The Stopped Clock Rule

I’m not a big fan of the Politico.com.  By and large, I think they’re a bunch of wankers.

But this short article about Wilson, Roosevelt, and Johnson’s ability to get things done — to get the legislation they wanted through congress — is worth reading.

The Moral Argument

Ezra Klein asks: what happened to the moral argument for health care reform?

It seems this argument was key to getting national health care passed in Sweden and Taiwan.  While opponents were talking in cold economic terms, proponents were talking about ethical obligations.  In T.R. Reid’s words:

Both countries decided that society has an ethical obligation — as a matter of justice, of fairness, of solidarity — to assure everybody has access to medical care when it’s needed. The advocates of reform in both countries clarified and emphasized that moral issue much more than the nuts and bolts of the proposed reform plans. As a result, the national debate was waged around ideals like “equal treatment for everybody,” “we’re all in this together,” and “fundamental rights” rather than on the commercial implications for the health care industry.

Frankly, I doubt how well that would work in America.

For starters, and most fundamentally, we’ve never quite cleared ourselves of Adam Smith thinking.  I’m referring not  to Smith’s notion of free markets, but to Smith’s moral philosophy that undergirded and justified it.  Smith’s argument was not just that free markets work best economically, but that they result in morally correct outcomes: everybody rationally pursuing their own best interest results, in the aggregate, in morally correct outcomes.

Thus, the distinction between economic arguments and moral arguments that Klein and Reid presuppose is one a lot of Americans still do not make.  (On this front, Max Weber remains extremely relevant, I think.)  I don’t mean to suggest that most Americans (or Swedes or Taiwanese) consciously think in or about these categories.  Only that most American thinking still runs very much within the grooves laid down by Smith, and those grooves never separated economics from morality.

Since Smith’s economics and his moral philosophy were individualistic (because rooted in his individualistic anthropology and epistemology), most Americans’ moral thinking and economic thinking are, likewise, identically individualistic.  Notions like solidarity and “we’re all in this together” just don’t carry much weight.  Public policy arguments based on them have never been terribly successful, except during some of our wars.

Say “solidarity” to 10 Americans over the age of 30 and you’re likely to be called a Communist at least 3 times.

Similarly, arguments featuring “equal treatment for everybody” don’t do all that well.  A big chunk of Americans don’t much believe in that — don’t believe in it at all on economic issues like being able to access health care.  Nor do they much favor “fundamental rights” in the economic sphere.  The only fundamental right is to an equal shot at working to make enough money to buy yourself some health care.

I’m not sure if that kind of thinking is still a majority mindset in America, but it very clearly is the mindset of at least a large, vocal, and pretty organized minority, that happens to pull the strings of one of our 2 major political parties.

So while I share Klein and Reid’s view that there’s a moral argument here, I don’t think the health care reform effort would be notably better off if proponents relied more on that argument.

Another Resignation

God resigns as governor of Alaska the universe:

So to serve the Earth is a really intense responsibility, because I know in my soul that Earth is of such import in our very volatile universe. And you know me by now, I promised a couple thousand years ago to show MY independence…that’s why I rested on the seventh day. That was foreshadowing.

via Sullivan

Pryor’s Priorities

Somehow I’ve gotten myself on Sen. Mark Pryor’s email list.  Probably it was by sending him an email a while back, complaining he was a wholly owned subsidiary of Sen. Ben Nelson.

Regardless, I got a kick out of his most recent missive, containing his summary of his legislative activities.  There are 3, presumably listed in order of importance:

1. He got the Corps of Engineers to waive some fees for use of Corps-maintained lakes and such, so Americans can afford a vacation in these tough economic times.  This required the writing of a letter.
2. He got an amendment to the Switchblade Knife Act of 1958 passed, protecting owners of “assisted-opening” pocketknives from undue government intrusion.  (“A pocketknife for many Arkansans can serve as an entire toolbox, and the government really has no business taking that away from them.”)
3. As chairman of the Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs, he held a hearing examining competition in the health care sector.

Pocketknives and fishing fees.  Somebody tell the Architect of the Capitol to start planning which buildings to rename in honor of Sen. Pryor’s pathbreaking career.

Note that in reporting on his health care hearing, Pryor manages not to say anything whatsoever about, much less take a position on, the issues actually holding up health care reform legislation.

A Near Miss

Matt Yglesias sees reality without actually quite seeing it:

Meanwhile, the geography of the 2010 Senate races is also highly favorable to the Democrats. And given the contrast between ironclad discipline on the GOP side and the “anything goes” attitude on the Democratic side, it looks like for a while yet we may be in a California-style dynamic where Republicans can’t win elections but Democrats can’t actually pass a governing agenda.

See, there?  That whole “ironclad discipline” vs. “anything goes” contrast?  There’s your problem.  That’s why “it looks like for a while yet we may be in a California-style dynamic where Republicans can’t win elections but Democrats can’t actually pass a governing agenda.”

Note, too, that Yglesias agrees with me that, contra Klein, there’s nothing about the senate rules that makes it inherently less amenable to discipline, as the GOP has been proving for a very long time, now, as both a majority and a minority.  It just takes leadership from the top, and pressure from below.  Republicans get the latter from talk radio and Fox News.  Dems should be getting it from superstar bloggers like Yglesias and Klein.

Yet five will get you ten that within 24 hours Yglesias repeats his claim that the problem is the system, not the people.

One more time: when there’s no price to be paid for breaking with your caucus, because your leadership won’t inflict one and progressive opinion shapers are giving you a pass by blaming the system, why not go off the farm?  The mainstream media love you because you look like a moderate and a Very Serious Person.  You get more leverage and therefore more control over the content of legislation and the president’s ongoing agenda.  The voters back home think you’re a stand-up guy or gal, voting what you think is right (or what is best for the home folks) instead of the party line.

Unless you represent a thoroughly liberal state (or district), of course you’re going to buck your party’s agenda.

Let me say I’m not arguing that  Dems should be forced to vote in total lockstep 100% of the time the way Republicans are.  We’ve seen what that got them; on the other hand, before they cratered, that discipline got them just about everything they wanted.  So I am arguing that on the Democratic Party’s biggest, most important, most desired, highest-profile agenda items, yes, you’ve got to be willing enforce some friggin’ discipline.