We’re All Missing The Debate
I wrote this Saturday morning (before I even knew there was a Dem debate last night). Then decided that while it does contrast the conflict between campaigns & policy it really wasn’t what I wanted for this week’s column. And while it’s also not “GAPol” we will from time to time dabble in bigger picture campaign themes here and there will be days where talking about the Presidential contest will be unavoidable. Bottom line: It’s a holiday and this was already written so consider this a bonus post. – CBH
I didn’t watch the GOP presidential debate last week. I arrived home just in time to see it, only to find that the cable that has been delivering broadband to my home for the last three years had decided it wanted to be replaced. Instead, I got a good night’s sleep.
As a result, I got to “see” the debate as most Americans do – through the reactions of social media and from the candidates themselves as they play offense or defense in successive news cycles. As best I can tell, the future of our country now depends on whether a someone born in Canada of Cuban ancestry can determine if people from New York are worthy for their values to be called American.
And before my Democratic friends jump on board and point and laugh – please let me know when your team plans on scheduling an actual debate when people are likely to watch. It’s obvious they’re shooting for a coronation. I at least applaud your chosen one for finally letting journalists out of the makeshift rope pen used in one of her early, barely scripted, spontaneous public appearances.
Modern campaigns are no longer a preview of governance or policy. They are a competitor.
Campaigns are highly scripted and overly consulted exercises in marketing. Campaigns, especially those in primaries, are increasingly designed not to enlighten voters on issues and positions, but obfuscate them. It is much easier to convince a potential voter that a certain candidate occupies a moral high ground than it is to educate a skeptical public on how tough choices will be made.
Tough choices evoke the reality that not everyone will get what they want along the way to solving problems. It’s easier to just change the subject to something the public can be convinced is crucial, but in reality is the equivalent of having them choose between their favorite flavor of vanilla.
If this Presidential campaign were about issues, we probably would be asking different questions of our candidates. I’ll list a few.
Oil has dropped below $30 per barrel. While this will show some short-term consumer benefits, the long-term consequence is that low cost foreign suppliers will decimate US domestic oil industry and block investment in alternative energy technology. What does each candidate feel is an appropriate national energy strategy to keep US consumers’ energy dollars at home creating domestic jobs? Or does the candidate prefer allowing a hands off “free market/free trade” approach that may likely result in soon returning to a dependence on foreign oil – and the often adversarial countries that supply it?
While China has been criticized for “currency manipulation”, China has made itself an integral part of the US manufacturing supply chain and is one of the largest purchasers of US debt. China appears on the verge of economic turmoil and is an environmental nightmare. If the US wasn’t dependent on China to finance our budget deficits the US would be in a prime position to demand policies to improve human rights, better environmental responsibility, and respect for U.S. intellectual property laws. How specifically does each candidate see the US-China relationship in his/her administration and what points of leverage – specifically balancing our national budget – can be expected to be used?
Part of the anger displayed from both parties has been from those who believe the middle class is disappearing as a rapidly changing economy and employment structure has made the concept of a 30-year bargain for work and then a comfortable retirement a quaint memory of yesteryear. How would your administration restore the American dream where anyone can seize opportunity to work, prosper, and retire in relative economic security? And how does this plan balance with America’s role in an increasingly globalized economy where America is a high-wage, high-cost producer?
To be fair, some candidates have tried to address these and other substantive issues more than others. It would take the commitment of both members of the media and the voting public to demand the specifics required to compare and contrast candidates on these issues.
Math, as they say, is hard. Foreign policy and economic nuance are even harder. And it’s a lot easier to debate by saying “my guy is good and your gal is bad”.
In keeping of the spirit that this is a space dedicated to “Georgia” politics, let’s add an important local corollary. The Georgia General Assembly is now in session, and this is an election year. We have 35 days left to govern, as most legislators in Atlanta are working hard to do. Others realize that the primaries are 4 months away. Or that the 2018 race will begin publicly soon.
Some in Atlanta are trying to govern. Others are asserting moral high ground in search of an ever-important leg up on their next political race. Never forget that multiple agendas are always in play with any proposed piece of legislation.
In campaigns and governing, we have a lot of surface level discussion about the intentions of our founding fathers. One thing they certainly intended but seems missing: They intended those that exercised their right to vote to work to be informed citizens and demand informed debate. And they intended us to be as concerned about actual policies than just the observing the sport of a competitive campaign.
That seems to be a lost American value. In New York and everywhere else.
Charlie Harper is the Executive Director of PolicyBEST, a public policy think tank focused on issues of Business & Economic Development, Education, Science & Medicine, and Transportation. He’s also the publisher of GeorgiaPol.com, a website dedicated to State & Local politics of Georgia.
About Author
Charlie
Founder of GeorgiaPol.com; Now weekly columnist Very interested in Georgia and Georginas. Interest in politics is waning daily.
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China:
China is growing their economy based on assisting their people in stealing the property, property rights, intellectual properties and patents around the world and the U.S. In particular.
A recent Forbes article was about their latest $20 billionaire that had the biggest IPO on the NYSE, Jack Ma, Alibaba and the 40,000 thieves.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelschuman/2015/11/04/alibaba-and-the-40000-thieves/#2715e4857a0b23fedab00b89
Last night 60 minutes did a story on the Chinese government with a large section engaged in corporate espionage stealing proprietary information costing the US thousands of jobs and hundreds of billions. When caught red handed they shook hands with Obama promised to stop and shifted the task to another department.
The idea of a President sympathetic to helping foreign countries, we can afford it or don’t want to hurt our sales to China, pales to the real concern, that China is on the threshold of having an agent in the White House. The Clintons and their foundation have been in Chinas pocket for more than a decade. Google that one. Watching them is like watching a gang take over a neighborhood. Will the FBI declare her activities, nothing to see here, move on ?
Tariffs and sanctions are in order. But who wants to blow that whistle, for sure no one in Savannah or Brunswick. We can’t legalize this mess like marijuana.
I guess the finer point on the above that I’m trying to make is this: If we would actually focus on a real plan to balance the budget and contain/amortize the national debt, we would have leverage against a China that has its economic back against the wall. We don’t have to keep their manufactured goods out, so much as stop the IP theft, get them to step up to the plate on environmental and human rights issues, etc.
We’re missing a great opportunity to gain this leverage.
That would require a cultural change, an agreement that the Feds cannot manage 300 million points of light or a tax system requiring legions in a game of manipulation. A basic change in what we perceive as the role of the Federal government.
The answer to the trend to social democracy is not Federalism (the founders were dealing with 3 million folks and debated that) but that ten million in Georgia can cooperate in a league of United States. For example, we must have basic national agreements in education but why financial connections?
We need a national transportation plan, but local street car funding ?
We need a middle class that outgrows the billionaire and poverty groups, individual initiatives not mega-mergers for less competition and special interest taxation. Private but mandated health care. We need the Federal debt to shrink by redefining the Fed roles and taxation that is not a social game for lawyers, CPAs, lobbyists and legislators. Everyone with skin in the game, flat taxes, specific fees and tariffs.
That would require visionary leaders…..oops.
Quick response.
Modern political campaigns are long, expensive exercises in marketing that impede rather than enhance governance and policy-making. So? Politics has been dealing with marketing and new media at least since Kennedy/Nixon debates and now with unlimited money, big data apps directed at the electorate, social media platforms to be exploited, the process continues to accelerate.
Oil prices are always in a boom-bust cycle. I don’t know what the US could do to get the price up around $50. Tell the Saudis to put cut production or we’ll pull our air bases? Put tariffs on imported oil? Issue credits for domestic production or usage? None sounds viable politically or economically.
China is stumbling as they deal with the aftermath of cranking their economy to an superheated level. We’ll keep selling them food and machinery and electronics, all the while educating their kids and maybe co-opting some of their hackers. Their pollution isn’t our problem but we’ll be glad to sell them all the scrubbers and electric cars they want while they work it out.
The disappearing middle-class is like the weather in that everyone talks about it but nothing much gets done. People can’t even agree what constitutes the MC as witness the Hope scholarship crisis. The donks will talk about job-training and incentivizing investment, the gop will talk about easing business regs and taxes, but either way, income increases never seem to follow increases in worker productivity. I say keep educating kids and keep money available for retraining workers. Here in Georgia, doesn’t Deal have some kind of program to train people to work in the film industry that originally came here for the tax breaks? Crank that up and see that production companies hire locally.
Joe Kennedy took it to a higher level but before that we had this from Adlai Stevenson upon his 2nd loss to Eisenhower:
“The men who run the Eisenhower Administration evidently believe that the minds of Americans can be manipulated by shows, slogans and the arts of advertising. This idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal — that you can gather votes like box tops — is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator David Perdue (R-GA), a member of the Senate Budget Committee, released the following statement after the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a summary of The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2016 to 2026, which projects more debt and less growth over the next decade:
“Yesterday’s CBO projections should be a wake-up call for Washington. This is another reminder that our country’s debt crisis is well past the tipping point. Last month, interest rates increased a quarter of a point, which can cause our interest payments to spike by almost $50 billion.
“With nearly $19 trillion in debt and over $100 trillion in future unfunded liabilities, each American family is responsible for nearly $1 million of this debt. Even more concerning, if interest rates were to rise to the 50-year average of 5.5 percent, the interest on the debt would amount to over $1 trillion annually, more than twice what is currently spent on national defense.
“We can fix our national debt crisis and the broken budget process, but Washington’s business as usual mindset must stop now. It is time for politicians to stop putting political interests above national interests and finally adopt four words American families say all the time: we cannot afford it.”
Agree….but not likely without a crisis of biblical proportion….meanwhile China just agreed to pay GE $5.4 billion for their appliance business which the FTC will probably quickly approve…..some time back read a story on their desire to go global on appliances…….too complex for me beyond tax revenue we will get slicked out of….lots of data chips….. 🙂