So, Anything Newsworthy Happen Today?
Oh, yeah, that:
Karl Rove, President Bush’s longtime political adviser, is resigning as White House deputy chief of staff effective Aug. 31, and returning to Texas, marking a turning point for the Bush presidency.
Mr. Rove’s departure removes one of the White House’s most polarizing figures, and perhaps signals the effective end of the lame duck administration’s role in shaping major domestic policy decisions, where the former Texas political consultant was a driving force.
Well, by now, there have been half a billion words written and spoken on this already, so I’ll briefly add my two cents. Rove’s role in Bush’s early electoral victories cannot be overstated, but his time has frankly passed. The idea of a the ‘permanent Republican majority’ is laughable now, and his contributions from here forward would be overshadowed by the controversy that surrounds him.
In other words, I’m not sorry to see him go (not much, anyway), but let’s not make the mistake made by his opponents when they tagged him the ‘evil genius’, the mistake of painting the man with too broad of a brush. His contributions were significant, his mistakes many, he made a huge impact, both good and bad, and now he shuffles off the public stage, at least for the moment.
In the end, he’s just a man, and his legacy should fairly count the good and the bad (and the good, in the long run, probably outweighs the bad, though it might not seem so at first blush with so much talk of the ‘failed presidency’ going around at the moment). History, as always, will be the judge…
I think that Karl Rove’s greatest effect will come ironically from being the catalyst which started the pendulum swinging leftward.
The cover editorial of this week’s Economist (“Is America Turning Left?”) notes its preference for the “‘western’ wing (of the GOP) rather than the moralistic ‘southern’ one that Mr Bush has come to typify. It is hard to imagine Ronald Reagan sponsoring a federal amendment banning gay marriage or limiting federal funding for stem-cell research.”
The editorial compares the overreach of social conservatives today with that of liberals in the 1960′s: “Forty years ago, (most Americans) turned against a leftish elite trying to boss them around; now the have had to endure a right wing version.”
Although it does not mention Rove by name, the Economist points to the kind of hard-edged politics using social issues as wedges as the impetus to start a multi-decade trend towards liberalism. Given how often history is ironic, it would be interesting to see if the thing which Rove was the cause of the thing he feared most.
Sorry, I posted too fast. That was a newspaper article (per Google) on President Reagan’s ban on IVF study funding. So, I think it possible, even likely, that the real President Reagan, not the revisionist version, would have banned stem cell funding.
I look forward to 20 years from now when people use President Bush as an example of someone that the current “evil” GOP president should be more like.
Well, it’s certainly possible that Reagan would have banned stem cell funding, but I’m not sure how likely it would be, especially considering how much has been learned about its potential between the time of Reagan’s Presidency and today.
Do you suppose Barry Goldwater would have opposed it?
One of the unintended consequences of Rove’s use of wedge issues was to drive a wedge between the get-government-off-our-backs conservatives and those who would use the government to pass legislation reflecting their moral beliefs. My guess is that a lot of these disaffected libertarian Republicans (for lack of a better phrase) will migrate to the Democratic side.
Libertarian Republicans will never side with the Democrats (not in large blocks anyway), the disagreement on fiscal issues is too wide and effects everyone; social issues affect only subgroups.
I dunno — I think Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin weren’t too far from traditional Republican economics — if Hillary is the nominee, my guess is that she will more or less reflect her husband’s pro-free trade, fiscally responsible views –
Which Goldwater? The 1964 or the 1980-1990 version?
Peter,
You’re right, of course – Senator Clinton would be “fine” for most of the more libertarian/suburban Republicans. In the short run, a combination of her on the left and Bush II on the right would certainly drive those kinds of voters to the Dems.
In the long run, though, Hillary can only go so far to the right and keep her own base, whereas the Republican party is basically free to try to win those voters back. In the really long run, the Republican party will need to abandon most of its social conservatism anyway.
Bob: I don’t know enough about Goldwater to know how his views changed from 1964 to later in his life — I always thought he was pretty consistent about a limited government which let the people make their own moral decisions.
TWL: Agreed — although I think Bill Clinton went pretty far to the right (for a Democrat, anyway) and kept his base.
You mean “It takes a village” Hillary? Health Care 2000 Hillary? I really don’t know how people will act, except for me, but suspect there are others who think as I do. Abortion rights, gay marriage, and the other “social conservative” causes are pretty meaningless to this libertarian republican because they have no impact on my life. Which is not to say I don’t care, just that they are much lower on the priority list than less intrusive and expansive government, and general government fiscal issues.
Now, if you want to talk about moderate Republicans then, yeah, I can see them voting for a moderate Democrat. Not sure how you put Hillary in that category but…
As far as embryonic stem cells go, in the College Republicans-College Democrats debate last fall, my team (the Republicans, of course) took a free market position on embryonic stem cells. They haven’t actually yielded any results yet (as far as I know), so why should the government be funding it?
Even if they have yielded results, is providing funds for medical research really something in which the government must be involved? If it isn’t, then a small-government/individualist Republican wouldn’t be in favor of it.
I could see Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan taking that position as well. It isn’t really an issue of personal freedom like abortion and gay marriage (arguably) are.
I haven’t researched Goldwater’s positions extensively, but I believe that Peter is right: he always supported maximizing individual freedom. It’s just that the issues that defined conservatives changed.
Also, I wouldn’t see why libertarian-leaning GOP voters would have sided with the Dems in 2006. They became socially conservative (either being pro-gun, anti-gay, and anti-abortion or just silent on one or all of those issues) and economic populists (supporting raising the minimum wage and opposing free trade). So, except for the gun issue libertarians would oppose most (but not all) of the Democrats on everything.
1) “They haven’t actually yielded any results yet (as far as I know), so why should the government be funding it?”
So the government should not have funded polio research until the cure was found?
2) “is providing funds for medical research really something in which the government must be involved?”
Must, no. Should, yes. There are certain things which the government is uniquely (and sometimes solely) capable of doing in the scale which these things require: medical research, putting a man on the moon, foreign aid, disaster relief. While some of these may be controversial, medical research is not among them: the overwhelming majority of Americans would favor tax dollars being used to fund medical research. In a democracy, that’s all you need.
“except for the gun issue libertarians would oppose most (but not all) of the Democrats on everything.”
I think there are other issues which reflect both libertarian and Democratic core values. Both camps seem to favor legalized euthanasia, or at least a much wider sphere of personal freedom in end-of-life issues. I think the spectacle of George Bush flying to Washington to sign the Terri Schiavo bill, or Bill Frist giving a diagnosis of a patient he never met, turned a lot of people off.
Ditto for medical marijuana. Also for sexual conduct issues: pornography, legalized prostitution, sodomy laws. Both camps favor letting the individual decide what he should have access to.
I think that eminent domain (the Kelo case) is another example of a consonance between Democratic and libertarian core values: both side with homeowners’ rights. (Although it’s not exactly clear who — besides five Supreme Court justices — is the constituency behind giving cities the power to evict homeowners to improve the town’s economic well-being).
Part of this reflects the confusion between what is liberalism and what is conservatism. Classical conservatism — the Barry Goldwater variety — favored getting the government off the backs of the people. I think it is fair to say that modern conservatives — or at least the Southern variety which the Economist refers to — favor their version of the nanny state. So things have switched, and perhaps using the word “liberal” as an epithet doesn’t mean quite what it is intended to mean.
This is precisely backwards.
The standard conservative/libertarian position is that the Government should fund basic research on topics that haven’t yielded practical results (because private Industry won’t). Conversely, once something has shown promise of practical benefits, it’s time for the Government to step aside and let Industry fund further research on that topic.
So, are you against funding all medical research? Should we disband the NIH?
If not, why do you single out stem cell research?
At least the SoCon argument about killing little babies had a little intellectual coherence. (Though not much. If they really think stem cell research is tantamount to mass murder, they should demand that it be banned, not merely deprived of funding.)
Jacques, Peter -
I view the embrionic stem cell funding ban as one of the prices of pluralistic society. Enough Americans are uncomfortable funding it that it became politically easier to not fund it. Frankly, I’m not sure that I feel negatively about that. If a politically substantial number of Americans don’t want to fund something – even if it’s just for “moral” reasons – well, it’s their country, too.
Peter, regarding President Clinton, yes, he moved pretty far to the right. For now, the best position the Republicans could take and stay viable would be to say, more or less, “we’ll hold the line” – meaning they won’t raise taxes, or restrict trade, etc, but they aren’t going to move any further. In the long run, they can run to the right of the Democrats on social security, and maybe tax policy, broadly constituted. Or, they can try to run a kind of semi-populist campaign to restrict trade and immigration, while also freeing up American business from over-regulation and -taxation. That might hold the traditional conservatives, and swing in some new votes – I have no idea what the numbers would look like. It’s never worked for Buchanan, but he’s never had the backing of the party, either.
That’s fair, I suppose. Though I wonder what your definition of “enough Americans” is.
Support for stem cell research enjoys pretty wide support in this country. It’s favoured by a nearly 2-1 margin.
I should point out that much higher percentages of Americans don’t believe in Evolution, which — if one were to apply similar reasoning to that case — would mean that the NSF should stop funding most Biology research.
The pluralism point is sort of a double-edged sword, I think. There are plenty of Americans who oppose a lot of things – capital punishment and war strike me as two big examples – but it’s crazy to withdraw federal funding from anything a significant portion of the public opposes. And it’s especially hard to argue that point, as Jacques points out, when support goes in the direction of more funding.
I think the correct pluralism argument here goes something like “give the money to NIH and let NIH decide how to distribute the funds”. The virtue of the American system (if there is one) is that decentralizing the distribution of money allows people who know what they’re doing to make the important decisions. President Bush’s stem cell decision impeded that process. (This is also why earmarks are bad, but that’s another issue.)
Of course, this has some implications that might be unpopular. I think the public generally opposes funding for abortions (I have no polling, so I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am), but abortion is legal whether we like it or not and so it is effectively a legitimate medical procedure and the people who usually make medical decisions (Medicaid, in this case) should probably be free to deal with that.
—
On the libertarians and Democrats issue, I think there is no reason to suspect that there’s any chance of a real alliance. If libertarians are going to vote Dem next year it’s because they’re fed up with Bush’s moralizing and incompetence and just abstracting from the issues altogether. There’s also the war to consider. But, whatever their reasons, they aren’t making a long-term decision to become part of the Democratic Party’s constituency.
Finally, I can’t overstate how much libertarians don’t matter. People who legitimately want less government in both the social and economic dimensions are virtually nonexistent. The group that is going to make the difference for the Democrats in 2008 is the same group that did it in 2006 and, for that matter, for Reagan in 1984: average Joes. Blue-collar folks who don’t like free trade or the war. The Democrats lurched to the right on “moral” issues to win in 2006 and they’ll do it again this year. They’ll also toss in universal health care, which the Republicans are committing political suicide by not endorsing at this point. There’s nothing at all libertarian about the current strength of the Democratic Party and we do ourselves no favors by pretending otherwise.
Jacques, Ryan,
My apologies, because this response will not satisfy you.
When I say “politically substantial,” I mean quite literally “enough to get the job done.” This is because I don’t want to draw hard-and-fast rules – I prefer to let the complexity play out, and live with the results. And, of course, you are right – in this case, majorities favor funding. The minority is fairly large, though, and also fairly loud. But drowning out even a loud group shouldn’t be too hard when you outnumber them two to one. More debate, more time, and you’ll probably get what you want – which will mean that in this case, at least, the price of pluralism was that you had to wait to get the funding you wanted.
Ryan, going further, I’m not sure I can agree with the technocratism of disallowing strings on, e.g., NIH funding. I of course recognize that elected officials are not in the best position to make scientific judgements, and that they would not direct funding as efficiently as could the NIH, but I do feel that there are concerns other than efficiency (that is, I would like government to pursue its ends as efficiently as possible – but you still need a method for deciding what those ends are). And, frankly, I’m not sure that the results of strings-free funding would be to all of our liking – it could be that voters get fed up with having no say in the spending of their money, and elect leaders who will cut funding entirely.
And, yes, I’m as cynical as anyone regarding Americans desire to control each other. “Libertarians,” even broadly defined, aren’t going to win anyone anything – even at their squishiest, they include, what, 20% of the population? That’s probably optimistic, actually. But if you take a look at who is advising the candidates on economic issues – or, hell, even what they themselves are saying in the debates – free trade isn’t going anywhere, and taxes aren’t going to go very much higher than they were under President Clinton. That is, from a libertarian standpoint, the Democrats aren’t going to make things much worse . . . and, on economic issues, things really aren’t that bad now.
“So the government should not have funded polio research until the cure was found?”
To be honest, I don’t know that much about the history of the development of the polio vaccine (not to quibble, but it is a vaccine, correct, not a cure?). So I ask, were there any promising results prior to the development of the cure? I imagine that there were, hence justifying further funding in accordance with my earlier assertions.
“The standard conservative/libertarian position is that the Government should fund basic research on topics that haven’t yielded practical results (because private Industry won’t). Conversely, once something has shown promise of practical benefits, it’s time for the Government to step aside and let Industry fund further research on that topic.”
That’s not the way it’s working. Plenty of people think that embryonic stem cell research holds promise, and are funding it privately. Generally speaking, if someone has reason to believe that something will work, then there are plenty of private interests with plenty of money who will subsidize research and do it much more efficiently than the government. About a year ago, 60 Minutes ran a story on this very issue.
“So, are you against funding all medical research? Should we disband the NIH?”
From the quote to which you refer with this, I was referring to a hypothetical individual who supports minimizing the government, not myself (at least not necessarily myself and, as can be gathered from paragraph 1 of post #11, I do support the federal funding for adult stem cell research, which has actually yielded results). In any case, such an individual would believe that the government should be in the business of doing what only the government can do. Is there someone who will fund embryonic stem cell research if the government does not? The answer to that question is obviously “yes”. If the government stopped funding AIDS research (in fact a much more easily understandable position than the cessation of funding stem cells as AIDs is a behaviorally-driven disease, unlike Alzheimer’s and Type 1 Diabetes) the private sector would most likely take it over.
Also, with regard to libertarianism (or any other kind of -ism, including conservatism). I will never understand why people hold such narrow issues as right to die, right to life, right to choose, et. al. in a place of greater importance — namely economics.
For instance someone who both believes in a free market and in legalizing marijuana ought to place greater emphasis on the market as it will benefit the most people, not just make a (relatively) small number of people happy.
Thus, I would hope that such an individual would be willing to vote for a pro-market, anti-weed candidate more readily than an anti-market pro-weed candidate.
Then why bring it up, if it’s not a position you actually believe in?
Do you seriously want to argue that you, Aaron, should be the arbiter of which avenues of research (embryonic stem cells vs adult stem cells vs whatever) hold scientific promise and should be funded? Thats. Just. Crazy.
The only rational approach is the one Ryan alluded to: allocate money to the funding agencies (in this case, to the NIH), and let the experts decide (through a process called scientific peer-review) how those funds should best be allocated among the approaches showing the most scientific merit.
Finally, let me emphasize a distinction that you seem hell-bent on eliding, though doing so makes it very hard to have a rational discussion on this sort of topic. Not every avenue of research, which has scientific promise, has the promise of practical commercial viability. Private industry cares only about the latter, which is why we have the Government fund the former.
“Then why bring it up, if it’s not a position you actually believe in?”
Because Peter was talking about what a libertarian would support.
“Do you seriously want to argue that you, Aaron, should be the arbiter of which avenues of research (embryonic stem cells vs adult stem cells vs whatever) hold scientific promise and should be funded?”
No. I think that SCIENTIFIC RESULTS should be the arbiter of what receives funding. It’s a fairly simple question and it doesn’t take an expert to answer it. Can you prove (with experimental results) that X might be able to accomplish something useful? If not, then come back when you have proof and we’ll talk about funds.
“Finally, let me emphasize a distinction that you seem hell-bent on eliding, though doing so makes it very hard to have a rational discussion on this sort of topic. Not every avenue of research, which has scientific promise, has the promise of practical commercial viability. Private industry cares only about the latter, which is why we have the Government fund the former.”
I thought we were talking about embryonic stem cell research. Are you suggesting that people would not pay to have Diabetes or Alzheimer’s cured? So I don’t see how I’m leaving out any distinction here.
Would you please provide me with an example of an area of science that ought to be publicly funded and yet has no promise of being commercially viable? I’m not denying that this exists. I just can’t think of any area to which this might apply. I can think of several areas that are commercially viable and several that aren’t because they’re completely useless.
“Would you please provide me with an example of an area of science that ought to be publicly funded and yet has no promise of being commercially viable?”
Putting a man on the moon? Exploring the other planets in the solar system?
Considering your statements about the relative merits of adult versus embryonic stem cell research, I don’t see why we should take your judgements about those “SCIENTIFIC RESULTS” seriously.
I think I’d rather trust the judgement of the scientists who actually know something about the subject (hence my preference for scientific peer-review to decide these matters).
The issue under discussion is who’s going to pay for those experiments in the first place.
You’re kidding, right?
Lessee:
All of Astronomy
All of Particle Physics (my field)
Most of contemporary Nuclear Physics
Large swaths of contemporary Condensed Matter Physics
All of Zoology (well, maybe excepting some Entomology)
Most of Botany
Paleontology
Almost all of contemporary Mathematics
.
.
.
I could go on, but what would be the point?
Do you think the NSF should be disbanded along with the NIH?
I said something that ought to be funded if it is not commercially viable.
Why should the government be funding something that is of no practical value to anyone?
1. To advance human knowledge?
2. Because without the reservoir of knowledge that basic research provides, applied research (i.e., the stuff that is of practical value) will wither?
3. Because no one can anticipate when some piece of basic scientific research might turn out to have practical applications after all?
4. Because no one else will fund it?
Some examples:
Superconductivity was discovered in 1911. It took over half a century before the first practical superconducting device (the SQUID) was invented. And that required a number of important developments (both theoretical and experimental) before anyone could even conceive of the possiblity of constructing such a device.
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance was discovered by my old professor, Ed Purcell, in 1946. It took over 30 years, before this led to the development of the MRI Scanner.
These are just off the top of my head.
I’m sure we could make quite a game of finding examples of the longest delay between some “completely useless” bit of scientific research and the discovery of a practical application.
But the real answer, in my opinion, is 1 and 4. If I have to explain why I think that, then I doubt there’s any chance you will appreciate my answer.
“Because no one else will fund it?”
Did Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Vanderbilt, and Rice Universities (to name a few) all just disappear last night without me hearing about it?
>Did Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Vanderbilt, and Rice Universities (to name a few) all just disappear last night without me hearing about it?
I hate to tell you, son, but Universities will give a professor an office and (if he’s an experimentalist), lab space. But they don’t fund his research. That’s why professors spend so much time writing grant proposals.
Did you honestly think your tuition dollars went towards buying lab equipment for your professors’ research?
Heck, your tuition dollars don’t even pay for the lab space. (Universities take ~50% off the top of every research grant for “overhead.”)
Well, I didn’t think that my tuition dollars as an undergrad went to lab equipment for professors to do research, since the professors at my college don’t do research; they are there exclusively to teach. Granted, my tuition dollars did most likely go to master’s candidates to conduct their research.
I knew that the big-name schools with phd programs and professors who primarily or exclusively conduct research had considerably higher tuition than my own institution, and — since my alma mater has been consistently named as the best undergrad engineering program in the country every year for almost a decade — they must be doing something with all that extra cash other than simply improving their educational quality.
But then I’ve only seen the student side of universities firsthand, so I wouldn’t know.
BTW, why do you feel the need to be so rude and condescending?