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Three Lessons From the Chaos in the Middle East

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As the foreign policy community begins a reevaluation of conventional wisdom about the Middle East, an obvious consequence in the aftermath of events in Egypt, one of the many questions that will get revisited is how to incubate a Palestinian state. It would be a pity if that track escaped the same needed consideration, or proceeded without an eye towards the pressing lessons emerging, even as the riots continue to simmer and the dominoes continue to teeter.

If the chaos sweeping the Arab and Muslim world has shown us one thing, it’s that Arab regimes in the Middle East come and go. If it’s shown us two things, it’s that regimes in the Middle East come and go, and that when they go, there had better be healthy liberal, secular democratic opposition groups ready to enter the vacuum. Otherwise the result is what we’re seeing now in Egypt, where the choices are between hostile political Islamists on the one hand and, on the other, a reshuffled version of the same regime that’s been ruling the country for decades.

One lesson that needs learning, then, is that an Arab state without an organized middle class is not only doomed to failure, but ALSO that the most organized oppositional forces sweeping the Middle East are basically one-man-one-vote-one-time Islamism. It’s not enough to have a middle class, and one can’t wave a magic wand or sprinkle fairy dust to make it happen. A middle class needs time to develop, to breath, and to become a recognizable political bloc with recognizable political interests channeled through recognizable political parties.

And that’s exactly what Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is attempting to accomplish in the West Bank. His economic initiatives, coupled with his institution-building programs, should not just be viewed as ways to increase the average Palestinian’s standard of living. More than that, they’re attempts to ground a future state in something like a civil society, the ultimate goal being to prevent a political vacuum from engulfing a future Palestinian government.

The Prime Minister knows that Hamas is ready to fill that vacuum and, having seen the creeping theocracy that is the Gaza Strip, he knows what the consequences would be if the Iran-backed terrorist organization ever succeeded.

The trick for the rest of us, of course, is to ensure that the process is allowed to play out – for the Palestinians and in Egypt – and that Fayyad’s efforts are allowed to become robust.

Economic peace should be allowed to take hold – and deeply encouraged – before political imperatives, lest still-fragile Palestinian institutions get overwhelmed and crumble.

And if we have learned a third thing from events this week – and more on this soon – it is that peace in the Middle East must be between institutions and societies, not simply with Arab political figures, whose future is far too uncertain across the Arab world for us, or our friends in Israel, to bet the farm on their survival.

Why We Are Watching This Clown

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

I normally try to stay away from this stuff, but the latest Glenn Beck blaze of paranoia on Egypt is just too much of a train wreck to miss. In 12 terrifying minutes, Beck outlines the contours of a Middle East that is ON FIRE, and promises to devote the next several episodes to giving his viewers the whole TRUTH, the TRUTH that “has no agenda,” the TRUTH that the mainstream media doesn’t want to tell you.

“I’m not going to give you the two minute sound-byte,” teases Beck. “I’m not going to treat you like you’re a moron. I’m going to treat you like you really do want to understand what’s going on in the world.”

Okay, we all know he’s crazy. But what I keep trying to understand, every time I catch a glimpse of Beck, is why do 2.5 or 3 million people tune in to watch this guy every night? Clearly, he’s figured something out. And as amusing as it is to gawk at the loop-de-loops of insanity, there’s got to be some deep psychological nerves that he’s satisfying.

Let me offer three hypotheses:

  1. The puzzle-solving boost. The neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran writes that “we are hard-wired to love solving puzzles.” In particular, we seem to most enjoy solving puzzles with sudden flashes of insight, “Aha” moments that give us a little flash of positive good feeling. This probably explains the appeal of conspiracy theories generally. Everybody loves a good mystery. And Beck’s most disturbing moments are kind of like that: he throws a bunch of oddly-sized puzzle pieces on the floor, and then promises to show how they will all fit together in an instant “aha” moment. It’s like puzzle-solving porn.
  2. The smarter than everyone else boost. What Beck is consciously doing is letting his viewers in on something exclusive, some privileged view of the world that allows them to feel superior to those who aren’t in the know. These are viewers who have probably spent much of their lives feeling intellectually insecure. But by providing a simple, secret explanation for what’s going on the world, Beck is peddling an ego boost.
  3. Anxiety needs some respect. Beck’s rants are fear-driven, and in that respect they must resonate with a sense of unease that seems to be plaguing too many Americans these days. But this is especially dangerous. Risk expert David Ropeik writes that “when it comes to perceiving and responding to danger, human brains are hard-wired to fear first, and think later.” Beck’s rants are fear-driven, and once the fear part of the brain is activated, the logic part of the brain just doesn’t function as well.

So, add it up, and what Glenn Beck is offering millions of anxious viewers is a chance to validate their fears and then illogically salve them by providing the psychological high of solving a puzzle that allows them to feel superior by being privileged to some secret, exclusive knowledge.

I’m not sure what the antidote is, but I’m guessing it’s not simply marginalizing Beck for his craziness, fun and ego-boosting as that may be. I do sincerely believe that the conspiratorial fear-mongering that comes out of the Beck empire is a serious, serious problem for our society, but it also taps into some serious psychological needs out there. More to think about here.

Import Recapture Strategy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

From the NYT, on rising Chinese export prices:

Markups of 20 to 50 percent on products like leather shoes and polo shirts have sent Western buyers scrambling for alternate suppliers…..Already, the slowdown in American orders has forced some container shipping lines to cancel up to a quarter of their trips to the United States this spring from Hong Kong and other Chinese ports.

It’s time for state and local economic development agencies to start honing their import recapture strategies. By ‘import recapture strategy’, I mean the judicious use of loans and other aid to help rebuild and restart manufacturing production and jobs that were lost to foreign factories.*

Yes, I know that sounds weird after all the manufacturing jobs that have been lost.  Anecdotally, the price differential between China and the U.S. was on the order of 35%.  Given the price jumps in the pipeline, all of a sudden the cost of U.S. production might be in spitting distance for some industries.That’s especially true since domestic manufacturers have the advantage of being close and flexible.

I’m talking here both high- and low-tech production here. The question is which industries are ripe for import recapture, and how many jobs could be created. Here I’m going to tell you an important  little secret–you cannot rely on the BLS import price data to tell you where the gap has closed between import and domestic prices. Two reasons:

* The BLS does not measure the difference between the price of imports and the price of the comparable domestic goods.   Just doesn’t.  Never has. It’s a gaping hole in the data.

*The BLS  does measure changes in import prices–but very very badly (see here and the conference proceedings here). To understand how badly, take a look at this chart, which supposedly tracks the price of Chinese imports.

If you believe this data, the price of Chinese imports into the U.S. has been effectively flat (plus or minus no more than 4%) for the past seven years, through the biggest import boom in U.S. history, the biggest financial crisis in75 years, and a 25% appreciation of the Chinese yuan against the dollar.  As the saying goes, “this does not make sense.”

This piece is cross-posted at Mandel on Innovation and Growth

Are Lobbying Expenditures Really Leveling Off?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Roll Call is reporting today that annual Washington lobbying expenditures dipped slightly in 2010, marking the first time since expenditure data became public in 1996 that the amount of money has not increased. The decline was small: from $3.6 billion to $3.5 billion (according to CQ MoneyLine). But it’s worth asking: does this mark some kind of leveling off of lobbying in Washington?

Some background: there has been a remarkable increase in lobbying expenditures since 1998, when a mere $1.44 billion was spent on lobbying. More organizations have come to Washington, and in particular more companies are spending more money on lobbying. OpenSecrets.org has the history, and there’s been roughly a steady 7 percent annual increase in lobbying since 1998.

If there truly is leveling off, it would be a remarkable development. But I’m skeptical.

One possibility is that more reports will be trickling in late, and this early report will turn out to be an underestimate.

A more likely possibility is that the reporting is inaccurate. Organizations and companies may be reporting less lobbying in response to the Obama administration lobbying rules, which create all kinds of hurdles for former lobbyists who want to serve in the administration. In 2008, OpenSecrets counted 14,214 registered lobbyists; in 2010, it counted just 12,484 – a decline of 12 percent.

There is good reason to believe that a lot of lobbyists have increasingly decided it was better not to register, or even just slightly adjust their portfolios and work schedules so that they technically didn’t meet the definition of a “lobbyist” under the Lobbying Disclosure Act. The Senate Office of Public Records, which keeps track of these registrations and reports, is perpetually understaffed and not well-equipped to go after anybody.

If this is the case, it’s a shame, because it means that by unnecessarily demonizing lobbyists, the Obama lobbying rules may have actually made the practice of lobbying less transparent by encouraging fewer lobbyists to register and publicly file reports.

Of course, it’s also possible that with the passage of heath care and financial reform, as well as the breakdown of climate legislation, the big lobbying dogs have less reason to be active, and with two years of gridlock ahead, it’s possible some interests realize nothing is going to get through, so why waste the money? But both health care and financial reform have major agency rulemakings ahead, and gridlock may actually require more lobbying grease.

Still, if it is a leveling off, I suspect it’s only a temporary one. As I argued in my Ph.D. dissertation on the growth of corporate lobbying (which accounts for about two-thirds of all lobbying expenditures), “More and more companies are discovering that Washington matters to their business, and those who do are sticking around and increasing their political capacities. As a result, corporate lobbying activity is likely to continue to expand for the foreseeable future, with large corporations playing an increasingly central role in the formulation of national policies.”

There’s simply too much at stake, and still for many large corporations, the amount of money they spend on lobbying is still a rounding error on their annual budgets (and much less than they spend on advertising or R&D). Rather, I suspect more and more companies will continue to realize that the reality is they can’t afford not to be lobbying.

Let’s Get Pragmatic on Gun Control

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As the debate over gun law reform continues in the wake of Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting spree in Tuscon, the biggest challenge will be finding a pragmatic solution that both sides of the gun control debate can support, and still addresses the fundamental issues in a comprehensive fashion. After all, gun control has historically been one of the most contentious areas in American politics.

Typically, on the subject of reducing gun violence through legislation, the loudest voices can be divided into two camps. On one side, guns are considered not merely instruments of violent people, but as actually creating or perpetuating violence. This group tends to focus on prohibiting certain configurations of firearms in the hope that if certain types of firearms are banned, criminals will be unable to inflict as much damage per incident.

A recent example is Rep. Carolyn McCarthy’s (D-NY) recently introduced bill to reinstate the ban on extended capacity magazines. The ban would limit firearm magazines to holding no more than 10 rounds. While it is difficult to articulate a need for an extended magazine in any civilian application, as a practical matter, changing magazines takes less than two seconds. This is not really an effective way to prevent shooting sprees as demonstrated by Seung-Hu Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, who had nearly 20 magazines on him and went through half of them before committing suicide.

The other camp believes that putting guns in the hands of more people will counter gun violence by enabling ordinary citizens to defend themselves against criminal attacks. This group tends to introduce legislation to ease restrictions on carrying weapons, concealed or openly, and has recently gone so far as to attempt to legalize students and teachers arming themselves on college campuses. Any amount of time spent on or near a college campus after hours will cause most people to question the wisdom of arming mass groups of college students.

A more pragmatic approach, centered on comprehensive background checks and screenings to keep guns out of the wrong hands is necessary. This approach is also largely supported by both sides. Such an approach, unlike the polar alternatives, can deal with the fundamental issue surrounding the Tuscon tragedy, which is that Loughner was able to purchase a gun to begin with. This is a man who was removed from his community college because his professors, administrators and fellow students recognized that he posed a danger. Yet, 5 months later he was able to legally purchase a Glock 19 pistol, passing a background check without being flagged.

We need to work harder to identify and properly deal with people who are so psychologically troubled or demonstrably criminally inclined that they pose a legitimate risk to society. The signs were there with Loughner. Why was he not subsequently submitted for a 72-hour evaluation? Why is there not a system in place where, if a person is deemed to dangerous to attend Algebra class, he is not automatically flagged as, at least pending evaluation, too dangerous to purchase or own a firearm?

We need to develop a framework of comprehensive background checks and screening that is consistent across every state and includes exposure to a qualified firearms trainer who can evaluate, among other things, an individual’s capacity to safely and responsibly possess a firearm.

A proper information technology backbone is desperately needed in order to make a comprehensive background check system work.

Currently, each state government is responsible for reporting information to the federal system as a separate operation. A ridiculous mix of proprietary, incompatible, and isolated information systems throughout the country slows down, or even prevents, the exchange of relevant information.

According to research by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, 18 states have reported zero citizens with mental health records that would preclude them from owning firearms to the national background check database. It is the 21st century, and there needs to be an open standard for all levels of government information systems that ensures interoperability so that manual information exchange is not necessary.

Such a system must allow hospitals, police departments, schools, states, counties and cities to enter information once, and have it immediately available to the federal system. Loughner would not have been able to pass a background check if the information had such a system been implemented.

As important as effective background checks are, however, no technological solution can surpass the effectiveness of human judgment. More comprehensive training and screening should be required before someone is able to purchase a firearm. This training should give a certified firearms instructor enough exposure to the applicant to provide sufficient opportunity to evaluate their potential for responsible gun ownership.

Had Loughner spent 5 days with a trainer, part of whose job it was to evaluate a person’s ability to responsibly own a weapon, perhaps his clear psychological instability could have been flagged and the gun would have been kept the gun out of his hands.

Most professional weapons training programs are designed, in part, to filter out those who are unfit to be armed. Such a requirement for civilian ownership could greatly reduce the likelihood that an unstable individual could legally purchase a firearm, independent of the severely limited background check system

If our legislative leaders focus on constructing this type of framework, both sides of the gun control issue can find something to be happy about. Proponents of gun control can be satisfied knowing that far more effort is going into ensuring that dangerous weapons, of any configuration, do not end up in the wrong hands. Proponents of the individual right to bear arms can be satisfied that, unless they exhibit behavior or criminal tendencies that should disqualify them from gun ownership anyway, their rights to bear arms will go unmolested.

While every tragedy cannot be prevented, common sense steps can be taken to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people. A framework that focuses on a solid system for comprehensive screening is a good first step.

How to Avoid the Infrastructure Blind Side

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In listening to President Obama talk about infrastructure in his State of the Union Message, I couldn’t stop thinking about last year’s great movie “The Blind Side.” A young, talented, left-handed quarterback fades back to pass, surveys the field, has three receivers open and…bam, once again he’s crushed by a bull-rushing defensive end, who once again rolls over his right guard.

President Obama may have greatness in him, and he may become great, but where infrastructure is concerned every time he steps up to the lectern I have to shut my eyes – it’s that scary.

First, President Obama doesn’t have the personnel in place for a successful – let alone ‘we do big things’ – infrastructure initiative. Think about it: who in the White House is in charge of infrastructure? And when has a signal initiative ever been successful without someone in charge?

Whether this is our Sputnik Moment or not, infrastructure is rocket science. If the U.S. Is to double our spending on infrastructure (moving from $150 billion year to $300 billion), someone in the White House needs to provide clear signals and hefty shoves to the Department of Transportation and the Department of Energy, as well as to the responsible officials (governors and secretaries) in the fifty states. Currently there is no one…bam.

Second, there is no overall infrastructure plan. A sustained increase in U.S. competitiveness does not require magical investments, whether in high-speed rail, the smart grid, electric cars and renewable energy – truly wide-open receivers downfield. It requires a clear consensus vision of the global challenge, and of which projects are strategic to responding to that challenge, and its opportunities.

The President not only needs to build a team, he needs to create a vision for that team – it is what great presidents do. Infrastructure built now provides value for 20-30 years, so where does the U.S. want to be in 20-30 years, and how – specifically – are we going to get there? Otherwise we will continue to spend incredibly scarce political, financial, and managerial resources on projects that are immaterial to our success. Unless the President’s team – and right now we are all on his team – is driven and directed by a vision of national competitiveness and renewal…bam.

Third, from the business point of view, the first two issues – not much of a team, and not much of a plan – are ‘walk away now’ fatal flaws – but there is another issue that needs to be addressed, perhaps the biggest blind side issue of all: how is a sustained infrastructure initiative to be financed in an environment of severe federal and state austerity?

The only serious answer is a National Infrastructure Bank, something that both Democrats and Republicans agree upon – and an idea strongly favored by incoming House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica.

All of our competitors –China, India, Russia, Brazil, the European Union – have national infrastructure banks. It is a source of strategic advantage in the globalized economy, and needs to be a fully-functioning part of our infrastructure renewal. Without a significant funding source, in the range of $250 billion-$300 billion over ten years, I simply have to shut my eyes in horror…bam, bam, bam.

In watching President Obama step up to the lectern on infrastructure – now for the third or fourth time in his young presidency – I am both fearful and perplexed. The President needs to step back from the field – up to the balcony, as Harvard’s leadership guru Ronnie Heifetz would say – and reflect on what actually needs to be done. To recognize that he needs to be more coach than quarterback, and take the time to find the players (a Team of Rivals he does not have), build the team around a compelling vision (the real job of a President) and finance the effort (you can ‘dream of things that never were, and ask why’ – but if you want to see those things you will have to find a practical, sustained, politically acceptable way to pay for them).

I have to get the nightmare out of my mind of a young, supremely talented quarterback, dropping back to pass – once again – and then…bam. I want my talented President to step up to the lectern and this time, get the who, what, and how of his infrastructure initiative right.

What To Do As Egypt Transitions to Democracy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s bizarre and wandering late-night address to the nation on Friday is almost certainly the beginning of his end.  Mubarak’s tone-deaf offer to reshuffle his cabinet is a ham-fisted attempt to address the Egyptian protesters’ concerns that only underlines his weakened position.  Only one of two paths seems open for Mubarak: that he clings to power through a campaign of violent and bloody repression, or that he flees Cairo to enjoy a luxurious retirement in Switzerland or Saudi. Given the army’s restraint thus far, thankfully the latter seems more likely.

The Obama administration deserves real praise for standing on the right side of history. Secretary Clinton’s remarks on the weekend’s talk shows struck an unambiguous tone as she called for the Egyptian people to “have the chance to chart a new future. It needs to be an orderly, peaceful transition to real democracy, not faux democracy.” Even John Boehner has praised the administration’s handling of the situation.

Should Egypt soon find itself staring “real democracy” in the face, what is the Obama administration’s next move?  The White House would do well to re-read a piece Shadi Hamid wrote for PPI in late 2008, particularly these sections:

Elevate democracy promotion through aid conditionality. The perception that America stands opposed to democratic openings in the Middle East must be challenged head-on so that Arabs and Muslims will begin to feel that they—rather than foreign powers—hold the keys to change within their own societies. The United States can start by articulating a regionwide contract whereby foreign aid is made explicitly conditional on a set of benchmarks, including respect of opposition rights, freedom of expression, and progress toward holding free elections, even if only on the municipal level at first.

Engage political Islam. Democratization will likely further empower Islamists, a reality that the United States must come to terms with. In order to re-establish credibility on democracy promotion—and just as importantly, to show that we have no gripe with Islam—we need to engage in a sustained dialogue with all religiously-oriented parties as long as they fulfill the conditions of renouncing violence and committing themselves to the democratic process. A new administration must begin by stating as a matter of policy that the United States is not opposed to dealing with non-violent Islamist groups and has no problem with parties of a religious character coming to power through free elections.

This would be coupled with the initiation of a U.S.-Islamist “dialogue,” designed to explore areas of tension and misunderstanding. As trust develops, the discussion would move toward the question of how moderate Islamists can help us and how we can help them. In exchange for supporting the political participation of Islamist parties in their respective countries, America would seek to extract certain “concessions” in return, including guarantees that they would respect vital U.S. interests, including standing peace treaties with Israel.

Anybody Home?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

BOOK REVIEW: Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics, by Morris P. Fiorina (with Samuel J. Abrams)

For those who view themselves as political moderates, these are troubling times. Despite the renewed calls to bipartisanship and civility, the reality is that the two parties in Congress are very far apart from each other and continue to show every sign of being far more eager to engage in partisan flame-throwing than in bipartisan problem-solving.

And yet: how did things get to be this way? And what about the supposedly moderate public: how and why do they stand for this? To understand these questions, a good place to start is Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics, by Morris P. Fiorina, a professor of Political Science at Stanford University.

Disconnect is essentially a book in two parts. The first is an extensive compendium of data in support of the claim that there is indeed a widening disconnect between a largely moderate voting public and an ideological polarized political class. The second part is the story of how that disconnect came about.

Just how moderate the public actually is turns out to be a matter of some debate in political science circles. An alternate view – and useful foil for discussing Fiorina’s book – is Alan Abramowitz’s The Disappearing Center (which I reviewed here), which makes the case the current polarization reflects the fact that Americans have sorted into two distinct ideological camps, and that politicians are polarized because the public is polarized (and representative democracy is therefore alive and well.)

Fiorina sees it differently: “The orientation [of the public] is more pragmatic,” he writes. “Far more people position themselves on the issues on a case-by-case basis rather than deduce their specific positions from some abstract principle….Those who ostensibly represent the American public take positions that collectively do not provide an accurate representation of the public.”

Part of the disagreement results from different data employed. Whereas Abramowitz focuses mostly on ideological self-identification and a few hot-button issues, Fiorina incorporates a broader range of issue polling, and finds that Democrats and Republicans are not nearly as far apart on most of the major issues as is commonly believed – on 40 Pew survey items, Democrats and Republicans differ only by an average of 14 points.

Moreover, they are not even moving apart that rapidly. In 1987, the average difference across the same 40 issues was 10 percent, meaning that in 20 years, there has only been an average change of four percentage points. Nor has it been consistently in opposite directions. Rather, Fiorina writes: “One sees a nonideological public moving rightward on some issues, leftward on others, and not moving much at all on still others.”

On some issues, Americans prefer more government intervention, on others less. But most of all, “Americans accept conflicting core beliefs and values.” Political views are often ambivalent and conditional, open to revision and re-consideration, as opposed to absolute and fixed. For example, four in five Americans are not sure whether life begins at conception or birth.

Americans, on the other hand, are much more divided in their assessments of political figures. George W. Bush, as we know, was the most polarizing figure in American political history. But Fiorina argues that the reviews of Bush are polarizing not because the public is polarized generally, but because Bush was an extreme partisan.

Fiorina also differs from Abramowitz in the definition of the political class. Whereas Abramowitz sees more people reporting trying to convince others to vote one way or another as a sign of more engaged political class, Fiorina notes that the percentage of Americans who work for a party or attend meetings and rallies is still the same as it was in 1952: 10 percent.

However, those 10 percent are quite different today than they were in 1952. This is one of the big stories of Disconnect. In an era gone by, politics was a clubby game, more concerned with material motivations than ideology. Politics was about compromise and bargaining, about taking care of business. It was no place for purists.

But without getting too nostalgic for the smoky and often corrupt backroom politics of a bygone era, Fiorina notes that all this openness and transparency changed the nature of politics. “The great irony,” Fiorina writes, “is that after this explosion of openness and transfer of power to the people, turnout in elections fell and trust in government plummeted.”

Without party machines to turn out votes and with new sprawling suburban districts to cover, candidates turned instead to special interests and ideological believers who were willing to volunteer and give money because they felt so strongly. A new political class that cared more about being right than actually winning took over the party mechanisms, creating the perfect breeding ground for ideological candidates.

Several demographic changes also led to political sorting. African-Americans migrated to the North and as a result became a more important political constituency. Civil Rights reforms alienated Southern Democrats, freeing the Democrats of their conservative wing and making their caucus more liberal. New Southern Republicans, plus the rise of the conservative Sunbelt, shifted the Republican center of gravity, as did the political awakening of evangelicals.

Meanwhile, as politics became more partisan, it also became nastier. Because the activists who increasingly control the party now feel more is at stake, they became more aggressive – a feedback loop that has left much wreckage in its wake.

Fiorina, like Abramowitz, offers little by way of reform. Instead, Disconnect concludes by laying the blame on deep structural forces that must somehow change on their own:

The usual institutional reforms are unlikely to do much to lessen the polarization of contemporary American politics. That polarization has deep roots in a variety of social changes that have increased the homogeneity of each party, widened the differences between the two parties, and encouraged politicians to construct electoral coalitions out of group building blocks that are less encompassing and less representative of the broader public than was the case for most of American history.

The optimistic note, however, is that by Fiorina’s reading, the American public remains quite moderate, despite the partisan warfare that has been dominating Washington. Without at least a moderate public, it is very hard to build a moderate politics.

Obama and Human Rights in the Middle East

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Events over the last few weeks demand a reconsideration, if not a full-scale reevaluation of the wisdom of the Obama administration’s overall approach to democracy and human rights in the Middle East.

Facts are stubborn things, and the reality is that President Obama’s administration has now succeeded where President Bush never did. On his watch, Tunisia’s people rose up in protest over economic corruption and government repression and a dictator fled. The Arab world has a fighting chance at establishing its first true democracy.

At a minimum, those on the right who incessantly take credit wherever freedom blossoms need to grapple with that fact. But even more than that may be called for.

The Obama administration’s approach has not always been perfect, but it does appear, for the most part, rather consistent. And it does appear to have helped. It combines a steady rhetorical insistence on universal principles with an attempt, not always successful, to avoid lending its political support to either governments or protesters—betting on both and neither at the same time—event at times of crisis for regimes.

With events heating up in Egypt, the Obama Administration has done nothing to impede—and in fact has amplified—Egyptians’ calls for change.

With regard to events in Tunisia, Clinton was even more direct. Just days before Ben Ali fled the country, with his government grasping for support, she refused to throw him a rope, telling Al Arabiya: “We are not taking sides.”

Most importantly, the Obama administration has called on the governments of Egypt and Tunisia to respect the rights of peaceful protesters and to refrain from violence. This is by far the most valuable stance the U.S. can take in this moment of instability. An Tiananmen-style crackdown in Cairo’s Tahrir Square would have devastating consequences for Egyptians and Americans alike.

The toughest part has yet to come: Todays’s protests in Egypt are likely to be larger than the ones on Tuesday, and Tunisia has yet to consolidate anything resembling a democratic government. But so far, we have to commend the Obama administration’s approach to both Tunisia and Egypt.

Obama’s Two-Track Approach on Energy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As often happens with State of the Union addresses, President Obama’s speech left a lot of D.C. pundits and policy types unsatisfied and complaining that he didn’t lay out enough specifics, or that he didn’t use clear enough language to endorse one policy proposal or another. And for some of the areas that he breezed through so quickly between his Sputnik references, they’re right to be hungry for more.

But one area where he did manage to send some strong signals was on energy policy. He didn’t lay out a long list of proposals here either, but he made it clear that he plans to push for an ambitious two-part energy agenda: encouraging technological innovation through research and development funding, and pursuing a strong national Clean Energy Standard (CES) that shifts our energy production away from the dirtiest categories of traditional power resources.

Supporting energy R&D isn’t really anything new for Obama, but the 80 percent CES target for 2035 is a more exciting announcement. It’s a bold attempt to take Congress again into the breach of debating a national energy plan, which requires more than relying on innovation alone. It’s a starting point for talking about what we want our mid-term future to look like, and how we intend to realistically manage our energy resources over the course of the next few decades.

One reason Obama is able to set the goal so high at 80 percent is that his definition of “clean energy” in this proposal is very broad. It goes beyond the zero-carbon category of renewables and nuclear, and includes partial credits toward the goal for natural gas and clean coal (see DOE’s fact sheet), a step that goes beyond most CES proposals that have been floated in Congress, and well beyond what many environmental advocates are comfortable calling “clean.” But Michael Levi has done an excellent job providing first-responder estimates of what the country’s generation supply would look like in 2035 under this proposal, and concluded that it’s clearly a more ambitious target than last year’s Senate bill.

In practice, Obama’s CES target is also very similar to the Balanced Energy Portfolio target for 2040 that PPI is proposing in an upcoming paper, but more on that later.

Just as the CES proposal is a new beginning for energy policy this year, Obama’s speech also signaled a new approach to framing the arguments for his proposals, both in what he said and what he didn’t say.

First, what he didn’t say: the phrase “cap and trade” didn’t come up, but that was no surprise, especially after he chose not to say much about it while it was dying a slow and public death in the Senate last year. But some of the other things he didn’t include in this speech are more interesting. He didn’t use the words “climate” or “environment” once. And no mention of global warming, carbon, EPA, or clean air. Apparently Obama not only wants to put cap and trade behind us, but he wants to move beyond the climate debate and talk about energy only in terms of innovation, competition, and clean energy jobs. With so many Republicans in the House now proudly flaunting their rejection of climate science, Obama’s move is politically understandable, even if it’s not morally commendable.

Next, what he did say: Obama’s call to arms was announcing a “Sputnik moment” for clean energy and national competitiveness, rhetoric he and John Kerry have been using a lot in recent weeks. It isn’t clear to me how they are defining this moment, but apparently my confusion is reasonable, since Obama himself wasn’t so clear on it back in 2009 either, when he sent a different message on energy [courtesy of Rachel Brown]:

There will be no single Sputnik moment for this generation’s challenges to break our dependence on fossil fuels. In many ways, this makes the challenge even tougher to solve—and makes it all the more important to keep our eyes fixed on the work ahead.

Frankly, I like Obama’s earlier message more than his new one, because I don’t really subscribe to this idea that clean energy development is a race that we are going to win or lose as a nation. However, I do think we should be taking much stronger steps than we are now to shift our energy use to cleaner resources and grow clean energy industries globally, so if Obama can make that happen by convincing Americans that a Chinese solar research center poses the same type of existential threat to our way of life as Russian rocket technology we couldn’t match in 1956, more power to him.

The best takeaway from Obama’s case for competitiveness is that we need a sustained national commitment to innovation, recognizing it as a comparative advantage we should exploit wherever possible.  This is true not only for clean energy, but for other innovative industries as well, as my colleague Michael Mandel emphasized this week. That commitment needs to be a shared effort that we value as part of our culture, with appropriate roles for the public, private, education, and non-profit sectors. It is a position that all progressives should rally around, because it’s one that will be under attack from the new goon squad of Tea Party conservatives, who want to cut most public spending just for the sake of cutting.

Just as progressives need to present a united front in support Obama’s call to defend well crafted R&D programs in the face of conservative budget roll-backs, progressives also need to raise their voices in support of his Clean Energy Standard proposal. Obama is right that investing in innovation and R&D is the key to finding long-term solutions that will be good for our economy and our planet, but innovation alone is not enough. Robert Stavins made the case last year that carbon pricing and R&D are both necessary, and one or the other alone is not enough, and I agree with his argument for the most part. And while a CES is a less efficient substitute for cap-and-trade, Stavin’s point still holds: whatever the incentive structure, we need a resource planning policy that reshapes today’s energy markets, while we wait for tomorrow’s solutions to become a reality.

President Obama deserves praise for taking a bold step toward an actual energy plan for the country, and he deserves it from all progressives. That means those of us who would prefer to see a stronger approach that includes a price on carbon, or those who are disappointed with Obama for moving too far to the center, should see the CES proposal for what it is: probably the only opportunity we have to move forward on energy resource policy in the next two years (at least), and therefore and opportunity that must be seized if at all possible. It also means that those who have advocated for innovation-only approaches need to extend their enthusiasm over Obama’s speech to support the CES together with other progressives, instead of trying to claim the mantle of leadership for themselves exclusively, as some have done this week.

Both pieces of Obama’s agenda are going to be tough to pass, and it goes without saying that they will require a better plan of attack than last year’s. There are a lot of details to be fleshed out, and some horse-trading compromises as it moves forward that won’t sit well with everyone. But the president has stepped forward this week and shown some real leadership, and progressives should return the favor as he takes the fight to Congress.

The Economist: Red Tape Rising

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI Senior Fellow Michael Mandel talks to The Economist about the interaction between excessive regulation and innovation:

Also unquantifiable is the innovation that may be deterred by regulation. Michael Mandel, a scholar at the Progressive Policy Institute, a think-tank, says some of Mr Obama’s rules, though well intentioned, interfere with the most dynamic parts of the economy. Rules meant to deter the abuse of student aid by for-profit colleges could stunt the growth of college courses taught over the internet; tighter conditions on drug approvals, prompted by much-publicised scandals, raise the cost of drug research, especially for small companies; and “net neutrality” rules could expose internet-access providers to stifling litigation.

Mr Obama’s regulatory surge would be less damaging if it had not followed one by Mr Bush, Mr Mandel says. Because of fears about national security, telecoms and internet companies came under pressure to accommodate federal eavesdroppers. The Sarbanes-Oxley accounting law has made it more expensive for start-up companies to list their stock publicly.

Read the full article.

The Washington Post: Obama’s call for innovation follows slowdown in most sectors, scholars say

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI Senior Fellow Michael Mandel discusses the need to reinvest in American innovation with the Washington Post reporter Brian Vastag:

Innovation scholars point to a “valley of death” where new technologies go to die. The federal government funds basic research. Private industry commercializes technologies springing from that work. But crossing the chasm between the two can be hugely difficult.

“We have investors with lots of money, and we have entrepreneurs with ideas that can get you across the valley of death,” said Michael Mandel, an economist who tracks American innovation for the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington. “But it’s a lot easier when you have a big winner out there, a gleaming star in the distance.”

Read the full article

State of the Union on High-Speed Rail: How to Pay for Fast Trains

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In setting a national goal of providing high-speed train service to 80 percent of Americans by 2035, President Obama challenged himself and Congress to come up with a way to finance the biggest transportation program since the Interstate Highway System.

The president called on Congress to “redouble” efforts to rebuild the nation’s transportation infrastructure and advance high-speed rail (HSR) even as it cuts elsewhere. He framed the issue as part of our generation’s “Sputnik moment” where the world has changed and government investment is needed to generate growth and stimulate private innovation.

“We do big things,” he said, wrapping HSR in the mantle of other federal initiatives, such as Transcontinental Railroad initiated by Abraham Lincoln and the highway system inaugurated by Dwight Eisenhower, that transformed American life.

Obama can start by submitting to Congress a radically reformed six-year surface transportation appropriations bill to replace the expiring act known as SAFETEA-LU, as we argued in a recent memo.

SAFETEA-LU has already been lambasted by Congress’ own advisory group, the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, as directionless and dysfunctional.

The commission has pointed out that $24 billion was appropriated to more than 5,000 congressional “earmarks.” That means that each member of Congress got to pick an average of 10 projects for their districts without any outside review. Such earmarking has made highway funding a poster child of the kind of pork-barrel spending that House leaders – and many Tea Party-backed House Republicans – vow to slash.

So here’s the President’s chance to cut government waste while securing long-term HSR funding. The new bill should allow money collected through the Highway Trust Fund to flow to HSR. Eliminating earmarks and such peripheral programs as Safe Routes to Schools could free up $5 billion a year for rail construction – or $30 billion over the bill’s lifetime – without requiring an increase in the federal gas tax, which is an anathema to Congressional Republicans.

The administration should also think of creative ways to leverage public monies to seed private capital for HSR construction. It was great to hear the president allude in his speech to private investment as a way to finance his rail program. We need to hear more as Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood develops tangible ways to leverage private capital, including capital promised by foreign train builders.

Using federal money to seed private-sector investment has long been advocated by John Mica (R-Fla.), the new chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Mica, who is responsible for drafting the next surface transportation bill, could be a constructive partner with the Obama administration.

Mica supports “true” high-speed rail as a transformational technology and has been critical of the administration’s allocations of federal stimulus funds to higher-speed conventional rail projects.

We have shared his concern that the administration, in its first round of grants a year ago, spread funds that would marginally improve passenger train speeds on shared track with freight railroads. Since then, the administration has placed much more emphasis on getting a dedicated high-speed route under construction between Tampa and Orlando and jumpstarting California’s high-speed line between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Mica wants to use private capital to underwrite high-speed rail development in the Northeast Corridor. He is holding a hearing today in Manhattan where he will take testimony from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, Thomas Hart of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association and Petra Todorovich of the Business Alliance for Northeast Mobility.

Obama demonstrated on Tuesday his commitment to the vision of high-speed rail. Mica can turn this vision into funded reality in a divided government. And Ray LaHood, a former Republican congressman who knows Mica quite well, says he is open to finding common ground. How these gentlemen interact over the next six months will bear close attention.

Making Sense of the State of the Union

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

For those of you out there still trying to make sense of the President’s State of the Union address, we at PPI have spent the whole day thinking about it.

Here are our insights:

  • Lee Drutman gave the speech a B+ for including some version of 8 of PPI’s 10 big ideas for Getting America Moving Again. He also assessed the impact the speech and the agenda it laid out could have on Obama’s 2012 chances.
  • Michael Mandel praised Obama for spending time on innovation, regulation, and jobs, but argued that in all three cases, he got his priorities upside down.
  • Jim Arkedis explained how foreign policy served as an underpinning for the address.
  • Ed Kilgore assessed the Republican response as little more than preaching to the choir on the limited idea of limiting government.
  • Mike Signer discussed the power of pronouncements.

State of the Union: Winning the Future and Winning 2012

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Last night, President Obama used the phrase “win the future” as the primary motif of his speech. But clearly, on his mind was also very particular future: the 2012 election.

Right now, that future looks bright. His approval ratings are back above 50 percent; independents are deciding they like him after all, and there is no particularly strong challenger standing out in the Republican field.

If last night was the opening gambit in the 2012 campaign, it hints that Obama understands that the two keys to getting re-elected – a centrist politics and an economic recovery – are linked. What he also needs to understand is that he’s going to have to keep hammering on the same themes if he wants them to stick.

On the positioning front, voters seem to be responding well to the new centrist Obama, who actually looks a lot like the old centrist Obama that voters elected in 2008: a president who went out of his way to show that he was not interested in being a partisan warrior and was open to working with Republicans and even including a few Republican ideas here and there.

The political events of the last two months – an especially productive lame-duck session of Congress, plus a nice moment of reflection following the tragic events in Tucson – have played to Obama’s strengths and allowed him to slip back into the role that I suspect he always wanted to play: leader of all the American people, not just the Democrats.

To the extent that Obama continued his centrist politics last night – cobbling together ideas from both sides – he should continue to maintain a wide appeal.

The bigger challenge is the state and trajectory of the economy. If unemployment is falling, businesses are creating jobs, and people feel rosy about a better tomorrow, Obama is practically unbeatable.

And while national economies are complicated beasts that defy presidents, there is certainly more to do than just stand aside and cheerlead. To the extent that the Obama administration can implement the proposed program of investments in infrastructure, education, and clean energy, as well as increasing exports, this should create jobs.

But more significantly (from a political sense), it creates a narrative that things are getting better, that America is building a future we can be proud of. It’s the same smiling horse of hope that Obama rode into town on that got every so jazzed up in the first place.

Some of this can happen at the executive level. But a lot of it requires some congressional participation.

Unfortunately, if the post-SOTU chatter is any indication (and it probably is), Republicans are not budging from their small-government old-time religion. Generally, they are generally laughing off Obama’s speech as so much misguided hot air. Even the lines that were supposed to make inroads with Republicans seem to have fallen flat among those they were intended to soften up.

Obama may by temperament prefer the bargaining chip approach (we’ll take one of your ideas and hope you vote for the thing), but at some point, he’s going to have to play a little more hardball. The only way Republicans come around to supporting some “investments” is if they feel that there will be a price to pay come next election of they don’t.

Obama started to do this last night by appealing to a national sense of purpose, and posing our challenge in us-versus-them terms. “We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.” He called it a “Sputnik moment.”

Obama is going to have to keep making his case to the American people in a more sustained and forceful way than he’s ever done. He’s going to have to keep hammering on the rhetoric that if we don’t take investing in the future seriously, we may as well kiss our role as a global leader goodbye.

And this is where positioning and performance come together. By framing his agenda in a way that puts America’s global competitiveness at the forefront and pulls ideas from both sides, he’s putting pressure on the Republicans to come along. And if they do, and the policies improve economy as predicted, it’s a double-bonus for Obama.

It’s a political gamble, but it’s a smart one. Now here’s hoping that Obama has the discipline to stick with it, and give this strategy the sustained effort it deserves.

State of the Union on Foreign Policy: Hardly an After-Thought

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Though the president failed to mention the words “foreign policy” until 80 percent of his speech lay in the rearview mirror, it very much served as the underpinning of the entire exercise.

“Winning the Future”, after all, is inherently a call to rise against two competitors: domestic political obstacles that restrain American growth and prosperity, and those nations who seek to best the American model of democratic free enterprise. In that sense, the best line of his speech–“We do big things”–was probably the most forceful testament to American greatness and world leadership of the Obama presidency. It was an effective reminder that despite the impasses our politics so routinely produce that our calling is at the head of the world’s pack, and for a damn good reason.

He used the buttress of China and India to raise the spectre of international competition, even though the notion of “competing” with with New Delhi and Beijing hardly boils down a zero-sum game.  But to gird Americans to tackle the huge tasks in their way, the frame was apt–other big countries are succeeding, and their models are sub-optimal.  We can be the best, he said, even though our democracy is messy.

Pundits may critique the speech for its lack of specific initiatives, that wasn’t really the point. Lofty rhetoric and inspirational moments fall well within the president’s balliwick, particularly at a political moment when a statement of first principles establishes the possibility of buy-in from erstwhile opponents. The specifics of regulatory reform, for example, may draw knee-jerk heckles from conservatives, but the idea of political cooperation that unleashes the power of American entrepreneurship and reestablishes American economic might on the world’s stage?  That’s rhetoric to start a conversation around.

When President Obama did get down to the foreign policy details, it was a mixed bag. Some, like Josh Rogin over at The Cable, took a cynical bent and criticized the president for glossing over some of the, er, finer details. Fair enough — I might disagree with some of Rogin’s “translations”, but he underlying point is that all isn’t going quite as swimmingly in the world of foreign policy as Obama makes it appear, and that’s about right.  Even if Obama’s foreign policy deserves, in broad strokes, a good amount of praise.

I wanted Obama to draw more of a line in the sand on foreign aid funding. With House Republicans set to eviscerate the foreign assistance line item in the federal budget, Obama could have used the moment to explain that if America is to remain numero uno in the world, it can’t retreat into isolationism. An America engaged with the world protects our security interests and advances our values, and engagement must be properly resourced.

And to conclude, I was pleasantly surprised at Obama’s forceful language on Tunisia and by subtle implication, the nascent rumblings in Egypt: “[T]he United States of America stands with the people of Tunisia, and supports the democratic aspirations of all people.”

Sure, platitudes come easy after a dictator has fallen, and Egyptians — as embodied in the “all people” tacked on the end — certainly wish Obama had been more direct. But in fitting with what I’ve said above, rhetoric is important and falls squarely within the president’s job-description.

Now let’s hope he has begun the process of cajoling our divided government into action.