The primacy of free enterprise

Lovely email at the Dish today:

Where does Rick Hertzberg think society's ability to give people "enough to eat and a roof over their heads" comes from, if not from those economic liberties and rights he holds as secondary? It's all from the surplus created by the division of labor and comparative advantage. The overflowing abundance that marks modern society - where people like Hertzberg can make a comfortable living writing for The New Yorker without ever cultivating his own food, weaving his own clothes, building his own home, and so on - would not exist if not for the continued protection of free enterprise and private property. (And he dares to quote Adam Smith in his follow-up post!?)

Free enterprise comes before voting.

If I can steal generously from Hayek for a second, society didn't develop the complexity that it has today because everyone in a small village in 2,500 B.C., or 100 A.D., or 1640s New England got together and voted to divide their time and effort in order to provide goods and services for exchange; this happens organically. This happens because it has proven, over thousands of years, to be the most efficient and mutually-beneficial means of getting past subsistence and reaching a better life. Without this, there is no possibility for organized self-government and modern civil rights.

In what possible viable world view could the "right to vote" be valued more favorably than property rights and the freedom of enterprise? Let's leave the philosophical for a second and look at this empirically: What impact does my right to vote have on the world? Very little. I live in a gerrymandered Democratic district, as a classically liberal Republican. My school board has had the same self-interested bozos in office for twenty years. Forget about the U.S. Senate; the only numbers that matter in the Senate are the size of the caucuses, and not the relative impact of my vote in Pennsylvania. My various executives - county, state, federal - merely preside over a rapidly-growing administrative state that is increasingly autonomous, practically speaking, and far too complicated for any particular chief executive to influence at more than a 10,000-foot broad policy level.

Honestly, the only two reasons I even make the effort to vote are 1) that I want to enter politics and thus need to cover my tracks, lest I be criticized someday, and 2) if I vote in 50 straight elections in Pennsylvania, I'll get a certificate when I'm 68 years old. It's nothing more than a frivolous little game and good cocktail party fodder.

Let's be clear: of course, the right to vote and popular sovereignty are vital, and in a healthy republic, inviolable. But without free enterprise and private property, they are practically meaningless.

A-fucking-men, as Sullivan adds.  I also want to associate myself with this post by Radley Balko.

Line in the sand: San Diego–Tijuana border

One of my favorite photos...

Of towards the left is San Diego, USA. Right side is Tijuana, Mexico. (wiki entry)

Here's to hoping the next big topic after the health care craze will be immigration reform. I'm pretty excited about a Democratic majority finally having a crack at it.

I support wide open borders, with restrictions solely for known criminals/enemies and those with communicable diseases. Obviously our political system and xenophobic conservatives/southerners won't stand for borders that open, but any nudge in this direction (including amnesty) will be a useful improvement for the economy, social justice, our fabulous melting pot effect, and general prosperity. As any student of history knows, high immigration rates made the USA what it's been in years past. We've always been a nation of immigrants.

Immigration is enormously wonderful for development. Yet roughly since 1914/WWI, nationalists in more-developed nations have become so obsessed with protecting their relative power over less fortunate people, they've lost sight of how labor mobility benefits everyone in the long run.

One thing I also keep hearing from nationalists is that them darn immigrants oughta be required to learn English—that it should be a national language. Um, not really (xkcd). Let immigrants and future generations pick up the dominant language on their own. It's worked fine in the past, it will work fine in the future.

Besides, English's role as our globalized world's lingua franca is only going to increase. Too much intellectual capital has been invested for it to be otherwise: vast amounts of business, information, science, and other research and works of art have been produced in English. What does every odd person in Europe speak? English. On an international flight from China to Japan with a South Korean flight crew, want to guess what language "This is your captain speaking, ..." is in? English!

(Cross posted. For a bit more on the inanity of political barriers to labor and trade, a previous post.)

Why I oppose government programs

As a contemporary example, Cato argues Cash for Clunkers is among the dumbest ever:

• A few billion dollars worth of wealth was destroyed. About 750,000 cars, many of which could have provided consumer value for many years, were thrown in the trash. Suppose each clunker was worth $3,000 at a guess, that would mean that the government destroyed $2.25 billion of value.
• Low-income families, who tend to buy used cars, were harmed because the clunkers program will push up used car prices.
• Taxpayers were ripped off $3 billion. The government took my money to give to people who will buy new cars that are much nicer than mine! 
• The federal bureaucracy has added 1,100 people to handle all the clunker administration. Again, taxpayers are the losers.
• The environment was not helped. See here and here.
• The auto industry received a short-term “sugar high” at the expense of lower future sales when the program is over. The program apparently boosted sales by about 750,000 cars this year, but that probably means that sales over the next few years will be about 750,000 lower. The program probably further damaged the longer-term prospects of auto dealers and automakers by diverting their attention from market fundamentals in the scramble for federal cash.   

Sane folks should agree these outcomes are outrageously dumb.  B-b-but, Obama bragged the program was popular!  And truly, it was.

Offering everyone $100 towards burning an old set of ugly clothes and buying a sleek new replacement might also prove popular, both to consumers and the clothing industry.  Huzzah, let's do it!  Regrettably, such popularity does not make it a good idea nor mean that implementing it would make any kind of economic or environmental sense—which it clearly wouldn't.

This basic problem of economic inefficiency, generalized, is why the majority of other government programs and economic interventions are also really bad ideas. What is politically popular seldom implies economic efficiency.  Often, quite the contrary. Political popularity foments fiscal insanity.  First you get your Democrats, who want to give every person on Earth a free cake, dog, and pony—plus the choice of a prepaid subscription to either People or The Washington Monthly.  This proves popular.  Then as a reaction you get your Republicans, who don't want to pay half a cent toward anything.  This also proves popular.  Unsurprisingly, voters want to have their cake and not have to pay for it, too.  Politicians are happy to pander to both sides.  The emerging compromise?  Massive deficits—a.k.a. having our children and grandchildren deal with it somewhere down the line.

Yes, Virginia—I don't mean to scare you with technical phrasing, but politics and government really do suck.

A sufficiently free market, by contrast, implements a method that almost always results in superior efficiency to either political popularity or technocratic fiat.  It's called price signals.

Unfortunately, due to a history of misguided (but politically popular!) government interventions and regulation, the U.S. health-care system does not have price signals.  This works out very poorly.

Allow me to paint you an analogy.  It would be as if credit cards were issued by "insurance card" companies who agree to provide their customers with "consumption coverage".  You would pay them a pre-arranged monthly "consumption premium", and in exchange they would "cover"—with just a small co-pay!—any shopping you do with their card, provided it was clear that you "needed" it.  Ramen noodles would probably be covered—eat more than you can puke.  So would most canned goods.  Even many of the cheaper fruits and veggies.  But the fine entrée you wanted to serve at your next dinner party?  Sorry, your insurance card company doesn't think you "need" it.  Oh, and there would also be limits on things like how much gas you can buy per week or how many drinks you're allowed at the bar per night.  Sound good?  Meanwhile, more and better ways would be developed to game and profit off the convoluted system.  Retailers would overcharge whatever they could get away with making the "insurance card" companies pay, and consumer demand for more and better purchase coverage would rapidly increase. Thus the monthly cost of these "consumption premiums" would also soar.

The above scenario is basically the status quo of U.S. health-care.  Obviously, it sucks.   In lieu of price signals, people always want more and better health-care to be provided, just like in the above they always want more "consumption coverage".    When the consumer doesn't pay for services, markets become dysfunctional. (Also true of some marriages >_>)

So how to reform the system?  Apart from those unfortunate Brits—who tragically got the idea during WWII that it would be good for their state to stay in the business of directly providing care—the left's favored solution tends to be single-payer: a government takeover of health insurance companies, analogous to taking over the odd "insurance card" ones above.

Insurance companies make great villains, but as we saw with Cash for Clunkers and can observe by looking at many other programs—particularly socialized health plans in other countries—they all have their own kinds of problems.   These problems are different from the US status quo: better in some ways, worse in others.

For example, one thing other countries' socialized systems are better at is cost control (.pdf).  They use their monopsony power to negotiate lower prices, and they can often be better at saying no to consumers.  They say no in more equitable ways, such as long waiting times, and some Canadian towns run regular lotteries to decide which families get a doctor.

Controlling costs would be nice, especially compared to an expensive system like the US status quo.  But one thing centralized bureaucratic cost controls also do is reduce the incentive for future private innovation.  Why spend your time experimenting with and further developing a new health product if you can't know whether the health bureau will decide it's a cheap and effective enough treatment to get it off the ground?

In short, the choice between the U.S. status quo and a single-payer system offers trade-offs.  I won't spill more ink trying to formally pin them all down: it's a big topic, kind of like going on about the difference between Republicans and Democrats.

At this point someone usually pipes up and wails about the plight of the uninsured poor.  But that is not a health-care system problem, it is an income problem.  And one of the few ways to directly mitigate an income problem is to provide subsidies to low-income families (some ways are more economically sound than others).  Point is, you could implement subsidies and attain universal health insurance coverage in the U.S. without directly changing anything about our health-care delivery system or the insurance companies themselves.  It would just be really expensive and balloon either the deficit or tax rates, which is why it shouldn't be done in isolation.

Happily there's a reform that would lower costs for everyone while actually increasing innovation:  bring back the price signals that are so essential to market efficiency.  Here's how this might be accomplished:

Firstly, repeal any state-level regulation—often called "patients bill of rights"—that require insurance companies to fully cover particular procedures or put an artificial ceiling on deductibles.  This would clear the regulatory barriers for health plans that sport low premiums and high deductibles, suitable for catastrophic coverage only.  This is how real insurance is supposed to work, like the kind we have for our cars and homes.  By contrast, the sort of thing we call "health insurance" today is actually "pre-paid health care".  Just imagine how high your car insurance payments would be if it were required to cover 80% of the cost of oil changes, tire rotation, wiper blades, new tires, regular service, etc.

Secondly, implement something like Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) for all the routine, preventative, non-catastrophic care.  Apart from trimming administrative jobs in our bloated health insurance industry, this would free consumers to shop for their own health care (Enter price signals, mission accomplished).

Of course, esteemed Nobel laureates like Paul Krugman shall protest:  "Health care is not a bowl of cherries...or a carton of milk, or a loaf of bread."

Indeed, shopping for health-care probably sounds like an odd idea to most.  But HSAs have been tried right here in America, and the data suggest they work well:

Consumer-driven health (CDH) products [i.e., high-deductible health plans relying on HSAs or Health Reimbursement Arrangements to reimburse for qualified expenses] have been marketed in various forms since the early 2000s. While emerging data is [sic] not entirely conclusive, general directional conclusions can be drawn from the studies published to date. […]

With regard to first-year cost savings, all studies showed a favorable effect on cost in the first year of a CDH plan. CDHplan trends ranged from -4 percent to -15 percent. Coupled with a control population on traditional plans that experienced trends of +8 percent to +9 percent, the total savings generated could be as much as 12 percent to 20 percent in the first year. All studies used some variation of normalization or control groups to account for selection bias.

For savings after the first year, at least two of the studies indicate trend rates lower than traditional PPO plans by approximately 3 percent to 5 percent. If these lower trends can be further validated, it will represent a substantial cost-reduction strategy for employers and employees.

Generally, all of the studies indicated that cost savings did not result from avoidance of appropriate care and that necessary care was received in equal or greater degrees relative to traditional plans. All of the studies reviewed reported a significant increase in preventive services for CDH participants. Three of the studies found that CDH plan participants received recommended care for chronic conditions at the same or higher level than traditional (non-CDH) plan participants. Two studies reported a higher incidence of physicians following evidence-based care protocols.

Bottom lines: the status quo puts health care rationing in the hands of insurance companies.  Single-payer puts rationing in the hands of bureaucrats.  A free, CDH market places it in the hands of consumers.

Which of the three do you prefer?

Contrary to popular belief, those of us on the economic right do not advocate market solutions because we have some arcane faith in mythical powers of the market.  We do so because they actually work better—even when they're politically unpopular.

(At this point someone usually pipes up to rail about how the financial crisis, like, totally discredits the idea of markets being better. Let's try not to be distracted by this different, macroeconomic topic that has more to do with a combination of poor regulation and lack of understanding the business cycle.)

The mean socially conservative Republican voter is our useful idiot. They don't understand free market economics any better than the left does, and are liable to show up at your local town halls spouting all sorts of nonsense about government conspiracies to kill more babies.  But the socons are willing to vote with us, so we often have to hold our nose and work with them.  It's called fusionism, and it's been the price to pay for an economic way of doing business that—while superior on the merits—would otherwise be too politically unpopular.  See for example the situation in contemporary Europe, which unlike the US has managed to purge socon fervor the old-fashioned way: through a long, tragic history of disastrous war.

I deplore social conservative attacks on personal freedom as much as the next freethinker, and I aim to counter them.  But I also deplore the left's attacks on economic freedom.  And I'm aware of the uncomfortable truth: unless I can convince a lot more of my fellow social liberals to cut back on their leftism and support freer markets, a chronic Faustian bargain with socons is necessary to preserve what economic freedoms we have.  Without this bargain, the U.S. economy would become more like Europe's, with the lower efficiency and lowered growth that over the long term is worse for everyone—rich and poor alike. Unless, of course, one is lucky enough to become a politician, bureaucrat, or have a personal connection to the business. Then the European political-economic landscape looks pretty rosy, and one can seek out all sorts of creative ways to gloss over the underlying economic inefficiency.

(Cross posted)

Public health insurance, antitrust, and price controls

NYT:

..critics argue that with low administrative costs and no need to produce profits, a public plan will start with an unfair pricing advantage. They say that if a public plan is allowed to pay doctors and hospitals at levels comparable to Medicare’s, which are substantially below commercial insurance rates, it could set premiums so low it would quickly consume the market.

The first sentence describes the whole point of having a new non-profit plan compete with for-profit HMOs and PPOs. They're afraid of this competition, which is understandable, but cry me a river. As a general rule, private industry is supposed to be more efficient than government programs, and if they can't compete on an even playing field then they're doing something wrong.

But how even is the playing field? If the public plan were to be subsidized by taxpayers and not self-sufficient, that would obviously be uneven.

The second sentence is also of concern. Allowing any plans—be they public or private—to fix costs and underpay at low Medicare levels will amount to an effective government price control on the industry.

Private insurers are not allowed to collude and use their combined negotiating power to underpay for medical procedures because of antitrust law. But here we have the specter of a government-run public plan coming in and sidestepping antitrust regulations, with the express goal of satisfying public demand for more and cheaper care.

Such a market distortion is unfair to health providers (i.e. hospitals and clinics) who were previously competing on a freer market. In reducing compensation, it will undoubtedly reduce the quality of care, and it may also reduce availability as providing health services becomes less competitive with other industries that are not price controlled by the government.

For general information on the consequences of such price controls, see here...

Governments have been trying to set maximum or minimum prices since ancient times. The Old Testament prohibited interest on loans to fellow Israelites; medieval governments fixed the maximum price of bread; and in recent years, governments in the United States have fixed the price of gasoline, the rent on apartments in New York City, and the wage of unskilled labor, to name a few. At times, governments go beyond fixing specific prices and try to control the general level of prices, as was done in the United States during both world wars and the Korean War, and by the Nixon administration from 1971 to 1973.

The appeal of price controls is understandable. Even though they fail to protect many consumers and hurt others, controls hold out the promise of protecting groups that are particularly hard-pressed to meet price increases. Thus, the prohibition against usury—charging high interest on loans—was intended to protect someone forced to borrow out of desperation; the maximum price for bread was supposed to protect the poor, who depended on bread to survive; and rent controls were supposed to protect those who were renting when the demand for apartments exceeded the supply, and landlords were preparing to “gouge” their tenants.

Despite the frequent use of price controls, however, and despite their appeal, economists are generally opposed to them, except perhaps for very brief periods during emergencies.

[..] The study of price controls teaches important lessons about free competitive markets. By examining cases in which controls have prevented the price mechanism from working, we gain a better appreciation of its usual elegance and efficiency. This does not mean that there are no circumstances in which temporary controls may be effective. But a fair reading of economic history shows just how rare those circumstances are.

And here.

Yglesias recently wrote a post in which he dismissed opposition to price controls by Blue Dogs as not good for deficit reduction, thus "not fiscally conservative", thus incompatible with being a Blue Dog. In this he ignores that economic conservatives are against price controls for very good reasons, e.g. preserving the quality of goods you get from a free market. If all we cared about was spending less, we'd propose a socialist system like Britain's, which spends less than half the amount per capita. Obviously their quality of care isn't as good. (And what makes Canada's better than Britain's is its location).

Another point aired in the NYT piece:

Insurance industry lobbyists are skeptical that the government can fairly referee a contest between its own insurance plan and private offerings. In an era of serial federal bailouts, they aks, would the government really let its own insurance plan fail?

This is important, becaue any situation in which the government plan is not allowed to fail would be unfair competition. Private HMOs, being normal companies, are subject to failure. (Capitalism's "creative destruction".)

If we start out with a public option that is unsubsidized, but it can't meet its sobligations at competitive rates, the odds are Congress will intervene to "save" it as a public good, i.e. find some way to subsidize it.

In sum, this is why I'm against public options for healthcare and anything else: it's very difficult to set up fair competition and ensure it remains fair.

For many leftists, however, that's the point: they're uninterested in fair competition, and would prefer a single-payer system with no competition that sets prices by fiat. Their goal is to provide equal coverage for all, with scant regard for the consequences to quality of coverage and for-profit incentives of R&D that heretofore have advanced modern medicine in the U.S. very quickly compared to states with public healthcare.

Mutually-exclusive takes on conservative failure

The Hill:

Rep. Mary Fallin (R-Okla.) says President Obama’s budget, the details of which will be released today, is tantamount to “taxation without representation.”

In an op-ed today, Fallin argues that because Obama’s budget will result in a deficit, it amounts to a tax on future generations, who are not currently represented in Congress.

“These taxpayers, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, haven’t been born yet. So they are not being represented today,” she wrote. “That’s taxation without representation of the worst kind.”

TMV pushes back:

Unless someone is a registered Republican, or fan of Rush Limbaugh and other talk show hosts, this is a weak argument. The bottom line: in elections one side wins and one side loses. For 8 years the Bush administration ballooned government spending — and I am not talking about during the financial meltdown but way before last fall.

Republicans weren’t talking about future generations and taxation without representation then. Why? Because it was their “sports team” that had the ball.

First of all, let's be clear that what makes this weak is not the argument itself, but the people making it. For instance, Karl Rove famously said "deficits don't matter". That was early in Bush's term when Republicans were busy doing all their own newly veto-proof spending.

Clearly Republicans are being hypocritical now, and that's why those tea parties made for very weak tea. But the arguments themselves are not weak. Obama's long-term deficits are a terrible thing that conceals the need to raise taxes in the future for medium-term political gain. That's dishonest and harmful. (Yglesias agrees on this, except he takes the pro-tax+spend position) So when I employ the same solid (I think) anti-spending arguments as Republicans, the difference between me and Republican hacks is that I have employed them consistently, regardless of which party was in power and doing the spending.

That said, the main point I want to make here is that all the above is inconsistent with the claim that fiscal conservatism, capitalism, and freer markets are failed ideas. If Republicans have been hypocritical, then these things have only been furthered in Republican rhetoric.

There are two mutually-exclusive possibilities. Either:

1) Republicans did govern conservatively, and their genuine conservative solutions failed.
2) Republicans stopped governing conservatively ("lost their way"), and genuine conservative economic principles haven't been operative for the last decade.

You cannot claim, as the left would like to do, that both:

3) Republican ideas are a failure and Republicans are hypocrites.

Admittedly, this is a little too neat. Perhaps half their ideas have been a failure, and the other half were hypocritically untested, or some other proportion.

We can haggle over that proportion. We just can't think that something like 90%+ of Republican ideas are a failure and 90%+ are hypocritical.

Either they mostly did what they professed to believe and it mostly failed, or they were hypocritical, didn't do it, and maybe deserve another chance some day in the future when they can convince us they're sincere (which will certainly take some doing).

Giving Liberalism a fair shake

Let's go back 101 years (!!)

Liberalism is not Socialism, and never will be... Liberalism has its own history and its own tradition. Socialism has its own formulas and its own aims. Socialism seeks to pull down wealth; Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. [Loud cheers.] Socialism would destroy private interests; Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely, by reconciling them with public right. [Cheers.] Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. [Cheers.] Socialism assails the pre-eminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks, and shall seek more in the future, to build up a minimum standard for the mass. [Cheers.] Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capital; Liberalism attacks monopoly. [Cheers.] These are the great distinctions which I draw, and which, I think, you will think I am right in drawing at this election between our philosophies and our ideals. Don't think that Liberalism is a faith that is played out; that it is a philosophy to which there is no expanding future. As long as the world rolls round Liberalism will have its part to play - a grand, beneficent, and ameliorating part to play - in relation to men and States. [Cheers.]

Ah, gentlemen, I don't want to embark on bitter or harsh controversy, but I think the exalted ideal of the Socialists - a universal brotherhood, owning all things in common - is not always supported by the evidence of their practice. [Laughter.] They put before us a creed of universal self-sacrifice. They preach it in the language of spite and envy, of hatred, and all uncharitableness. [Cheers.] They tell us that we should dwell together in unity and comradeship. They are themselves split into twenty obscure factions, who hate and abuse each other more than they hate and abuse us. [Hear, hear, and laughter.] They wish to reconstruct the world. They begin by leaving out human nature. [Laughter.] Consider how barren a philosophy is the creed of absolute Collectivism. Equality of reward, irrespective of service rendered! It is expressed in other ways. You know the phrase - "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." [Laughter.] How nice that sounds. Let me put it another way - "You shall work according to your fancy; you shall be paid according to your appetite." [Cheers.]

Although I have tried my very best to understand these propositions, I have never been able to imagine the mechanical heart in the Socialist world which is to replace the ordinary human heart that palpitates in our breasts. What motive is to induce the men, not for a day, or an hour, or a year, but for all their lives, to make a supreme sacrifice of their individuality? What motive is to induce the Scotsmen who spread all over the world and make their way by various paths to eminence and power in every land and climate to make the great and supreme sacrifice of their individuality? I have heard of loyalty to a Sovereign. We have heard of love of country. Ah, but it is to be a great cosmopolitan, republic. We have heard of love of family and wives and children. These are the mere weaknesses of the bad era in which we live. We have heard of faith in a world beyond this when all its transitory pleasures and perils shall have passed away, a hope that carries serene consolation to the heart of men. Ah, but they deny its existence. [Laughter.] And what then are we to make this sacrifice for? It is for the sake of society.

And what is society? I will tell you what society is. Translated into concrete terms, Socialistic "society" is a set of disagreeable individuals who obtained a majority for their caucus at some recent election, and whose officials in consequence would look on humanity through innumerable grills and pigeon-holes and across innumerable counters, and say to them, "Tickets, please." [Laughter.] Truly this grey old world has never seen so grim a joke. [Applause.] Now, ladies and gentlemen, no man can be either a collectivist or an individualist. He must be both; everybody must be both a collectivist and an individualist. For certain of our affairs we must have our arrangements in common. Others we must have sacredly individual and to ourselves. [Cheers.] We have many good things in common. You have the police, the army, the navy, and officials - why, a President of the Board of Trade you have in common. [Applause.] But we don't eat in common; we eat individually. [Laughter.] And we don't ask the ladies to marry us in common. [Laughter.]

And you will find the truth lies in these matters, as it always lies in difficult matters, midway between extreme formulae. It is in the nice adjustment of the respective ideas of collectivism and individualism that the problem of the world and the solution of that problem lie in the years to come. [Applause.] But I have no hesitation in saying that I am on the side of those who think that a greater collective element should be introduced into the State and municipalities. I should like to see the State undertaking new functions, particularly stepping forward into those spheres of activity which are governed by an element of monopoly. [Applause.] Your tramways and so on; your great public works, which are of a monopolistic and privileged character there I see a wide field for State enterprise to embark upon. But when we are told to exalt and admire a philosophy which destroys individualism and seeks to replace it by collectivism, I say that is a monstrous and imbecile conception which can find no real foothold in the brains and hearts - and the hearts are as trustworthy as the brains - in the hearts of sensible people. [Loud cheers.]

—Winston Churchill, 1908

(ht Above the Borderline)

Urbanization, fear, and the GOP's electability

Looking at Nate Silver's chart, I noticed a large anomaly in the urban vote's trend:



I posit that the most recent Republican successes at the national level (including the aggregate result of winning majorities in Congress) owed more to threat-mongering than the appeal of domestic Republican policies—be they social or economic.

Thus it is little wonder to see GOPers continuing to defend the utility of torture. If the public isn't scared enough to demand torture-as-policy, we probably won't be scared enough to elect Republicans again in their current state.

And this is also why Obama's message of hope was successful among swing voters. It attacked Republicans' newfound strength by convincing them to be less fearful, restoring the trend.

Short of treasonous desire for another 9/11-style attack plus a botched Democratic response, I think fear is unlikely to be a winning bet again. What then should the GOP focus on?

Daily Beast collected a symposium of views from the right. I agree with David Frum's prescription:

Over the longer term, [the GOP] needs to retool itself so it can become competitive in the Northeast, Midwest, and California. In my view, that means four things: 1) a more-relevant economic message with health care at its core; 2) an environmental policy based on science; 3) a softer tone on social issues; 4) a renewed emphasis on competence in government.

There are people in the party who are pointing in this direction, most notably Gov. Jon Huntsman of Utah. It’s not a message the party wants to hear right this moment, but I think it’s the direction we will see the party taking.

I've heard many other pundits express concern that the GOP now regional party of the South and East of the Rockies. And this looks apparent on a standard map:



However, I think we should stop talking in terms regions and think more about what these voters have in common. Take a look at these cartograms with states sized by the number of electoral votes they posses. EVs correspond with that state's number of members in Congress, based on their total population in the last census:



And clearly these EV-proportioned blue states, with their higher population density, tend to be more urbanized (compare with a map of the US at night). The effect is even more pronounced when we plot the county-level results and see large splotches of blue in a sea of red countryside. 

Instead of worrying about appealing to macro regions, I think the GOP should try to develop a platform that better appeals to urban voters everywhere. If the urban vote could shift 5+ points in their favor, I think they'd be back in business.

Here are Frum's prescriptions again:

1) a more-relevant economic message with health care at its core
2) an environmental policy based on science
3) a softer tone on social issues
4) a renewed emphasis on competence in government

This seems like a good start to me. What more could be done to appeal to urban voters in particular?

Update: According to ABC exit polls, only 9% considered terrorism to be the most important issue in 2008. They went for McCain by a huge margin:


In 2004, CNN put this number at 19% with a virtually identical 86-14 split.

Now obviously there are people who are more likely to vote Republican because of terrorism yet who don't rank it as their #1 issue; but this gives us some idea of its salience for the GOP's 2004 victories.

Obama on marijuana

The question:

"With over 1 out of 30 Americans controlled by the penal system, why not legalize, control, and tax marijuana to change the failed war on drugs into a money making, money saving boost to the economy? Do we really need that many victimless criminals?"
- Ryan Palmer, Dallas, TX

[Update: there were actually multiple questions voted high, so Obama may not have been responding to this specific one]

Obama's answer:

"Can I just interrupt, Jared, before you ask the next question, just to say that, you know, we -- we took -- we took votes about which questions were going to be asked, and I think 3 million people voted or 3.5 million people voted. I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high, and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation.

And I don't know what this says about the online audience... (laughter)

... but I just want -- I don't want people to think that -- this was a fairly popular question. We want to make sure that it was answered.

The answer is, no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy. So -- all right...

Here he first focuses on the "money making, money saving boost to the economy" portion of the question. And he's morphing it into a question about "growing the economy".

But the economic case for ending prohibition isn't about "growing the economy" overall. It's about ending a drag on the licit economy by re-legalizing a widespread illicit one. In other words the point is not to increase economic activity overall, but to end part of the failed "war on drugs" that has created a very harmful black market. Much more harmful than the re-legalization of marijuana could possibly be (Also see the Netherlands, where harmful drug use decreased after legalization).

The point of re-legalizing pot is also not directly "job creation", as the president suggests. The point is to un-create unproductive jobs, meaning the vast law enforcement necessary solely to try -- and fail -- to effectively enforce drug laws, as well as the United States' ridiculously high incarceration rate. We have 5% of the world's population (1 in 20) yet host 25% of the people behind bars (1 in 4), many of them for victimless and nonviolent drug-related crimes. This is a very serious drag on our economy.

Any job creation from repealing prohibition would happen indirectly, as fewer taxes are spent on the failed enforcement of prohibitions that on balance are clearly unnecessary, unwise, and unhelpful. Instead those resources and a new tax on marijuana and all the productivity saved by scaling down the war on drugs could be invested in something more positive, like say the healthcare, education, and energy research that Obama is so eager for.

Admittedly this question wasn't phrased as well as it could have been, but it's disappointing that he didn't really address it nor the real substance behind it. He's smarter than this, which is what makes his answer more deliberately political than substantive or in the country's best interest. This has to change sometime -- and if not now, when?

Update: At the subsequent White House press briefing the issue is also not taken seriously:



(question asked at 1:20)

Q Robert, in the online town meeting, when the President said he doesn't think legalizing marijuana would give the economy a boost, was he giving a political answer or an economic answer? Does he have economic numbers to back that up?

MR. GIBBS: I'm unaware of a CEA analysis -- (laughter) -- regarding that. I think the --

Q Will you let us know if there is one? (Laughter.)

MR. GIBBS: I think you've heard the President talk about getting us on a path toward sustained economic growth. I don't think he believes that that is a part of that plan.

Q What about medicinal marijuana?

MR. GIBBS: I think the -- I'd point you to the Justice Department on developments on that.

The President asked people to ask their questions. Obviously interests aligned with certain viewpoints did so, and the President wanted to answer the question that, no, it was not -- he did not think a good economic strategy.

Q Did that question get the most votes of any?

MR. GIBBS: I will ask Macon and those guys. It is interesting when -- I think several of those topics were in things like financial stability or --

Q Green jobs.

MR. GIBBS: Green jobs, right. (Laughter.) It's unclear what leap of faith one has to make to ask that question in some of the -- some of those -- right, some of those -- some of those topics.

Q Why did he even bring it up? Why did he even bring it up? I mean, no one asked it online and no one asked it --

MR. GIBBS: No, people -- people asked it online –

Q I mean, no, I know they voted for it, they voted for it. But he brought it up on his own. This is what I'm saying. Why did he even bring --

MR. GIBBS: April, the concept of the virtual town hall meeting was to have people --

Q Transparency?

MR. GIBBS: No, no, let me -- you can ask and I'll answer -- (laughter) -- that the President asked people to go to the web site, ask questions of the administration, vote on which questions they wanted to have the President answer, and that he would do so. And as I said and as Ann said and -- maybe we should have said "clean-energy jobs" -- that would have --

Q You said "green."

MR. GIBBS: Yes, I know. That in some topics -- you know, this is not the first time that an interest group gets on a web site and votes many times for their question to be answered, and the President thought he should answer it and I think he did.

Q But, Robert, he didn't take on the serious issue. He made a joke out of it. I mean, there were a lot of questions about legalization of marijuana, not as a job creation program, but just as a serious policy issue. And with what's happening in Mexico --

MR. GIBBS: It poses the legal -- I'll do this for the President -- I didn't -- I neither emailed my question in, nor voted for it, but the President opposes the legalization of marijuana, and I'd -- I'll say I did that without even the slightest hint of laughter.

Q Can you say why?

Q Robert, while you're on this same subject can we follow up?

MR. GIBBS: Hold on one sec. Hold on.

Q What did the President learn in this? A lot of the questions were things he talks about all the time.

Q Annie, there was a question pending on why -- why he feels that way about legalizing marijuana.

MR. GIBBS: He does not think that that is -- he opposes it. He doesn't think that's the right plan for America.

Q But a follow-up on the process, on the --

MR. GIBBS: Hold on, let me -- I've lost control. (Laughter.) Hold on, what are you -- dammit, you guys don't get to Google this stuff and send in your questions. Hold on, hold on, hold on, let me --

Meanwhile Andrew Sullivan opines on "Obama's Pathetic Pot Answer":

The chuckle suggests a man of his generation. The dismissiveness toward the question of ending Prohibition as both a good in itself and a form of tax revenue is, however, depressing. His answer was a non-answer. I'm tired of having the Prohibition issue treated as if it's trivial or a joke. It is neither. It is about freedom and it's deadly serious.

Agreed. current policy is deadly serious in a tragically literal sense. Many people die every year as a direct consequence of prohibition.

The many reasons to end Prohibition

Jeffrey Miron, senior lecturer in economics at Harvard, gives a compelling tally. Here is a portion with my numbered emphasis and imagery...



Numbered plastic markers are set on the pavement to determine the location of bullet casings found at the scene of a shootout where unknown gunmen opened fire and killed four police officers in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on Feb. 17, 2009.

1. Prohibition creates violence because it drives the drug market underground. This means buyers and sellers cannot resolve their disputes with lawsuits, arbitration or advertising, so they resort to violence instead.



Bodies awaiting autopsies crowd a walk-in refrigerator at the morgue in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Feb. 18, 2009.

Violence was common in the alcohol industry when it was banned during Prohibition, but not before or after.

Violence is the norm in illicit gambling markets but not in legal ones. Violence is routine when prostitution is banned but not when it's permitted. Violence results from policies that create black markets, not from the characteristics of the good or activity in question.

The only way to reduce violence, therefore, is to legalize drugs. Fortuitously, legalization is the right policy for a slew of other reasons.



Army soldiers guard a police station in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Monday, March 16, 2009. As retired and active-duty soldiers largely took over security in the violence-wracked city of 1.3 million, a retired Army officer took over as head of police Monday, whose previous law enforcement chief resigned earlier, after receiving threats.

2. Prohibition of drugs corrupts politicians and law enforcement by putting police, prosecutors, judges and politicians in the position to threaten the profits of an illicit trade. This is why bribery, threats and kidnapping are common for prohibited industries but rare otherwise. Mexico's recent history illustrates this dramatically.



Mexican soldiers check the identity of a man during an operation searching for drugs and weapons in Reynosa, on Mexico's northeastern border with the U.S., late Tuesday, March 17, 2009.

3. Prohibition erodes protections against unreasonable search and seizure because neither party to a drug transaction has an incentive to report the activity to the police. Thus, enforcement requires intrusive tactics such as warrantless searches or undercover buys. The victimless nature of this so-called crime also encourages police to engage in racial profiling.



A member of the Army watches the incineration of fourteen tons of drugs in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on December 2, 2008.

4. Prohibition has disastrous implications for national security. By eradicating coca plants in Colombia or poppy fields in Afghanistan, prohibition breeds resentment of the United States. By enriching those who produce and supply drugs, prohibition supports terrorists who sell protection services to drug traffickers.



With a .50-caliber rifle in the foreground, the U.S. House National Security and Foreign Affairs subcommittee holds a hearing on U.S.-Mexico border violence, Thursday, March 12, 2009, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C..

5. Prohibition harms the public health. Patients suffering from cancer, glaucoma and other conditions cannot use marijuana under the laws of most states or the federal government despite abundant evidence of its efficacy. Terminally ill patients cannot always get adequate pain medication because doctors may fear prosecution by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Drug users face restrictions on clean syringes that cause them to share contaminated needles, thereby spreading HIV, hepatitis and other blood-borne diseases.



A federal policeman stands guard during an operation at a nightclub in downtown Ciudad Juarez March 7, 2009. Across the border from El Paso, Texas, Ciudad Juarez recently received hundreds of heavily armed federal forces to take over anti-drug efforts from police tainted by corruption and links to drug traffickers. Picture taken March 7.

6. Prohibitions breed disrespect for the law because despite draconian penalties and extensive enforcement, huge numbers of people still violate prohibition. This means those who break the law, and those who do not, learn that obeying laws is for suckers.



Yaneth Deyinara Garcia (center) and Sigifrido Najera (2nd from left), members of the drug Organization "Cardenas Guillen", are presented to the press at the headquarters of the Defense Secretary in Mexico City on March 20, 2009.

7. Prohibition is a drain on the public purse. Federal, state and local governments spend roughly $44 billion per year to enforce drug prohibition. These same governments forego roughly $33 billion per year in tax revenue they could collect from legalized drugs, assuming these were taxed at rates similar to those on alcohol and tobacco. Under prohibition, these revenues accrue to traffickers as increased profits.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One in every 31 U.S. adults is in the corrections system, which includes jail, prison, probation and supervision, more than double the rate of a quarter century ago, according to a report released on Monday by the Pew Center on the States.

[...] "Violent and career criminals need to be locked up, and for a long time. But our research shows that prisons are housing too many people who can be managed safely and held accountable in the community at far lower cost," said Adam Gelb, director of the Center's Public Safety Performance Project, which produced the report.

[...] During the last 25 years prison and jail populations have grown 274 percent to 2.3 million in 2008, according to the Pew research, while those under supervision grew 226 percent over the same span to 5.1 million.

It estimated states spent a record $51.7 billion on corrections in fiscal year 2008 and incarcerating one inmate cost them, on average, $29,000

This article argues for more probation and parole, and those may be good, workable ideas.

But the single best thing we could do to reduce law enforcement and prison costs dragging the economy is to eliminate the incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders and raise revenue:


If re-legalized and taxed at a reasonable rate, the weed in this bust alone could pay all those salaries for a year plus prison costs. [And that's not even taking into account the lost productivity of being jailed for 5 years or cultivating marijuana in secret.]

Under prohibition there is no revenue and these salaries and prison costs are paid from your other local taxes.

(ht Library Grape, images via The Big Picture)

The astounding consensus on Iraq vs. other U.S. deployments

Drezner:

As the book club on Tom Ricks' The Gamble comes to a close, Barack Obama announced his future plans for Iraq. 

What's fascinating is the effect of the surge on the political reaction to Obama's proposal to scale down the U.S. presence to 55,000 troops by August 2010.  It has received bipartisan support in the United States.  Iraqi officials have by and large endorsed it (though see here and scroll down).  Obama has even earned the always-crucial Foreign Policy blogger vote. 

Think about this for a second.  If I had told you two years ago that there would be a broad domestic and international consensus on U.S. strategy in Iraq, you would have laughed me off the Foreign Policy web site. 

Ricks argues that the surge has not led to political achievements in Iraq, and he may very well be right.  What it has accomplished, however, is changing the political optics in three crucial ways.  First, it has given Republicans cover for supporting a withdrawal, arguing that it is being done from a position of strength rather than weakness. Second, it has blunted the Democrats' zeal for immediate withdrawal.  So long as things in Iraq are going relatively well, the political pressure to DO SOMETHING NOW! has abated.  Finally, the surge has given the Iraqi government the confidence to believe that a significant U.S. drawdown will not lead them back to the abyss. 

I don't know whether the withdrawal will actually prove to be good policy -- but the fact that we've reached a political consensus that it is good policy is nothing short of astounding.  

Far be it from me to disagree that the consensus is astounding.

The 55,000 remnant is going to anger the Muslim world more than it would other peoples, and this worries me.  But for perspective here are the top 6 countries with active duty U.S. military personnel as of September 2008:

Iraq	190,400
Germany	55,140
Japan	33,286
Afghanistan	32,300
South Korea	25,062
Italy	9,601

Source: Department of Defense

All six countries are ones we've liberated or are attempting to liberate. From previous wars Vietnam is notably absent and has a mere 14 U.S. military personnel.  It would seem the Imperial U.S. Army didn't win that round.

But why do we still have more personnel assigned to Germany and Japan than Afghanistan? Isn't it where the last attack came from and where we continue to be at war?  Put in this perspective, Obama's announcement that he's sending 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan seems an obvious move.

Now certainly Germany and Japan are useful bases of operation.  For instance wounded soldiers who require advanced treatment get flown from Iraq to Germany, and we need the naval and air bases in Asia to defend South Korea and Taiwan.  But do we really need 55,140 in the Fatherland now that the Cold War is over?

BTW the DoD only lists 32 personnel in Pakistan. I'm sure the classified number is much higher.

Meet the new boss, different but cagy like the old boss

I declared The Who's 1971 hit to be a theme song for the Obama era. It was an obvious call, but the lyrics are becoming even more apropos...

The change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that’s all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain’t changed
‘Cause the banners, they were all flown in the last war

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
No, no!

...

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

Obama may be the Un-Rove, as Andrew says.

Yet Obama is cagy, just in a different way:

Look at how he's framed the debate since the election. Every single symbolic act has been inclusive and sober. From that speech in Grant Park to the eschewal of euphoria on Inauguration Day; from the George Will dinner invite to the Rick Warren invocation; from meeting the House Republicans on the Hill to convening a fiscal responsibility summit; from telegraphing to all of us Obamacons that he wasn't a fiscal lunatic to ... unveiling the most expansive, liberal, big government reversal of Reagan any traditional Democrat would die for.

Smart, isn't he? He won the stimulus debate long before the Republicans realized it (they were busy doing tap-dances of victory on talk radio, while he was building a new coalition without them). And now, after presenting such a centrist, bi-partisan, moderate and personally trustworthy front, he gets to unveil a radical long-term agenda that really will soak the very rich and invest in the poor. Given the crisis, he has seized this moment for more radicalism than might have seemed possible only a couple of months ago.

He ran on a rediscovery of Clintonomics and said in his speech to Congress on Tuesday night: "As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by President’s Day… Not because I believe in bigger government — I don’t. Not because I’m not mindful of the massive debt we’ve inherited — I am."

Yet two days later he puts forward the most progressive populist long-term budget in more than 40 years.

That's not channeling Clinton-era policies.. It's a new amalgam of FDR and LBJ, updated for our times.

We knew some of this stuff was coming. And many decided to vote for him anyway because of the worse-er failures of Bush Republicanism. But we didn't know it would be quite this audacious. Can he pull this long-term growth of government off competently? Quite possibly. But will it be sustainable without The Empiricist at the helm? Because we'll be doomed if in 2016 or beyond we elect another incompetent bumbler like George W. Bush or an incurious demagogue like Sarah Palin to manage a bulked-up federal government. Can you imagine the disaster?

Andrew continues:

The risk is, at least, a transparent risk. If none of this works, he will have taken a massive gamble and failed. The country will be bankrupt and he will have one term. His gamble with the economy may come to seem like Bush's gamble in Iraq. But if any of it works, if the economy recovers, and if the GOP continues to be utterly deaf and blind to the new landscape we live in, then we're talking less Reagan than FDR in long-term impact.

It's going to be a riveting first year, isn't it?

Just the first one?

Wake up America, you're getting a bit more change than you bargained for. It's nice that we're getting the country back on track, but let's try to avoid another derailment shall we?

Just how we'll manage to do so with a hapless, bigoted, morally bankrupt Republican opposition that has literally gone crazy remains to be seen.

Real people, real families

Heart-breaking . . . . I can't hold back the tears.

Monitor writes:

Sitting here without a mate in my little bubble of comfort, it's easy to forget about the countless married gay families in California that are currently under assault from the likes of Ken Starr.

Not only are the religious fundamentalists behind Prop. 8 planning to defend its legitimacy in the California Supreme Court, they have taken their fight to the most outrageous extreme imaginable and are actively trying to invalidate the marriages of tens of thousands of devoted Californians.

This is not some abstract discussion about rights, equality or the legal merits of gay marriage. These are real people with real families who were legally married in California before Prop. 8 took away the marriage rights of every gay Californian. These families are now faced with the prospect that the perennial agents of intolerance will forcibly rip their marriage away from them.

When will it end? Another four years? Eight? More..?

Taste of Iraq

The good:

People were happy with the initial results and it was very clear to everyone that the people have learned from the bitter experiences of the past few years and the previous elections of 2005. They all believe that the religious parties brought nothing to this country but sectarianism, which cost them the lives of hundreds of thousands of their relatives and friends. The secular parties became an alternative for most of the Iraqis.

The heartwarming:

As a journalist stationed in one voting center, I was not able to vote. It made me very sad at heart that I was sitting out these elections (especially after boycotting the last ones).

After work I rushed to my assigned voting center only to find it long closed. I started blaming myself for not voting before heading to duty. At home, I was overjoyed to see my family’s purple forefingers. I hid my hand in my pocket, slipped to my room and dipped my finger in a bottle of ink. Not out of fear but out of a desire to be part of this great experience.

The bad:

We are a displaced family. We were told that we could only vote where our ration card is issued. How do they expect us to go vote in the neighbourhood from which we were displaced? All the world knows that there are millions of Iraqis displaced inside Iraq – couldn't the Elections Commission place a box for the displaced in every centre? We have been issued IDs stating that we are displaced – Is corruption so wide spread that they don't trust their own IDs?

The awful:

A woman suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has confessed to organising their rapes so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame.

In a video confession, she explained how she had mentally prepared the women for martyrdom operations, passed them on to terrorists who provided explosives, and then took the bombers to their targets.

"We arrested Samira Jassim, known as 'Um al-Mumenin', the mother of the believers, who was responsible for recruiting 80 women'', Major General Qassim Atta said.

It was Winston Churchill who said "war is beyond all words horrible."

But then what do you call this orchestrating the rape of women and then telling them they need to kill themselves while blowing up nearby enemies in order to escape the shame?

It too is beyond all words, but even more beyond.

Update: Ladyblog's take: "monsters"

More on Bush's big-government disaster

Reason beats the horse some more:

Now that George W. Bush has finally left office, here's a challenge to a nation famous for its proud tradition of invention: Can somebody invent a machine capable of fully measuring the disaster that was the Bush presidency?

Yes, yes, I know that attitudes towards presidencies are volatile. Harry Truman was hated when he left office and look at him now; he's so highly regarded that President Bush thought of him as a role model. There are, I'm sure, still a few William Henry Harrison dead-enders around, convinced that the 31 days the broken-down old general spent as president will someday receive the full glory they deserve.

In a way that was inconceivable when he took office, Bush—the advance man for the "ownership society," smaller and more trustworthy government, and a humble foreign policy—increased the size and scope of the federal government to unprecedented levels. At the same time, he constantly flashed signs of secrecy, duplicity, ineffectiveness and outright incompetence.

READ MORE...

Think for a moment about the thousands of Transportation Security Administrationscreeners—newly minted government employees all—who continue to confiscate contact-lens solution and nail clippers while, according to nearly every field test, somehow failing to notice simulated bombs in passenger luggage.

Or schoolchildren struggling under No Child Left Behind, which federalized K-12 education to an unprecedented degree with nothing to show for it other than greater spending tabs. Or the bizarrely structured Medicare prescription-drug benefit, the largest entitlement program created since LBJ. Or the simple reality that taxpayers now guarantee some $8 trillion in inscrutable loans to a financial sector that collapsed from inscrutable loans.

Such programs were not in any way foisted on Bush, the way that welfare reform had been on Bill Clinton; they were signature projects, designed to create a legacy every bit as monumental and inspiring as Laura Bush's global literacy campaign.

The most basic Bush numbers are damning. If increases in government spending matter, then Bush is worse than any president in recent history. During his first four years in office—a period during which his party controlled Congress—he added a whopping $345 billion (in constant dollars) to the federal budget. The only other presidential term that comes close? Bush's second term. As of November 2008, he had added at least an additional $287 billion on top of that (and the months since then will add significantly to the bill). To put that in perspective, consider that the spendthrift LBJ added a mere $223 billion in total additional outlays in his one full term.

If spending under Bush was a disaster, regulation was even worse. The number of pages in the Federal Registry is a rough proxy for the swollen expanse of the regulatory state. In 2001, some 64,438 pages of regulations were added to it. In 2007, more than 78,000 new pages were added. Worse still, argues the Mercatus Center economist Veronique de Rugy, Bush is the unparalleled master of "economically significant regulations" that cost the economy more than $100 million a year. Since 2001, he jacked that number by more than 70 percent. Since June 2008 alone, he introduced more than 100 economically significant regulations.

At this late date, it may be pointless to argue about the grounds for the invasion of Iraq, which even Bush has (finally) acknowledged were built on sand rather than bedrock. The Iraq war has lasted longer than any American conflict except for Vietnam and has cost more than any shooting match except for World War II. Leave aside for a moment the more than 4,200 U.S. deaths and 30,000 casualties, and ask a very basic question: Did President Bush's prosecution of the war—he declared an end to major hostilities in May 2003—and his direction of the ongoing occupation make you feel better about the government's ability to execute core functions?

Or, like the bungled federal response to Hurricane Katrina (later made good by shoveling billions of pork-laden tax dollars to the Gulf area) and the rushed, secretive, and ever-changing bailout of the financial sector, did it make you want to simply despair?

Bush's legacy is thus a bizarro version of Ronald Reagan's. Reagan entered office declaring that government was not the solution to our problems, it was the problem. Ironically, he demonstrated that government could do some important things right—he helped tame inflation and masterfully drew the Cold War to a nonviolent triumph for the Free World. By contrast, Bush has massively expanded the government along with the sense that government is incompetent.

That is no small accomplishment—and its pernicious effects will last long after Bush has moved back to Texas, and President Obama has announced that his stimulus package, originally tagged at $750 billion and already up to $825 billion, will cost $1 trillion or more. Bush has cleared the way for President Obama to intervene more and more in the economy and every other aspect of American life.

Last July, the political scientists Philippe Aghion, Yann Algan, Pierre Cahuc, and Andrei Shleifer wrote a paper titled "Regulation and Distrust" (PDF). Using data from the World Values Survey, the authors convincingly argue that "distrust influences not just regulation itself, but the demand for regulation." They found that "distrust fuels support for government control over the economy. What is perhaps most interesting about this finding...is that distrust generates demand for regulation even when people realize that the government is corrupt and ineffective."

George W. Bush has certainly taught us that government really can't be trusted to be very effective, or open, or smart. He has also taught us that government can always get bigger on every level and every way. It's a sad lesson that we'll be learning for many years to come.

Nick Gillespie is the editor in chief of Reason.tv and Reason.com. A version of this ran in the Saturday, January 24, 2008 edition of The Wall Street Journal.

Basically Bush, like the Republicans under him, preached low taxes and small-government while actually governing largely and incompetently, but in the name of "small-government" conservatism. With this he's accomplished an impressively bad trifecta:

1) Bigger government
2) Manifestly incompetent governance
3) Greatly harming the good name of small-government conservatism

Best case scenario for the country, Obama's Democrats only accomplish #1. Worser case they also accomplish a bit of #3 because they give big-government a better name by running the country more competently than Bush's purported "small government" .

(Free advice: if you must have a bigger government, get Democrats to run it instead of Republicans. They know how to do it with some effectiveness because the people they appoint are relatively intelligent "public servants" rather than party hacks who are philosophically against doing their own damn jobs effectively.)

Worst case scenario for the country is Democrats actually manage to do #2 instead of #3. And this bad scenario is the only one that helps the right's electoral prospects.

What a terrible pickle Bush Republicanism has left us in.