Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Nick Lowe, 64.

And some good stuff:

1. Dan Hopkins on how to influence policy if you're a lobbyist.

2. Bob Dole and the current Senate, by Michael Kranish.

3. And Mark Kleiman tries a little education.

Yes, Winning Veepstakes is a Good Idea

With Eddie Haskell back in the news with his new House GOP budget, Steve Kornacki had a piece this morning about the history of those who were Veepstakes winners but general election losers. His conclusion: it doesn't really help them, and may even hurt them.

Ed Kilgore looks at the same examples and interprets it much more favorably for the VP losers.

I'm with Kilgore here. Take, for example, Bob Dole. Sure, he received terrible reviews for his debate performance and his 1980 presidential campaign was a dud. And, yes, his stints as Finance Chair and then GOP Senate Leader certainly helped him in his marathon quest for a GOP nomination. Still, it's hard to overall say that his career arc was damaged by 1976. It's not as if he would have had a better chance in 1980 if he wasn't on the ticket in 1976. And who knows; some of the contacts he made and the experience he earned in 1980 (and even 1976) may well have helped him be a viable candidate in 1988, and then eventually the nominee in 1996.

The easily overlooked point that I'll add to the discussion is that if Dole, John Edwards, and the rest of them hadn't been nominated...someone else would have been. Suppose, in 1976, Ford picks Paul Laxalt instead. Laxalt probably wouldn't have challenged Reagan in 1980, but it's easy to imagine the national exposure helping him emerge as the mainstream conservative alternative to Bush in 1988, no? At any rate, it surely would have elevated a potential Dole rival. The same would be true had John Kerry selected Joe Biden or Bill Richardson in 2004; if either of them had come even a little closer to the top tier in 2008, it might well have made it harder for Edwards to get as far as he did. And the same is true of the one that Kornacki leaves out, Ed Muskie. Like Edwards, he wound up as a serious candidate who fell far short; like Edwards, he probably was helped not only by being on the ticket, but by blocking some other politician with a similar profile getting the VP nomination instead of him.

The only real exception, I think, is the Gerry Ferraro one -- not because things didn't work out for her as a national politician, but because (as Kornacki points out) that if she had stayed in the House, she might well have wound up high in the leadership, and even Speaker. Giving up a safe seat in the House with a path to the leadership in order to run as VP (assuming you have to give it up, which depends on the state) really does have a major downside risk. For everyone else, however, winning Veepstakes is generally a good move.

Fun With Forecast Models

Ah, I see that Nerdfight has flared up again (be sure to look at comments on the first of those). I'll just mention that I think Nate Silver really overstates his case about the failures of the objective indicator models; I make the case for that here (see points 5-10). My key point? If you look at the three strongest prediction systems from the group that Silver collects, they do quite well indeed. And there's a pretty good argument, in my view, that that's not just cherry-picking the best ones.

At any rate: it's a Friday afternoon, so I'd rather have fun.

Here's what we can take a first-run crack at thanks to the prediction models: who did best beyond the fundamentals? If fundamental-based predictors say one candidate should win by 5 points and he wins by only one, then we can suppose (although many caveats would have to apply) that it's the things beyond the fundamentals -- candidates, campaigns, events that matter but for whatever reason are not in the models -- that hurt that candidate and helped his opponent. I'm not even going to bother spelling out the (necessary!) caveats here; I just want to have a little fun.

So: Silver collected predictor systems from 1992 through 2008. I'm only going to look at three systems, however, and not all of them show up for each election. The ones that have performed well overall are Abromowitz, Wlezien & Erickson, and Hibbs. I'll take a straight average of any of their forecasts that show up, and compare that to the election results, specifically to the incumbent party percentage of the two-party vote (all data from Silver).

1992: Predictors average 47.6; Bush gets 46.6. Clinton does a bit better than expected.

1996: Predictors 55.4; Clinton gets 54.7. This time, Clinton does a bit worse than expected.

2000: Predictors 54.4; Gore gets only 50.3. A big miss; Bush overachieves a lot (I've always thought the big thing was late-breaking economic weakness, some of which showed up only in after-the-election revisions...but that could be totally wrong).

2004: Predictors 52.9; Bush actually comes in at 51.2. I've done this one before: Kerry did better than the fundamentals models predicted (and, for what it's worth, the models I'm looking at here lean far more towards Kerry than the ones I'm not using).

2008: Predictors: 47.3; McCain gets 46.3. Obama does a little better than expected.

Comments::

First of all, the only real miss here is 2000. The predictors are pretty good (remembering, of course, that I picked which ones to look at).

Second: the only one that's way off had Bush beating expectations and Gore failing to reach expectations in 2000.

Third: Bob Dole's losing campaign and John Kerry's losing campaign did a bit better, not worse, than what the predictors thought would happen. Again, that doesn't mean they really had great campaigns after all, but I'd say it's at least a bit of evidence in that direction.

Plum Line: Mitt Dole

Over at Plum Line, I listen to Mitt Romney at CPAC and hear Bob Dole, 1996. Which reminds me of my favorite (and probably not apocryphal) Bob Dole 1996 campaign story.

Two more quick things from Romney's speech today.

First, here's my favorite part. Sorry, it's long, but the kicker is at the end:

And let me be clear: Mine will be a pro-life presidency.
On day one, I will reinstate the Mexico City policy.
I will cut off funding for the United Nations Population Fund, which supports China’s barbaric One Child Policy.
I will ensure that organizations like Planned Parenthood get no federal support.
And I will reverse every single Obama regulation that attacks our religious liberty and threatens innocent life.
The Presidency is more than a public office; it is a sacred trust. As President, I will honor that trust by assuring that America remains the greatest military power on the face of the earth. This is very simple: If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on earth, I am not your President. You have that President today.
This election is a defining moment for our generation and for the conservative movement. Make no mistake - we have an opportunity for Greatness but with that opportunity comes defining responsibility. We cannot use this election to refight past battles or reward our friends. 

Well, we're certainly not going to refight past battles or reward our friends, are we?

Second:

In business, if you’re not fiscally conservative, you’re bankrupt. I spent 25 years balancing budgets, eliminating waste, and keeping as far away from government as was humanly possible.

Balancing budgets? I really like this a lot. It's Friday afternoon, so I'll leave it at this: there's just no possible meaning of "balancing budgets" that works for both what Romney did in business and also works for what "balancing budgets" means in the context of the presidency.