Beware the Sabato slant

Probably we've all seen Larry Sabato on TV during election season. The UVA political scientist is usually portrayed as an unbiased analyst, concerned mainly with the facts, especially statistics, and with political predictions. Well, in this world there is no such thing as "unbiased". In Larry's case, his writings reveal him to be a liberal through and through. The excerpts below from a recent essay of his illustrate this. (The entire text of his essay is linked here.)

Now Larry Sabato is a halfway reasonable guy, as liberals go. It isn't so much his political orientation that I object to, except in the sense that he's old enough to know better. What I object to mainly is the pretense that he's unbiased. That's also what I loathe and despise about most of the media, that they lie not only in the pictures they paint of the world, but even in what they themselves are all about.

Regarding the substance of Sabato's comments:

It is laughable to describe today's GOP as being "fiercely right-wing" and "harsh" in its conservativism. In fact, in the past dozen or so years the party has degenerated into confusion, so that today it doesn't know what it stands for. Conservatives, feeling betrayed, are among the harshest critics of this GOP, and many have advocated forming a third party. For a respected polical analyst to state the opposite of the clear facts is jaw-dropping.

Sabato says it is surprising that a conservative politician would advocate civil unions (as opposed to the oxymoronic "gay marriage") for homosexuals. Apparently whenever a conservative doesn't fit his mental model of "harsh", it is surprising to him.

My advice to liberals: When your preconceived model conflicts with the observed data, stop trying to change the data. It's your fundamental model that's wrong, so you should change it to match the data. However, if liberals did this, they would cease to be liberals.

Also, the stance he describes is not "moderate". As used today, a "moderate" is someone who doesn't know what he believes, and whose highest value is just to cave in to the lunatics and all get along.

Regarding the last point below, I asked David Yepsin whether the conventional wisdom was correct about Romney's Mormonism hurting him in Iowa. Yepsin replied that it both helped and hurt Romney among Iowa Republicans, and as far as he could tell the net effect was a wash. At least in Iowa, Yepsin clearly knows more about this than Sabato does. Sabato was just speculating from a liberal perspective, as if his mental model of the world were as good as actually knowing the facts.

Presidency 2012: The Invisible Primary BeginsA Commentary By Larry J. Sabato Friday, May 08, 2009

We at the Crystal Ball must beg your forgiveness. With fewer than 1,300 days left until the next general election for President, we have failed to offer a single analysis of this historic upcoming battle. With humility, and hoping for mercy, we submit this first update on 2012.

(snip)

Two moderate-conservative Republicans who are fresh faces could give the GOP more of a fighting chance in 2012. Two-term Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota has found a way to win in a Democratic state without abandoning most traditional conservative positions. He is also in his 40s, with a blue collar background, possessing a pleasant demeanor and a sense of humor. (Having been on John McCain's short list for running-mate, he joked to this analyst after Palin was selected that he was "just one chromosome away from the vice presidency.") Whether Pawlenty intends to run for President is uncertain, and he has to decide about offering for a third term as Governor in 2010--always a risk in a Blue state. Will Republicans even accept a less harsh version of conservatism that isn't located in the Sunbelt?

An intriguing dark horse candidate is two-term Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. A proponent of gay civil unions and some other surprisingly moderate stances despite hailing from one of the nation's three or four most conservative states, Huntsman is openly testing the waters, and arguing that Republicans are headed for a long spell in the wilderness without a major ideological facelift. Wealthy and smooth in his public appearances, Huntsman makes a vital point, but undoubtedly he will strain the patience and tolerance of a fiercely right-wing party. His tiny base--Utah has but five electoral votes--doesn't help, and his Mormonism possibly will be a detrimental factor with many fundamentalist Christians, just as for Romney. (snip)

Larry J. Sabato is the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Another one bites the dust

It's just a shame that a song by that title was actually more popular than Tuesday’s announcement from Senator Arlen Specter. This man just recently proclaimed he would not switch parties because it would upset the balance of power. A couple of years ago he got up in front of the Senate to announce he would sponsor a bill that would not allow Senators to switch parties during their term. So what does all this mean? Here are a few thoughts:

Once again another politician disappoints and outright lies to the public; One more reason not to trust them.

Our GOP has shown it has another member who can’t be trusted to do what he promises. All of us know without his support, the all-important 787 Billion “Economic Recovery” bill would not have been possible, and the world would be a different place today.

Let us be honest, Specter did this purely to save his own career. He most likely would have lost in the Republican primary and this was his only choice if he wanted to stay in the Senate.

Is this good or bad for the GOP?

I think it all depends on your point of view. If you are a tried and true Republican, you think they do no wrong and you will support them at all cost…..well then you probably are deeply distressed.

I happen to think it is both. If the party truly digs deep, atones for its sins, and finally stands up for itself, there is a great opportunity. What do I mean by “stands up for itself?” Well, it seems that every time the Democrats call us on the carpet about something, we just sit back and take it. We do not loudly defend our positions or even go after them when we do not like their policies. They play dirty politics, and folks, it is not our style. Sometimes you just cannot beat them if you do not have a straightforward and rational policy. It is rather obvious we need to get back to our roots, listen to Americans, stand up for what we believe, make some promises and LIVE by them. A message that is TRUE and really CONNECTS with America would be a good start.

Now for the BAD, or maybe the good. I fear if we do not get our act together quickly, our party will disintegrate. The history of political change is violent and quick. If you don’t believe me, read up on the transition from the Whigs to the Republican party before the Civil War. Or, how about how fast the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. It could happen if we are not careful. If we don’t clearly shape our positions, folks, I think it could happen before the next election in 2012.

Here is what I’d like to see us concentrate on:

** A Clear, Strong and Real Energy Policy that actually recognizes we need oil before we switch to another energy source. How about let’s go for a “Manhattan Project” to solve this problem.

** How about some REAL financial sanity.

** How about something to force our legislators to really live up to their promises. How about they have to sign a “warranty” that they actually read the bills they vote for.

** I’d go for a real and enforceable “None of the Above” on the ballot. If NOTA gets more votes, then both parties candidates are out and we have another election. Maybe they would actually do what they say!!!!

** And how about we change Election Day to April 15th. Nothing like having to vote on tax day!!! Maybe WE will actually think about what is really going on in Washington.

Bottom line: Time is running short for our party.

I do not want to see us go down into the junk heap of history as a failed experiment. I hope we can get our act together. If not we may be have to vote for the Democrats or the Common Sense party. It is important we speak to our leaders and plead with them for sanity and Common Sense.

Multiple taxes support grasping government

"In political arithmetic, two and two do not always make four.'' Alexander Hamilton quoted this old maxim in the Federalist Papers in his discussion of the need for taxes to support the government being proposed by the Federal Convention of 1787. Hamilton contended that a tax on consumption was adequate for all practical purposes which also had the virtue of being almost self regulating in that citizens reduce their spending, and therefore government revenues, if the tax is too high. Of course, Hamilton never heard of what in recent years has been called "supply-side economics," which is based on the idea that high income tax rates are also self defeating. But his reasoning and President Ronald Reagan’s were exactly the same.

Unfortunately, this political wisdom is disregarded in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., as rapacious governments there not only are raising tax rates in pursuit of ever-elusive revenues but are addicted to taxes on almost every conceivable object. I submit that both these tendencies are evidence of incompetence or knavery or both.

Liberal Democrat politicians (and their Republican enablers like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger), when they propose tax increases and new taxes to make up the government’s revenue shortage, are acting on the assumption that these measures will actually produce more revenue. But they ignore the depressing effect which their high tax and spending policies have already had on domestic consumption and especially business enterprise.

The best evidence of this effect is the startling discovery, only a month after legislative leaders and the governor agreed to a hodge podge of spending cuts, tax increases and borrowing to cover the $40 billion shortfall, that they were short an additional $8 billion. Now the voters are being offered a six-part package May 17 that includes a two-year extension of the sales and income tax rate increases.

Until control of the government changes to a new, more fiscally conservative political party, we are not likely to see anything but a series of stopgap measures featuring a lot of posturing by political leaders but no permanent solution to the "revenue problem."

In truth, revenue is not the problem; unrestrained spending is. As long as that is the bad habit of those who make our laws and administer the government, there will never—repeat, never–be enough money to support the government. Not only does raising taxes not work but the existence of so many taxes on so many items is evidence that the government’s appetite for revenue is insatiable.

From time to time friends email me lists of the number and variety of taxes which our governments impose these days. They include taxes on income (individuals and corporations), sales, property, fuel, estates and inheritances, liquor, cigarettes, luxuries, telephones, highway usage and much, much more.

Our governments have gone far beyond constitutional limitations. The federal government was authorized to provide for the common defense and to promote the general welfare, which consisted in maintaining armed forces, regulating trade, collecting taxes and enforcing its own laws. State governments had broader powers, but even those originally did not include providing cradle-to-grave security or even public schools.

California government spends upwards of $100 billion each year, and the federal government spends $3 trillion–with no end in sight in either case. No taxes will ever be enough when there is, in principle, no limit to the number and variety of objects on which that money can be spent.

When Americans trade their labor or supply a product in return for money, they are enterprising. When governments increase taxes, they are greedy. Are you as tired as I am of hearing government spokesmen say that people who make lots of money in the marketplace are greedy but that those who tax us heavily are compassionate?

It is not surprising that improvident or unsuccessful individuals and corporations are encouraged to seek bailouts, for that is what our governments do whenever they commandeer more and more of our money. Too often taxes are not intended to defray the costs of legitimate functions but to bail out governments that can’t control their fiscal appetites.

On Wednesday, all across America, citizens are holding TEA (Taxed Enough Already) parties to protest out-of-control taxing and spending by our state and federal governments. You will probably not learn about this in our major media, but then the apologists for the king of England were not interested in the colonists’ complaints either

Public outrage is building, as it ought to, and we will be fortunate if it overturns the modern Leviathan and restores constitutional government to our country.

It’s not too soon to judge Obama

It’s been just over two months since Barack Obama became President, and his popularity is beginning to slip. Those who so strongly backed the Illinois senator say it’s too soon to be critical while those who did not, believe that enough evidence is in to vindicate their negative appraisal. Above everything else, Obama wanted to be regarded as a "transformative" leader, symbolically and substantively. He spoke often last year of the need to rise above petty politics, the old conflicts, stale arguments, etc., beyond cynicism even, in the direction of a bipartisan and perhaps post-partisan politics that solves problems and makes sound investments in our nation’s future.

It is a mistake to credit the supposedly new attitude when the fact is that there are serious differences of opinion about how to deal with our domestic and international problems. The fact that Obama and other Democrats now control the executive and legislative branches may give them the votes to pass any bills and institute any policies they like, but does not prove that they should prevail. After all, Obama led many to believe that congressional Republicans would be consulted as changes were made.

Obama’s claim that he was rising above partisanship was merely a ploy to deflect attention from the seriousness of the partisan differences and to neutralize opposition, if not stigmatize it. Sure, "politics ain’t beanbag," but that bit of political wisdom is as much an indictment of Obama and his pretentious claims of nonpartisanship as it is of those who are surprised that Obama is a partisan after all.

As to the substance of Obama’s policies, there is no doubt that he is as opposed to constitutionalism, free markets and American exceptionalism as his election-year commitment to "transforming" America implied that he was. Naive people who either dismissed or fell for political rhetoric did not think about what transformation was really about. But the clues to that ambitious objective were in plain sight for those who paid attention.

Seeking to outdo even Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Obama means to replace the markets that have been the source of our nation’s prosperity with government controls in every area in which he can make some sort of plausible case. Yet the credit crisis was brought on not by markets out of control but by the biggest lenders of them all, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, indulging into an orgy of bad loans and underwriting the efforts of private lenders in the process.

Yet Obama insists that our problems are due to corporate greed while facilitating continued borrowing by millions of unqualified home buyers, thereby ensuring more greed. That bogus claim underlay the audacious "stimulus package" of $780 billion that is way out of proportion to the problem and irrelevant to its solution. As White House aide Rahm Emmanuel said, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, so this administration has taken full advantage of the opportunity to waste money on a multiple trillion dollar scale for years.

And because both the price of oil and our dependence on foreign sources have risen so much in recent years, Obama proposes that we shift to subsidized alternatives such as solar, wind and geothermal that have yet to prove themselves as efficient and cheap as oil and natural gas, while ignoring nuclear power and preventing off-shore and continental drilling that would have supplied our needs long ago.

Similarly, Obama’s otherwise well-founded concern about the declining state of public education unfortunately leads him to call for vast expenditures of money and bigger salaries without regard to results. Education is too bureaucratic and union-dominated to deliver the goods, particularly when Obama proposes that everyone be educated until the first year of college.

And the biggest jewel in the Obama crown is government health care which, like energy and education, has already been made too expensive by government funding. When consumers are not responsible for the costs of the services sought, they have no incentive to control costs. Medicare and other government health programs have driven up costs because consumers have delegated their expenses to a third party.

We don’t have to wait for the full implementation of costly "reforms" to know that we made a mistake in electing Barack Obama. Like our founding fathers, we don’t have to wait until we are taxed of all our earnings or deprived of all our liberties to revolt. Like them, we can see this coming and take the necessary steps to avoid or reverse it. Fortunately, we still have free elections in which to make that choice.

News reporting not enough

These are the times that try journalists' souls, to paraphrase Thomas Paine, as newspapers try mightily to survive in an exponentially expanding electronic world. Radio and television were once thought to be the death of newspapers, and now the Internet, with its multiple applications and formats, is greatly feared. This is no phantom. Many afternoon dailies bit the dust in the 1950s when news was broadcast to our television sets at dinner time. Now even morning newspapers are disappearing while the Internet thrives. Kathleen Parker, the sometime conservative columnist with the neat turn of phrase and low tolerance for all lacking that gift, whatever their politics, blames critics of media bias while singing the praises of the underappreciated news reporting function as the foundation of our free republic.

Let's sort out of the salient observations from the nonsense here. There is no denying that years of so-called media bashing have had their effect. Millions of Americans now understand that the major media regularly skewer conservative Republicans and favor liberal Democrats under the guise of "objective news coverage." That means nothing more than utilizing the format of the standard inverted-pyramid news story to engage in selective reporting and quoting. It is an easy task for bright journalists to hide their partisanship while "giving the facts."

Unless the journalist is a god, his point of view will color his accounts, although there is still plenty of room for full and fair summary and explanation. Otherwise, every newspaper editorial or op-ed, and articles in opinion journals, have to be written off as hopelessly biased, which is absurd. Every article should be judged on it merits, regardless of format.

When Thomas Jefferson was President of the United States, he received letters from an aspiring Virginia journalist who asked him his opinion of what standards should govern newspapers. Jefferson wrote a lengthy reply, including a scathing indictment of the press. His most succinct and telling advice was to restrict the newspaper to "true facts and sound principles only." Not only a commitment to factual accuracy but to the principles of a free government were necessary, Jefferson emphasized.

For critics of media critics like Kathleen Parker, the main thing is factual accuracy with sound principles as only an afterthought. She rightly cherishes a free press as necessary to preserving our form of government, but she apparently has given little thought to what principles should govern that press beyond news reporting. As one of those pundits whom she obviously chooses not to deride, she performs the equally important, if not more important, function of contributing argumentation to the nation's deliberations on public policy.

But that is only half the matter. Commitment to factual accuracy is more than a good habit. It arises from minds devoted to finding the truth and doing what is right. Bad reporting, as Walter Lippmann wrote long ago, is akin to false testimony in a courtroom which, if done with knowledge, is perjury. Only a citizenry habituated to some semblance of moral and intellectual virtue practices, and honors, factual accuracy.

But Lippmann wrongly believed that factual accuracy in the media and the government would suffice to refine public opinion and improve public policy, at least he said so early in his career. Doubtless this man who became the premier "pundit" for half a century in this country appreciated the importance of informed commentary as well.

Someone once said that "Figures don't lie but liars can figure." He could have been referring to news reporters. The mere inclusion of multiple facts in a newspaper article is no guarantee of its accuracy, much less its contribution to public deliberation. By the same token, the proliferation of punditry on the Internet is hardly cause for alarm. However much we may cherish newspapers, many trees have to die to maintain that production. The press does not exhaust all media possibilities, and neither does news reporting.

There is much to admire in the news reporter's habit of presenting both sides of an argument, but there are difficulties. For one thing, understanding a point of view requires more than just the ability to gather facts. It means suspending judgment until one has fully understood the position under review. This is even more difficult (though not impossible) if you think the point of view is wrong. Add to this the space or time limitations of all media (not to mention many people's short attention spans), and justice may not be done.

What too often emerges is an oversimplified, truncated, almost child-like version of what someone is saying that effectively trivializes what should be understood as part of a serious debate over public policy.

Fortunately for sports fans, sports sections are often the healthiest in the newspaper, fueled by intense reader interest and largely unambiguous subject matter (somebody wins, somebody loses). But imagine ball games being reported as if they were political. "The Angels defeated the A's today, as umpires permitted more runs by Los Angeles." Or: "The Lakers scored more points than the Rockets last night as the referees maintained the tradition, questioned by some, of restricting the playing time to 48 minutes."

Sure, politics are controversial, but our fundamental political principles and our Constitution provide a standard and impose limits. Sports are also controversial, but true sportsmen would not permit changing the rules to accommodate their desires. In both cases, we must know what is right as well as what is a true fact.