Mad Social Scientist

A report from Florida that touches the heart even of an old political cynic like me.

A lot of ink has been wasted on the pointless question of who Osama bin Laden would like to see as the next American president. What we should be discussing instead is what Osama wants---what is the al Qaeda grand strategy, if one exists, and how can we avoid playing into it, or even throw a spanner in the works.

I've been pondering this today, and am worried that bin Laden may be a much better strategist than we have given him credit. Suppose that what Osama really wants is the following:

1. A theocratically governed Islamic world, loosely directed by a community of religious leaders, in which Osama or his lieutenants and allies play a key role. These countries may not be unified politically (it doesn't seem like Osama and his type care much about the Westphalia system of nation-states one way or the other). They do want to be isolated from the modern, Western world and way of life.

2. The ultimate expulsion of American and other non-Islamist forces from the Dar-al-Islam, and more than that: the ability of Islamic countries to deter American intervention, and thus avoid manipulation by America.

There are several barriers in the way of these goals. The biggest is the threat of America to intervene to protect secular regimes in oil producing states from overthrow by unfriendly factions. This was credibly demonstrated in 1991.

Another missing ingredient is domestic social unrest and revolutionary movements.

The final problem for al Qaeda and Osama, created by their own actions on 9/11, is that they can never assume overt power, or step into the daylight anywhere, unless they want to be bombed to kingdom come. So any political action they take needs to be indirect. They seek to create conditions favoring their preferred outcomes---but they can't take the final actions themselves.

I suspect al Qaeda's agenda is to do two things: react to events in such as way that erodes these barriers, and set traps for their enemies (the US and its secular allies) that will weaken them no matter how they react. al Qaeda knows it is weak militarily, facing the greatest military and economic power in history. They cannot plan every step, because the US can always change the rules. But perhaps they are working on a plan with three phases:

Phase I: Draw the US into open conflict. Post Gulf War, directly mobilizing revolutionary movements in Saudi was pointless, because the US would surely intervene and crush them if necessary. So it became essential to draw the US into a conflict that would weaken this commitment. This began with attacks on embassies in Africa, on the Cole, and finally the WTC and Pentagon.

Phase II: Fight a wearisome, costly, indeterminable guerilla war with the US on Islamic soil. The Iraq conflict serves the aim perfectly. The goal in Phase II is to convince America and American citizens that intervention in the Middle East is doomed, bound to be bloody, and worth avoiding at all costs. The model here is Southeast Asia, which after the Vietnam War the US wanted nothing to do with. For this Phase, the idea is to keep the conflict going as long as possible. They don't want us to give up on Iraq. They want us to exhaust our military over many years in Iraq, and decide that ultimately, such adventures are no worth it in the Islamic world.

Phase III: Years down the road, support, in the distant background, any theocratic revolutionary movements that spring up in the Islamic world. Overt al-Qaeda activity may be counterproductive, by drawing in the US (which will always want revenge for 9/11). Better to let other groups pursue these revolutions, then, once much of the Middle East is theocratic, take a backroom role in running the umma.

***

This speculation assumes that Osama is a rational, calculating revolutionary leader---maybe not as smart or organized as Lenin or Mao, but someone operating in that mode. In contrast, we have no Kennans in the US government trying to figure this out (or if there are, they have to keep it very quiet). Our foreign policy at best involves promises to kill the bad guys, and at worst is used as a club to beat up on domestic opponents of the administration while rewarding cronies. I don't know if this speculation is right, but it could be. We should get much more serious about the game we are playing with al Qaeda, in the same way we got serious about the Soviet Union in 1948.

An interesting (falsifiable) implications of my theory:

Al Qaeda may be done attacking the US on our soil. Much better at this point to attack the US in Iraq, where our military is, to keep our forces bogged down, and in the long run convince Americans that it is a mistake to fight wars in Muslim countries. Also better to attack allies of the US in their own countries, to discourage their participation, and further isolate the US (raising the perceived costs of intervention). The theory is consistent with the otherwise puzzling lack of any recent al Qaeda attacks in the US, despite attacks in Spain and other areas of the world.

***

More on this later. A last thought: if this essay is right in broad outlines, it reinforces the need to go directly after the Qaeda leadership. I think Kerry will do just that. Bush has shown surprisingly little interest in that, and instead seems to enjoy a symbiotic relationship with Osama. His advisors even called Osama's last video "a little gift". They want to exploit Osama to scare the American people. I think Osama wants exactly the same thing.

of catharsis.

I'm no longer alone in my fears that Bush-Rove Republicanism is on the road to a particularly American Nationalist/Evangelical form of fascism. The Pledge of Allegiance to Bush being recited at Bush campaign events has opened a lot of eyes, as Brad de Long surveys.

I don't joke about fascism (or communism for that matter). I use the word carefully. And I'm very afraid that it could lie in our country's future.

Thankfully, like many such movements, I don't think this one could make it without its figurehead. Thinking about Bush in this way does clear some stuff up. Back when he was running for president the first time, he pompously spoke about leadership qualities as if he were the world's greatest expert on the subject ("A leader leads" is my favorite). The only experience Bush had that came close to leadership was the part time job of Texas Governor, a position less powerful than Lt. Governor, of all things. After 9/11, Bush rewrote the history of the event to make himself---a man who spent August on vacation and the morning of 9/11 reading My Pet Goat---as the hero. His own convention claimed Bush's most important accomplishment was comforting and rallying the nation from the ruins of the WTC. When things go wrong--on the economy, Iraq, you name it---Bush blames his enemies, his underlings, his supporters; anyone but himself. And bereft of accomplishments, his reelection campaign is centered on his claims to be a great, strong, and steady leader.

This man is running for the position of Il Duce. He always has been, but he and his backers are so unaware of this historical significance of the cult of personality strategy that none of us saw the signs until he'd been in office two years.

We need to send a message this kind of shit doesn't play in America. Then we need a Republican Krushchev to stand up and repudiate the Bush style of governance. I want the party of Lincoln back. But I'd settle for the party of Eisenhower, or Bush Sr.

This week has seen three scandals which seem to capture everything there is to say about the Bush administration: incompetence, venality, dishonesty, coverups, and polcies that drastically undermine national security while claiming to bolster it.

1. The missing explosives. After a week of coverage (on which the best summary is given by the running commentary over at TPM), it seems fairly clear that there were ~380 tons of high explosives at the al Qaa Qa facility which disappeared, likely into the hands of the insurgents who have been blowing up our troops and Iraqi recruits. There is no way to interpret the facts that makes the Bush admin look good. It took a year for the disappearance to be investigated, despite the fact that we supposedly went to Iraq to prevent terrorists from getting dangerous weapons. Those terrorists have now gotten the weapons because of our clumsy invasion and inadequately planned and manned reconstruction. They now have the men and materiel to keep up the guerilla war indefinitely. What's more, the Bush admin's initial response to the story was to lie about having checked for the weapons and not found them in the early days of the wa. It turns out the only forces to check out al Qaa Qa were just passing through, and couldn't have surveyed the full complex in their one night there; what's more, careful examination of videotape shows the explosives were there all along, and only disappeared after we invaded. (The Bushies also blamed the Iraqis---who didn't take power till after the explosives were known to be missing, and the US troops who weren't ordered to secure the facility, or given the men to do it. A class act those Bushies).

Bottom line: the Bush people screwed up in starting a war they weren't prepared to lead, and through their incompetence have gotten more than a thousand American soldiers killed, and delivered dangerous weapons into the hands of our enemies. Nice going guys. If you'd listened to anyone before starting this mad scheme, this wouldn't have happened.

2. Halliburton contracts were corrupt. A senior contracting official has blown the whistle. (FYI, you have to be pretty corrupt to upset the Army Corps of Engineers, historically the most pork riddeen agency in the Federal government). Now the FBI is on the case. The Bushies call it politically motivated, but somehow I don't think the FBI is a branch of the Democratic Party. And they've got documents.

3. Now we know why Bush went to war. According to his own ghostwriter, Bush planned the war as early as 1999 because he thought winning an easy war would give him the political capital needed to muscle through his domestic agenda and win reelection. This is beyond cynical---waging a war for political gain is flat out treason. The article is worth reading for various quotes on Bush's idea of "leadership", e.g.:

“He told me that as a leader, you can never admit to a mistake,” Herskowitz said. “That was one of the keys to being a leader.”

and

“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade….if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”


I'm beginning to think that when Bush says he's the leader, he means Il Duce.

We have got to get him out of office.

Of all the things Bush and his cronies have done to hurt our country, the one that has always stuck in my craw is his contempt for democracy. Our country has remained democratic through tremendous trials. Indeed, it has usually come out of those trials, like the Civil War, the Depression and Second World War, and the tumult over civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s more democratic than before. Along comes George W. Bush, who doesn't care a whit about the democratic process, only about grabbing hold of power and doing what he feels like with it. He's trying to do what civil war couldn't---turn American democracy into a sham.

The behavior of the Bush camp in Florida in 2000 stunned me, and converted me from someone who didn't much like Bush to someone who loathed him as much as any figure in American political history. He simply didn't care who the voters had chosen. He didn't care about the democratic process. I think Gore and the Democrats were equally surprised that the Republicans were ready to fight tooth and nail, even if their man had fewer votes at the end of the day. And they didn't fight back hard enough.

Well, four years later, Bush and Rove and co have if anything less respect for democracy. (Let me note in passing that mere willingness to hire and associate with Karl Rove should be proof that a man is neither honest, nor good, nor fit to run the country. See this collection of Rove stories if you have any doubt). Bush et al view the critical opinion of millions as an inconvenient "focus group". They don't care what anyone in Congress or even the Cabinet thinks. They want loyalty to their vision from everyone. And if they can't get it, they'll cheat, lie, and steal to get it. The list of electoral crimes is mounting---check here and here. It's too depressing to list them all, but the worst offenses---shredding Democratic voter registrations, trying to reject ballots because they aren't printed on the right card stock---are evidence that the modern Republican party believes in democracy about as much as Hitler or Stalin did.

This is a massive problem, and we need to come at it aggressively. It should be at the top of the legislative agenda for the Kerry administration, if one arrives.

Let me channel my inner politician and give you an idea of the bill I'd most like to see passed next year. It has three planks, and is call Every Vote Counts.

1. A standard national ballot format. The 2000 election revealed that differences in ballot design can make the difference in a presidential election, and complicate efforts to settle the outcome of close elections. Preventing another Florida debacle, and ensuring that every vote has the same chance of being counted is an easy task for a rich, technologically advanced country. The first step is to insist on a common ballot format for the entire country. This design should be simple but flexible, to allow the diverse elections of various states (some allow referenda, or direct election of judges; others do not). In other words, a template, not a straitjacket

2. A standard national counting technology. The foundation of democracy lies in free and fair elections, and elections cannot be either unless everyone is assured that the counting of ballots will be uniform and reliable. Some pundits pretend that this is impossible, even in a country as rich and technologically adept as the US. We can make ballot counting reliable, fast, and non-controversial, by adopting a uniform and effective technology nation-wide. I nominate optical scanning of ballots marked by an ordinary pen. This is a highly reliable technology with a paper trail and easy recounting. It will drastically reduce the risk of miscounting and fraud. With adequate federal funding, we can ensure there will be no more Floridas.

3. Constitutional affirmation of the right of all voters to vote for the president, directly for the president, and to have their vote count in the presidential election. Bush v Gore held that Americans do not have a guaranteed right to vote for the president; rather, the states can select the presidential electors as they wish. Moreover, no one really votes for presidents, rather, they vote for electors at best, even when this right to vote is granted. Finally, most Americans live in states where the margin in the presidential race is large, and even if the election is close in swing states, their votes do not count. The only way to solve all these problems is a Constitutional amendment abolishing the electoral college and instituting popular election of the president.


The likely objections to "Every Vote Counts" are weak. Will it take a little power away from the states? Yes, but it's worth it to protect democracy. States can still have diverse arrangements for local and state elections (they can have referenda or not, provide supplement information to voters or nor, experiment with different voting rules, etc.) And we can fund it federally, which will help the states out. Will it cost money? If a few billion can secure democracy in America, then it is the best money the federal government will ever spend. Will it reduce the clout of small states and swing states? Yes, but voters in those states now count for more than the rest of us. Defenders of the status quo want unequal votes, they want their vote to count more than yours. That's not fair, that's not democracy. I urge the next president to push Congress to make sure Every Vote Counts.

It's always fun to figure out how much your vote is "worth" (well, actually, it's usually quite depressing, but let's do it anyway). The actual probability of casting a deciding vote in a US presidential election is vanishingly small (see this paper by Gelman, King, and Boscardin for examples from past elections). So Sam Wong calculates some examples in "jerseyvotes", where one jerseyvote stands for the probability a New Jersey vote will be decisive. Right now, according to Wong, a prof at Princeton, votes in Florida and Ohio are worth 4,400 jerseyvotes and 4,300. If you live in NJ (or most of the country, for that matter), that's got to make you feel important, doesn't it?

Lots of people are upset at how unnecessarily difficult this election has been. Logistics that should be a snap for our rich, advanced country are, we are piously told, simply insurmountable.

Counting 100 million ballots accurately? Can't be done. How many more dollars are counted accurately every day? Wouldn't you be steamed if your bank piously declared it couldn't get its accounts to balance because there were just too many transactions?

Maintaining a list of people legally allowed to vote, and ensuring their votes are cast in the correct precinct? The IRS can mail you a 1040 every year, the post office can find your address day after day, and the state send that driver's license renewal right to your home like clockwork, but voter registration? That's up to you, mind the deadlines and the cardstock.

Voting early? Sorry the computer is down.

Want a paper record of your vote? Good luck.

We can do better. The only reason we aren't doing better is because one side (guess who) benefits from making voting costly and turnout low. (Hint: it's the side that praises elections as a cure-all in the countries we've invaded, but thinks that it's more important to finish elections on time than to count the people's votes accurately). We've done elections on the cheap for years in this country, and now we lag behind countries like Mexico and South Africa in the conduct of elections. Jimmy Carter says we wouldn't even qualify for election monitors---they would insist on higher standards and stronger election authorities just to show up!

In my next post, I'll explain how we can turn this around.

The NYT describes the latest Republican effort to suppress voting. Listen to the contempt GOP officials have for voting:

Republican Party officials in Ohio took formal steps yesterday to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.

Party officials say their effort is necessary to guard against fraud arising from aggressive moves by the Democrats to register tens of thousands of new voters in Ohio, seen as one of the most pivotal battlegrounds in the Nov. 2 elections.

Election officials in other swing states, from Arizona to Wisconsin and Florida, say they are bracing for similar efforts by Republicans to challenge new voters at polling places, reflecting months of disputes over voting procedures and the anticipation of an election as close as the one in 2000.

Ohio election officials said they had never seen so large a drive to prepare for Election Day challenges. They said they were scrambling yesterday to be ready for disruptions in the voting process as well as alarm and complaints among voters. Some officials said they worried that the challenges could discourage or even frighten others waiting to vote.

Ohio Democrats were struggling to match the Republicans' move, which had been rumored for weeks. Both parties had until 4 p.m. to register people they had recruited to monitor the election. Republicans said they had enlisted 3,600 by the deadline, many in heavily Democratic urban neighborhoods of Cleveland, Dayton and other cities. Each recruit was to be paid $100.

The Democrats, who tend to benefit more than Republicans from large turnouts, said they had registered more than 2,000 recruits to try to protect legitimate voters rather than weed out ineligible ones.

Republican officials said they had no intention of disrupting voting but were concerned about the possibility of fraud involving thousands of newly registered Democrats.

"The organized left's efforts to, quote unquote, register voters - I call them ringers - have created these problems," said James P. Trakas, a Republican co-chairman in Cuyahoga County.

...

"Our concern is Republicans will be challenging in large numbers for the purpose of slowing down voting, because challenging takes a long time,'' said David Sullivan, the voter protection coordinator for the national Democratic Party in Ohio. "And creating long lines causes our people to leave without voting.''

If the GOP were serious about making elections fair and free of fraud, they would put money into the process---make sure the registration, polling, and counting process went smoothly and easily. Why should this process be so hard? E.g., our countries banks run thousands of ATMs, dispensing and receiving cash to virtually every American; how often do you hear about fraud in that sector? Are the logistics of voting any harder, or even very different from running cash machines? The reason it is hard is because the Republicans want it to be. Because it will help them win, they want to make it hard for blacks and poor people to register, to vote, and have their votes counted. They only care about securing power, the process of democracy be damned. More on this soon, but I cannot say how appalled I am that this party is willing to set fire to 228 years of democracy to get their trained monkey "re-elected". And that is what they are trying to do, in Ohio, Florida, and across the nation. We don't need Republican intimidators at the polls; we need UN observers the way this is going.

If they steal this one, we can't let them get away with it.

''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .

''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.''

Suskind's article has helped me understand why Bush enjoys so much support. Half our country believes in angels and creationism, in UFOs and psychics, and why? Partly because confidence men---often sincerely and deluded confidence men---win them over to a pre-modern world view. But the deeper reason is that these people so desparately want to believe that someone is watching over them, protecting them, making the world simple and safe. That is the enduring appeal of American-style Christianity, I think, and for some reason half our country manages to keep its head under that sand. Bush, like some brands of American Protestantism, says "Just believe in me, and everything will be okay---you don't have to do anything or know anything. Faith conquers all".

Over the last few months, I've read dozens of articles with quotes from the "man in the street" on why they favor Bush. They are all the same: "Bush will keep us safe from evil." Often, they recognize that "Kerry is the better debater, but not the better commander in chief". In other words, they want a strong looking, confident man to have confidence in, even if they are troubled by the doubts that Kerry raises. Sounds like the age old debate between doubt and faith. Never has faith offered a more pathetic idol. But he is a very effective one.

Bush has run a campaign appealing to our country's inner child, who is a chump looking for a divine protector. And because Bush is the biggest chump of all, he makes the best campaign figurehead.

So maybe Bush's support is not about religion, but something that lies beneath religion---the desire for paternal protection from an all powerful father.

The Red Sox just won in the bottom of the 14th inning of a nail-biter. The Red Sox were in an 0-3 hole, then won last night in a 12 inning marathon. No team has come back from 0-3 in any sport, but the Sox are at 2-3, and they remind me of my beloved Houston Rockets of 1994-1995, who kept coming back, from 0-2, 0-2, 1-3, to win it all two years in a row. Not saying it will happen, but it doesn't seem impossible anymore.

But what I really want is to see the Astros in the series. They're in the bottom of the 8th, 0-0 pitchers' duel. But the starters just got pulled. Wonder how many innings this will go.

Why the long post on baseball? It all reminds me of the game that got me into the sport in the first place, the classic 1986 NLCS Game 6, Astros vs Mets. Many consider it the best playoff game ever played. Heartbreaking, but great.

How about a trade. Two Houston vs Red Sox battles this November. But we let Houston win in baseball, and give the presidency to Kerry...

As a public service, here are two excellent sites for keeping tabs on the election.

The first is more technical (it provides a met-analysis of state polls, a public good I've been hoping someone would provide!). It's from a neuroscientist at Princeton, Sam Wong.

The second is graphically elegant, contains lots of info, and is updated frequently, though most of the day to day variation in this site has to do with the quirky way its maintainer aggregates state polls (he doesn't). But it's nice to check every day, if you're as nervous as I am.

If you're wondering what to do with these results, here's my take:

1. The race is dead even, judging from the distribution of polls.

2. The key states up for grabs are still OH, FL, and WI; to a lesser extent PA, and then the smaller prizes of NH, NM, and NV.

3. Beyond the uncertainty from random sampling error, there is the modelling error introduced by uncertainty about who will turnout in this election. It's a historic election, with intense hatred of the incumbent in some quarters, fear about war and terrorism, the memory of a close race in 2000, and massive new registration. Good luck predicting what will happen.

4. Many people, even sober social scientists and veteran Washington journalists, think there is a strong chance the election will be decided by cheating on the part of Bush, especially, but not exclusively in FL. More on the evidence of this later.

5. You may have seen discussion of ties in the polls going to the challenger, because people undecided at this point aren't going to go with the incumbent. This LAT story reviews the evidence. I think this one is so close, and the race so unusually heated, that I'd be reluctant to expect it to run true to form. But if it helps you sleep at night, read the article.

One thing that depressed me about last week's debate was the pathetic level of discourse on health care policy. Health care policy is complicated---much more so than foreign policy---and to understand it, you need to know quite a bit of economics, for a start. I'm increasingly leaning toward the belief that health care policy may be simply too complicated for voters to follow in any prospective sense. In other words, maybe we would be better off if the debate were merely about whether you like the current state of health care, and not about what should be done to improve it. (How would this be accomplished? Independent commission? Elite consensus to keep it off the table? Beats me; I can't see any enforceable way to stop "Harry-and-Louise-ism".)

Compare the language of the debates with this document, a primer on health care by clear thinking health economist Uwe Reinhardt (Princeton), hosted by Brad DeLong. Letting people make policy choices who can't converse about health care at this level would be as foolish as hiring a surgeon whose only experience is with the board game Operation.

I'll just add one comparative remark. Anytime you hear someone say "America has the best health care system in the world", you can ignore everything else they say on the topic; it will be pure bs. Every serious research would agree that while for those willing and able to pay the price, American health care is as good as any, the *system* is about the worst in the industrial world. American spends more, per capita, than anyone, and covers a smaller fraction of its population than anyone.

How is this dual failure possible? It results from private provision of a good that the market cannot provide efficiently. Private health insurance is cursed with several severe market failures, most notably information asymetry and moral hazard. In the traditional fee-for-service arrangement, patients and doctors collude to bilk insurance companies for everything they can get. Patients have the moral hazard---they pay a premium, but not the full cost of the services. Doctors have the info asymetry vs the insurer---they know which services are worth the expense, and which aren't, and have no reason to share this info truthfully. Insurers are left with the bill, which they spread around, raising everyone's premiums. The patients as a group don't like paying so much, but they are trapped in a prisoner's dilemma---why restrain your consumption if everyone else keeps scamming the insurers?

At the same time, people without full coverage are denied needed medical care, and either suffer, die, and/or go to the ER when the crisis is acute, pushing up costs further.

The whole mess gets worse when you add rapid technological improvements. Over time, doctors and patients will be able to spend ever more insurance company money on new services.

Almost all other countries deal with this problem by providing most health care through public funds, which are capped at some level. Then the task is trying to use the budget efficiently---targeting it to the health care that does the most good, most cost-effectively. This arrangement has much to say for it democratically; the government sets the global budget for health care, and if voters want more health care, they just vote for the party that promises to raise the budget (and vice versa). That's a choice I think voters can handle.

Public health care under a global budget is empirically the only successful method for restraining health care spending in a modern industrial economy. Managed care was an effort to reap these gains in a private system; it has slowed cost increases, but I don't think many people are too happy about it. By contrast, the publics of countries with public provision tend to be very happy with their health care systems, and usually thank God they don't live in the US.

Long ago, as an undergrad, I wrote a paper on all this; you can find it here.

It's much easier to write the conclusion to a book-length work than it is to write the introduction. Maybe everyone else knew that, but I hadn't realized.

The conclusion has the great advantage of coming last. Everything else you wanted to say is already out there to be referred to. If the reader has been paying any attention, he will have some idea what you are trying to say (more than he will in the intro). You can be brief and witty and have fun, because the reader is probably already getting bored with your stuff, and showing him something new, even if only half-baked, might work better than a rehash.

The introduction, on the other hand, has every disadvantage. It needs to make your argument before you've set up the framework and evidence that supports it. You must persuade your reader that what you are saying matters to them by tying it to other things people care about. You must be intriguing, and very tight in your prose. You have to assume that many readers will never get past the intro, so this is your only chance to tell them anything. A much trickier job...

If you put your mind to it, you can do just about anything. Even this.

The Astros have won their first ever playoff series. After 42 years of frustration and near misses, they finally did it, and against the Braves no less. Next up: the Cardinals.

But I can't bring myself to say "Woo-hoo" today. Ken Caminiti, a former Astros star who's had a rough life, died yesterday at 41. I remember when Caminiti was called up, back in 1987. He was instantly the most exciting player on the field and at bat. I was sad when he was traded, and still more saddened by his troubles with drugs. Rest in peace, Ken.

Even Superman died yesterday. What next?

There's an article on the paradox of voting in Slate. Assume people only vote to affect an election's outcome. Voting is costly (time, energy used going to the poll), and there is a payoff only when you break a tie. In a large election, ties are very very unlikely. So why do people vote?

Lots of clever and not-so-clever reasons for "rational" policy-motivated voting have been advanced, but I think the problem is the assumption that people only vote to influence the outcome.

I think actual voters can be broken down as follows:


Group 1: People who see the reason to vote as influencing the election outcome, and still rationally decide to vote because they are uncertain how close the election will be.

Size of group: Vanishingly small


Group 2: People who see the reason to vote as influencing the election outcome, and still vote because they misunderstand basic probability.

Size of group: A distinct minority


Group 3: People who vote because they would feel ashamed if they didn't (pressure from social networks) and/or who would like to tell other people how they voted (self-expression).

Size of group: Most voters


Political scientists have spent a lot of time trying to rationalize Group 1. Partly, this is because social scientists love the counter-intuitive, and a paper that showed it was rational to vote in a 100 million person election in order to influence the outcome would be as counter-intuitive as they come. But there is another reason: political science's economics envy. We wish we could build a general equilibrium model with voters voting for politicians based on policy, and politicians setting policy to win voters, all at the same time. We need predictable (perhaps, but not necessarily rational) policy-motivated voters to make this work.

A general equilibrium model would be very cool. But if voters are almost all Group 3 and 2, we're not modelling them right. Perhaps a behavioral economics/political science fusion might save the day?

Kydland and Prescott won the Economics Nobel this year. Economists and political scientists reading this will be familiar with their work and its impact, but for my other readers, I'll quickly summarize their most famous contribution. Kydland and Prescott noticed that there are some choices we plan to make, and want to make, but when the time comes to make them, we find ourselves temporarily unable to. To choose a few everyday examples, imagine a small kid at the waterpark, who wants to ride the big water slide, and knows that he will enjoy it (say, from past experience), but when he gets to the top of the stairs leading to the slide, gets scared and backs out. Or imagine a dieter who really wants to lose weight, but faced with a donut breaks down for the momentary pleasure of it.

These are examples of what KP called the time inconsistency of optimal plans. The dieter plans to avoid donuts, to lose weight. This plan, if followed, will make the dieter happy. But in the moment of temptation, the dieter finds himself unable to follow the optimal plan.* KP's work has had a big impact because time consistency problems happen to policy makers too. The classic example is a politician who would like to promise not to try to stimulate the economy using monetary policy. Monetary policy can give a short-run jolt to the economy, but with lasting inflationary consequences---so you would want to use it when the economy is slipping into recession, but not on an everyday, "I wish the economy were even better" basis. The "optimal plan" is to resist inflationary monetary policy. But suppose an election is coming, and the politician is worried he might lose. An "even better" economy would be nice insurance. Maybe he'll inflate just this once... The catch is that while no one cares whether the dieter reaches for that donut, the whole economy is watching the politician, wondering if he will stimulate the economy. They know the politician will be tempted to inflate, and so they expect higher inflation---which is to say, they expect dollars to be worth less tomorrow than they are today. And that's a self-fulfilling prophesy. (Unless the politician somehow resists temptation, in which case the economy slows down, due to the expectations he wouldn't resist!) The politician is in a bind, because everyone knows he faces a time inconsistency problem, and they hedge against it. Everyone would be better of it the hedge were unnecessary---and that's only so if the time consistency problem is "solved".

The most popular "solution" to this problem is to find some "commitment mechanism" which reassures observers in advance that the politician must stick to his optimal plan. In the lingo, "he ties his hands", gives up discretion over the policy in the short-run, and thus the time consistency problem vanishes.# Well, if the commitment device is foolproof. If the politician has a backdoor method for subverting that, we're back where we started.

My own research, on central banks and monetary policy, follows in this tradition, but notes that the most popular commitment mechanism, delegation to an "independent" agent, is only a partial solution in practice, because the tempted party often retains various methods for tempting the agent---not least, selecting a potentially pliable agent in the first place. But there is little doubt that a desire to at least mitigate (if not fully solve) the time inconsistency problem underpins a lot of the delegation to independent agencies that happens in politics (the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve are the key examples, but there are many others).


*Okay, so maybe dieting isn't the best example; behavioral economists might not agree this is a time consistency problem per se. But bear with me.

# The classic story here is from the Odyssey; Odysseus wishes to hear the Sirens, but knows he will be drawn to his death by their call if he does, so he binds himself to the mast of his ship.

My reaction can be summed up in two points:

1. Kerry missed a lot of opportunities, and muffed issues, especially domestic ones, he could have knocked out of the park. Saletan comes closest to my view on this one.

2. Bush is a lying bastard. See here, here, here, and the big one, a whopper about Bush's budget performance that made me cry out "he's lying" when I heard it.

How anyone with a brain and a conscience can support Bush is a growing mystery for me.

At least the state polls are getting better.

Watching Bush and Cheney in the debates, I recognized a feeling I haven't felt in watching, say, Bob Dole debate Bill Clinton, or George H. W. Bush against Dukakis. In those cases, I disagreed with one side, and felt the other would make the better president. But towards Bush, I feel anger, hatred, and contempt. I don't just disagree with him, but see him as a lying, immoral, disgraceful person.

E. L. Doctorow feels my pain, and puts it more eloquently than I ever could:

I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.

But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.

He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.

They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life . . . they come to his desk as a political liability, which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.

How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that, rather than controlling terrorism, his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice.

He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you have to.

Read on.

Noam Schreiber has a nice point:

This has been bugging me since the debate last Thursday. The president keeps insisting there's no way to get more allies helping out in Iraq if you keep insisting the war was a mistake, as John Kerry does. ("I can imagine him walking into the leaders of the world saying, 'We need your help, but Iraq is a mistake,'" the president said yesterday.)

But isn't the reality exactly the opposite? Pretty much every potential ally in the world thinks Iraq was a mistake. As long as that's the case, don't you stand a greater chance of winning them over by acknowledging this rather than treating them like idiots? If I'm France or Russia, I'm going to be much more receptive to a pitch that says, "Look, we know we screwed up, but we need your help so Iraq doesn't become an even bigger problem than it already is." The alternative pitch--"Hey, everything's going great. We'd still do it the same way if we had it to do all over again. Oh, and by the way, would you mind kicking in a few thousand troops?"--doesn't strike me as so compelling.

Other stuff from the net: a thought-provoking essay on the nature of the Iraqi insurgency. The prez keeps saying they're a bunch of terrorists, end of story. I suspect that making peace in Iraq will require understanding a bit more about what the hell is going on.

Put Bush and Cheney in front of a camera for an hour and a half each, and you get more lies than you can shake a stick at. Nixon would blush. Here are some lists of whoppers from Fred Kaplan, the now-Shrill E. J. Dionne, Newsweek, and the NYT. Then there is this grand collection on Cheney.

Lie, evade, scare, and smear. That's all they've got to distract attention from four of the worst years of leadership our country has ever seen. And yet the race is neck-and-neck. Sigh.

The Bush administration wishes we had something to fear besides fear itself.

The second they find something remotely fishy, they trump it up into a bogeyman. Of course, later it turns out that "there were no weapons". Today's phoney threat is a disk with information about US schools found on an Iraqi man. A terror threat? Well, rather than dig two centimeters for the innocent explanation, the Bushies put out the alert to the media, probably to pump up their bizarre warning of threats to schools a few days ago (based on nothing, it would seem, other than the fact a school in Russia was attacked a month ago by Chechens).

Turns out there is an innocent explanation, according to the FBI:

A Homeland Security official said the disks also included a Department of Education guide on how to plan for a crisis in schools. There is no indication anyone was on the ground casing the schools, a senior government official said.

The Homeland Security official said the material was associated with a specific individual in Iraq, and it could not be established that this man had any ties to terrorism. He did have a connection to civic groups doing planning for schools in Iraq, the official said.

You think maybe this guy was trying to plan to protect schools, not attack them? Jeebus, that seems pretty likely in Iraq, where schools are about a bazillion times more likely to be attack than here.

On a related note, I wonder if, or when, the holder of these disks will be released from custody. No mention in the article, and we have a bad track record of holding innocent Iraqis as if they were terrorists. All in the name of democracy and brotherhood, you understand.

When will people realize the Bush admin is just peddling fear? That's not "resolute" or "stronger", or "brave", or any of the other words they want you to associate with Bush. It's a cowardly way to lead, and one that has more in common with dictators than democrats.

Behold the power of photoshop. Use it for good, never evil.

A new book claims the French were in talks with the Pentagon, as late as 12/2002, to provide 10,000-15,000 troops in Iraq, but back off when Bush insisted on rushing to war before inspections had completed.

If this is true, it should cause an earthquake. Think about it:

1. Had Bush played his cards right, the way his own father had in 1991, he could have had a worldwide coalition (would the Germans and Russians have stayed out if France went in? I doubt it), with all the legitimacy, peacekeeping and rebuilding expertise, and resources that come with it. Instead we got reluctant and coerced allies unable or unwilling to shoulder much of the burden, and an illegitimacy that had turned the occupation into a waking nightmare.

2. Why was Bush in such a goddamn hurry, if he could have had it all---his war and an international coalition behind it? Was it just an irrational hatred of the international community, the UN, and the French? Was it Rumsfield and the neocons whispering in his ear that the US needed to display its might, shock and awe, and all that? Were the Bushies afraid that inspections might work, so they couldn't have a war? Why?

3. Going to war against the will of billions around the world has turned the US into a pariah. It has undoubtedly undermined our abaility to coordinate with other countries in the fight against terrorism. It has surely inflamed terrorist recruitment against us. Going to war was unnecessary, but if it could be done in a way that minimized the appearance of imperialism, why not do it that way? For Jeebus' sake, why?

I never supported the war. I thought Iraq was contained, not a serious WMD threat, not a serious terror threat, and a potential guerilla war quagmire. But if Bush was going to go to war no matter what, why not minimize the costs and maximize the chance for success? Failure to do so is about the worst thing a president can do. It is surely impeachable. It makes a mockery of the Bush attack on Kerry (he won't keep you safe; he can't handle a war, etc; foreign countries will never come to our aid in Iraq, etc).

I look forward to hearing more about these meetings with Chirac. If this holds up, it should mean more than just an electoral defeat.

Given enough time, most everyone but GOP diehards will come around to the belief that the critics were right all along---about the war, the occupation, Al-Qaeda and Osama, homeland security and nuclear proliferation, the budget, tax policy, the economy, Enron, Halliburton, the environment, our foreign relations with allies, North Korea, Iran, and on and on. You can see the process in slow motion now (e.g., articles like this this one, on Saddam's lack of weapons and weapons programs post-1998. You can see it in Bush and Cheney's eyes during the debates, when they are asked about their massive failures and have no defense. Last night Cheney didn't really try to explain why things are so bad; he just evaded the question, or lied so blatantly even he won't be able to escape it (from the major, "I've never suggested Saddam was involved in 9/11" to the minor, "I've never met you Sen Edwards", Cheney is setting himself to be Gore'd).

Cheney's digs at Edwards were pretty weak by comparison. Edwards has missed a lot of Senate votes this year---presidential candidates always do. He would have show up if his vote was needed, so this is a meaningless charge. Cheney, as VP, casts the deciding vote on Senate ties, but does he show up when the vote isn't going to be a tie? Hell no. Regardless, Edwards can say: "I missed some votes while campaigning for president; you and Bush misled the nation and brought our army into harms way." I just don't see these barbs as in remotely the same league.

Nor did Cheney reply to the most devastating recent defection of a former Bush official (what is this, the 10th case?). As reported in NYT:

At DePauw University, Mr. Bremer said that "the single most important change - the one thing that would have improved the situation - would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout" the occupation. He said that he raised his concerns a number of times within the administration, but that he "should have been even more insistent."

Naturally, the minions immediately went out to blame the messenger. But their initial denials that Bremer asked for troops have come to nought:

Still, two senior officials confirmed Tuesday evening that Mr. Bremer had sought more troops before he took up his post as the head of the coalition authority in Iraq, and that once he arrived in Baghdad he repeated his belief that the United States and its allies had committed insufficient forces to the task.

"The reality is that Paul kept pressing the issue, because it was immediately clear that a lot of facilities - even arms stockpiles - were unguarded," said one senior official who was part of that debate but insisted on anonymity.

Naturally, the Bushies have started spreading the word that the troubles are all Paul Bremer's fault. Just like they blamed Paul O'Neill, and Richard Clarke, and George Tenet, and Jay Garner, and everyone else who has left the administration. At the very least, isn't this an admission that Bush has awful taste in deputies?

It looks like the rats know the ship is sinking. Rats who've escaped the ship inevitably bemoan it. Rats still on the ship privately argue about how to salvage the situation, and who screwed it up. But publically, and for the next month, they continue to pretend things are great. How great? Andrew Sullivan catches the following email:

From: "Baghdad, USConsul"
To: "Baghdad, USConsul"
Subject: Warden Message
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 14:36:13 +0000

Warden Message - Increased Security Awareness within the International Zone

On October 5, 2004, at approximately 1 pm, U.S. Embassy security personnel discovered an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) at the Green Zone Café. A U.S. Military Explosive Ordnance Detachment safely disarmed the IED.
American citizens living or working in the International Zone are strongly encouraged to take the following security precautions:

* Limit non-essential movement within the International Zone, especially at night.
* Travel in groups of two or more.
* Carry several means of communication.
* Avoid the Green Zone Café, the Chinese Restaurants, the Lone Star restaurant and Vendor Alley.
* Conduct physical fitness training within a compound perimeter.
* Notify office personnel or friends of your travel plans in the International Zone.
**** Conduct a thorough search of your vehicle prior to entering it.

Consular Section
US Embassy Baghdad

I don't think we can take much more "progress".

why do we still have Rumsfield to kick around?

Very useful: a map of attacks by the Iraqi insurgents. Clearly much heavier in Sunni areas.

And I thought he was Gollum

The only thing from Thursday's debate that R's have latched on to is Kerry's poor choice of words ("global test") to describe the idea that the president needs to present evidence to the people and the world before declaring a pre-emptive war. Naturally, the R's have imagined "global test" means a French veto (because they hate the French, and because the oppose any restraint on American power). But Kerry isn't arguing for a foreign veto on US war decisions---he's just asking for a reality check before starting a war. And the reality check is for the benefit of everyone: the people, Congress, and the world.

God I hope Edwards and Kerry knock this one out of the park in the next two debates. All they need to say is that the US can always decide to go to war on its own, but that the president shouldn't be all-powerful--he has to answer to the people, and he shouldn't squander his credibility by lying to the people and the world about the need for war. Say that "global test" was a poor choice of words; what Kerry really meant was a reality check:

No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. But if and when you do it, Jim, you've got to do in a way that passes the test—that passes the global test—where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing, and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

Here we have our own secretary of state who's had to apologize to the world for the presentation he made to the United Nations. I mean, we can remember when President Kennedy, in the Cuban missile crisis, sent his secretary of state to Paris to meet with [French President Charles] de Gaulle, and in the middle of the discussion to tell them about the missiles in Cuba, [the secretary of state] said, "Here, let me show you the photos." And de Gaulle waved them off, and said, "No, no, no, no. The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me." How many leaders in the world today would respond to us, as a result of what we've done, in that way?

You won't see that quote on Republican blogs or Republican speeches. If they so much as quote a full sentence, their interpretation falls apart.

Nice posts here by slacktivist and Kevin Drum pondering Bush's instinct to disrespect the opinions of other nations whenever possible, as if that were a good in itself. When there are important, life-threatening problems to face on the horizon---nuclear terrorism, global warming, the continuing meltdown of the Middle East---it's just indescribably sad that our leader is a petulant little boy.

If Kevin Drum is right, and Bush simply doesn't believe in negotiation, how can he ever succeed as a head of state? It simply doesn't matter how big our military is: we'll never be omnipotent, so sometimes, we'll get a better deal by talking and bargaining than by shooting and threatening. We've seen nothing but abysmal failure so far; this blind spot---obliterating just about every option beside force and coercion---would explain a lot of it. Can anyone think of an example where Bush made a good faith effort at negotiation, with anyone, in any capacity, ever? (Serious question; I'd be interested in the example, be it foreign, domestic, commercial, personal, or spiritual---"God, I'll give up the booze and blow, but you've got to do something for me...").

While you're poking around slacktivist's blog, check out his archive of posts on the Left Behind series of apocalypse fiction (start at the bottom of the page). I'd gathered these books were bad, in a Tom Clancy techno thriller meets raving religious loonies kind of way, but I had no idea how deeply offensive the heros, plot, dialog, and morality of these books was. If you are as fascinated as I am by the crazy and stupid, or by fiction so bad it hurts, then this is a must read. (Think MST3K for bad books).

Three more car bombs today show that the insurgents---whoever they are---can attack at will even in the heart of Iraq. We can't provide security anywhere. The lede in the NYT article is at least blunt about this:

Three powerful car bombs exploded across Iraq this morning, killing at least 26 people and injuring more than 100 others in a horrific day of carnage that demonstrated the effortlessness with which insurgents are striking in the hearts of major cities.

Read on, but it's heartbreaking as usual.

From the Electoral Vote website:

Early in the year, the Republicans couldn't control their glee at the possibility of picking up as many as five Senate seats in the South, which has become increasingly Republican over the years. But a funny thing happened on the way to the election. The voters had different ideas. Not only are the Democrats holding four of the five seats in the South, but they are leading in all three formerly Republican seats. They are also leading in the only two really contested seats in which an incumbent might lose: Alaska and South Dakota.

If the Senate election were held today, the Democrats would take control of the Senate, 52-48 (counting independent Sen. Jeffords as a Democrat, since he caucuses with the Democrats).

Looks like Lincoln Chafee is breaking down. I wouldn't be surprised to see a defection in the right circumstances.

Plus,
registration is picking up in the last days, especially in cities in the swing states.

The Ig Noble awards

Most people seem to have score the debate a win for Kerry. I couldn't tell because I've never found Bush persuasive in any presentation, and the question of when other people will recognize him as a conniving, lying idiot who wormed his way to power is a difficult one.

Kerry was better than I expected. He was clear and direct in explaining his positions. He could have gone for the kill more often, but he at least came across as competent and concerned for the fate of our troops, country, and Iraq, things Bush will never be.

Bush relied heavily on two or three themes---Kerry is inconsistent, only consistent and aggressive foreign policy will work---but when Kerry countered them effectively, Bush appeared frustrated and out of ammo.

Kerry's criticisms were mostly on the mark; I wish he'd gone farther in criticizing Bush prosecution of the war in Iraq.

Bush's insistence about being consistent makes little sense to me. What advantage is there to being consistently wrong? What benefit is consistency without credibility?No one trusts us anymore, after our trumped up justification of war, and our botching of reconstruction. Isn't it time to get things right, and win back trust?

Is "consistency" the best we can do for our troops in Iraq? Bush has consistently showed little concern for their well-being. This is a good thing?

I'm amazed these points get taken seriously. But the Bush campaign's reliance on them shows how empty their quiver really is. Remember: "Stay the course" didn't work for Bush I. And the course Bush II has plotted is much worse.

As for specifics, I'll let the web do the writing for me.

Bush howlers:

Tax cuts matter much more than securing the country against nuclear terrorism

A long list of lies, exaggerations, and deceptions.

That Polish president? He feels betrayed by Bush's lies.


At least people are starting to figure out that the emperor is a strategically shaved chimp:

(Poll results collected by Brad DeLong)

Who won the debate? (Kerry-Bush)
CNN: 78-18
MSNBC: 70-30
ABC: 45-36
CBS: 43-28
Gallup: 53-37

The US is now conducting a propaganda campaign to restrict American exposure to bad news from Iraq. The Brezhnev-ification of the Bush regime continues.

One hilarious aspect is Bush's insistence that Iyad Allawi is a valuable ally and courageous leader, rather than a Panglossian puppet. Four quotes should clear this up:

From Bush last night in the debate:

Now, my opponent says he's going to try to change the dynamics on the ground. Well, Prime Minister Allawi was here. He is the leader of that country. He's a brave, brave man. When he came, after giving a speech to the Congress, my opponent questioned his credibility.

You can't change the dynamics on the ground if you've criticized the brave leader of Iraq.

One of his campaign people alleged that Prime Minister Allawi was like a puppet. That's no way to treat somebody who's courageous and brave, that is trying to lead his country forward.

From the WP (link above):

"White House spokesman Scott McClellan, asked Tuesday about similarities between Bush's statements about Iraq and Allawi's speech to Congress last week, said he did not know of any help U.S. officials gave with the speech. 'None that I know of,' he said, adding, 'No one at the White House.' He also said he did not know if the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad had seen the speech.

But administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the prime minister was coached and aided by the U.S. government, its allies and friends of the administration. Among them was Dan Senor, former spokesman for the CPA who has more recently represented the Bush campaign in media appearances. Senor, who has denied writing the speech, sent Allawi recommended phrases. He also helped Allawi rehearse in New York last week, officials said. Senor declined to comment."

Then check these two on Samarra.