush Limbaugh. There’s no way that Limbaugh believes half of what comes out of his mouth. He couldn’t because one half refutes the other half.  But he is invested in bringing down liberal and Democratic politicians. He does so through misleading his audience with half-truths, rhetorical sleights of hand, and bathetic thundering. We rightfully call these tactics “cynical” because in order to engage in them Limbaugh must believe two things (1) that the ends justify the means and (2) that there is no other way to win this argument because his audience is too stupid to listen to well-formed arguments that appeal to the intellect.

Before I go on, to the extent that Olbermann does the same thing, his tactics are also cynical and if it fits your personal ideology to replace “Olbermann” with “Limbaugh” then by all means go ahead. I won’t be speaking about particulars so you shouldn’t have any problems.

Number 2 clearly makes these tactics cynical, etymologically-speaking. Limbaugh believes … something … and he feels that he is righteous in attempting to persuade others to side with him. But he also believes they are too stupid to reach the same conclusions he did through the same machinations that he reached them, which presumably involved facts of some kind. So he must trick them into it.  This notion that people are too stupid to use their intellect is cynical by definition regardless whether its true or not.

I am not trying to assert that “cynical” equals “bad.” I have several cynical notions, in part because people like Rush Limbaugh are not isolated cases. If, for example, I believe that Rush Limbaugh does what Rush Limbaugh does because it makes him money, I believe the worst of Rush Limbaugh and of his followers too, since the only way a venal person can make money through the Limbaugh method is tap into the venalism inherent in man.

But what if we believe the best of Limbaugh? What if we believed that he really believes that there is an intellectually honest conservatism that would make a better world were it enacted in policy unadulterated by Democratic politicians? And what if we also believed that (unfortunately) he is right and the hoi polloi are too stupid to choose good government on their own? In other words, what if we believed that Limbaugh is trying to create a better world and to do so he makes the most of human stupidity—using it against itself to make that better world?

Must we also believe that only Limbaugh knows the method by which this better world can be created? Must we also believe that Limbaugh developed this theory completely on his own without the aid of a single book, teacher, friend, mentor or episode of The Wire? Must we also believe that there’s not a single, solitary person in the whole nation that might be persuaded by hearing Limbaugh articulate his theory and how he arrived at it in a well-argued format free of specious or illogical reasoning?

I guess what I really want to say here is that I can offer something like forgiveness for this obstinate, hateful and ignorant hackery, this ends-justifies-the-means style of battle if I had some clear picture what those ends were supposed to be. It seems to me that people like Limbaugh refuse to offer these kinds of arguments because they just don’t exist and that’s the problem I see. Real conservative thinkers like Conor Friedersdorf and (lord help me) Ross Douthat don’t sound like Limbaugh and don’t hold his positions  because they actually think through the big questions of the day.

Rush Limbaugh essentially turns himself into the straw man he is always using, right? Any liberal that stands up and says  “conservative thinking is bad because I heard on the Limbaugh show last night that blah blah blah; and, that isn’t accurate because X, Y, and Z” is attacking a belief that no one really holds. His level of hackery makes him a parody of conservatism in exactly the same way that the word “Liberals,” when uttered by Limbaugh, is always followed by some parody of actual liberal thinking. “Now, this is really simple folks; the Liberals in this country would have you believe that Obama is a Christ-like figure that walks on water but…”

No big point really and I would do myself some harm if I tried to force one. Just thinking out loud.

He’s very convincing.

He has the right to take your money if you’re stupid enough to trust another human. <shrug> Actions have consequences.

Hope you like government cheese. Oh, I forgot, there isn’t any.

Goodbye.

Society be damned.

What can I say?

Seriously.

Is he the Ryan Leaf of presidents?

One of the big debates in 2008 was whether Obama had “enough” experience. At the time, a lot of the people who were criticizing Obama for his lack of experience were touting Mitt Romney as their guy based primarily on his single term as governor of Massachusetts and his experience as a CEO of an investment firm.

I said at the time that I thought “experience” was a hard measure. What exactly qualifies you to be president of the United States? The job is unique in quality or scale in every conceivable category. Think of it this way, if we were to put various world leaders in a head-to-head comparison in an attempt to find out if, for example, FDR was a better leader of the US than Tony Blair was of England, how would you do it? In addition to problems of comparing the head of the US state and US government to just the head of the UK government, you also have to make huge concession for the size of the land mass, economy, military, population, and relative ethnic homogeneity–just to name a few of the most striking differences.

Now that may seem extreme, but imagine what happens if try to do the same thing but limiting our comparison to just presidents of the United States.

In 1890 America’s population was roughly the size of what Britain is today. Our economy was the same size as Britain’s (measured in GDP) around 1980.  So, if we can’t really compare Blair to FDR, how can we compare Adams to Clinton?

Or, for that matter to be more reasonable about it, how do compare Harry Truman to  George W. Bush? I’m not a huge fan of Bush but let’s be honest, America in 1947 was a big, complicated mess but America in 2002 was an even bigger, more complicated mess if all we consider are the size of the economy and our population. Certainly we have to toss a few bonus points Bush’s way by virtue of having had a harder job.

Two presidents, but only one man.

But my bigger problem is this: when you ask a question like, what experience makes for a better president? what you want to do is gather a set of data and start to generalize. But we’ve only had 43 presidents (we shouldn’t count Grover Cleveland twice). Some of them were legislators, some were soldiers, some were governors. As senators or governors, some were from big states where they represented lots of people and large economies. Some were from very small states where they did not.

Basically I’m saying that we just don’t have a large enough data set to come up with any definitive answer on this score.

Brad DeLong thinks only governors should be in the running for president. In response,  Jonathan Bernstein eyeballs the Siena survey (pdf) and thinks that legislators, not governors, have a slight edge. John Balz, a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago in a paper in the most recent Perspectives on Politics (pdf) tries to quantify data from seven surveys (including Siena) and concludes that mayors and legislators are slightly disadvantaged.

However, and I think this is key, Balz essentially concludes that, regardless of position held or length of service, prior experience makes almost no difference at all. This is essentially what Bernstein notes as well.

To shed just a little light on the difficulty of using past experience as a gauge for predicting future performance look no further than “the quarterback problem.”  In a nutshell, despite the subjective measures of professional football scouts and the objective measurements of the Wonderlic Test, nobody has a clue how to predict which college quarterbacks will make good NFL quarterbacks.

Keep in mind, this is a system that gives us hundreds of data points every year going back decades. Also keep in mind this is a situation where the general skill set is essentially the same. Although the level of competition is higher and the strategies are different, the fundamental skills of being a quarterback remain unchanged. And yet…we still can’t do it.

If we can’t figure out which past quarterbacks will make good future quarterbacks how can we possibly determine which professional path will give us the best future president?