Glenn Greenwald called me out for saying (over at Plum Line) prior to the Ames debate that Tim Pawlenty was still a viable candidate, and then for noting his demise without referring back to my previous Pawlenty optimism. I'll talk about it a bit, because I think it's worth exploring a bit more about how I think about nomination politics. My apologies if this post is overly self-indulgent.
I plead: not guilty! I certainly make my share of mistakes, and I try to mention them myself when I do -- and I'm happy to have people remind me if I don't. But I'm going to defend my "buy Pawlenty" recommendation from a few weeks back. I obviously wasn't predicting that the Minnesota Meh would win (I said 1 in 7 chance in the post in question) -- just that he was still a plausible nominee, while the betting consensus on him was "toast." I'm comfortable with that one. Had he been the perceived winner of the Ames debate, or had he proven to have organizational strength in Iowa that translated into a better finish in the Straw Poll, he would I believe still be around today. Were those things very likely? Perhaps not. Were the odds of them better than the odds that were being offered at the time? In my view, yup.
To put it another way, or perhaps to better explain the context: way back in the fall I recommended "buying" DeMint, Barbour, and...Rick Perry. Obviously, I didn't think that all three would win, since at best only one could do so. What I thought about them then, and what I thought about Pawlenty really up until Saturday, was that they each had a much better chance than was perceived. I don't think I was really "wrong" about DeMint or Barbour and "right" about Perry; what I was either right or wrong about was my understanding of how the process works, and what was going on in general.
In general, I try to avoid absolute statements about the future, not because I'm being weaselly but because I think in most cases we live in a world of probabilities, at least as I see it. To step back a bit more...much of what I'm trying to do here is to match what's happening right now with what political scientists know about how the world of US politics works. So three things can go wrong: I can misunderstand what's happening now; I can misinterpret what political scientists know; or we (that is, political scientists) can get things wrong, which in turn can be because something hasn't been studied enough yet, or has been studied poorly, or because reality changed and the old studies no longer apply.
Anyway, I do think that I try to 'fess up when I get stuff wrong, but I don't at all think that I got Pawlenty wrong. He ran a serious race for the White House, and lost. In my view, given what was public, he was a plausible nominee right up to Ames. Could I have been wrong? Sure. But not based on what was public then, or how I understand the process. To say that Pawlenty is undervalued isn't to say that he's going to win. If it turns out that Michele Bachmann wins or comes close to the nomination, or if a Paul Ryan jumps in now and wins or comes close, or if someone (really) skips Iowa and wins and comes close, or if a New York City mayor wins or comes close to being nominated (note: who came close to winning can be tricky to judge)...then, yup, I'll have been wrong. But not on this one.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
On Press Coverage of Presidential Candidates
What's the job of the press with regard to presidential candidates?
That's a very tricky question. It comes up because there's a bit of a flap about Ron Paul's coverage post-Ames -- he's not getting very much, and Politico's Roger Simon thinks that's wrong (but see Steve Kornacki, who nails it...oh, so does Kevin Drum).
OK, let's get to this. Putting aside the school of thought that says reporters should do whatever gets them the most readers, and thinking in terms of their function within a democracy...the problem is that there's a real conflict. On the one hand, it's a Good Thing to publicize all the points of view. People who see things through that lens say things like "the press shouldn't pick winners," and that's true...looking at things in that way. So the press should tell us who Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry and Mitt Romney are and what they have to say, but also should tell us who Ron Paul and Gary Johnson and, I suppose, Roy Moore are and their views. Presumably, Republicans who are making choices would want those choices to be well-informed.
And yet, that's not all Republicans making choices want to know. They also want to know which candidates have a chance to win. And reporters presumably have an obligation to report on the horse race aspect of what's going on. Moreover, the process depends on the ability of Republican actors to signal to each other (and, eventually, to voters) as they coordinate and compete over the nomination. If important Republican actors are saying that (for example) Michele Bachmann is doing well but Ron Paul isn't, well, the press should let us know about it.
Or: we could think of it another way altogether, from a real party and not candidate point of view. After all, that would be more accurate. But it's a lot to ask of the press, since it goes up against their well-known bias for people over processes. Which just gets back to that for all that anyone might stipulate that they should ignore what sells newspapers (I know, I know, it's a dated phrase), in real life they aren't going to do so.
At any rate, I'm not going to clear up any of this in a short blog post. The point is only that even if we ask for the press to fulfill democratic functions, that still leaves plenty of conflicts.
That's a very tricky question. It comes up because there's a bit of a flap about Ron Paul's coverage post-Ames -- he's not getting very much, and Politico's Roger Simon thinks that's wrong (but see Steve Kornacki, who nails it...oh, so does Kevin Drum).
OK, let's get to this. Putting aside the school of thought that says reporters should do whatever gets them the most readers, and thinking in terms of their function within a democracy...the problem is that there's a real conflict. On the one hand, it's a Good Thing to publicize all the points of view. People who see things through that lens say things like "the press shouldn't pick winners," and that's true...looking at things in that way. So the press should tell us who Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry and Mitt Romney are and what they have to say, but also should tell us who Ron Paul and Gary Johnson and, I suppose, Roy Moore are and their views. Presumably, Republicans who are making choices would want those choices to be well-informed.
And yet, that's not all Republicans making choices want to know. They also want to know which candidates have a chance to win. And reporters presumably have an obligation to report on the horse race aspect of what's going on. Moreover, the process depends on the ability of Republican actors to signal to each other (and, eventually, to voters) as they coordinate and compete over the nomination. If important Republican actors are saying that (for example) Michele Bachmann is doing well but Ron Paul isn't, well, the press should let us know about it.
Or: we could think of it another way altogether, from a real party and not candidate point of view. After all, that would be more accurate. But it's a lot to ask of the press, since it goes up against their well-known bias for people over processes. Which just gets back to that for all that anyone might stipulate that they should ignore what sells newspapers (I know, I know, it's a dated phrase), in real life they aren't going to do so.
At any rate, I'm not going to clear up any of this in a short blog post. The point is only that even if we ask for the press to fulfill democratic functions, that still leaves plenty of conflicts.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Catch of the Day
Steve Benen calls out WaPo's Richard Cohen -- the "hackiest pundit in America' -- for saying that Rick Perry looks like a president while Michele Bachmann doesn't.
What's amazing here isn't just that Cohen's instinctive sexist and racist assumptions (and, really, there's no other way to put it) aren't just several years behind the reality of a world in which Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were the two most likely to win presidential candidates last time around, but that this sort of thinking is so far behind where most of the culture is. Yes, once upon a time movie presidents all looked like Henry Fonda and Walter Huston. But a quick check of wikipedia reveals that recent presidents have included Danny Glover, Blair Underwood, Louis Gossett, Jr., Chris Rock, Michael Dorn, Morgan Freeman, Jimmy Smits, Geena Davis, Patricia Wettig...do I need to go on? Well, I suppose I should mention Mary McDonnell, although I suppose that doesn't count on a technicality, but still...it's worth mentioning that not all presidents are glamorous. At any rate, yes there are still plenty of James Cromwells and James Caans, but Hollywood loves its black presidents, and is gradually getting used to the idea of women in the White House, too. Which means that Richard Cohen is not only years behind reality, but he's also years behind where the rest of the culture is.
What's amazing here isn't just that Cohen's instinctive sexist and racist assumptions (and, really, there's no other way to put it) aren't just several years behind the reality of a world in which Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were the two most likely to win presidential candidates last time around, but that this sort of thinking is so far behind where most of the culture is. Yes, once upon a time movie presidents all looked like Henry Fonda and Walter Huston. But a quick check of wikipedia reveals that recent presidents have included Danny Glover, Blair Underwood, Louis Gossett, Jr., Chris Rock, Michael Dorn, Morgan Freeman, Jimmy Smits, Geena Davis, Patricia Wettig...do I need to go on? Well, I suppose I should mention Mary McDonnell, although I suppose that doesn't count on a technicality, but still...it's worth mentioning that not all presidents are glamorous. At any rate, yes there are still plenty of James Cromwells and James Caans, but Hollywood loves its black presidents, and is gradually getting used to the idea of women in the White House, too. Which means that Richard Cohen is not only years behind reality, but he's also years behind where the rest of the culture is.
Ames, Iowa, and the Dropout Gap
Nate Silver continued the argument about Ames today by presenting data that show the limited effect not of Ames, but of the Iowa Caucuses -- especially on the Republican side. I've got a bit more to say on this, including the importance of the dropout gap between Democrats and Republicans.
To back up a bit...Iowa doesn't have to predict the nominee to be important. As Josh Putnam pointed out in a series of tweets this morning (I'm not going to link to them all; just follow him, and read FHQ), what Iowa does is winnow the field. It matters a lot if you finish 5th or 6th in Iowa, because then your campaign ends and, consequently, you aren't nominated. If Iowa voters have an independent effect that makes the difference between fighting on and being finished, then it certainly does matter!On the other hand, if being an also-ran in Iowa is not an independent effect, but just the consequence of losing the invisible primary, then it's not all that important after all.
I think what the evidence shows is that it's a little of both. Looking at the Democratic side, in 2008 Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, and Joe Biden were crushed in Iowa (and gone soon thereafter) exactly because they had been trounced in everything else: Iowa registered their failure in 2005-2007, rather than exerting an effect of its own. On the other hand, Iowa probably did have an independent effect on the relative standings of the winners of the invisible primary (Obama and Clinton, and to a lesser degree Edwards). An effect -- but not a decisive one.
Now, the dropout gap. What I suspect that Nate's equation is picking up, at least to some extent, is that Republicans habitually drop out of the race before Iowa, while Democrats don't. Hmmm....I need to be a bit more specific. Some candidates, such as Mitch Daniels and John Thune this cycle or Mark Warner and Evan Bayh last time, drop out before they formally announce their candidacies. In my view, that sort of candidate did in fact run and lost, and they are found on both sides. What Republicans have and Democrats don't are candidates such as Tim Pawlenty this year or Lamar Alexander, Liddy Dole, and Dan Quayle in 2000 -- candidates who ran full-blown campaigns, complete with formal announcement of candidacy, and dropped out before contesting the Iowa caucuses. I don't really know why that's the case. Is it that Republicans are more hierarchical and therefore can winnow more efficiently? Better organized? Is there an Ames factor, in which a highly visible marker during the invisible primary gives candidates a message so obvious that they can't miss it? Or is it learning from party history (correctly or not); Republican longshots don't have the examples of success that Democratic longshots have.
Whatever the reason is, it appears to be quite real. And consequently the line of serious contestants dropping out after Iowa or New Hampshire tends to be longer for the Democrats than for the Republicans.
To back up a bit...Iowa doesn't have to predict the nominee to be important. As Josh Putnam pointed out in a series of tweets this morning (I'm not going to link to them all; just follow him, and read FHQ), what Iowa does is winnow the field. It matters a lot if you finish 5th or 6th in Iowa, because then your campaign ends and, consequently, you aren't nominated. If Iowa voters have an independent effect that makes the difference between fighting on and being finished, then it certainly does matter!On the other hand, if being an also-ran in Iowa is not an independent effect, but just the consequence of losing the invisible primary, then it's not all that important after all.
I think what the evidence shows is that it's a little of both. Looking at the Democratic side, in 2008 Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, and Joe Biden were crushed in Iowa (and gone soon thereafter) exactly because they had been trounced in everything else: Iowa registered their failure in 2005-2007, rather than exerting an effect of its own. On the other hand, Iowa probably did have an independent effect on the relative standings of the winners of the invisible primary (Obama and Clinton, and to a lesser degree Edwards). An effect -- but not a decisive one.
Now, the dropout gap. What I suspect that Nate's equation is picking up, at least to some extent, is that Republicans habitually drop out of the race before Iowa, while Democrats don't. Hmmm....I need to be a bit more specific. Some candidates, such as Mitch Daniels and John Thune this cycle or Mark Warner and Evan Bayh last time, drop out before they formally announce their candidacies. In my view, that sort of candidate did in fact run and lost, and they are found on both sides. What Republicans have and Democrats don't are candidates such as Tim Pawlenty this year or Lamar Alexander, Liddy Dole, and Dan Quayle in 2000 -- candidates who ran full-blown campaigns, complete with formal announcement of candidacy, and dropped out before contesting the Iowa caucuses. I don't really know why that's the case. Is it that Republicans are more hierarchical and therefore can winnow more efficiently? Better organized? Is there an Ames factor, in which a highly visible marker during the invisible primary gives candidates a message so obvious that they can't miss it? Or is it learning from party history (correctly or not); Republican longshots don't have the examples of success that Democratic longshots have.
Whatever the reason is, it appears to be quite real. And consequently the line of serious contestants dropping out after Iowa or New Hampshire tends to be longer for the Democrats than for the Republicans.
Ames and Pawlenty
What should we think of the Ames Straw Poll as part of the nomination process? Polls and Votes and the Monkey Cage's Joshua Tucker argue it's not predictive of nomination success; Nate Silver says that it is, a little. The Nation's Ben Adler has quite a bit of contempt for it.
I sort of think they're all thinking about it the wrong way. I had a TNR column last week that I don't think I've mentioned yet over here in which I made the case for Ames (although not quite as enthusiastically as the headline they gave me might have made it seem). Basically, I think the best way to think about Ames is as an unusually visible event within the invisible primary. And as with all events within the invisible primary, what's important is the signals that various party actors are sending to each other as they try to compete and coordinate on their way to choosing a nominee, and the way that the candidates attempt to appeal to those actors.
From that perspective, it's not that Ames knocked Pawlenty out, and it's certainly not that (as Adler has it) the media arbitrarily decided to call Ames a big deal and drove Pawlenty out by arbitrarily setting high expectations for him. No, what I'd say happened is that Pawlenty had failed for several months to impress various party actors, and that Ames signaled that he wasn't interesting activists, either. Since Pawlenty was (apparently) actually running for president and not using the nomination process to win a spot on Fox News or sell books, he had no point in continuing once that was decided. But the point is that the decision-makers here weren't primarily the folks at Ames -- they were the various active participants in the Republican Party. That is, and regular readers will recognize this list, campaign and governing professionals, formal party staff and officials, activists, politicians, and members of party-aligned interest groups and media. The story certainly appears to be that collectively, those folks had come to the conclusion that while Pawlenty was acceptable to them on public policy and was probably as likely to be an adequate president as any of the other contenders, he was simply an electoral dud. They may have been wrong about that! It's not a science. On the other hand, they need to make choices, and it's basically a good, healthy sign that they care about electoral viability. Meanwhile, since no constituency within the party was willing to push hard for him, well, you know what happened.
I sort of think they're all thinking about it the wrong way. I had a TNR column last week that I don't think I've mentioned yet over here in which I made the case for Ames (although not quite as enthusiastically as the headline they gave me might have made it seem). Basically, I think the best way to think about Ames is as an unusually visible event within the invisible primary. And as with all events within the invisible primary, what's important is the signals that various party actors are sending to each other as they try to compete and coordinate on their way to choosing a nominee, and the way that the candidates attempt to appeal to those actors.
From that perspective, it's not that Ames knocked Pawlenty out, and it's certainly not that (as Adler has it) the media arbitrarily decided to call Ames a big deal and drove Pawlenty out by arbitrarily setting high expectations for him. No, what I'd say happened is that Pawlenty had failed for several months to impress various party actors, and that Ames signaled that he wasn't interesting activists, either. Since Pawlenty was (apparently) actually running for president and not using the nomination process to win a spot on Fox News or sell books, he had no point in continuing once that was decided. But the point is that the decision-makers here weren't primarily the folks at Ames -- they were the various active participants in the Republican Party. That is, and regular readers will recognize this list, campaign and governing professionals, formal party staff and officials, activists, politicians, and members of party-aligned interest groups and media. The story certainly appears to be that collectively, those folks had come to the conclusion that while Pawlenty was acceptable to them on public policy and was probably as likely to be an adequate president as any of the other contenders, he was simply an electoral dud. They may have been wrong about that! It's not a science. On the other hand, they need to make choices, and it's basically a good, healthy sign that they care about electoral viability. Meanwhile, since no constituency within the party was willing to push hard for him, well, you know what happened.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Sunday Question for Liberals
Wisconsin: two Republican state senators were defeated this week in recall elections, but four others survived, leaving Republicans with a slim majority. Obviously, Democrats were disappointed that they didn't do better. But overall, was it good news, or bad news, for liberals?
Sunday Question for Conservatives
Putting aside the various fringe and protest candidates, if I'm correct we're basically talking about two plausible nominees right now, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. (The others matter because they give people a chance to express with views and to influence the course of the party, but they aren't very likely to be nominated).
So whatever you might do in the primary, you're probably voting for one of those guys next November. And I'm sure you'll do so believing that he'll be better than Barack Obama, given that either will promise and deliver far more conservative policies than Obama will (in which by conservative I mean policies supported by mainstream Republican conservatives, of course). So that's not my question.
My question would be: do you have some reasonable confidence that you'll be voting for someone who will be skilled at the sort of things that presidents do? Or, to put it another way...the party's job is to nominate someone who (1) supports party policies and (2) is well-equipped to be a good president. Do you think the Republican Party is doing that job well?
So whatever you might do in the primary, you're probably voting for one of those guys next November. And I'm sure you'll do so believing that he'll be better than Barack Obama, given that either will promise and deliver far more conservative policies than Obama will (in which by conservative I mean policies supported by mainstream Republican conservatives, of course). So that's not my question.
My question would be: do you have some reasonable confidence that you'll be voting for someone who will be skilled at the sort of things that presidents do? Or, to put it another way...the party's job is to nominate someone who (1) supports party policies and (2) is well-equipped to be a good president. Do you think the Republican Party is doing that job well?
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