change

President Obama has issued a signing statement, contradicting some things he said during the campaign.  But signing statements are just a procedural shortcut past a very serious problem of legislative collusion.  There is a better solution.

President Obama's signing statement...

[A]fter Democrats criticized former President George W. Bush's signing statements, Mr. Obama issued one of his own, declaring five provisions in the spending bill to be unconstitutional and nonbinding...

...would seem to contradict his previous arguments. 

• In a 2007 letter to a constituent, Senator Obama said, "The President can veto a bill or sign it into law, but the Constitution does not grant him authority to determine when he can ignore those he signs." 
• In a 2007 interview, Senator Obama said, "it is a clear abuse of power to use such statements as a license to evade laws that the president does not like", and "I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law.
• In a 2008 campaign event, when asked, "Do you promise not to use Presidential signage to get your way?", candidate Obama said "Yeah" and added that "We're not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end-run around Congress."  That was captured on video... 

The issue of signing statements is complicated, and I don't intend to make a blanket pronouncement on the matter here. It comes down to a tension between speed and quality of legislative action: "Congress sometimes includes minor constitutional flaws in important bills that are impractical to veto."

But signing statements do not resolve the important questions of Constitutionality; they simply kick the can down the road.  Signing statements are a procedural shortcut that allow politicians to maintain the omnibus approach to legislation. 

The legislative bundling process sacrifices quality, oversight and accountability in exchange for speed.  This is a very bad collective decision making process.  It is unaccountable and collusive. 

The solution would be an unbundling of legislation.  That is, the legislature should consider and vote on each legislative item separately - each earmark, each rule, each amendment.  While this might seem prohibitively complicated for a massive bill, it need not be.  Line item voting could be accomplished with a simple box-check form submitted at the time of the formal vote, with the final bill composed of the individual items that recieved a majority vote.  This could also simplify the legislative reconciliation process. (NOTE: We should also ask ourselves why we would tolerate a legislative process so complicated that legislators cannot consider each element of a bill)

President Obama has pledged to change the Bush administration's approach to signing statements, but only in degree, not in principle.  That will not improve the government's perverse collective decision making process.   Legislative unbundling could resolve that problem, but that would require accountability and responsibility.  Neither Republicans nor Democrats appear interested in that. 

Rasmussen Reports, one of the two most accurate polling firms in predicting the outcome of the 2008 Presidential Race, has come out with a series of new polling numbers the last couple of days that should come as welcome news for the Republican Party. It all has to do with one thing: the opposition to Barack Obama’s so-called “stimulus” package that has been described as a “piñata” and a “rotting corpse”.

In other words, the American people, who were once for the Obama stimulus plan, are now suddenly against it. For the first time, the support for the Obama plan has fallen below the number of those who oppose it (37% support it versus 43% opposing it). Why? There are 50% of Americans who believe that the plan will make the economy worse.

The end result is that this is becoming a huge shot in the arm for the Republicans who are in opposition to the Obama stimulus plan. For the first time since early December of last year, the Generic Congressional Ballot shows the Republicans within four points of the Democrats (42% to 38%) and more than half of all Americans (54%) think Congress is doing a “poor” job while only 12% think Congress is doing an “excellent” or “good” job (that’s beginning to rival Rod Blagojevich territory when Blago had a 7% approval rating back in December). 

If the Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy “Margaret Hamilton” Pelosi want to become a minority party again by 2010 and 2012, all they need to do is to keep doing what they are currently doing. 

In the House vote, every Republican and 11 Democrats voted against the plan, but it was not enough to stop the plan from passing the House. In the Senate, Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) has tried to reassemble the “Gang of 14” to get any stimulus plan passed. It’s more a sign of desperation instead of bipartisanship. 

Before our eyes, the plan’s details, namely the pork-barrel projects, are being decried. There was money for contraception which has now been removed. There is money for a discus golf course in Austin, Texas. There is money for Shreveport, Louisiana to purchase eight Harley-Davidson motorcycles for the police department. There is money for a dog park in Chula Vista, California. And, of all places, Las Vegas is asking for $2 million for more neon signs. 

As the days go by, the American people are waking up to what is really going on in Washington and it flies in the face of the “change” that President Obama’s campaign was all about. Instead, Obama should have just cut out the Barbara Streisand (B.S.) and just campaigned on “Politics as usual”. 

Karl Rove reports in the WSJ:

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama criticized Washington for being "obsessed with the perpetual campaign." As president he is the first occupant of the Oval Office to give his director of political affairs -- who coordinates the president's involvement with his party and other campaign related activities -- an office in the West Wing. [...]  That's a sign of the importance of politics for Team Obama.

@anamariecox on Twitter

I think Obama is *perfecting* the Bush model of media relations...

David Cay Johnston in the Columbia Journalism Review:

While it is too early to judge just how this will work out, the early signs are troubling. And interviews with a dozen Washington reporters indicate that the Obama press operation tends to embrace friendly questions, while treating skeptical questions as not worth their time or, worse, as coming from an enemy.

Brendan Nyhan (formerly of Spinsanity) co-authored a book ("All the President's Spin") about the slippery, overtly political way the Bush White House communicated.  I've had a couple exchanges with him and others since then over the substance of the book (which I found generally solid), and the implications of it.  While many on the Left and in the media seem to regard the Bush White House as an anomaly - unusually deceptive, untrustworthy - I think they are giving insufficient weight to two factors:

1. The Trend: The permanent campaign is further entrenching itself in government, becoming more sophisticated, and evolving outside of its traditional home in the communications department.  It is not an anomaly; it is an arms race.  Politicians may be outraged that their opponents do it, but they will rationalize their own need to do the outrageous.  Absent a structural change in the way government operates, this will continue.
2. The Internet: Comparisons between recent years and earlier periods are virtually impossible. The internet gives us access to exponentially more information than we have ever had before. It gives people exponentially more opportunities to research, expose and communicate problems, flaws, hypocrisy and deception.  Before, we were drinking from a glass; today, we are drinking from a firehose.  It should be no surprise that today's poiticians seem somehow...wetter.  Even if the Bush administration was exactly equivalent to previous administration's, we would still be aware of vastly more problems. 

 Whatever the intentions of the Obama administration, the fact is that only major structural changes to the incentives (e.g., mandated transparency, accountability mechanisms, etc) can create actual change.  Intentions and promises are not a useful metric.  

Good intentions will always lose to perverse incentives. The Obama administration may find itself surprisingly similar to the Bush administration they thought they despised.

From a recent Newsweek story....

With Democrats in control on Capitol Hill, the incoming Obama team shouldn't have to worry much about hostile probes. Last week's confirmation hearings for top Obama nominees were largely congenial (though there are still a few ongoing flaps, including Treasury nominee Tim Geithner's tax and "nanny" issues). Legislative insiders say a reshuffling of key committee posts in the new Congress will ensure that investigations of Obama's actions will proceed with caution.

It's increasingly apparent that "Change" was more about swapping out the pigs than cleaning up the mud.

“Which comes first,” asks Michael Turk, “ideas or the message?” That’s an easy one. Of course it’s ideas. But to understand why, let’s think about politics in the context of the production cycle.

This concept is not my original thinking. It was explained to me a couple weeks ago during a presentation on the future of conservatism as a way to grasp our shortcomings and understand the gaps of our movement.

Let’s start with the basic manufacturing production cycle, which I’ve boiled down to three essential steps: 1) obtain raw materials, 2) turn them into a product, and 3) sell that product to consumers.

Now let’s apply those three steps in the context of producing change in politics:

1. Coming up with ideas. Academia plays an important role, albeit less significant today due the shortage of right-leaning academics. For example, think about the work of the powerhouse team of political economists at the University of Chicago (Frank Knight, Milton Friedman, George Stigler) and how their ideas on free-market economics began to take shape after World War II.
2. Turning ideas into public policies. This is role of think tanks -- and on the right there is no shortage of them. Think tanks existed prior to the 1970s, but mostly in the form of academic institutions without students (AEI, Brookings, CSIS). The Heritage Foundation (my employer) helped usher in a new approach. These new institutions (Cato, ATR, NTU) began working directly with policymakers to have an impact.
3. Implementing policies. Here is where activist groups, media and politicians fit. The left has a superior network of implementers who are effective at shaping a coherent message (MoveOn.org) and using communications channels (full-time bloggers) to sell it. We're about to see how a politician, Barack Obama, achieves this through governing. On the right, groups like Club for Growth and online communities such as RedState fit into this portion of the cycle. Rebuild the Party is an example of an implementer.

The point of this exercise is to understand the imbalance we face on the right. There is a serious deficiency of academics and implementers. We have an abundance of think tanks. Because we lack balance, the production cycle is thrown out of whack and we’re unable to produce change.

You see, ideas alone don’t produce change. And activist groups and bloggers savvy at marketing can’t produce change if they don’t have principled public policies to back up their message. We need a more integrated structure and balanced production cycle.

Earlier this evening, a group of under-40 operatives pulled back the curtain on RebuildTheParty.com, a 10-point action plan for the next RNC Chairman.

The premise behind the plan is simple: every Republican has a stake in the outcome of the RNC election, so every Republican must have a voice in the process. Collectively, we intend to bring pressure to bear, not for a specific candidate, but for a set of principles that will force our new leadership to deal head on with the GOP's structural failures -- a yawning online gap, a failure to mobilize our grassroots, and an inability to recruit either strong candidates in every district  or encourage sophisticated activism at the local level.

A number of us have been talking about these problems for months now. Well, the time for talk is over and the time for action is now. That's why the plan outlines a number of specific proposals and success metrics: 5 million new online activists, a minimum of $100,000 raised online by target Congressional candidates, candidates in all 435 districts, 25,000 new people who can work on campaigns and run their neighborhoods. It's time to start holding people in the party accountable for online success the same we hold people accountable for the number of voter contacts.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be fleshing out individual pieces of the plan and likely be getting more specific in our recommendations. We also know that we can't micromanage the process and that the next Chair is going to have to chart his or her own path. Having worked on campaigns, however, we know that necessity is the mother of invention. The primary purpose of the Rebuild the Party plan is to create this sense of urgency and necessity. We challenge the idea that the Internet is more than a fun little add-on or that it's enough to prove you "get it" by setting up a Twitter account. The Obama campaign proved that the Internet is so much more than that: it is a serious platform for transforming literally everything about how your campaign is run, from media to fundraising to field.

And the best part? You can vote on key tenets of the plan, submit your own, and vote them up in a Digg-like process. The best user generated ideas may be included in future releases of the plan. Participate in this platform by visiting Ideas.RebuildTheParty.com and registering.

Beyond disappointment at all the opportunities we missed this election, I felt something else on Tuesday night: liberation. I felt like a huge burden had been lifted off our shoulders, that we could finally get to work building the Republican Party we really want not just defending the one that we had. Our mission will no longer be subsumed in the immediate work of winning an election. The time to build the next right has come.

Pre-Election I posted about the disease the Republican Party has suffered from: arrogance, complacency, failure to adapt.

The disease has led to the President’s low approval rating, the loss of both houses in 2006, a less-than-inspiring 2008 presidential primary and now the sweeping in of President-elect Barack Obama.

The Republican Party’s disadvantage in organization, fundraising, and even favorable media coverage are all symptoms of that same failure to change.

Yet, now is not the time to hang our heads and feel sorry for ourselves for being diagnosed with this disease, it’s the time to pursue the cure.  It’s a time to focus only on the causes of the disease for the purpose of remaining focused on the specific steps we can take to “get well.”

The election of Barack Obama is the turning point, the rock bottom.  Not only the numerical election results, but also the sheer exuberance that accompanied them should be the wake-up call Republicans, and our country, needs.  In the same way Type-2 diabetes, or a heart attack, is often the wake-up call one needs to diet and exercise, or a chronic cold is what one needs to slow down and reevaluate their lifestyle, we must act now. 

Again, I repeat this seemingly obvious quote, what I suggest as the mantra for the Republican Party in the next few months: if you don’t change, you won’t change.  I also point to a few guidelines for recovery from my last post on this topic.

If we don’t start now with a new, optimistic, yet aggressive approach towards reviving the conservative movement and the Republican Party, we will most definitely only have ourselves to blame.  If we want to survive, we can’t be like those chronic emphysema patients who bemoan their decrepit health, yet continue smoking through their bronchial tube. 

The vote count is in (mostly).  It’s time to finally admit that the status quo is not working; it’s time to democratize the Republican Party, to rewrite the playbook; it’s time to rebuild.
 

We complain about the superficial, biased coverage of the MSM. We are justified in doing so. Thus, we must not succumb to the same trite discussion of why McCain is losing and where the GOP went wrong.

The answer, my friends, is not found in one person, wing of the Party, policy approach or tactic.  The reasons the "circular firing squad" now points to – inconsistent message, poor fundraising, inferior integration of new technology, even the President's low approval rating -- are symptoms of the disease, not the cause of it. 

The disease is complacency with the status quo and arrogance.  The same disease that caused Republicans to lose the majority in both houses in 2006.   Americans demand change. Duh.   

David Frum summarizes this well in The Week as reported by Politico:

In The Week, former Bush speechwriter David Frum wrote of McCain's travails in a way that seemed to take defeat for granted and warned the GOP faces a long road back. "That's not a failure of campaign tactics. It's not even a failure of strategy. It's a failure of the Republican Party and conservative movement to adapt to the times."

The Republican Party must heed this quote in the coming months: If you don't change, you won't change.  

If the Republican Party doesn't re-establish a core set of principles that address the issues the majority of Americans care about, we will continue to lose support.  If we don't understand that raising money is not the most important function of a campaign or political organization, we will continue to raise less than our leftist counterparts.  If we don't stop holding ourselves hostage to an entrenched consultant class, we only have ourselves to blame.  If we don't set specific goals and make investments in new media and political technology training, we will continue to cede grassroots dominance to our political opponents.  And if we don't start listening to the American people, and addressing their concerns, rather than pursuing our own agenda, we will continue to be unpopular.

Election Day is one week away.  No matter the specific Republican vote count for President or seat count in the House and Senate, it will be time to finally admit that the status quo is not working; it will be time to democratize the Republican Party, to rewrite the playbook; it will be time rebuild.

It will be time to stop throwing blame around, and for every Republican official, candidate, staffer and consultant to open their eyes and ears to a new approach.

As someone who has advocated a new approach to the Republican Party for the last four years, I look forward to a more open, inclusive discussion about the way forward.  Meanwhile, I look forward to your input here.