Rick Perry, President?

Rick Perry is not running for yet another term as Texas governor; speculation is that he's in for another presidential run.

Is he a viable candidate?

Sure. Why not? He has conventional qualifications, and is certainly in the mainstream of his party on public policy.

That said...Jamelle Bouie has been making the case that he's a strong candidate (at least on twitter; I don't think he's written it up elsewhere), and I'm not quite as impressed as he is. Mind you -- I was very bullish on Perry throughout the 2012 cycle, considering him a live longshot before he got in admitted he was running, and considering him a real possibility even after he was crushed in Iowa. Indeed: I'd still argue that he, and not Santorum or Newt, was the real runner-up in 2012.

So why not this time? Well, at least as of now, it appears that he'll be one of several viable candidates, rather than the one of two or three he was in summer 2011. Moreover, had Republican party actors wanted him in 2012, they almost certainly could have had him; debate debacles aside, a strong push for him in November through January by something like a unified group of GOP leaders would have very likely been enough.

And it's hard to believe that the reason that didn't happen was because of loyalty to, let alone enthusiasm for, Mitt Romney.

So the question becomes: if various flavors of Republican party actors weren't interested in 2012, against Romney, why would they be interested in 2016 against presumably three or four candidates who have better records of conservative orthodoxy than Romney could ever get?

That's not a rhetorical question. There may be an answer. Perhaps the debates really did scare people off who would be willing to jump on this time if Perry does well in the early debates. Perhaps Perry's deviations on abortion (the vaccine) and immigration, small as they seemed, mattered more to people than Romney's huge past-tense violations. Perhaps there really is something to the "wait for your turn" thing among Republicans. Perhaps Perry's health issues hurt his campaigning in general in ways that could be forgotten if he does well over the next couple of years.

But my guess is that while he's certainly viable, his failure in 2012 is telling us something about his 2016 candidacy, and that he's not all that likely to emerge from the pack this time around.

Perry Out

Rick Perry drops out and endorses Newt Gingrich. Reminder: he endorsed Rudy Giuliani last time around.

Presidential nomination politics is fascinating in part because all of the drama that only counts around the margins in most elections really can make a huge difference in nomination politics as it's currently practiced. Candidates and their campaigns really do matter. Campaign events -- the perfect ad, the debate gaffe or great line, the press conference gone awry -- really can make a difference to voters with few cues to use to choose between nearly identical candidates.

Of course, structural things matter too. That's why I thought Rick Perry was a viable contender a year ago, when he was saying he wasn't running; it's why I think he still was viable, despite all the disasters of his campaign, as late as mid-December. As it turned out, it was Rick Santorum who caught the late bounce and "won" Iowa, but it's worth pointing out that Perry wound up only 3500 votes behind Newt Gingrich for 4th place, and only 14K votes behind Ron Paul for third. On the one hand, that's a solid drubbing, no question. But one good ad, or one slightly better and slightly more redeeming debate performance, and it's easy to imagine things working out very differently. Because Perry still had plenty of structural advantages that could have turned a somewhat better finish in Iowa into a very strong campaign down the line.

But it was not to be. Perhaps it was Perry's position on immigration, or even more so the way he talked about it (calling those who opposed him heartless). Perhaps it was just that Republicans couldn't handle the debate performances. Perhaps it was the memory of George W. Bush -- before Perry entered, a lot of pundits (but not me) said that there was no way another Texas governor would be nominated so soon after Bush, and perhaps there was something to that. Perhaps Perry's gaffes would have been excused a little more easily if they didn't remind people, somehow, of what happened the last time Republicans decided that policy knowledge was irrelevant and nominated Bush.

As Buzzfeed is saying, "running for president is hard." Perry was a lot better at it in December and January than he was in the fall, but it was too little, too late.

Perry's Odd Decision

I've been meaning to get to this for a while now...it seems to have become rather long and meandering. I guess that makes it appropriate for a Friday afternoon.

Nate Silver had an outstanding post up earlier in the week regarding Rick Perry's about-face about dropping out. It's really, really, first-rate. Silver goes through the possibilities of what Perry is up to. Perhaps it's a personal, emotional decision despite there being no plausible chance of winning; or, perhaps there's additional information we don't know about, and he's actually making a "highly informed and strategic decision." We don't know! Go read it.

It's just a much smarter, and more interesting, and more useful post than what I wrote earlier about the decision, which was just the smaller point that we shouldn't necessarily believe his first claim that he's staying in. In my defense, I watched a lot of cable news on Tuesday! I wound up just way annoyed at how the cable news people had apparently never heard of any candidate who says that's she's staying in the race forever on one day and then drops out the next, and wanted to remind everyone of that...which is fine as it goes, but sort of misses the big point of what Perry may or may not be up to. Ah well -- if you read the comments to that post, a bunch of the commenters had useful things to say. But Silver nailed it.

I do want to clean up a couple of things he said that need a bit of clarification.One is that Silver thinks that political scientists "prefer" the second type of explanation, the incentive- and institutional-based explanation. I don't think that's correct as a blanket generalization. Most good political science leaves plenty of room for personal variation in how (for example) politicians respond to incentives.

The other thing is something that Silver called the "maximal expression" of incentive-based reasoning about his stuff, which is the thing that I usually say: that the best way to think of it is that they're all candidates, everyone from Tim Pawlenty to Haley Barbour to Mitch Daniels to John Thune. And I'm comfortable with defending that position...but I should point out that as far I know, it's sort of peculiar to me, at least as explicitly stated.

At any rate, I'm not complaining, but I do want to point out that lots and lots of political scientists, myself certainly included, do not treat politicians as if they are nothing but rational utility calculators.

OK, let's hide some substance down here at the bottom of the post. Following Silver's logic, Perry could be staying in because of a personal and emotional reaction to the situation; he could be staying in because he mistakenly believes that he could still win; or he could be staying in because he correctly believes he could still win.

If it's the first two, we have nothing much to analyze; the only question is how much he would take away from Santorum in South Carolina, and the answer is: probably not much, and not enough to make much of a difference.

What about the possibility that he correctly believes he still could have a chance? What's interesting about that is that it would really mean that something in the process would have changed. Certainly no candidate in the reform era has failed to register any success in either Iowa or New Hampshire and then come anywhere close to the nomination. So something would have to have changed. One possibility is the Mickey Kaus theory -- that media spin and news cycles have accelerated so much that the normal relationship between Iowa and New Hampshire, and then New Hampshire and the rest of the states, breaks down. If that's the case, then it just wouldn't necessarily matter that Rick Santorum broke out in Iowa and Perry finished out of the money; we would still be in the pre-Iowa situation in which a slight bit of good news could spark a surge from any candidate, and Perry would still be better positioned than Santorum (or Newt, or Paul) to take advantage of it.

The other possibility, at least the other one I can think of, is that the "party decides" side of things has strengthened so much that it overwhelms the media-centered mechanisms that make Iowa and New Hampshire so important. That is, if it's even more the case now that party actors' decisions determine the nomination, then perhaps those decisions could be made much later in the process and rapidly enforced by the parties (presumably through use of the partisan media). So: if all this was true, then Perry might simply be waiting for conservative party actors and groups to finally make their decision -- and the results in Iowa and New Hampshire might be irrelevant to that decision.

I'm willing to believe that both of those things are possible...but I don't think either is particularly likely. To put it another way: there are two different tracks here. One is about party actors, everything from elected politicians on down to activists, collectively competing and cooperating to settle on a nominee. The other is about ordinary voters and the mass media. Since about 1980 or 1984, the first track has been able to impose its choice on the second track in part by knowing how the incentives and mechanisms of the second track work (although that's not all; party actors also presumably also use the primaries and caucuses to gather information about the candidates, including how they appeal to voters, so it can run both ways). If, however, the mechanics of how the media works and how voters are influenced has changed sufficiently, it's always possible that the party will lose control (as it did in the 1970s when the rules were new and party actors were slow to adapt), or that the party's control will be much stronger (perhaps through advances in partisan polarization and the partisan press).

I don't believe either of those changes have happened. The only change I've really observed is an acceleration of the early winnowing that has been showing up in GOP nomination cycles for some time now. But the evidence so far is still consistent with the possibility of significant change, and of course we should always be open to that possibility. And a Perry comeback now would certainly, I'd say, indicate that things have changed somehow.

Perry Still In?

The news this morning is that Rick Perry, after going back to Texas to reassess his candidacy, is...staying in? That's what's apparently happening, according to multiple sources. I suppose it might even be true. On the other hand...no one says they're out until they're really out, and plenty of campaigns have pulled more sudden u-turns: I wouldn't be at all surprised if this reprieve lasts only 24 or 48 hours.

Why would a campaign do that? Well, if they really are trying to calculate their chances, then they would want potential donors and current supporters to believe that they're still in, for now. Drop this out there, and see if any money comes in over the next day or two. See, too, what their high-visibility supporters tell them. Until you're absolutely certain that you're dropping out, there's no reason to even hint at it. So they might just be making one last bluff.

And even if Perry and his staff believe they're going to stay in, that's still no guarantee that they'll still believe that after a couple of days.

So I only know what I read, but I just wouldn't take claims that he's staying in at face value.

Santorum/Perry

Just a quick reality check. There have been six Iowa polls released this week, five of them based only on surveys begun after Christmas. Rick Santorum is certainly surging, in the sense that he was probably in sixth place before and appears to be in third place now. But careful...at least from what we've seen yet, his surge is still more semi- than certain, at least if we're talking about a strong finish.

In particular, here are Santorum's leads over Rick Perry in those five polls (four via Silver, plus NBC here): 0, 2, 2, 3, 1.

Impressed? I doubt it.

Now, if we go beyond the horse race numbers, it's clear that there's good news for Santorum in that his favorable ratings beat Perry's, at least in the ones I've looked at. And buzz and hype are clearly on Santorum's side. On the other hand, Perry is presumably going to be massively outspending Santorum on ads over the last few days. There's also the question of organization...I'm really not certain who has the advantage there, or how that will figure in.

I'm just saying: from the numbers so far, it ain't there.

UPDATE while I'm writing....and now a new poll is out with a 7 point gap between them. With Bachmann surging up to 12%! Maybe that's right...I don't know; it seems unlikely to me that Bachmann's week has helped her, but perhaps it has.

I guess I'll tie it all together by just emphasizing (1) Iowa is really hard to poll, and (2) try not to make too much of a lot of relatively small differences in polling numbers.

Question Day

I'm back to regular blogging...but far behind on lots of things, including some of the news of the last few days. My solution: it's time for question day! Whatever you have: of course the presidential nomination process and the 2012 cycle, but Congress, Congressional elections, Obama, recess appointments, exec branch and judicial nominations, campaign finance...whatever you ask, via comments here or tweet it or email me, I'll try to answer.

Meanwhile, just one quick comment: I know that there's no reason at all to take Intrade all that seriously, but I really don't get Perry's lack of momentum there. As I look now, he's at 3.6%, a bit down from his peak last week. To the extent that this is even a slight reflection of conventional wisdom: do people really not think that he has a 1-in-20 chance or better of winning the nomination? When Nate Silver right now has him projected 3rd in Iowa? Baffling.

Okay, what have you got?

Up to 11

WaPo/ABC Iowa: Newt 33, Romney and Paul 18, Perry 11.
NYT/CBS Iowa: Newt 31, Romney 17, Paul 16, Perry 11.

Yes, I'm focusing on the last name on that list. Perry's within ten points of second place in Iowa? And still has plenty of money to spend?

I'm not predicting anything; in fact, I should note that the two polls above, both released yesterday, were much better for him than the two over the weekend, which had him below 10% and behind at least one other longshot. So he could be moving up, or it could just be random variation and he's really in a pack with Bachmann and Santorum, and that's not where anyone wants to be. But still...if those numbers released yesterday are accurate, Perry's certainly within hailing distance of getting one of the proverbial three tickets out of Iowa.

And if he does that? Hard to tell. One real possibility is that after a Newt/Paul/Perry trifecta in Iowa, Romney could actually just collapse, finishing behind at least two of Newt, Perry, Paul, and Huntsman in New Hampshire, and basically hitting the end of the line right there. Another is that Newt's bubble pops (we've yet to see how his support lasts once he's targeted, and supposedly Paul is about to run ads against him in Iowa). There's no guarantee that Newt even finishes in the top three in Iowa. Even if he does win, the expectation game could hurt Newt coming out of Iowa, especially if GOP elites are looking to take him down (which of course I believe they are); they could treat a win by him in the caucuses as a foregone conclusion, and support a pro-Romney or pro-Perry spin coming out of that state. That matters. Everyone remembers that Bill Clinton won the spin game in New Hampshire in 1992 by famously declaring himself the "Comeback Kid" after finishing second, but that sort of thing is a lot easier to sustain for a candidate who has plenty of surrogates repeating the message. And it's even easier if many of those in-effect surrogates are technically neutral party elites who just happen to buy your message and not the message of your opponent, not just on air but in how they influence TV producers and correspondents. If there are lots of those people who are ready and willing to jump on you...well, you can get the Howard Dean Scream.

(Granted, Dean was already sunk before the Scream, but it's still an excellent example of how post-primary spin can be spun).

Again, not predicting anything, other than that I'm fairly sure that the contest in Iowa is still very interesting. And that among the still-viable possibilities coming out of Iowa in addition to the Gingrich/Romney contest everyone is anticipating are a Gingrich/Perry, a Romney/Perry, or a Romney/Perry/Gingrich race, in each case with Ron Paul as a plus-one. It's even possible that one of the others will spike up and wind up the "other" candidate to Romney, or even to Perry -- we could have, for example, a Perry/Huntsman race after New Hampshire. Or I suppose a Romney/Santorum battle, although I really don't see that one coming. And note that all of those potential races would be in the context of what we do already know, which means that we would know a lot about the likely outcomes.

Long way to go. Even if it is just a month.

State of the Race/WH 2012 Notes

I've been saying at various places that I don't think Romney is done for, and I still don't think that Newt is a plausible candidate. Just to put some clarifications about what I'm thinking overall in the same place, plus some of things I haven't followed up on...

No, I haven't ruled out Rick Perry yet. He's run an awful campaign, and campaigns matter a lot in primary elections. Maybe it really is his back; maybe Kevin Drum was right all along and Perry is just too stupid. No idea, but it sure has been a terrible campaign. Nevertheless, I'm still where I've been all along: there's at least a 90% chance, and probably around 98%, that the winner will be a mainstream conservative with conventional credentials, and the only two remaining who fit that are Romney and Perry. What I used to say, including when Perry was surging, was that I had no idea how to apportion that 98% between the two of them; what I've been saying now for the last few weeks is that obviously Romney is ahead. But I haven't tried to break that down into odds because I really don't know how to calculate it.

Granted, this is basically what I said about Pawlenty as his campaign was dissipating. So make of it what you will...I guess I'll say that I think both Romney (at 50%) and Perry (at 2%) are clear buys to me at Intrade right now.

I need to also answer Neil Sinhababu's Newt-optimist post* which cleverly uses me against myself to make the case for Newt. He notes that I've argued in the past that the GOP entertainment division (Rush, Fox News, everyone hawking books) creates perverse incentives because they're probably better off financially with a Democrat in the White House. If that's so, why shouldn't they support Newt?

If that were the case, and I do think it's depressingly plausible, I think we would be seeing a little more consistent support for Newt from the fringier politicians than we've seen so far (indeed, they would have jumped on the Bachmann or Cain bandwagon earlier, too). I guess that while I do think there's some effect here, the way it's working out is on issue positions. Put it this way: in normal parties there's tension between purists who want positions that are poison in the general election, and pragmatists who just want to win; the conservative marketplace (I think that's my brother's phrase) tilts the scales towards the purists. It can do that with candidates, too, but I guess I just don't buy that the incentives wind up dictating a Bachmann, Cain, or Gingrich nomination. After all, there are still a lot of pols that just want to win elections, and campaign and governing professionals and party-aligned interest groups who also would rather win. I think it might help explain why joke candidates have displaced mediocre non-joke candidates as the high-profile losers, but I think that's all.

Naturally, however, in the unlikely even that they do nominate Newt, I'll be happy to have anyone make the argument that I called it. and ignore the dozens of blog posts and columns and tweets and whatever in which I explicitly said the opposite. I am taking credit for calling (along with Josh Putnam and others) that Romney would contest Iowa.

One more thing that came up in comments the other day that I want to be clear about. When I say that party actors generally determine nominations, I'm very much not saying that "insiders" or "the establishment" do so; lots of party actors, certainly including activists but also including even some elected officials, don't think of themselves that way and don't coordinate with those they believe are the "establishment." Also: I not only believe that nominations do work that way, but I believe that they should work that way, but only on the condition that parties are internally democratic in some real sense and are highly permeable. Under those conditions, I think nominations in which party actors play the dominant role are more democratic than those in which the voters make choices without party intermediation. I don't believe that about general elections because the presence of partisan cues makes it easy for voters to be sufficiently informed that they can make reasonable choices, and because the democratic stakes are different for elections compared to nominations.



*And a chance to make my vocabulary clear: candidate "optimists" are those who think the candidate will win or do well; candidate pessimists are those who think the candidate will lose or do badly. Doesn't imply anything else about what one thinks about the candidate.

An Amateur Congress? No Thanks

Rick Perry wants an amateur Congress. Jamelle Bouie is on it:

Here’s what you would get by adopting Perry’s “reforms.” Already, congresspeople are buffeted with concerns from constituents and interest groups on a variety of policies, to say nothing of the pressure of fundraising and reelection. Absent the time to educate themselves or the staff necessary to collect information, something has to give, and more often than not, that something is independence. When lawmakers are pressed for time, resources, and cash, they’re far more likely to rely on lobbyists for information, and even written legislation. After all, of the people in or around government, lobbyists (and assorted advocates) have the most time and resources for changing the direction of policy. Professionalized legislatures aren’t perfect, but they stand as something of a bulwark to the undue influence of interest groups. Take that away, and you’ve turned Congress into an institution more porous than it already is.

Exactly correct.

The only major thing I'd add is that an amateur Congress wouldn't just mean more influence for lobbyists. It would also empower everyone else in the system, but particularly the bureaucracy, which would have much less to worry about from Congressional oversight of existing operations, and would probably have more influence on drafting bills. Moreover, it's likely that an amateur Congress would tend to write more vague and less detailed bills, which would leave more discretion to the bureaucracy (and, for that matter, to the courts).

Bottom line: if you like (representative) democracy, you should arrange for the politicians to be important within the system.

On the other hand, as a campaign move, Congress-bashing is always a winner. So who knows whether Perry in particular will survive, but Congress-bashing surely isn't going away any time soon.

Oy, Bai

Argghhhh....

But we do expect them to really believe in the things they propose — to have the requisite conviction to know and recite with passion the basic policies that someone on their team stayed up nights to craft. Say what you want about Mr. Bush, but no one ever doubted his deep well of resolve on tax cuts or education reform. He had command of his own plan, if not all the underlying data.

Remind me: what exactly did it get George W. Bush that everyone (supposedly) thought he was "authentic"??? George W. Bush, in case Matt Bai has somehow forgotten, was a massively unpopular president. And he probably somewhat underperformed in the 2004 election against (supposedly) inauthentic flip-flopper John Kerry.

I mean, if you think about this for more than a second, it's obviously just silly. George H.W. Bush, the guy who invented snack preferences just for a campaign (not to mention flip-flops on issues from abortion to taxes to taxes again) as more authentic than Mike Dukakis? Did Americans think that Dukakis was presenting a phony persona of a boring technocrat, and that's why he lost to Bush? Of course not.

Rick Perry wasn't hurt because making a fool of himself on TV undermined his authenticity, as Bai proposes; he was hurt (assuming he was hurt; we don't really know that for sure yet) because he made a fool of himself on TV.  Sometimes, it isn't actually more complicated.

Is It Over Before Iowa?

So has Mitt Romney wrapped up the nomination?

I've been saying forever that Romney and Rick Perry are the only viable candidates, but it's getting harder and harder to imagine Perry rebounding. Jonathan Chait has a typical (and fun) version of the "Perry's toast" take on the debates. Nate Silver, however, has a somewhat more measured approach, concluding that Intrade's current 5% or so odds for Perry sound about right.

The case again Perry still being viable is obvious: party actors aren't going to invest in a campaign that's spiraling down or a candidate who just guaranteed he'll be a national laughingstock for a while, at least.

The case for him?

He seems to be handling the gaffe in good cheer, hitting the morning shows and planning a visit to Letterman tonight. Could that possibly earn him a bit of sympathy? It's also, don't forget, a ton of publicity for a candidacy that was starting to have difficulty breaking through the assumption that he was old news only (ask Michele Bachmann about how easy that is to get), and that's outside of the frenzy about Herman Cain's (alleged) misbehavior, a frenzy unlikely to go away soon. Can he find a way to take advantage?

(By the way, note that one of the reasons Cain's head-to-head polling numbers haven't tanked in the last week could easily be that in a race in which most voters aren't yet engaged, the massive publicity for Cain mean that he may be the only candidate some voters have actually heard of. I'd pay more attention to the favorable/unfavorable ratings).

Beyond that, the logic for Perry remains, really, the same as it's ever been: if you assume as I do that Cain, Gingrich, Bachmann, Santorum, Paul, and Huntsman are not going to win because they don't fit into the group of candidates with conventional qualifications who are in the party's mainstream on policy, then you are left with Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. And if that's the case, then Perry has to absorb whatever percentage of the chance to win that Romney doesn't take. I don't know what that is -- Romney has clearly moved into the lead -- but whatever it is, that's Perry's chance.

Unless, of course, I'm wrong about Cain, Newt, et al. That's what Ed Kilgore argues in a new (pre-debate, for what its worth) TNR piece. I continue to disagree, but go ahead and read the case he makes. I just don't buy it -- and I'll note that while Kilgore says we should "follow the lead of Republican voters," the truth is that those voters haven't said anything yet and won't until January. All we have so far is polls which may just be showing name recognition and recent publicity. So perhaps he's right that the usual rules won't work, but then again it's also fairly likely that the usual rules are working just fine, and they delivered a contest that Mitt Romney has won, or almost won.

At any rate: I'll stick with my usual belief that there's upwards of 90%, and probably upwards of 95%, chance that a candidate with conventional credentials who holds mainstream conservative views will win the nomination, and that given who is running now that means either Romney or Perry. I've never made any prediction between them, but I have no reason to doubt the consensus that Romney has (at least) a solid lead in that race. Beyond that, I don't know, so I'm not going to venture any guesses.

Catch of the Day

Steve Benen watches Rick Perry's first ad airing in Iowa, and discovers that Perry is promising...2.5M new jobs in his first term. Which, as Benen notes, is a bit under what the US economy under that radical socialist Barack Obama has done in private sector jobs in the last eighteen months.

Indeed, 2.5M jobs would work out to all of 52K new jobs a month, which isn't even close to the break-even point needed to absorb new people in the workplace. Rick Perry: elect me, and I promise you four years of recession-level job growth!

And that's being generous. Perry no doubt wants to continue shrinking the number of public sector jobs. Is his 2.5M new jobs the total of new jobs, or is it a net figure with his planned public sector layoffs already included? If the former, well, I don't know if he's pledging a specific number, but it's not really clear that he's promising any net new jobs growth at all.

The fun part? Perry brags about 1M new jobs in Texas. If one were to be uncharitable, one might suppose that Perry and his ad team aren't actually aware that the US is rather a lot bigger than the Lone Star state. Let's see...there are about 25M Texans, so that's well under 10% of all Americans, and actually about 8%. So why isn't he at least promising at least 12M new jobs? Why is he promising that he'll deliver recession-level results that are far worse than he claims for what he's done in Texas?

I'm wrote over at Plum Line today about signs that Perry's campaign is getting more competent over time, but this is just stupid. He's making up numbers ("dynamic scoring") to pretend that his tax plan wouldn't produce massive increases in the federal budget deficit; he might as well promise a pie-in-the-sky number of new jobs, while he's at it.

Great catch by Benen, and a very silly blunder by the Perry people.

It's Still Romney vs. Perry

Ross Douthat got a lot of things really right in his NYT column yesterday. There's a lot of truth in this:

Everyone has an incentive to play down these realities and play up Romney’s vulnerabilities instead. The press needs the illusion of a hard-fought campaign to keep its audience from straying. Democrats enjoy the spectacle of right-wing infighting, and benefit politically from it as well. And Republicans don’t want to admit that America’s conservative party is destined to nominate a politician who embodies the very tendencies that the conservative movement came into being to resist: technocracy, ideological flexibility, Northeastern moderation.

Except for one thing: it's not over yet. Or at least, there's no evidence available to us outsiders that would indicate it's over. There's still Rick Perry.

Douthat lumps him in with the hopeless candidates, who can be broken up into business plan candidates (it's Chait's phrase, and I love it) such as Herman Cain or Newt Gingrich, and with those who are just ideologically all wrong for the GOP, such as Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman. But Perry doesn't fit either of those categories. And Douthat doesn't really have the goods on him. All he has is that Perry did poorly in the debates so far. That's not enough; Perry is raising lots of money and therefore running a full-scale campaign, and he's also won a fair number of endorsements. He's a serious candidate, whatever his current polling numbers indicate.

Now, if Romney was doing the things that runaway frontrunners do, I'd agree with Douthat that it's over. But he's not, at least so far. His polling numbers are far behind those of typical frontrunners, and so are his endorsements.

In other words, at this point there's still a very large number of party actors (and, while less important, a very large number of voters) who haven't decided yet. It's a large enough group that if they all went the same way, that candidate would win. Clearly, many of them are wary of Romney (or else they would have jumped on that bandwagon long ago); just as clearly, they aren't enamored of Perry, or at least they're waiting to see if he can run a solid campaign.

So at some point, the campaign might wind up essentially over in the way that Douthat thinks it is now, but unless he has more information than what's in public reporting, that isn't the case yet.

The funny thing is that when Douthat says that "Romney’s path to the nomination is more wide open than for any nonincumbent in decades" but that he could easily lose one or more contest once the voting start -- what he's really describing is where George W. Bush was in fall 1999. The difference between Bush then and Romney now is that Bush had much better polling numbers and was endorsed by far more high-visibility party actors -- a good sign that party actors in general were either happy to have him or at least willing to live with him. And, indeed, Douthat's advice about ignoring the ups and downs of the next few months would have been excellent advice then. John McCain, the 2000 edition? Never had a real chance. Bush had it won, long before McCain's New Hampshire upset.

And we may well wind up there this time. It's certainly possible that Perry's done, either because of the debates or his immigration mess or whatever other reason; even if he's not done yet, perhaps he will be soon. Even if that happens, it will still be quite possible that Romney will lose Iowa or New Hampshire before formally nailing down the nomination, and in that case all of Douthat's cautions will be exactly right.

But we're not there yet.

Catch of the Day

David Frum is just brutal on Rick Perry's "jobs" plan. Best part:

Suppose we just continue on the present policy path. What happens to those 1.2 million jobs in that case? And the answer is: many of them show up anyway. Perry hypothesizes that the Obama administration will impose future regulations to inhibit the development of the gas-fracking industry in the US – and then counts as “new” jobs the jobs that would come by not imposing those as-yet-nonexistent regulations. Likewise he counts as “new” jobs the jobs that would come from approval of pipelines to Canadian oil sands. Yet those approvals are roaring ahead anyway.

It's a nice catch, but I disagree with Frum's interpretation, which is that it shows Perry isn't a very serious candidate, which I think means Perry is either lazy or over his head.

I'd go in another direction: Perry is confronted with a tough problem, and is taking a sensible way out. The tough problem is that doing policy in the GOP nomination contest is almost impossible. What motivates Tea Partiers and other enthusiastic primary voters? A lot of it is mythical, such as the immanent Obamcrackdown on fracking seen here, or Obama's apology tour, or Obama's plans to seize everyone's guns, or all those IRS agents that Jon Huntsman was complaining about in last week's debate. Others are internally contradictory; good luck proposing a budget that eliminates the deficit, cuts taxes, and doesn't cut spending on the military or current Medicare or SS payments. Still others are massively unpopular general election positions; that part is normal in all presidential nomination contests, but particularly an issue this time around. And hanging over all of it is the possibility that something on the approved list today could be the mark of a RINO tomorrow (see: Mitt Romney, health care reform). Not to mention that there are a half dozen or so "candidates" who are prone to making up stuff intended to ingratiate themselves to the crazies (well, it's really mainly three -- Newt, Bachmann, Cain).

In that environment, calling for a tough stand against the mythical is an obvious and probably smart choice. Thus Mitt Romney's foreign policy, which appears to be entirely designed against opposition to mythical apologies, not to mention everyone's opposition to the mythical "Obamacare" version of ACA. And thus Rick Perry's energy plan.

One more thing: strawman attacks during the general election are normal, and for the most part (IMO) relatively unobjectionable. Strawman attacks on the other party are seriously unhealthy during the nomination fight, at least if they dominate to the extent that policy fights are all about who is best able to stop nonexistent plots. After all, nomination fights are when parties really have a chance to determine what they want to do. Republicans have some serious questions they could be fighting over, beginning with whether they want to return to George W. Bush's first term foreign policy, and what they actually believe should be done about the economy in the short and long term. If they don't deal with those things now, they're going to wind up (should they win) with someone in the White House who won't really be constrained by actual party preferences on the issues, beyond, you know, not reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.

It's not Rick Perry and Mitt Romney who aren't serious; it's the party they're trying to lead.

Back to the original point: nice catch!

(Link fixed)

The Anti-Romney

Josh Putnam tweeted:

There will be anti-Romney. Perry still best positioned.

I don't think that's quite right, or at least I don't think it gets at how things play (of course, to be fair it's a tweet, so of course he didn't lay out the full case for what will happy; I'm just using it as an excuse).

Anyway: I think there's a very live possibility that there will be effectively be no anti-Romney -- that Romney will wrap things up in the next few weeks, and the primaries and caucuses will just be about making it official.

That's what appears to have happened on both sides in 2000. Wait, you're asking -- both sides? Yup. As I read it, the late McCain challenge to George W. Bush was really a sideshow, with Bush having already wrapped up the nomination by securing the backing of the overwhelming bulk of party actors (and facing attempted vetoes from none of them). Even when the nomination is settled, a rogue candidate can fight on, and might even win a few states (and on the Democratic side, can win some delegates), but it doesn't really have anything to do with actually nominating a candidate. That's easy to see when it happens after the winner has already accumulated enough delegates to win, but it can be just as true, I think, even in Iowa and New Hampshire.

So one possibility is that Romney wins early, but even if that's the case someone will at least finish second in Iowa and New Hampshire, and it's even possible that someone could win in one -- maybe even both -- of those states while still not having any plausible chance of being nominated. If Cain or Bachmann or Gingrich or Santorum or Paul or Roy Moore wins early but doesn't win any significant endorsements or support from party actors, odds are he or she will fade out rapidly, and Romney will be nominated easily.

So I'm not sure that Rick Perry at this point has the best chance of winding up challenging Romney in the early states. What I do think is that if Perry gets his campaign going enough to do that, then he'll have a solid shot of actually winding up the nominee. That's why I agree with Seth Masket that Perry is still viable. But if Perry succeeds in making himself unacceptable to Republicans, then it doesn't really matter who serves as the early-state anti-Romney, because whoever it is isn't likely to come anywhere close to being nominated.

Presidenting and Rick Perry

I took a fair amount of grief, or at least puzzlement, in comments (and on twitter) for saying earlier today that Republicans could do a lot worse than Rick Perry (and Mitt Romney, but the comments were all about Perry) and the either would likely be "much better presidents" than George W. Bush. Since I've been asked for an explanation, I'll give one.

Basically, when thinking about who would make a good president, I want to put policy positions to the side. Obviously, a good Republican president is going to pursue and eventually enact quite different policies than a good Democratic president, and I certainly have preferences about those policies. But what I'm talking about in the Perry/Romney/Bush comment, and what I generally talk about here, is about their ability to president (or, how good they are at presidenting).

So what does it take to be good at that, and why do I think Rick Perry would probably be better than Bush? Well, mostly it starts with how low the bar is: Bush, in my view, really was astonishingly bad at it. So that raises the question of what Bush didn't have. And what I've argued is that it comes down to three things: experience in governing; basic interesting in government and public affairs; and, perhaps the trickiest one, ambition. Bush, I've argued (see here and here) just didn't have those things, with terrible consequences.

Rick Perry? He's a career politician who, as far as I can tell, is as wildly ambitious as any of them. He wants to be President of the United States not because he sobered up one day and decided to go into his dad's business, but because as a career pol it's the top of his profession. That's good; he's a lot less likely than Bush was to give up on the job, or not care what voters thing. He -- like Romney -- appears to have little problem adjusting his positions in order to secure political goals. I like that too; true believers worry me a lot, even if I agree with their policy positions. I don't know that he's been great at governing, but at least he won't be dealing for the first time with an aide withholding information in order to avoid looking bad, or a bureaucrat fighting against him by leaking stuff to the press. He should know that he can't automatically trust people, even close allies he has appointed to their positions.

Would he be particularly good at presidenting?* I don't have enough information to guess at that, but I'm not really aware of any serious positive signs. I do have some concerns about any Republican at this point, not because of issue positions but just because the party is so dysfunctional that I suspect there are unusual challenges to being a GOP president. But other than that, I don't really see any particular reason going in to be alarmed about Perry.



*You don't like my verbification? Sorry, but I'm keeping this one.

Sunday Question for Conservatives

I know I'm asking a lot of Perry/Romney questions these days, but, well, it does seem like the thing to do. So...

Do you think that as president there would be any difference at all between Rick Perry and Mitt Romney on the following issues: immigration, abortion, health care, Social Security? If so, what would it be? And what's the reason you believe (if you do) there would be a difference?

Sunday Question for Conservatives

Do you have a good sense of the differences, if any, between what Rick Perry and Mitt Romney would do as president on foreign policy?

Perry/Dean?

Ross Douthat has a fun post today comparing Rick Perry to Howard Dean in his 2004 campaign. Best point: "One interesting quality that Perry has in common with Dean, and which last night’s various back-and-forths brought out, is the extent to which both his national profile and his personal affect are much more ideological than his actual gubernatorial record."

I think that's correct, and worth some thought.

Here's the thing. What Dean meant for the Democrats in 2004 wasn't just that, as Douthat says, his public persona on the campaign trail...seemed to embody all the stereotypes associated with blue state liberals. What mattered a lot more was that he was pure and clean on the one issue that passionate Democratic activists cared the most about that year: Iraq. Many liberals that year -- well, not that year, but 2003 -- were basically very willing to overlook the plain and obvious fact that Dean wasn't really much of a liberal.

Perry's situation is a bit different. The thing about Republican primary voters and even activists this year is that there's nothing even remotely equivalent to Iraq as an issue. To make it perhaps overly speculative, my guess is that what Republicans are looking for, and why Perry jumped out to such a strong start, is much more basic: a fully qualified candidate who actually shares their position on issues. After all, it's been so long since they've had one. 2008 was full of candidates who had some grievous flaw or another, and most of 2012 is more of the same.

Perhaps that will mean that Perry is especially vulnerable to what relatively small deviations from conservative doctrine that Mitt Romney and other opponents can trump up. Or perhaps no one will care, and his cultural strengths will win out. Or: perhaps what really matters here is the difference between the two situations. In 2004, Howard Dean was one of a number of fully qualified Democratic contenders, with at least a couple of them (Kerry and Edwards) fully acceptable, if not exciting, to virtually every party group and constituency. This time around, Perry is one of at best two fully qualified Republican candidates, and he's facing someone who isn't really trusted by large segments of the party. In other words, while I do think that Douthat has a point, the truth is that Perry makes sense as a nominee (or at least as a very strong candidate) in a way that Dean never did. Or: Perry has every possibility of just inheriting the nomination by default, as long as he can convince most party actors that he's reasonably safe. Howard Dean never had a chance at that.

Truth is, I have no predication at all about whether Perry or Romney will wind up the GOP nominee. But it is shaping up as a fascinating race -- although to tell the truth I suppose I've found each nomination fight since I've been following this stuff fascinating. Except I suppose for Gore/Bradley 2000.

Tea Party Debate Tonight

This one is, I'd say, quite a bit lower profile than last week's Reagan Library debate. That one had Rick Perry for the first time, and the flap with Obama's speech scheduling, and the Reagan Library debate tradition. This one? I guess the Tea Party angle is something.

Apparently the big anticipation tonight is that Michele Bachmann is going to go after Rick Perry on Social Security. She basically treats the presidential nomination contest as if it was an early-afternoon cable net talk show, doesn't she? Of course, that's her skill set as a politician. I mean, not winning those shoutfests, but being willing and able to take part in them. The problem for her is that since nominations aren't like that at all her upside is very limited. The problem for Perry is that her position, which seems to be "keep the government out of my Social Security," is entirely unconstrained by rationality, and thus potentially somewhat difficult to refute (not that there's much rationality to his Ponzi scheme thing, of course).

Hmmm....trying to decide here between when Picard told Tasha that "There's no logic in this at all," or Spock's "logic is a little tweeting bird chirping in a meadow." I suppose the latter would be really good if Bachmann was going to take on Romney.

At any rate, getting back to the debate, it'll be interesting to see whether Perry takes the bait or not. His best bet, it seems to me, would be to shrug off anything Bachmann says and focus on establishing his policy strengths, but that's not how he's acted so far.

I'll once again be tweeting and then doing a recap over at Greg's place. Anything else we should be looking for?