Obama Approval Dropping as Hard Choices Made
As President Obama settles into his fifth month in office, his personal popularity remains high but his job approval is slipping drastically, according to a new NYT/CBS News poll. A substantial majority of Americans say President Obama has not developed a strategy to deal with the budget deficit, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, which also found ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 18, 2009 09:26
Great Compromise Not So Great?
Matt Yglesias has discovered the facts that 1) each state gets two Senators and 2) some states are bigger than others, a condition that has obtained since the inception of our current system in 1789. There was, as some may recall having read, this thing called the Great Compromise whereby delegates representing sovereign states under the extant Articles of Confederation ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 16, 2009 11:50
Right Wing Extremists
There's been much back-and-forth since Wednesday's tragic shooting of a guard at the Holocaust Musuem about the rise of right wing extremists and the need for the federal government to treat them as a threat. Inevitably, we're seeing the perennial "their extremists are worse than our extremists" debate. Oddly, we're even seeing some "No, he's actually a Left-wing extremist!" arguments. Rather ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 13, 2009 08:17
Europe’s Fringe
The press had a field day with the election of various racist and oddball parties to the European Parliament over the weekend. A quick scan of the headlines: "European election results Battered and bruised" (The Economist); "European elections 2009: far-Right and fringe parties make gains across Europe amid low turnout" (The Telegraph); "European elections: extremist and fringe parties are the big ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 11, 2009 11:39
Ridiculing the Tea Party Protests
Steve Benen and Jesse Taylor both note that some people participating in the "Tea Party" protests are less than highly articulate spokesmen for the cause, with the former referring to "low-information voters" interviewed by CNN and the latter, well, apparently having gotten over being tired of obscenities. Scott Payne is right that it's unfair to criticize ordinary citizens frustrated with the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 15, 2009 16:19
Concentration of Power
Via Glenn Reynolds, I see that Arnold Kling has managed to come away from an anti-capitalism screed in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi with this conclusion: For quite a while, but especially over the last nine months, the best way to predict developments in politics and finance has been to ask: what will do the most to increase the concentration of ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 31, 2009 08:50
The End of Fascism
Megan McArdle calls for an extension of Godwin's Law that would put an end to "using the word fascist to apply to the current, or indeed previous, administration." How is this helpful? Has clarifying the distinction between fascism and socialism really added to most peoples' understanding of what the Obama administration is doing? All this does is drag the specter of ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 31, 2009 08:32
Republican ‘Budget’ Embarrassing
Steven Taylor, a lifelong Republican, calls "The Republican Road to Recovery," the GOP's budget-without-numbers, "an "embarrassing budget proposal." Here’s the deal: if one is going to engage in a serious1 policy debate about very serious fiscal and monetary matters in a time of a very deep financial crisis, one has to come prepared and be ready to have a a real ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 27, 2009 11:54
Obama: Slacker President?
Reacting to a Rachel Lewis feature touting Barack Obama as a man-about-town in Washington, attending ball games and plays and dining out, Ann Althouse wonders, "Should the president be working harder?" Glenn Reynolds quips, "I think he should take as much time off as he wants." Heh. Indeed. Aside from that, though, it's an absurd criticism. First, like all modern presidents, Obama puts ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 26, 2009 11:56
Geither’s Loose Lips (Briefly) Sink Dollar Ship (Updated)
My New Atlanticist piece Geithner Dollar Remarks Create Panic" shows how a perfectly reasonable and intellectually defensible comment by a senior official can have an enormous, negative impact. The video: The bottom line: Things perfectly fine for public intellectuals to bandy about often require subtlety and sidestepping by public officials. Diplomats must be diplomatic, presidents must be presidential, and treasury officials must ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 26, 2009 08:17
Why Small Things Get Big Attention
Steven Taylor makes a point I made on Wednesday's edition of OTB Radio ("AIG Bonus Brouhaha") about why seemingly minor matters resonate with the public while major issues often don't. [W]hile broad and complicated policy may not fully register in the minds of the public, a smaller, specific and easier to understand action can capture public attention and lead to substantial ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 21, 2009 07:27
Democrats Can’t Win for Losing
Matt Yglesias, responding to my statement yesterday that "We’ll always have a strong 'conservative' movement. It’s just that Ronald Reagan and Alex P. Keaton wouldn’t quite recognize it," one-ups me and posits that "American politics in the future will mostly be dominated by a center-right political coalition just as it always has." While he's riding the progressive horse and yelling "Faster! ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 18, 2009 12:05
These Kids Today: Conservative Politics Over?
Paul Waldman fleshes out a theme that many observers have made in passing: The young voters who helped propel Barack Obama to the presidency could create a "permanent" realignment in American politics. In 1984, 59 percent of the nation's Alex P. Keatons voted for Reagan, an extraordinary percentage for a Republican (and just over his proportion of the popular vote ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 17, 2009 14:51
Representation Without Taxation
Amity Shlaes tells NPR's Kai Ryssdal that the current tax system reverses the problem that the founders faced. Taxation without representation. That's what our nation's founders rebelled against. Subjects in the colonies were sending money home to the crown without getting say in their own government. The course of U.S. history can be seen as progress by those who are taxed ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 14, 2009 07:20
The Consensus Fallacy
Thomas Friedman suggests that what we need to get out of this financial mess is a little more BOGSATT: Which is why I wake up every morning hoping to read this story: “President Obama announced today that he had invited the country’s 20 leading bankers, 20 leading industrialists, 20 top market economists and the Democratic and Republican leaders in the House ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 14, 2009 05:06
