The Enlightened Despot

This chart, based on Census Bureau data, comes from Nate Silver, and shows the growth of real income for each decile of earners during the past seven presidencies. It’s a neat graphic, and another piece of evidence, as if one were needed, that the Bush years have not been kind to America. But, with all due respect to Silver, who did terrific work during the election, his analysis of the data presented is really quite awful.

The conclusions he draws are actually all perfectly sensible, though I would have thought most of them went without saying. For instance:

Manifestly enough, as we see under Reagan/Bush, the government has some capacity to allocate income to one class to another with its economic policy. In general, however, the fates of different economic classes are linked. Since 1967, the correlation in the change in year-over-year income between the 10th and the 90th percentiles is .63.

This latter characteristic is something that I think a lot of liberals tend not to have a good appreciation of. There is sometimes a tendency among liberals to see the economy as a zero-sum game, but this is not really the case. When the economy is doing well, everyone tends to do well, unless the President is trying really, really hard (as Reagan did) to steer that growth only toward certain income classes. And when the economy is doing poorly, everyone tends to do poorly. The poor did awfully under George W. Bush, but the wealthy didn’t perform all that well either.

It’s certainly true that liberals care a lot more about inequality than do conservatives, who are generally more interested in the bottom line for the economy as a whole. But if liberals really tend to “see the economy as a zero-sum game” then they desperately need to do their homework. Adam Smith (and David Hume before him!) did a very good job of explaining why it was foolish to think of economies this way, and I’m not aware of any serious thinker who has challenged him on the point. (One more instance in which the search for correctness leads to 18th century Scottish thought.)

But if the above graphic helps people understand this, God bless. My objection is to the premise - absent from the conclusions, but prevalent throughout the preceding discussion - that macroeconomic trends should generally be attributed to the actions of the current president. Consider:

Also, the data omits transition years — for example, 2001 is a transition year between Clinton and Bush, and it’s not clear who to credit/blame for the economy’s performance in that year, so I’m skipping it.

…

There’s a lot to look at in this little chart. Under Nixon/Ford, the very wealthiest did reasonably well, but oddly enough, so did the very poorest (this may have been LBJ’s Great Society programs belatedly kicking in rather than anything Nixon/Ford did).

Here we have two exceptions that prove the rule. (From the ‘begs the question‘ file of near-fatally abused phrases.) Though Silver never makes the connection explicitly, the two examples of cases where we can’t reliably say which president is responsible for the economy strongly imply that, as a general rule, the health of the economy is a function of presidential activity.

This is hardly a theory unique to Silver. Indeed, there is strong evidence to suggest that most people buy into this theory , at least implicitly. The state of the economy leading into an election year is a good indicator of how the incumbent party will fare. But as fashionable as it is to caution against underestimating the American voter, he is no economist.

It is inarguably true that the president can have a very powerful impact on the economy; he can start a major war, for instance. And it’s almost certainly the case that the actions of the president usually have a significant effect on the macroeconomic picture. But it is equally certain that there are many other factors at work, some of them entirely outside any president’s control. It could be the case that the causal power of presidential activity so far outweighs all other factors that we should expect the health of the economy to track the wisdom of the president’s economic policies most of the time, but this is a massive assumption. It’s an interesting psychological fact that most people make this assumption, but it doesn’t have much place in serious discourse without an argument.

The Weekly Standard has a glowing review of the Bush era, listing his top 10 achievments. Here they are, with commentary. Boldface type is the Standard, the rest is Despotic wisdom:

1.) [H]is decision in 2001 to jettison the Kyoto global warming treaty so loved by Al Gore, the environmental lobby, elite opinion, and Europeans.

Strictly speaking, I’m with them. Kyoto had zero chance in congress, and wasn’t all that hot anyway. Admitting the obvious truth that Kyoto was something we weren’t going to do could have been a good way to start talking about what we were going to do. As it turns out, what we were going to do was nothing, which wasn’t such a hot approach either.

2.) Second, enhanced interrogation of terrorists. Along with use of secret prisons and wireless eavesdropping, this saved American lives. How many thousands of lives? We’ll never know. But, as Charles Krauthammer said recently, “Those are precisely the elements which kept us safe and which have prevented a second attack.”

If Krauthammer has any evidence for this claim, he didn’t let the Weekly Standard in on it. That anyone considers this an accomplishment is too depressing to dwell on. On to:

3.) [T]he rebuilding of presidential authority, badly degraded in the era of Vietnam, Watergate, and Bill Clinton. He didn’t hesitate to conduct wireless surveillance of terrorists without getting a federal judge’s okay. He decided on his own how to treat terrorists and where they should be imprisoned. Those were legitimate decisions for which the president, as commander in chief, should feel no need to apologize.

This is breathtaking. It’s almost as if they’re trying to sound evil. If they cited Skeletor as an advocate of this position, it wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. Sure, torture is awesome, but if you clear it with some bigshot judge, it kind of cheapens it. Also: ‘the era of Vietnam, Watergate, and Bill Clinton’? I remember that era well. Or, perhaps I wasn’t born. It’s hard to tell with these discontinuous eras…

4.) [U]nswerving support for Israel.

If there’s one thing I demand out of my president’s support for foreign governments, it’s refusal to swerve. If we actually take Israel’s actions into account when determining our response to them, the terrorists have already won.

5.) His fifth success was No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the education reform bill cosponsored by America’s most prominent liberal Democratic senator Edward Kennedy.

Yes, this was very good. As part of a general Bush-can-do-no-right attitude, people love to focus on the shortcomings of the act, but the fact is that the federal government is spending a lot more on education than it was, and has the beginnings of a system for holding schools accountable. It isn’t enough money, and nowhere near enough reform, but he did some good here.

6.) Bush declared in his second inaugural address in 2005 that American foreign policy (at least his) would henceforth focus on promoting democracy around the world.

Can declaring something in a speech really be considered a major accomplishment, if you get through it without stuttering? No.

7.) [T]he Medicare prescription drug benefit, enacted in 2003.

Sure, why not?

8.) John Roberts and Sam Alito.

Conservatives who do what they want without worrying about the Constitution, rather than liberals or moderates who do what they want without worrying about the Constitution. My dog in this fight was killed off many decades ago. Whatever.

9.) He strengthened relations with east Asian democracies (Japan, South Korea, Australia) without causing a rift with China. On top of that, he forged strong ties with India.

A mixed bag here. I like Australians as much as the next guy, though I’m not convinced that much hangs on whether we are great friends, or simply very good friends. Forging strong ties with India sounds terrific - but then, so does coming to an understanding with Iran. I think the Standard would agree that giving our blessing to Iranian nukes and helping them build reactors outside Tehran wouldn’t be such a good price to pay for it.

10.) Finally, a no-brainer: the surge.

A no-brainer! Remember when that asshole started a war in Iraq and didn’t have a plan or enough troops to run the country? Good thing Bush came along to clean up. That first guy really sucked, though.

Sir Not-appearing-in-this list.) Combating AIDS in Africa. Admirable stuff. But, you know, not exactly water-boarding good.

This is a spectacularly unflattering photo. It’s not just that Bush is flinching; that seems pretty reasonable when you know what is going on: someone just through a shoe at Bush’s head and is preparing to throw another one. The big problem is the contrast: Maliki looks downright placid as he throws up a hand to protect the cowering Bush. But look at the incident in real time:

He actually handled the incident pretty well! There’s nothing remarkable about it, but he ducked a shoe thrown very hard at his face and kept standing where he was, looking more or less calm. That shoe would most likely have knocked him out cold, and it would in any case be uncharitable to blame a visiting American politician for being jumpy about objects hurled at him whilst in Iraq. All in all, this was a more than respectable reaction.

Which highlights just how amazing photogaffe-free politicians are. Barack Obama won the primary and general elections against the two most photogaffe-prone figures amongst the highest echelon of U.S. national politics. But if there were a fleet of cameramen documenting your every moment, the results would probably be as horrific - or worse- than any Hillary or McCain photo you’ve seen. Because sometimes in life, Iraqi reporters throw shoes at our heads, and rare is the man who can look dignified throughout such an experience. McCain and Hillary aren’t exceptional in this regard, Obama is. It just seems like they photograph poorly because most highly successful politicians to some extent share Obama’s talent for avoiding photogaffes: you won’t see a lot of terrible pictures of Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan.

Now, I can almost hear the Hillary faithful and the hard right screaming that Obama only looks better because the press loves him and chooses photos accordingly. Nonsense. Certainly a photographer with the president-elect in his sights and enought access could come up with some pictures that were less flattering than what we’re used to seeing, but the man has photos taken of him all day, and some of the photographers work for Fox. And one doesn’t have to spend all that much time scouring the archives to target, say, Hillary. There are horrible photos of her from just about every thoroughly documented event she’s ever attended, just as their are terrible photos of you on every roll of film your friends have taken.

Not looking extremely stupid for a few fractions of a second many, many times a day, is an underappreciated and rare skill, but one that is very useful for a politician. W, God bless him, doesn’t have it.

(h/t JSelk/CWeasel)

After all that economic doomsday nastiness, it’s time for something a little lighter. When I wrote this, I had no idea that Sean Penn had been up to this stuff for years. The piece I quoted is not an aberration. He is a very crazy man, and a profoundly awful writer. From a full page ad he took out in the Times:

“It’s a sunny afternoon in Northern California,” the weatherman interrupted, “puffy white clouds resting upon a beautiful blue sky.” We sat in the car eating french fries in the parking lot of our local burger joint. President George W. Bush had just rebuffed the United Nations’ push to re-introduce weapons inspection teams into an Iraq where even a deservedly humiliated Saddam Hussein had expressed willingness to accept them. Tightening in my gut, on this otherwise fab day, were troubling questions about our nation’s understanding of this pending conflict. Its most accessible information sources were the corporately sponsored and largely conservative media outlets. Indeed, in my gut, were my own troubling questions, not only about our Administration’s unilateral military posturing, but also, what effect U.S. decisions today might have on my children’s tomorrow.

As soon as I read this, I hurried to his Wikipedia page to see if there were any instances of brain trauma that could explain all this. I didn’t find anything, but I did notice something very odd about it: it reads as if it is largely written by Sean Penn. I say that based both on the prose style and the content. Wikipedia articles, as a rule, do not look like this:

In 1986 he starred in the drama At Close Range, opposite Christopher Walken. The film was based on a true story and gained positive reviews from critics. Fans and critics noticed the change in Penn’s body build. Penn appeared very muscular and in shape. It’s considered to be the first film to cash in on Penn’s status as a sex symbol.

If he is working on his own article, he has been kind enough to leave this gem intact:

Directors Trey Parker and Matt Stone claim to have received a letter from Penn prior to the release of thier film Team America: World Police in 2004. The letter allegedly argued that they shouldn’t put the movie out for fear of George Bush being re-elected. Both Stone and Parker in an interview with CBS quoted the following: “What if we want George Bush to be re-elected? And who cares, you’re Sean Penn”.

(h/t CWB)

This is actually an update on a somewhat old story, but I missed it the first time around:

The Egyptian-born physicist, a U.S. citizen since 1988, lost his security clearance late last year, along with his job at the Bettis nuclear propulsion lab in West Mifflin, where he’d worked since 1990.

The clearance was revoked by order of Jeffrey Kupfer, acting deputy energy secretary. He said he had “reliable information” that Dr. El-Ganayni was a security risk but refused to let him see any evidence or defend himself.

The scientist filed a federal lawsuit seeking an independent review, charging retaliation for statements he made opposing the war in Iraq and the Bush administration’s post-9/11 treatment of Muslims. He said the government invoked national security as a smokescreen to hide its lack of evidence.

It’s not really Bush himself I am so looking forward to seeing the end of. His refusal to grow up and do his job does not reflect well on his character, but his sins of being lazy and indifferent wouldn’t be such a big deal if he hadn’t been made president. Had he had nicer babysitters, his terms in office could have been fine. But the organization that has in fact grown up around him, with evil at the top, and petty, incompetent cronies the rest of the way down, has done a lot of harm, and looked shabby doing it every step of the way. Good riddance.