My colleague Ben Lieberman’s thoughtful op-ed in The Washington Times focuses on voters’ rejection of environmental alarmism about the Gulf oil spill. It appears that voters discounted the exaggerated claims of Gulf devastation and were more concerned instead about the moratorium on offshore drilling and its devastating effect on jobs. With a faltering economy, voters didn’t appreciate the Administration’s job-killing over-reaction.
As Lieberman said:
“For a while, it was fashionable to ridicule those who had chanted “Drill, baby, drill” during the 2008 race. Opponents of domestic drilling thought they had a defining issue heading into the midterms.
“Now the “Drill, baby, drill” crowd is back – and they’ll be returning to Washington with quite a few new allies.
“Ironically, it was not the spill itself but Mr. Obama‘s overreaction to it in the form of a job-killing moratorium on offshore drilling that really angered voters in Louisiana and other impacted states. The only reason the Obamatorium didn’t hurt Democratic candidates along the Gulf was that they were just as vocal as Republicans in their opposition to it.”
And he has some words of caution for policymakers who would try to ram through energy-restrictive policies:
So what does all of this tell us about voters? For one thing, it shows that they are getting wise to environmentalist alarmism and exaggeration. Just as the drumbeat of doom-and-gloom predictions about global warming didn’t generate public support for “cap-and-trade,” neither did overblown claims of oil-spill-induced ecological devastation create a backlash against offshore drilling. And given the still-struggling economy and stubbornly high unemployment, the electorate is not going to accept costly solutions to overstated threats.
With a fiercely partisan election less than a month away, the concluding paragraph of Ludwig von Mises’ Liberalism is a refreshing rejection of party politics. Mises, of course, uses liberalism in the original sense of the word:
No sect and no political party has believed that it could afford to forgo advancing its cause by appealing to men’s senses. Rhetorical bombast, music and song resound, banners wave, flowers and colors serve as symbols, and the leaders seek to attach their followers to their own person. Liberalism has nothing to do with all this. It has no party flower and no party color, no party song and no party idols, no symbols and no slogans. It has the substance and the arguments. These must lead it to victory.
-Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradtion, p. 151.
Many people think change is in the air. Voters are angry. And they want to throw the bums out. That’s the dominant narrative this election cycle. But at least during primary season, that narrative is fitting poorly with actual election results. Politico reports:
Six incumbents have lost this season: Sens. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) and Bob Bennett (R-Utah) and Reps. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.), Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-Mich.) and Parker Griffith (R-Ala.). Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, pointed out in Arena that factoring for those losses translated into a 98.3 percent win rate for incumbents so far in 2010.
That 98.3 percent win rate will drop on Election Day. But probably not by much. Not even if one or both chambers switch parties. In 2008, incumbents running for re-election had a 94.9 percent success rate. In 2006, when Congress changed parties, the re-election rate was still right around 94 percent. The last time re-election rates went as low as 90 percent was in 1992 — nearly two decades ago.
The sad truth is that incumbents are safe. It doesn’t matter that Congress’ approval ratings are in the low teens. Voters just aren’t going to throw out very many bums. Voters may despise Congress as an institution, but most people have positive opinions of their own representative.
That’s why the average tenure in the House is more than 14 years, or seven terms. And most turnover isn’t from losing elections. It’s from retirement, or running for other office, or death; for many, politics is literally a lifelong career.
So expect a lot of familiar faces to be sworn in when the 112th Congress convenes in January, even if power changes hands.
Though I will, of course, be very happy if events prove me wrong.
The first half of Fall 2009 was a busy season in European politics.
On September 27, the general elections took place in Germany. The results were pretty optimistic–conservatives won the elections and kept the top spot, socialists lost and left the coalition, while liberals became a new member of a ruling coalition. The same weekend, elections took place in Portugal. The results were less optimistic, as the socialists stayed in power and will probably form a coalition with the Left Bloc, another socialist political party. And on October 4, Greece elected a new socialist government.
In the first weekend of October, Ireland voted for the second time on the referendum concerning the ratification of the Lisbon treaty, which would further concentrate political and economic power in Brussels. This time Irish citizens approved ratification, which now makes Czech President Václav Klaus the lone holdout. With the Lisbon treaty close to being ratified, things are heating up on the EU political stage. The treaty would create two significant vacancies for the top body of the European Commission. And even though the treaty is not yet ratified, there are already huge debates among the EU countries about the candidates for these two posts. But for these two positions–that are supposed to be the most important ones for the EU–European citizens are not expected to be asked for their opinions or suggestions. Now it will all be decided for them…
A new NBER working paper by Andrew Gelman, Nate Silver, and Aaron Edlin finds that “On average, a voter in America had a 1 in 60 million chance of being decisive in the [2008] presidential election.”
Live in a swing state like Virginia? 1 in 10 million.
Facing an economic downturn and an election, politicians of both parties sought to stimulate consumer demand—and some business investment—through political action. They promised that if the early 2008 “Stimulus Package” didn’t succeed, there would be “more to come.”
It didn’t work, and a stimulus is now the number one Obama priority. His “Big Bang” agenda has to wait its turn.
As in recent stimulus campaigns—for example, during the first terms of presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush—almost all today’s politicians accept the legitimacy of government stimulus and rarely ponder the future economic harm such intervention may cause.
Genuine stimulus would entail liberalization of the economy from excessive interventions, regulations, and spending, and from political inflation of the money supply. It would maintain the conditions—legal order, minimal regulations and stable institutions—within which wealth can be created. It would recognize that governments do not themselves create wealth.
“Say’s Law” (as I discussed in the report Still Stimulating Like It’s 1999) holds that supply creates its own demand. A relative overproduction of certain goods may occur, implying that too many scarce inputs have gone into the production of unwanted items relative to inputs for desired goods. But general overproduction to which demand stimulus would (presumably) provide relief is not the core economic problem confronting societies. The leading pre-requisite for economic well being—along with negligible political interference—is low tolerance for special-interest pleadings that transfer resources. This means no political maintenance of wages or prices at above market levels, and a rejection of government-granted monopolistic abuses. It means no “Bailouts to Nowhere” and no “Bailouts on Wheels.”
[click to continue…]
The presidential campaign of a certain U.S. senator has just expanded the bounds of the political advertising universe with in-game ads inside popular EA gaming titles.
Racing towards hope? The ads can be seen in nine popular titles, including “Madden NFL 09,” “Need For Speed: Carbon,” “Burnout Paradise.” I’m assuming this is the first time the campaign has intentionally associated itself with that last phrase.
For U.S. senator Barack Obama, that means being the first presidential candidate to buy ad space inside a video game.
According to the Associated Press, Obama’s mug can now be seen in nine different EA games connected to the internet, including Madden NFL 09 and Burnout Paradise, in an effort to appeal to the hard-to-reach 18 to 34 year-old male demographic.
“What we’re trying to do is offer ads in games where we’re simulating a real-world environment, so our racing games, our sports games lend themselves to that,” EA spokeswoman Holly Rockwood told the AP on Tuesday. “That’s very appealing to our advertisers.”
We don’t know how much money EA is making off of this deal, but it certainly seems likely to expand in the future.
RSS Updates 
RSS E-Mail Updates 
Twitter 
Facebook 
CEI.org 
WorkPlaceChoice.org 
GlobalWarming.org 
CEI On Demand Video 
Liberty Week Podcast 