Semi-Daily Journal

I am still really puzzled about President Bush's policy choices these days, since few of them have any obvious relationship to what it will take for him to be re-elected. Bush is still the favorite in the race because he is the incumbent and because I think it is possible that the economy will improve enough between now and November 2004 pretty much despite whatever economic policy the White House runs with. There is still, however, plenty of room for a lot of things to go wrong, and anything going wrong will put him in a very bad position. Right now, his poll numbers are fairly mediocre, and if the Zogby poll is to be believed, possibly trending towards really bad:

http://www.pollkatz.homestead.com/files/image001.gif

Now, I would like to believe that the decrease in numbers is due to people becoming aware of Bush's dangerously wishful thinking on most fronts (expert opinion really is cast aside in the administration). I think it is more likely that the poll numbers merely indicate that people aren't excited about their present situation, and do not believe that the threat of terrorism is the whole explanation.

It is puzzling, isn't it? I've got a perceptive friend (unfortunately, a Bush supporter) who commented that Bush's policies make much more sense under the assumption that Bush considers himself to be a one-term president.

Bush really doesn't remind me of Al-Sahaf.... I was never quite sure that Al-Sahaf believed what he said - the twinkle in his eyes always made me think that he knew how ridiculous his statements were. So while his statements were in flagrant denial of reality, I didn't think he was.
There are no such conflicts in Bush's case: both him and his statements seem to reflect a consistent, flagrant denial of all reality.

Bush is rather amazing. :)

Not just a one-term president but also somebody who doesn't like America all that much. At least that is the way it looks from the outside.
Surely he couldn't have *accidentally* rendered the US this vulnerable, this fast?

Oh, btw, Andrew Gumbel seem to agree with Brad's assessment of Bush's cognition:"...but George W Bush, a C student and proud of it, is in a category of his own when it comes to disregarding or even openly campaigning against objective reality."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=441456

I saw Dubya's speech on TV and I was very angry when he brought up the issues of Iraq and terrorism. Somehow this administration has made the Americans (69% percent of them) believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11 when there's in fact zero evidence to support such a connection. It just amazes how easily the public is misled by this administration. But I am even more amazed by the press corps, which has difficulty in getting the facts and truths out.

Is that the WJS editorial page? It can't be. That space is reserved for fantasy.

Nescio writes:
> I saw Dubya's speech on TV and I was very angry when he
> brought up the issues of Iraq and terrorism. Somehow
> this administration has made the Americans (69% percent
> of them) believe that Saddam had something to do with
> 9/11 when there's in fact zero evidence to support such
> a connection.

I know that the administration has every intention of blurring the distinction between Saddam and Al Qaeda. But I don't believe that the administration is primarily responsible for this confusion. To be brutally frank about it, most Americans are very easily confused and pretty shockingly ignorant. They do not recognize their own confusion and ignorance, however, and cheerfully act as if they know what is going on. In the case of Saddam and Al Qaeda, I honestly believe that people conflate them because both are known to be evil and both have "Arabic sounding" names. You could probably find a majority of people believe that Saddam Hussein and Amir Jabir Al Sabah share terrorist links as well. (Hey, why not?)

It is so easy to find evidence for this befuddledness in polling data, which affects attitudes on pretty much every policy out there, whether or not the administration has a misinformation line out. I would truly love to see polling results given someday that broke out data according to whether the individuals polled were aware of the basic facts of the matter, as assessed by answers to control questions.

OK, you can stop laughing now.

Jonathan King wrote, "Bush is still the favorite in the race because he is the incumbent and because I think it is possible that the economy will improve enough between now and November 2004 pretty much despite whatever economic policy the White House runs with."

You forgot a 3rd reason: the ability to raise huge wads of cash from wealthy people who like having their taxes cut.

Nescio wrote, "But I am even more amazed by the press corps, which has difficulty in getting the facts and truths out."

One problem with the media is that they are willing to discuss issues of truth when it comes to petty scandal, but not when it comes to public policy. So if Bush says "2+2=5," the media won't reply with "2+2=4," but rather "leading Democrat X counters that 2+2=4," which makes it hard for the public to figure out who to believe (since it becomes he-said-she-said). A good essay on this is "Calling a lie a lie," by David Greenberg at http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/5/lie-greenberg.asp

The costs of obtaining and digesting information are extremely high. Most people don't have the time or inclination to invest heavily.

Due to the direct bearing on the operation of democratic systems, democracies should probably have a greater emphasis on the public education of political science and economics than any other disciplines.

"I've got a perceptive friend (unfortunately, a Bush supporter) who commented that Bush's policies make much more sense under the assumption that Bush considers himself to be a one-term president."

http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/great-unraveling/ Suppose you are a leader of a political party with a radical agenda which is actually quite unpopular (as Krugman notes, many voters refuse to believe that anyone could be serious about some of it), hasn't won a national majority in more than a dozen years, and has the demographic tides running against it. Through a combination of parliamentary flukes and lying about your program, you come to power. What, exactly, is your incentive to not ram as much of your agenda through as you possibly can? Normally parties don't fight everything to the hilt, because of the "shadow of the future", the sense that they'll need to cooperate with other parties and anyway there'll be another chance. But a party in that position, no possible future casts a moderating shadow --- this is its last chance, unless it is able to smash the existing order and build a new one entrenching its power. (People used to discuss this in connection with Communist parties under the catch-phrase "one man, one vote, one time".) Hence maximalism.

I know a lot of creationists who with a straight face will insist that the earth is only 6000 years old and that the scientists who almost all say the earth is 4.5 billion years old are wrong.

What is the difference between a creationist and a true believer in supply side economics? True believers will endlessly repeat the supply side mantra and dismissing mainstream economsts. True adherents to the neocon world view will embrace American supremacy, dismiss isolationism and eschew multilateralism.

These people truly believe that tax cuts for the wealthy is good for the economy and will eventually generate enough revenue to balance the budget. These people believe that the US is correct to assert its power unilaterally whereever it determines it to be in the short term self interest.

It is clear to me that there are competing ideologies that lead to very different policies and those ideologies are not being scurtinized. On the one hand, we have Rush and Fox News and a cast of conservative think tanks and media praising supply side economics and American supremacism as the best thing since sliced bread. On the other hand, we have mainstream economists and diplomats that fail to understand that we have an administration with a truly radical worldview.

bakho posts:

"These people truly believe that tax cuts for the wealthy is good for the economy and will eventually generate enough revenue to balance the budget. These people believe that the US is correct to assert its power unilaterally wherever it determines it to be in the short term self interest."

You are conflating two rather different animals. Belief A appears to lend itself to theory and empirical observation. Supply-side either works or it doesn't in terms of producing equal levels of revenue.

Belief B, on the other hand, has a great deal of normative content. Granted, the levels of co-operative and unilateral behavior have effects on the level of co-operation one might expect in the future, but the value of said co-operation can be discounted based on what one perceives foreign self-interests and strength levels to be. So B basically boils down to something like "Do I actually care what a European thinks of our policies?"

I, for one, do not. I'm an unabashed unilateralist in favor of myself and, by extension, tend to favor the interests of my physical, economic and cultural home. Of what consequence is it to me if, say, French interests or (gasp) feelings are hurt as a result of US unilateralism, as long as I've already correctly discounted possible French reactions? As European self-interest in many cases dictates that Europe is likely to follow our lead anyway, and European weakness dictates that there is little they will do about the cases where our interests _don't_ coincide, I don't see what could be "incorrect" about unilateralism.

You may, again, take issue with whether European reactions are actually being discounted correctly or not (though current events suggest that the above analysis holds true more often than not), but the fundamental question you pose is a normative one. I don't care about European (or, for that matter, Asian, African, etc) interests as long as my own are being met, so unilateralism cannot, in that sense, be wrong.

Bernard Guerrero

bakho posts:

"These people truly believe that tax cuts for the wealthy is good for the economy and will eventually generate enough revenue to balance the budget. These people believe that the US is correct to assert its power unilaterally wherever it determines it to be in the short term self interest."

You are conflating two rather different animals. Belief A appears to lend itself to theory and empirical observation. Supply-side either works or it doesn't in terms of producing equal levels of revenue.

Belief B, on the other hand, has a great deal of normative content. Granted, the levels of co-operative and unilateral behavior have effects on the level of co-operation one might expect in the future, but the value of said co-operation can be discounted based on what one perceives foreign self-interests and strength levels to be. So B basically boils down to something like "Do I actually care what a European thinks of our policies?"

I, for one, do not. I'm an unabashed unilateralist in favor of myself and, by extension, tend to favor the interests of my physical, economic and cultural home. Of what consequence is it to me if, say, French interests or (gasp) feelings are hurt as a result of US unilateralism, as long as I've already correctly discounted possible French reactions? As European self-interest in many cases dictates that Europe is likely to follow our lead anyway, and European weakness dictates that there is little they will do about the cases where our interests _don't_ coincide, I don't see what could be "incorrect" about unilateralism.

You may, again, take issue with whether European reactions are actually being discounted correctly or not (though current events suggest that the above analysis holds true more often than not), but the fundamental question you pose is a normative one. I don't care about European (or, for that matter, Asian, African, etc) interests as long as my own are being met, so unilateralism cannot, in that sense, be wrong.

Bernard Guerrero

bakho posts:

"These people truly believe that tax cuts for the wealthy is good for the economy and will eventually generate enough revenue to balance the budget. These people believe that the US is correct to assert its power unilaterally wherever it determines it to be in the short term self interest."

You are conflating two rather different animals. Belief A appears to lend itself to theory and empirical observation. Supply-side either works or it doesn't in terms of producing equal levels of revenue.

Belief B, on the other hand, has a great deal of normative content. Granted, the levels of co-operative and unilateral behavior have effects on the level of co-operation one might expect in the future, but the value of said co-operation can be discounted based on what one perceives foreign self-interests and strength levels to be. So B basically boils down to something like "Do I actually care what a European thinks of our policies?"

I, for one, do not. I'm an unabashed unilateralist in favor of myself and, by extension, tend to favor the interests of my physical, economic and cultural home. Of what consequence is it to me if, say, French interests or (gasp) feelings are hurt as a result of US unilateralism, as long as I've already correctly discounted possible French reactions? As European self-interest in many cases dictates that Europe is likely to follow our lead anyway, and European weakness dictates that there is little they will do about the cases where our interests _don't_ coincide, I don't see what could be "incorrect" about unilateralism.

You may, again, take issue with whether European reactions are actually being discounted correctly or not (though current events suggest that the above analysis holds true more often than not), but the fundamental question you pose is a normative one. I don't care about European (or, for that matter, Asian, African, etc) interests as long as my own are being met, so unilateralism cannot, in that sense, be wrong.

Bernard Guerrero

bakho posts:

"These people truly believe that tax cuts for the wealthy is good for the economy and will eventually generate enough revenue to balance the budget. These people believe that the US is correct to assert its power unilaterally wherever it determines it to be in the short term self interest."

You are conflating two rather different animals. Belief A appears to lend itself to theory and empirical observation. Supply-side either works or it doesn't in terms of producing equal levels of revenue.

Belief B, on the other hand, has a great deal of normative content. Granted, the levels of co-operative and unilateral behavior have effects on the level of co-operation one might expect in the future, but the value of said co-operation can be discounted based on what one perceives foreign self-interests and strength levels to be. So B basically boils down to something like "Do I actually care what a European thinks of our policies?"

I, for one, do not. I'm an unabashed unilateralist in favor of myself and, by extension, tend to favor the interests of my physical, economic and cultural home. Of what consequence is it to me if, say, French interests or (gasp) feelings are hurt as a result of US unilateralism, as long as I've already correctly discounted possible French reactions? As European self-interest in many cases dictates that Europe is likely to follow our lead anyway, and European weakness dictates that there is little they will do about the cases where our interests _don't_ coincide, I don't see what could be "incorrect" about unilateralism.

You may, again, take issue with whether European reactions are actually being discounted correctly or not (though current events suggest that the above analysis holds true more often than not), but the fundamental question you pose is a normative one. I don't care about European (or, for that matter, Asian, African, etc) interests as long as my own are being met, so unilateralism cannot, in that sense, be wrong.

Bernard Guerrero