More Obama Thoughts
I've maintained, as an Obama supporter, that I disagreed with his policy ideas on ideological grounds, but that I liked the man himself. If I'm going to have to listen to someone I disagree with for four years, I would prefer to listen to someone who is eloquent and has a pleasant voice. Given that my objections to Obama were no stronger than my objections to McCain, my decision was obvious.
That position has eroded somewhat over time, and an article I discovered last night went a long way towards demolishing the rest of it.
The article is titled 'Obamanomics', and I'm inexcusably late in finding it -- it's almost two months old. (That's a NYT link, which means it will ask you to register, but I recommend www.bugmenot.com as an alternative to giving the NYT your personal information.)
Some key quotes that struck me (all from page 3 of the article):
Compared with many other Democrats, Obama simply is more comfortable with the apparent successes of laissez-faire economics.
From the beginning, Obama has sought out academic economists, rather than lawyers or former White House aides. His first economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, is a young University of Chicago professor who shares Obama’s market-oriented Democratic views.
On global warming and carbon permits:The alternative was to auction off the permits - to let the market set their value. 'If you don’t auction 100 percent of the permits,' Goolsbee told me, 'this could be one of the biggest pieces of corporate welfare ever.' With Congress making the decisions, the power companies with the best political connections might get the permits. With a full auction, the permits would end up with companies willing to make the highest bids.
That last quote is the very first time I've ever heard of a Democrat acknowledging the central problem with government intervention in the economy: that it leads to a market in political influence rather than a market in financial value. The picture this article paints is of a results-oriented candidate, who is comfortable looking for solutions independent of ideological constraints.'The market is the best mechanism ever invented for efficiently allocating resources to maximize production,' Obama told me. 'And I also think that there is a connection between the freedom of the marketplace and freedom more generally.'
That's the clearest and most concise defense of markets that any politician has made since Ronald Reagan. That's libertarian economic thought in a nutshell. But it's pragmatic libertarian thought; he continues:'There are certain things the market doesn't automatically do.' In other words, free-market policy isn’t likely to dominate his agenda; his project would be fixing the market.
All of this is well and good, but the clincher for me was an aside in a quote intended to illustrate another point:James Heckman, a Nobel laureate who critiqued the campaign’s education plan at Goolsbee’s request, said, 'I’ve never worked with a campaign that was more interested in what the research shows.' (emphasis mine).
Think about that for a moment. Not only does Obama surround himself with experts to help develop his ideas into workable form; not only does Obama trust his experts to know their fields and do their jobs well; but the campaign as a whole recognizes the danger of institutional groupthink and takes steps to actively combat it.
If you haven't managed a team that handles contentious issues, this may not resound with you as strongly as it does with me. From my experience, groupthink is the single most dangerous problem an efficient team faces. It's easy to fall into the trap of believing that since everyone on the team is smart, and everyone on the team is in agreement, the team's decisions must be correct. To actually recognize that weakness and seek outside critiques in an effort to keep your internal teams honest... well, let's just say that it's rare even in a profit-driven, results-oriented business environment. It's unheard of in a political campaign.
What I realized is that when Obama talks numbers in his speeches and in the debates, those numbers are not pulled out of his ass. They aren't invented for the most effective possible sound bite. They're real numbers, developed by a team of very smart people, vetted by independent smart people, and reflect his actual policy proposals as opposed to empty campaign promises.
This is a candidate who's developing serious policy plans before the election. This is a candidate who takes governance seriously, as opposed to one who takes politics seriously.
That I find this as thrilling as I do is a tragic comment on our typical political process.
That position has eroded somewhat over time, and an article I discovered last night went a long way towards demolishing the rest of it.
The article is titled 'Obamanomics', and I'm inexcusably late in finding it -- it's almost two months old. (That's a NYT link, which means it will ask you to register, but I recommend www.bugmenot.com as an alternative to giving the NYT your personal information.)
Some key quotes that struck me (all from page 3 of the article):
Compared with many other Democrats, Obama simply is more comfortable with the apparent successes of laissez-faire economics.
From the beginning, Obama has sought out academic economists, rather than lawyers or former White House aides. His first economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, is a young University of Chicago professor who shares Obama’s market-oriented Democratic views.
On global warming and carbon permits:The alternative was to auction off the permits - to let the market set their value. 'If you don’t auction 100 percent of the permits,' Goolsbee told me, 'this could be one of the biggest pieces of corporate welfare ever.' With Congress making the decisions, the power companies with the best political connections might get the permits. With a full auction, the permits would end up with companies willing to make the highest bids.
That last quote is the very first time I've ever heard of a Democrat acknowledging the central problem with government intervention in the economy: that it leads to a market in political influence rather than a market in financial value. The picture this article paints is of a results-oriented candidate, who is comfortable looking for solutions independent of ideological constraints.'The market is the best mechanism ever invented for efficiently allocating resources to maximize production,' Obama told me. 'And I also think that there is a connection between the freedom of the marketplace and freedom more generally.'
That's the clearest and most concise defense of markets that any politician has made since Ronald Reagan. That's libertarian economic thought in a nutshell. But it's pragmatic libertarian thought; he continues:'There are certain things the market doesn't automatically do.' In other words, free-market policy isn’t likely to dominate his agenda; his project would be fixing the market.
All of this is well and good, but the clincher for me was an aside in a quote intended to illustrate another point:James Heckman, a Nobel laureate who critiqued the campaign’s education plan at Goolsbee’s request, said, 'I’ve never worked with a campaign that was more interested in what the research shows.' (emphasis mine).
Think about that for a moment. Not only does Obama surround himself with experts to help develop his ideas into workable form; not only does Obama trust his experts to know their fields and do their jobs well; but the campaign as a whole recognizes the danger of institutional groupthink and takes steps to actively combat it.
If you haven't managed a team that handles contentious issues, this may not resound with you as strongly as it does with me. From my experience, groupthink is the single most dangerous problem an efficient team faces. It's easy to fall into the trap of believing that since everyone on the team is smart, and everyone on the team is in agreement, the team's decisions must be correct. To actually recognize that weakness and seek outside critiques in an effort to keep your internal teams honest... well, let's just say that it's rare even in a profit-driven, results-oriented business environment. It's unheard of in a political campaign.
What I realized is that when Obama talks numbers in his speeches and in the debates, those numbers are not pulled out of his ass. They aren't invented for the most effective possible sound bite. They're real numbers, developed by a team of very smart people, vetted by independent smart people, and reflect his actual policy proposals as opposed to empty campaign promises.
This is a candidate who's developing serious policy plans before the election. This is a candidate who takes governance seriously, as opposed to one who takes politics seriously.
That I find this as thrilling as I do is a tragic comment on our typical political process.