Wednesday, June 16, 2010

We elected you to be a leader, Mr. President. Now would be a good time.

Last Night’s Oval Office address on the catastrophe in the Gulf was not a great example of leadership on President Obama’s part. Sure, he boldly and quotably asserted that “our clean energy future is now.” Reading a quote like this out of context makes it seem like this was another one of those uplifting, brilliant, optimistic Obama addresses that he’s so good at, the kind that rallies an entire nation to his side; in reality, it was nothing more than a vague proclamation supported by a bunch of empty rhetoric and half-hearted suggestions for policies on how to get us to that clean energy future.

This was Obama’s opportunity to lay out clear objectives and goals for what the United States can do to wean itself off of fossil fuels, and, in the process, combat the dangerous effects of climate change. He could have talked about the need for a market-based cap-and-trade program to overturn the tide of global warming. He might have compared this disaster in the Gulf to the one five years ago, and said that more natural disasters like Katrina will happen, more often and with greater intensity, as long as we are still addicted to the gooey black stuff we see bubbling up in marshes and on beaches. But he didn’t. Instead, he hedged and weaved and didn’t really suggest any specifics at all. Here is an actual quote from his speech:

"Some have suggested raising efficiency standards in our buildings like we did in our cars and trucks. Some believe we should set standards to ensure that more of our electricity comes from wind and solar power. Others wonder why the energy industry only spends a fraction of what the high-tech industry does on research and development - and want to rapidly boost our investments in such research and development."

Some have suggested these things, Mr. President? Who is "some"? How about everyone in their right mind is suggesting these things?! Show a little backbone; endorse one concrete policy idea - or better yet, follow in the footsteps of some of your greatest predecessors, like Roosevelt and Truman, and come out in favor of a whole package of ideas. A New Deal for clean energy, something like that. In his entire speech, Obama didn’t even mention the American Power Act - the watered-down, pseudo-bipartisan climate bill introduced by Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman last month.

Contrast the President’s wishy-washy “we could do this, or we might do that” address with California’s Democratic candidate for governor, Jerry Brown, who yesterday touched on the same subject. Brown unveiled an eight-point “Clean Energy Jobs Plan,” and to be fair, although many of his “points” aren’t actual policy ideas that the government could enact as a law, there are some real and major actions that could be taken to move California, and the nation, toward cleaner energy and away from oil.

For example, Brown proposes codifying in statute an existing Executive Order, signed by Governor Schwarzenegger, requiring all electric power utilities to generate 33 percent of their power from renewable energy sources. He wants the California Energy Commission to fast-track the permitting process for electric projects using cleaner energy. He says that the California Public Utilities Commission should provide monetary incentives for homeowners to upgrade and retrofit their homes to use less, and cleaner, energy.

Also on Brown’s list - requiring potential homebuyers to be given accurate and detailed information about a property’s energy use before they purchase; having the Energy Commission institute stronger appliance standards for consumer products like light bulbs, dishwashers, and so forth…

Brown, who at 72 years old and having several terms in elective office at various levels, doesn’t inspire nearly the passion or emotion of Obama’s most fervent supporters, is offering actual solutions for a real problem, not heated, overblown rhetoric. Perhaps Obama, who often seems to think that simply saying he will take care of a problem is tantamount to actually doing something about it, should take a lesson from Brown’s playbook.

All of this isn’t to suggest that I dislike, or have lost all faith in, President Obama. But I find myself doubting that he has the leadership skill necessary to tackle the bigger issue here - not the BP oil spill, but the transition away from fossil fuels and to a clean energy economy that absolutely has to happen sometime in the next decade or so if we are ever again to be a prosperous and peaceful society. I knocked on doors for Barack Obama; I pleaded with complete strangers, in person and on the phone, to vote for this man because I believed he had a leadership quality sorely lacking in our politics. I still believe that he might. But it’s time for him to prove it.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Money Can't Buy You Love... But It Sure Can Buy You An Election

A few important lessons to take away from Tuesday’s statewide primary election:

First, the dynamics of a race can change dramatically in the last 2-3 weeks of a campaign. Until sometime in early May, the conventional wisdom in the U.S. Senate Republican primary was that former congressman Tom Campbell was headed for a victory over former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. Most polls had Campbell holding onto a 10-to-15-point lead. Fiorina lurched to the right, picking up endorsements from Sarah Palin, anti-abortion rights groups, and supporting gun ownership rights for suspected terrorists. The media took this as a sign that Fiorina was going to split the conservative vote with far-right candidate Chuck DeVore, thus benefiting the moderate Campbell.

Here, as is often the case with elections, the conventional wisdom – and the media – was wrong. It appears that very few moderates voted in the Republican primary; maybe there just aren’t any moderate Republicans left. (I hate to say “I told you so” – actually, I don’t – but it was I who said of Campbell, back in January, The man supports same-sex marriage and proposed a temporary hike in the gas tax last year to pay down California’s budget deficit; mark my words, he is not going to win a Republican primary.) Either way, Fiorina took home an easy 56 percent of the vote, much more than either of her two challengers combined; she now goes into the general election contest against incumbent Barbara Boxer stronger than ever.

The same rule – about the dynamics of a race changing as the race comes to a close – applies in the gubernatorial contest. April was Steve Poizner’s month; the state insurance commissioner had been running a distant second in the Republican primary, often 40 to 50 points behind Meg Whitman in opinion polls. Before April his candidacy was widely considered DOA; but then Arizona passed its controversial immigration law, Whitman’s ties to Goldman Sachs were exposed, and Poizner dumped some of his considerable personal fortune (which nonetheless pales next to Whitman’s) into the campaign. All of a sudden, the polls showed a much tighter race; Poizner appeared to be within 10 points of Whitman. Could he eke out a victory?

Alas, Poizner’s brief comeback was not to be, and Whitman made a dramatic turnaround in May, amping up her media spending, nabbing coveted endorsements from prominent Republicans like Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich, and shifting to the right, stealing Poizner’s momentum on the immigration issue. The jury is still out on how much, if at all, Whitman’s right turn will hurt her in the general election against Jerry Brown; but it certainly helped her take back the Republican race. It turns out those pre-April polls were the most accurate of them all; Whitman finished with a stunning 64 percent. Poizner, once considered a rising star of the state GOP, took just 29 percent. I’d be surprised if this hasn’t completely destroyed his career in statewide politics.

The second rule is that Los Angeles clearly no longer dominates state politics; for the moment, the power center of California politics is the Bay Area. All of the major-party candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, and U.S. Senator are either from, or identify as their political base, the Northern California region. Indeed, in the race with the most prominent North-versus-South dynamic – the Democratic contest for lieutenant governor – San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom not only defeated Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn by more than 20 points, but won several Southern California counties, including San Diego, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo. Only in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties did Hahn’s vote total even exceed 50 percent.

Another new rule is that the Tea Party movement doesn’t do as well in large states, where campaigns usually cost in the several millions of dollars, as it does in smaller ones like Nevada. Here, the electoral results speak for themselves. In several prominent races, the candidate who most clearly identified himself as a Tea Partier pulled an embarrassingly low percentage of the vote, be it Poizner’s 29 percent in the gubernatorial contest, Sam Aanestad’s 30.5 percent in the race for lieutenant governor, senatorial wannabe Chuck DeVore’s 19 percent… Even in the campaign for attorney general, where the Tea Party had little or no presence that I’m aware of, the candidate backed by the Tea Partiers’ favorite congressman – Tom McClintock – came in a distant second, with 34 percent.

My personal favorite rule demonstrated by Tuesday's results is that money may be able to buy you a lot of love if you’re a candidate (Whitman, Fiorina), but not necessarily if you’re a corporation looking to use the initiative process to fatten your wallet. Pacific Gas and Electric, the state’s largest private utility, and Mercury Insurance, a large auto insurer, each spent millions of dollars to pass Propositions 16 and 17, respectively. Proposition 16 would have cemented PG&E’s monopoly on municipal power by requiring a two-thirds vote of the electorate any time a city or county tried to establish a competing public power company, like Sacramento’s SMUD; Proposition 17 would have dismantled state auto insurance regulations in such a way that would have benefited Mercury and other large insurers. For each initiative, the corporate proponents spent much, much more on advertising and media than their grassroots opponents; but in neither race were California voters fooled. Both 16 and 17 took less than 48 percent of the vote.

One rule that I previously thought to be written in stone in California politics – that any Republican who supports a tax increase is doomed to electoral failure – may have been upended this year. Abel Maldonado, the incumbent lieutenant governor who supported the February 2009 budget agreement that contained several short-term tax hikes, faced what was supposed to be a strong primary challenge from conservative anti-tax state Senator Sam Aanestad. Surprisingly, Maldonado, who was considered the Senate’s most moderate Republican by far before Governor Schwarzenegger appointed him lieutenant governor, pulled out a nearly 13-point victory over Aanestad.

Then again, in the race for state insurance commissioner, a little-known Republican candidate who spent less than $5,000 on his campaign and had absolutely no endorsements or establishment support whatsoever may have narrowly defeated a three-term GOP state legislator, Mike Villines, who voted for the same 2009 budget agreement. The race is still up in the air, as absentee ballots have yet to be fully counted, but challenger Brian Fitzgerald currently has a 10,000-vote lead over Villines, which a befuddled media is chalking up to Republican anger over Villines’s tax vote last year.

Ultimately, though, the election belongs to Meg Whitman. Whatever happens, both in the near and distant future, what we will all remember is the money. Something like $70 million of her own personal fortune was spent to win the primary alone; look for her to spend upwards of another $100 million on the general election. Whether she defeats Brown or not – and I fear for my state’s future if she does – we will remember the money. When all is said and done, and Whitman is thanking the volunteers for phone banking and going door-to-door, when she is attributing her victory to institutional support from GOP leaders like Mitt Romney and Condoleezza Rice, when her supporters boast of her scapegoating of undocumented immigrants as the reason for her victory, we will remember the money. For better or for worse, Meg Whitman has now changed California politics forever.

Monday, June 7, 2010

The Government's Going To Take Away Your Right To Watch "The Biggest Loser"

One of the peculiar things I’ve noticed about conservatives is that they tend to think the government – any government, federal, state, or local – has much more political power than it actually does. Yesterday’s New York Times column by former George W. Bush adviser N. Gregory Mankiw provides an excellent example of this phenomenon.

The purpose of Mankiw’s column is to analyze recent attempts by multiple governments across the United States to enact, or at least study, imposing new taxes on soda and other ultra-sugary drinks. Whatever your stance on this issue – and I recognize that it is more complex than a simple left-versus-right, tax-versus-no-tax, government-versus-market debate – Mankiw’s culminating argument is nothing short of absurd:

Taxing soda may encourage better nutrition and benefit our future selves. But so could taxing candy, ice cream and fried foods. Subsidizing broccoli, gym memberships and dental floss comes next. Taxing mindless television shows and subsidizing serious literature cannot be far behind.

Setting aside the fact that taxes on junk and fast food, or subsidies for healthy diets and activities, are both legitimate ideas worth debating, Mankiw’s paranoid idea that a soda tax would somehow lead to the federal government taxing crap TV like Jersey Shore and subsidizing, say, the works of Philip Roth is one of the most egregious uses of the slippery slope fallacy I’ve ever seen. The main reason this is so beyond the pale is that, as Mr. Mankiw and so many other libertarian/free-market devotees seem to forget, we elect the government.

In order for the federal government to enact something so obscene as a tax on awful television shows, Americans would have to vote into office, in separate and distinct electoral contests, at least 218 members of the House of Representatives (a majority of the total 435), 60 members of the Senate (a three-fifths majority of the 100 Senators, since just about everything controversial is filibustered these days), and a President willing to sign such a policy into law. All of these elected officials – except for the ones who retire, who usually represent a small fraction of the total – would have to be held accountable by the voters at the next election. This is how public policy works in a democracy.

Of course, any such policy as Mankiw ominously hints “cannot be far behind” a soda tax would be challenged in court, and given that the Supreme Court under John Roberts has become such a hotbed of right-wing judicial activism, there’s a good chance that a Real Housewives of Wherever tax or a Michael Chabon subsidy would be struck down as unconstitutional.

What I’m getting at with my poor attempts to make pop culture quips is that there exist democratic safeguards against Mankiw’s ridiculous notion that the government is going to suddenly tax shows like Survivor or American Idol, the most important being that there is zero public support for such an idea, and it is the public that chooses the government.

This paranoia is among the most prominent fears of right-wing economists like Mankiw – the idea that “the government” or “the state” is going to enact some horrible, oppressive policy that will rob of us of all of the freedoms that we hold dear, and that there is absolutely nothing we will be able to do about it. Never mind that one-third of the Senate and 100 percent of the House of Representatives is chosen by the people in free and fair elections every two years, or that the President is elected once every four years, and limited to two terms. That policy is always coming. It's always just around the corner.

(P.S. Times blogger David Leonhardt has posted an excellent rebuttal to Mankiw. He doesn’t address the silly “the big bad government is gonna tax TV shows it doesn’t like” argument, but he does make a solid argument for some kind of public policy to reduce Americans’ intake of ultra-caloric beverages. Did you know that the annual national cost of obesity in the U.S. comes to $147 billion? That’s $1,250 per household. To paraphrase one of my favorite movies, Clerks, would you be willing to pay someone that much money to kill you every year?)