Much ink and many pixels are being expended on writing health care's political postmortems, but the focus should rightly be on the policy front -- in the think tanks and in the legislative priorities of recent Republican administrations and Congresses. In short, the battle was lost before the first shot was even fired because Republicans did not present a compelling alternative story of what was wrong with the health care system, or how they would fix it.
When it comes to health care policy, conservatives have been seriously outgunned. And I say this in all fairness to the friends I have who work night and day on free market solutions to health care. On economics, you always know what the conservative answer is: tax cuts and generally hands-off regulatory policies to spur economic growth. No matter how good the Democrats' promises sound, we return to these simple, pro-growth touchtones that resonate with a majority of Americans who intuitively get that you can't micromanage your way to a better future.
On health care, I have no idea what our basic guiding principle is. Seriously, I don't.
We have tried ineffectively to stretch free market rhetoric to health care without appreciating that health care is already too far removed from a free market for the analogy to make sense. Real markets are sensitive to price. Health care isn't. The insurance companies hide the cost of actual care from the consumer.
What we have lacked in this debate is a simple clarion call to address an aching need -- bringing free market principles to bear to improve tangible health outcomes.
Instead, we have allowed the left to define the problem as exclusively one of access -- of the nearly 50 million without insurance dying in the streets (of course, we don't talk about that number anymore because nearly a third of that number are illegal immigrants, an issue Obamacare studiously avoids).
And it's no surprise. The left has had a far greater number of health care analysts devising grand plans for the eventual takeover. And they have invested more political capital in this issue than any other. It should surprise no one that the conservative effort in this space has been paltry in comparison. We just haven't had as many people thinking about health care, and we didn't actively move legislation on it when we were in power.
Perhaps you might say that's beside the point of the awfulness of this plan, and that our full efforts must go towards repeal. Be that as it may, Republican inattention to health care and the failure to develop a compelling free market narrative on the issue led to the place we are now. By pounding home the notion that the uninsured were the central problem with the health care system, and pointing to the fact that their numbers were growing each and every year, liberals built a sense of urgency that conservatives didn't have and were able to demand action -- even if that action was political suicide.
At the outset of his Administration, George W. Bush set out to neutralize a key Democratic issue, education, with his No Child Left Behind Act. NCLB was a grab bag and not beloved by conservatives for its massive expansion in Federal spending in education, but it did insist on the vaguely conservative principle of accountability.
The merits of that legislation can continue to be debated, but one political outcome is clear. We don't talk much about education at the federal level these days. There is a sense that the problem was "solved" by NCLB, which is now nearly a decade old. Likewise, no one will try to move welfare reform legislation because the successful 1996 reform law substantively and politically took the wind out of the sails of that issue.
Imagine if instead of the Medicare Part D entitlement, the Bush administration had moved a smart, substantive health care bill that addressed cost as the key to unlocking access, making health plans dramatically more affordable, addressing medical liability, and moving away from employer-based plans by giving any group -- whether an employer or not -- the ability to organize their own health insurance pools?
I was there, and I can attest that the Bush Administration did make good faith efforts to move medical liability and association health plans, but it was never the central, overarching focus. It was clear they would never expend political capital like they did on the prescription drug issue that they let themselves get baited on by Al Gore in the 2000 campaign, or the war, or tax cuts.
A well-developed Republican health reform effort could have addressed the high cost of health care -- actually the most glaring issue in our system -- in a way that would have served as a kind of tax cut for the already insured. And in lowering costs, we could have covered the people who wanted health care but couldn't afford it -- the nub of the uninsured problem.
Debate the details of this all you want, but the political upshot of this would have been to render the health care issue, a major Democratic hobbyhorse, politically dead for a generation. A bill less ambitious in scope, designed to address real pain points not a quixotic campaign for 100% insurance, could have forestalled this bill even in the event of a complete Democratic takeover.
This may be oversimplified. There are certainly many very good conservative health care scholars whose work I should have been reading more closely these last few years. But politics is a battle of perceptions, and the perception -- that became reality -- was that Republicans brought a knife to a gun fight when it came a debate about the scope and reach of health care reform. We may have won the political battle over health care, in that a majority of Americans opposed Obamacare, but sometimes it is the policy battles that set the tone for the future political battleground, moving the entire spectrum on which they are fought further left.
Newt Gingrich and John C. Goodman list Ten GOP Health Ideas for Obama. There's really too much to excerpt, so you'll have to read the whole thing for yourself.
My initial take: Some of these are very good ideas, some are less appealing. But whatever their individual merits, it's hard to see an overarching "vision thing" in the proposals. It is tinkering. Perhaps good tinkering, but it lacks a structural narrative that makes it easier to sell these as a package.
The GOP needs a much more comprehensive approach to entitlements in general, not just health care. At this point, I think we need to do one of two things: Either....
Government as a Last Resort - Government can insure everybody for any yearly expenses over 20% of annual income, which completely eliminates the problem of unbearable costs, both for consumers and for insurers (and which ought to dramatically lower insurance costs, since the potential risk is far smaller). That shouldn't have a major distortive effect on the market, either, because most catastrophic costs tend to be things about which we can't/don't often make good cost/benefit calculations. This would also eliminate the need for Medicare/Medicaid, since this would automatically cover people who have little/no income. While there are undoubtedly problems with this, it seems on the whole better than a system that gets government involved at much lower decision and cost levels. Or...
Government as a Safety Net - Restructure our entitlement system along the lines of what (if I recall correctly) Milton Friedman and Charles Murray have recommended: expand the EITC to cover basic costs of living on a means-tested basis, so we can predicate entitlements upon actual need, rather than blanket distribution.
In either case, I think you have a pretty strong, compelling message: Government should provide a safety net, not a straitjacket. We are not going to let people fail completely, but safety nets should not catch people who do not fall.
These options would allow Republicans to strengthen the safety net for people who genuinely need it, while making the program more sustainable by removing the "safety net" for people who don't actually need one. Importantly, this would also eliminate the "third rail" problem of entitlements, and we could actually begin making better cost/benefit decisions about them.
I was reading a speech by a Republican leader from the 70s and wondered how this idea would be recived today. Is there still room in the conservative movement for this type of thinking? If so, how would we implement these ideas?
"Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work—work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it."
The contest was about who could make a "paper airplane" go farther, not about how far could a sheet of paper go, in any form. So Jeff was not a hero. He cheated! just as the people who tanked the economy with their mortgage derivatives skims. It's very popular, nowadays, to change the rules to win, and more sad than that, those who do, win the admiration of dupes.
--JHT
Let me atempt to represent the conservative and liberal world-views (in an admittedly strange topic) of NR participants in an imaginary dialogue among some usual NR suspects:
Reminder of the...: Good call, JHT
Lonestar: Am I a dupe for wondering . . . (don't answer that!) . . . what are the limitations or boundaries or rules of design for an airplane? (And thus for a paper airplane.) Will something organic someday qualify? Something more fractalish? Something not bilaterally symmetrical, as in a crushed almost-sphere of material?
Knackers: In the movie, the teacher didn't stipulate any specific rules such as paper airplane had to be such and such size and shape. All the kids did what they knew, what they had seen before that was conventional, imitative and in the box. A sphere has the smallest enclosed volume for the smallest surface area of any shape and they can be thrust in any direction which would be a major advantage for space travel. Perhaps in the future there will be new materials beyond what we know today. Perhaps we will travel around as light spheres zipping here and there not having to load heavy bodies into heavy floating tanks.
Besides, everyone knows the Borg Sphere is used by the Borg Collective and is a large spherical vessel having transwarp capabilty.
Go Jeffy! You weren't focused on winning you were focused on dreaming....
Nando: Noo, not a dupe, it was taken as a matter of common knowledge rather than inspiration that a ball can be thrown further than a paper airplane can float and, although cute, the kid didn't design anything or do anything that the rest of the class didn't already know. His 'thinking outside of the box' wasn't in plane design, it was in how to find a loophole in order to win. The next contest will not be a paper airplane flying contest, it will be a paper ball throwing contest with a bunch of dummies crushing paper and throwing it.
Knackers: In that case, be sure that little Johnny joins the contest. He'll be the last participant and wet the paper so the resulting heavier ball can acquire more kinetic energy than the dry ones. Hence little Johnny wins, and if there's no tap water to wet the paper he'll pee on it ;-)
JHT: Exactly Nando! Besides, the movie was presented not as an example of great airplane design, but as an example in good thinking to be followed. And what was the example: disregarding the implied rules of the game which were, making a paper airplane.
Everyone knows what an airplane looks like, and what the word means.
There are many things that fly, but they are not called airplanes. A ball, a blimp, a helicopter, a dart flies, no one call them airplanes.
If a pitcher throws a tennis ball, he broke the rules, despite the fact that he threw a ball, and, probably, there are no written rule against it. It's the spirit of the game, the trust of the participants which was violated, as it was in the mortgage debacle, which was done legally, although in full dishonesty and disregard for others.
Republicans seem more sophisticated in breaking rules and with more catastrophic results for the country. Democrats tend to be blundering crooks like Blago.
JHT: Knackers, the ball trick is common knowlege to kids. I have two boys that had that one figured out by the time they got to first grade. The story was almost certainly a story made up by an adult unfamiliar with kids in order to make an example of thinking outside of the box. That author might consider doing a little thinking outside of the box of their own.
Michigan-Man: i couldn't disagree more, Nannie. I'll take that kid any day over those who can't think outside of the the limits imposed by the 'authorities' and rule makers.
The next contest won't be anything like what you imagined but will now have to include limits that have been expanded pushed into brand new territory by those who DO dare to think such things to include such thinking, not restrict it.
And i do speak from experience having been fortunate enough to have been selected for and then extensively trained in honing/perfecting those very abilities ....to indeed think not only outside of the box but outside the tetrahemihexahedron. It's a very big world out there.
Btw here are a few other forms that can be made from folded paper which may or may not fly better than a wadded up piece. Who can say?
Nando: I can usually win at scrabble by not connecting my letters to other words if I can convince the scrabble police that they're limiting me too much with their boring game rules.
Lonestar: In my school days there still was a place for little Johnnies. Teachers gave a few extra tasks or supplied books to read, when you had finished classwork an hour or more, before classmates did. They knew to keep up interest - provide nutritive food for thought :-)
Hence the change to treadmill education with multiple choice answers to be ticked was seen as retrograde development. Nowadays, help with education consists of teaching the technique of giving satisfactory answers instead of providing fundamental insight ;-)
With the economic downturn, maybe there's more opportunity for attention regarding the little Johnnies. An invention (like the wheel) has to be made only once...
Knackers: Hey! How come everyone raves about this guy or gal who invented the wheel?
Let's give some credit to the one who invented the axle. A wheel without an axle ain't worth a damn. ;))
Ray: It's actually the opposite in my locale to Lonestar's. Things got worse for awhile after I was out of school, but maybe because of seeing so much failure, they started a big overhaul of the schools and some are impressive. Hopefully, money problems won't kill the positive momentum.
They have also gone back to more rote education for the most basic facts for young children, though, in areas they found they needed to. Spoon feeding knowledge might be useless in some areas, but it's so much faster in learning to read or in learning basic facts, that it's made the difference for some kids in whether they learn at all.
Ironmann: There are quite a few articles on the performance of students in math, science etc. per country. The statistics might have helped to improve schooling.
But once in the profession that's loved, that might present a conflict with commercial interests. Such a conflict rarely arises in professions chosen for the salary only.
It won't be difficult to find a few reports on improving grades at universities like Cornell, Yale, Harvard etc. - by learning how to respond and often the graduates wind up in legislative functions.
A major issue is learning to observe properly, to interpret the observations and to draw conclusions in such a way that room is left to appreciate different perspectives, and to be able to discuss them. That would end stuffing the mind but also end blind belief - IOW it would start an era of little Johnnies.
Nando: Our schools are crowded with little Johnnies that crinkle paper, etc. only because they aren't able to think, not because they can, and they make it very hard for teachers to give enough time to thoughtful students. That's the littlejohnny rub, at least in the US.
Canman: Almost all of my higher education consisted of tests requiring answers in essay form ...'explain in your own words'. I hated it, that's why I like my responses here short... and curt: Earlier, i had a college science prof who did much the same ...required that you actually demonstrate that you knew and understood. He also gave us 'multiply choice' tests ... but with his own spin: each question had four answers ...A,B,C,D ...and you had to answer each with T/F. None might be correct ...all might be correct ...or any combination ...so the result was that there were4 points for each question. And the real kicker was ...you got -1 for each one you answered incorrectly! one could actually end up with a score of -400 on a 100 question test. As he explained ...he was teaching us to NOT guess. And it worked. So yes ... that prof was indeed a little johnny himself ...and fit the stereotype of the absent minded prof exactly ...einstein hair and all. He reminded me of Prof Irwin Corey ... [he may have been the inspiration for the comedian] ;)
And ...he loved puns and bad jokes ...so one had to pay attention to everything he said ... which resulted in ... 'getting' the subject matter the first time around. I found i didn't have to 'study' ... as he had a way of keeping my attention and focus completely ... and the data just flowed in. He insisted one be present. Made class a gas ... one of the best instructors/mentors i had. Thanks prof. I bow.
Skyane: The 'rule makers/authoritarians' always object to and fight innovation and 'free thinking'. it's a control issue. Seems to me that the Republican tend to be the parry of control freaks, those who like to impose 'rules' and have their minions fall in line, march in step. No thanks.
JHT: Not when it comes to making money. Their economic philosophy is the law of the jungle: let the strong feed on the weak, the sick, the stupid, the uneducated. Their only compassion seems reserved for the unborn.
Sure, they believe in control, and law and order for the poor, guy, colored, and immigrants, but the wealthy should have no constrains in this land which belongs to free and brave rich white men.
Kemjeff : All the more reason to resist the 'authority' the demcoarts [mis]re-present.
Appears to me that those in 'authority' are often so concerned with maintaining their control and so short-sighted in that end that they don't pay attention to or value the bigger, long-term picture. Which then often results in the collapse, an implosion actually of their own constructions, from their own weight. Nothing new.
'tis the rise and the fall of empires/civilizations.
Even in nature the preying of/on the weak by the strong does have limits/balances/checks built in. There is a control function in play, all taking place within a larger, encompassing system. The successful predator is not the one who eliminates its prey, but one who achieves a balance. An equilibrium with all the elements. There is a relationship in play which is larger than each/any which serves both/all. That's ole ma nature. What works continues ... what doesn't ends.
Canman: 'tis the rise and the fall of empires/civilizations. And marriages. :-)
molotove: SPeaking of 'resisting authority', religious and political figures and their projected authority are definitely to be resisted or at least questioned, as it is their control trips internalized, among other things, which prevent us from seeing what is the case. By resisting the external authority, we come to see how enslaved we are internally and can free ourselves.
In the arguments here, there are other things at play. Afaict, all of you have something to say. The "rules" in the paper airplane game are not designed to oppress and control but to foster excellence in design. When "thinking outside the box" abandons that excellence, then we have only gaming the system to win.
When extended back into the political realm, gaming the system to win just means exploiting and parasitizing others in support of ignoble tendencies such as greed and power (over others). As if happiness were a zero-sum game, and one could only be more happy if someone else were less happy. Whereas encouraging a talent for design could make everyone happier.
And yes, encouraging a thinking outside the box can do that too, even if "talent" is not immediately obvious in the outcome.
kemjeff: well ... that wasn't at all what i meant. I didn't go with 'all authority' for that very reason, thinking it might be misinterpreted in exactly that way. Now that i think about it, i should have gone that way after all, as 'resisting all authority' would include questioning one's own sense of authority....
In my last installment of “No Risk, No Reward,” I suggested 5 risky policy changes for the GOP. Remember, you’re not selling plausibility of passage in Congress. You’re selling bold ideas and, by contrast, setting up the party-in-power as sclerotic, bloated, elitist and bureaucratic (all of which is true). Perhaps one of these reforms, like entitlement reform in the 1990s, will even take. Here are 5 more, as promised.
6. Healthcare “1,2,3”
1-Medical savings accounts for every American – Give every American the option to divert part or all of their Medicare portion of payroll taxes to a medical savings account (aka HSA). These interest-gaining accounts can be used for out-of-pocket medical care and high deductibles. Mitigates the expense account effect running up the costs of healthcare and pulls us back from the cliff (See Singapore).
2-Refundable Tax Credits for the poor (straight into your MSA). Perhaps we can “afford” to help the poor, but not the way we’re doing it. Means-test people and give poor folks refundable tax credits on a sliding scale. They put these resources into their HSAs and choose where their healthcare dollars go.
3-Kill State Monopolies - Let people buy less expensive insurance across state lines. If I can cut my insurance premium in half by buying in Idaho, I should be able to. The only thing that prevents me from doing so is government. Let’s end that bullshit.
7. Dollar-for-Dollar Schools – Create the conditions for the emergence of creative new private, non-profit schools by allowing people to deduct a portion of the tuition to place their kids in these innovative schools. (Then, perhaps this will happen.) If you’re taking a full pupil out of the DMV-style school but leaving a large portion of the tax money for said pupil, no one can credibly argue that it “takes resources from the public schools.” Add refundable tax credits for the very poor and you’ve got a viable alternative to the mediocre-at-best public schools system. Universal primary school is maintained. Competition and iterative innovation radically improves our kids’ education. Everybody’s happy (except the teachers’ cartel, uh, union).
8. Congressional Crowdsourcing - Public solutions for public problems means big-dollar contests and public suggestion-box-type efforts can get the best ideas out of the American people. Bureaucrats have terrible incentives. And seriously, there are no Steve Jobs(s) in Congress. Congresspeople and their staffers should find ways to let the "wisdom of crowds" – even ideas futures markets - solve genuine public problems. Who ever heard of an innovative populist meritocracy? Well, now you have.
9. 1% Rule – For every dollar a federal department saves taxpayers relative to a reasonable budget baseline, those employees get 1 percent of that savings directly in their paychecks (according to pay grade). This would encourage bottom-up departmental efforts to tighten up. To prevent artificially bloating budgets the following years in order falsely to reward these functionaries, you’d have to set up the baseline to avoid political gaming of the system. Such may only be possible with a TABOR-like provision. I agree that the devil would be in the details. Just tossin' it out there.
10. Toleration – I have written elsewhere that the GOP should replace the social conservative policy leg of their tripod with a leg of toleration. Toleration is the cultural institution that means conservatives have their own private social conservatism and let others have their own lifestyles, religious beliefs, or whatever as they see fit. The kids today are much more tolerant and you won’t get anywhere with them unless you let go of all the stuff that smacks of theocracy or social engineering a la Falwell. Persuasion and privacy on social issues is preferable to power.(Here are 1-5)
(Note re: this post by Yglesias. Technology contests for CO2 sequestration would cost Americans this much-$. Carbon taxes would cost this much--$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Yes, subsidizing carbon sequestration technologies requires tax money. But there are differences of degree and differences of kind. I’m afraid Yglesias's criticism conflates the two. Spending this much ($) versus orders of magnitude more means throwing alarmists a bone, while not continuing to bankrupt the country. Clearly, the case of anthropogenic climate change is losing ground rapidly. But even if it weren't, not one person yet has made the case that these taxes, subsidies and green boondoggles would have any appreciable effect on emissions (or mitigation). Though they are clearly corporate welfare opportunities, which the Obama Administration looooooves.)
Add yet another “R” to the things Republicans need to do to pull their party from the abyss: Risk. What sorts of risks can the GOP take? Let's start with policy. Consider some platform changes that may seem crazy at first, but if you’re prepared to embrace them, own them and see them through you could a) change the national conversation, b) restore your credibility on all this recent “freedom” talk, and c) win younger voters.
Here are 5 to start:
1. Legalize Drugs - You have turned a corner on this issue. All evidence and economics indicates that prohibiting anything for which there is a demand causes black markets. The black markets in drugs mean the costs of doing business are higher—but that means so too are the profits. These profits (and turf) are protected violently by gangs and drug cartels. Gang culture is built around said profits. Remove the profits through legal competition and the gangs fade away eventually (just as they did after alcohol prohibition was repealed). Yes, there will be secondary social costs. Yes there will still be petty crime due to addicts—despite lower-cost drugs. But you can offset those social costs by taxing the product to build rehabilitation centers, which are preferable to building more prisons and morgues. You get credibility points for admitting that people have a right to do what they like with their bodies. Freedom is freedom, warts ‘n’ all.
2. Civil Unions – Want to shake everybody up? Try this: The state should get out of the marriage business. Period. End the debate. Marriage is a matter for churches, mosques and temples. Civil unions ensure that people who unite contractually are treated equally before the law, as the Constitution requires. If a church is willing to marry two gay people, fine. It’s none of the government’s business. Government will, however, offer equal tax treatment. Civil unions cover this just fine and states may craft their own civil union variations. Ultimately, though, marriage is ritual and, therefore, a private matter.
3. Means-test Everything – If it is to exist, every federal social program should be designed to help the very poor. The middle class only a little. The rich none. Government welfare programs for the rich, such as Medicare, are insane. Let's say so. (That includes a louder call for bringing Medicare back from the precipice.) Shame rich, old people: “You cannot continue to rob the next generation and get away with it. You have more resources and your healthcare costs more. Pay for it. You owe it to ‘the children.’” Thus: No welfare for the rich. No corporate welfare.
4. Taxpayer Bill of Rights & Balanced Budget – After this monstrous growth of the federal government by the Obama Administration, people are very likely going have an appetite for some kind of limits on government bloat. A Taxpayer Bill of Rights – which would lock government revenues in at population plus inflation as measured by acceptable cost of living indices. Couple this with limits on national debt that would force cuts. Plus, say we’re not going to charge up the national credit card and the bill to Generation Y. This is grossly unfair. We need to have a limit on deficits and balanced budgets within a certain timeframe, or consequences will follow.
5. Global Warming: “More Technology, No More Taxes” - We’re willing to fund sequestration technology. We’re willing to fund geo-engineering technology. We’re willing to use X-prize-type contests to do it. But we’re not willing to tax the American people as they rebound from a severe recession—for all for a hypothetical “crisis” that has never quite materialized.
It’s time to be the party of ideas again. And ideas are risky. (Nos. 5 through 10 now up).
Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis wrote a lengthy article for Politico making the case that conservative ideas can still win, citing as evidence President-elect Barack Obama's embrace of many conservative themes during the campaign. Anuzis is absolutely correct, and that's exactly why we should hold Obama accountable for his promises.
Unfortunately, one of the "bold, conservative ideas" that Anuzis cites as an example is what's known as a tax holiday. In other words, he wants conservatives to embrace a tax version of Keynesianism that has little chance of accomplishing its goal of stimulating economic growth. Here is Anuzis' argument:
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) has proposed taking the $350 billion pledged to the Wall Street bailout and instead funding a two month tax holiday for all Americans. That's two months of no income taxes, Social Security or Medicare taxes. That's thousands of dollars to pay mortgages, buy cars or invest in starting a new business that creates jobs. Newt Gingrich takes Rep. Gohmert's idea one step further, suggesting that instead of adopting Speaker Pelosi's dream of a $700 billion stimulus program, the tax holiday could be extended to a full six months. Now, that's what I call the mother of all stimulus packages!
Don't get me wrong, Anuzis' intentions are correct. I'd rather keep the money than send it to Washington. But if the purpose is to stimulate the economy, this isn't the right approach. If Anuzis is going to advocate for policy solutions, he should embrace permanent tax rate reductions, repeal of the death tax and reduction of the corporate tax rate. (It's another question of whether the RNC chairman should stay out of policy and focus on politics.)
Conservatives are eager to offer new ideas, but we need to remember that not every new idea is a good idea.
This letter was written as a follow-up to some points I raised about idea creation for the GOP in an earlier blog post.
To the future chairman of the Republican National Committee,
We face a tough road over the coming days, months, and years as we work to transform the Republican Party into the party of the future so that we can recover from this year’s devastating losses in the House, Senate, and ultimately, White House. The path ahead will be a challenging one, but I am convinced that we are up to the challenge and that ultimately we will prevail.
In order to do this, however, we must recognize as a party that many of the ways of the past are no longer the way of the future. For example, Barack Obama has proven that new media and the Internet are essential to winning elections. Similarly, we now see that we must be able to raise a large percentage of money and build a powerful infrastructure online.
Following this logic, we also need to realize that peer production is the way of the future – not just in politics or business, but in all walks of life. At a macro level, this means that we must democratize the Republican Party by opening it to mass collaboration. If the Republican Party wants to be the party of the future, it must adopt this sort of collaboration driven, peer production based model.
Indeed, peer production has proven enormously and unequivocally successful as a business model. Corporations are scrambling to replicate the impeccable successes of companies like Goldcorp, Inc., who in 1999 was on the verge of bankruptcy because it was unable to locate sources of gold on its property. Out of desperation, CEO Rob McEwen issued the “Goldcorp Challenge,” inviting anyone and everyone to help the company locate gold on its campus. The success was astounding: due to peer production, Goldcorp went from being an underperforming $100 million company to a $9 billion juggernaut. Many other leading companies, including IBM, Boeing, and Procter & Gamble have adopted peer production as a central component of their business model to similarly resounding success. Although political trends tend to lag behind business trends, peer production is clearly one trend in which we cannot afford to fall behind.
In fact, Barack Obama’s electoral success was not really due to his use of the Internet. Rather, the Internet only served as the medium through which Obama’s volunteers and supporters could peer produce. In the end, it was the Obama campaign’s understanding of the necessity of utilizing peer production and its ability to do so that fueled his victory. MyBarackObama.com was immensely successful in doing this, resulting in his supporters peer producing 200,000 offline events, 400,000 blog posts, 3 million phone calls, and $500 million. Everything at MyBarackObama made it unambiguously clear: “This campaign is about you.”
Democrats, following in the footsteps of countless successful corporations, are going to continue to use this model in 2010 and beyond because it is a proven winner. Accordingly, this begs the question: are we going to do the same? Please, Mr. Chairman, let the answer be an unmistakable, “Yes!”
Patrick Ruffini recently wrote a piece arguing that the GOP needs an “ideas czar”, while Soren Dayton disagrees, insisting that, “The beltway is the disease not the cure.” Regardless of where you stand on this argument, both Patrick and Soren raise a critical, underlying point: the Republican Party needs a way to bring new, innovative ideas to the table if it wants to find its identity and ultimately achieve electoral success.
Ruffini founded the site RebuildTheParty.com, which specifically states that the Internet must be our #1 priority over the next four years. I fully agree with this, and in this vein I think we need to utilize the Internet – and specifically, the concept of peer production, which “describes what happens when masses of people … collaborate openly to drive innovation and growth” – to accomplish our goal. Peer production is what creates content for Wikipedia and empowers websites like Digg.
Indeed, in today’s new Age of Participation, having an elite person or group of people making policy decisions and generating new ideas is a recipe for death. Although I have an enormous amount of respect for Patrick, his idea of establishing a GOP ideas czar is tantamount to maintaining the status quo in that our ideas will continue to come from the party’s established elite. An institution consisting of “politicians, academics, business leaders, think tankers, and interest groups” as Soren describes is slightly better, but ultimately it is still an exclusive group of elites.
Instead, we need to establish an open forum in which all ideas from all walks of life are welcome and taken into consideration. Everyone’s opinion is valuable as we fight to rebuild the Republican Party. Patrick has taken the first step toward this with ideas.rebuildtheparty.com, where anyone can make suggestions to enhance the RebuildTheParty.com platform, but unfortunately it’s only a baby step. In the end, the be all and end all of the Republican Party – the Republican National Committee – is not reviewing, considering, and responding to this feedback.
If we really want to create new ideas and transform the Republican Party, we cannot continue to allow a small, elite group to be the source of our ideas and policy. If we continue to do so, we risk digging a hole so deep that we may never be able to climb out. Instead, we must permanently open the Republican Party’s ideas and platforms to mass collaboration. In doing so, we can truly become the party of the people, and in turn we can take a huge step toward becoming the party of the future.
Patrick and Matt, who I both respect and count as friends, get something completely wrong. Patrick wants to install an "Ideas Czar" and a "Republican National Policy Committee":
What we need is a policy arm independent of the existing policy infrastructure on the Hill that incorporates the best of what's happening in the states, on the Hill, and in the think tanks. A Republican National Policy Committee would be tasked with crafting a larger message that's bigger than just House Republicans or Senate Republicans, but that includes both and Governors as well. An RNPC would have de-facto last word on the elusive question of what the Republican Party is for, would appoint "shadow cabinet" spokespeople to directly respond to what's happening at the departments and agencies, and have point on crafting a Contract-like Republican platform for the midterm elections. Part think tank, part messaging engine, a Republican policy committee would keep the ideas flame alive until a Presidential nominee emerged.
I think that this gets exactly wrong what we need. Washington is where ideas come to die. They get strangled by interests groups warping them for their own ends. They get strangled by bureaucracies in the parties, in the interest groups, and in government interested in the status quo.
We don't need Washington to deputize someone with the authority to have ideas on behalf of the party. Anyone who has seen the platform process up close knows that it is, for the most part, a list of shibboleths rather than a serious policy debate. Subordinating our ideas to existing power structures is just going to destroy us.
We need more people with actual ideas speaking and competing in the marketplace. If we are going to take ideas seriously -- and I agree with Jon that our institutions are not yet ready to, there might be an alternative model that we could borrow from the European centre-right, the European Ideas Network (EIN) or improve on our existing models.
