“The Ignorance Caucus”: Republicans Are Unable To Apply Critical Thinking And Evidence To Policy Questions
Last week Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, gave what his office told us would be a major policy speech. And we should be grateful for the heads-up about the speech’s majorness. Otherwise, a read of the speech might have suggested that he was offering nothing more than a meager, warmed-over selection of stale ideas.
To be sure, Mr. Cantor tried to sound interested in serious policy discussion. But he didn’t succeed — and that was no accident. For these days his party dislikes the whole idea of applying critical thinking and evidence to policy questions. And no, that’s not a caricature: Last year the Texas G.O.P. explicitly condemned efforts to teach “critical thinking skills,” because, it said, such efforts “have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
And such is the influence of what we might call the ignorance caucus that even when giving a speech intended to demonstrate his openness to new ideas, Mr. Cantor felt obliged to give that caucus a shout-out, calling for a complete end to federal funding of social science research. Because it’s surely a waste of money seeking to understand the society we’re trying to change.
Want other examples of the ignorance caucus at work? Start with health care, an area in which Mr. Cantor tried not to sound anti-intellectual; he lavished praise on medical research just before attacking federal support for social science. (By the way, how much money are we talking about? Well, the entire National Science Foundation budget for social and economic sciences amounts to a whopping 0.01 percent of the budget deficit.)
But Mr. Cantor’s support for medical research is curiously limited. He’s all for developing new treatments, but he and his colleagues have adamantly opposed “comparative effectiveness research,” which seeks to determine how well such treatments work.
What they fear, of course, is that the people running Medicare and other government programs might use the results of such research to determine what they’re willing to pay for. Instead, they want to turn Medicare into a voucher system and let individuals make decisions about treatment. But even if you think that’s a good idea (it isn’t), how are individuals supposed to make good medical choices if we ensure that they have no idea what health benefits, if any, to expect from their choices?
Still, the desire to perpetuate ignorance on matters medical is nothing compared with the desire to kill climate research, where Mr. Cantor’s colleagues — particularly, as it happens, in his home state of Virginia — have engaged in furious witch hunts against scientists who find evidence they don’t like. True, the state has finally agreed to study the growing risk of coastal flooding; Norfolk is among the American cities most vulnerable to climate change. But Republicans in the State Legislature have specifically prohibited the use of the words “sea-level rise.”
And there are many other examples, like the way House Republicans tried to suppress a Congressional Research Service report casting doubt on claims about the magical growth effects of tax cuts for the wealthy.
Do actions like this have important effects? Well, consider the agonized discussions of gun policy that followed the Newtown massacre. It would be helpful to these discussions if we had a good grasp of the facts about firearms and violence. But we don’t, because back in the 1990s conservative politicians, acting on behalf of the National Rifle Association, bullied federal agencies into ceasing just about all research into the issue. Willful ignorance matters.
O.K., at this point the conventions of punditry call for saying something to demonstrate my evenhandedness, something along the lines of “Democrats do it too.” But while Democrats, being human, often read evidence selectively and choose to believe things that make them comfortable, there really isn’t anything equivalent to Republicans’ active hostility to collecting evidence in the first place.
The truth is that America’s partisan divide runs much deeper than even pessimists are usually willing to admit; the parties aren’t just divided on values and policy views, they’re divided over epistemology. One side believes, at least in principle, in letting its policy views be shaped by facts; the other believes in suppressing the facts if they contradict its fixed beliefs.
In her parting shot on leaving the State Department, Hillary Clinton said of her Republican critics, “They just will not live in an evidence-based world.” She was referring specifically to the Benghazi controversy, but her point applies much more generally. And for all the talk of reforming and reinventing the G.O.P., the ignorance caucus retains a firm grip on the party’s heart and mind.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, February 10, 2013
“Marco Rubio Is Thirsty”: Forget About The Dry Mouth, The Real Problem Was What He Said
It’s not his fault, really. Maybe it was understandable nervousness—after all, here he was just a few days after being anointed “The Republican Savior” in a Time magazine cover, following the president, but without an applauding crowd to feed off. Or maybe it was that the room was hot and dry. Whatever the cause, after trying to wipe the sweat from his brow and face for 12 long minutes and repeatedly moving his tongue around his mouth to get some moisture going, Marco Rubio decided he just had no choice but to bend down and grab that tantalizing little bottle of water that lay just out of reach.
So don’t blame him for that, even though he’ll no doubt get plenty of mockery for it today. You can blame him, however, for the insipid speech he delivered, a combination of calumny and cliché that demonstrated just why Republicans are having such problems appealing to voters. Let’s start with this:
Presidents in both parties – from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan – have known that our free enterprise economy is the source of our middle class prosperity.
But President Obama? He believes it’s the cause of our problems. That the economic downturn happened because our government didn’t tax enough, spend enough, and control enough. And, therefore, as you heard tonight, his solution to virtually every problem we face is for Washington to tax more, borrow more and spend more.
OK, so that’s not what the President said in his speech, and hearing from a Republican that Barack Obama hates free enterprise ceased to surprise a long time ago. And though Obama has certainly placed part of the blame for the economic downturn on insufficient government oversight of capital markets, the idea that he ever once blamed it on insufficient spending and taxation is obviously, plainly, absurdly false, a lie by any definition of the term. But that doesn’t surprise, either. What is remarkable is that just a few paragraphs after falsely attacking the president’s motives, Rubio says this: “There are valid reasons to be concerned about the president’s plan to grow our government. But any time anyone opposes the president’s agenda, he and his allies usually respond by falsely attacking their motives.”
Come to think of it, that mixture of dishonesty and self-pity may be just what Republican primary voters are looking for in 2016. And one thing they may also be looking for is the assurance that not only are we God’s favorite country, but life everywhere else is an unending nightmare of opportunities denied and dreams dashed. If so, Rubio is ready to oblige:
This dream – of a better life for their children – it’s the hope of parents everywhere. Politicians here and throughout the world have long promised that more government can make those dreams come true.
But we Americans have always known better. From our earliest days, we embraced economic liberty instead. And because we did, America remains one of the few places on earth where dreams like these even have a chance.
Really? America is one of the few places on earth where people can dream of a better life for their children? Oh, please. The truth is that economic mobility in America is lower than in many similar countries (the result of a decades-long trend, and not Barack Obama’s fault, for what it’s worth). The “only in America” canard is a longtime pet peeve of mine, so I have to ask: why is it necessary to extol our country’s virtues by claiming that those virtues are ours alone? Why is it so hard to say that we value hard work and opportunity, and so do many other societies?
Maybe Marco Rubio is the Republican savior. Lots of politicians have given one crappy speech and then gone on to great things, most notably Bill Clinton, whose speech nominating Michael Dukakis at the 1988 Democratic convention was panned for being both dull and ponderously long. Before you know it, this one will be little more than the source of the occasional chuckle, and Rubio will rise or fall based on what he does in a hundred other settings. But it just goes to show that with a few rare exceptions (like this one), delivering the opposition’s response to the State of the Union is likely to do your career more harm than good. If Rubio thought he’d be the one to buck that history, he didn’t get much more for his trouble than a dry mouth.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, February 13, 2013
“We Deserve A Vote”: Americans Stand With President Obama’s Gun Control Pleas
On Tuesday, President Obama delivered his fourth State of the Union address (his 2009 speech was technically not a State of the Union). He followed the traditional path of laying out his vision with a laundry list of policy ideas and priorities. As he suggested, all are needed to create more jobs, encourage more economic growth, and to keep America safe, while protecting its values of fairness and equal opportunity.
It was not until he called upon Congress to take up new proposals to curb gun violence that he became emotional and animated. It was a stark contrast to his address in 2009, delivered shortly after the tragedy in Tuscon, Ariz., when he failed to mention any need for gun control at all.
Recent Quinnipiac University polling shows the majority of Americans are more supportive of a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons (56 percent to 39 percent) and more supportive of a nationwide ban on the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines (56 percent to 40 percent) than members of Congress, and overwhelmingly support the president’s position to require background checks for all gun buyers (92 percent to 7 percent).
In having the confidence of knowing where the American people stand and with Gabby Giffords in the audience, along with many other victims of gun violence, the president said, “This time is different.” In a cadence often reserved for the pulpit, he called out the names of those individuals and communities who have suffered tragic losses and repeated the simple refrain, “They deserve a vote.”
It was a powerful moment in the speech, one that brought scores of lawmakers to their feet in thunderous applause, and one that the president can now use effectively to continue to build the necessary political support to pass common sense gun control measures.
By: Penny Lee, U. S. News and World Report, Debate Club, February 13, 2013
“The Audacity Of Freedom”: President Obama Decisively Changes The Direction Of Our Politics
President Obama is a freer man than he has been at any point in his presidency. He is free from the need to save an economy close to collapse, from illusions that Republicans in Congress would work with him readily, from the threat of a rising tea party movement and from the need to win reelection.
This sense of freedom gave his State of the Union address an energy, an ease and a specificity that were lacking in earlier speeches written with an eye toward immediate political needs. It was his most Democratic State of the Union, unapologetic in channeling the love Bill Clinton and Lyndon Johnson had for placing long lists of initiatives on the nation’s agenda. Obama sees his second term not as a time of consolidation but as an occasion for decisively changing the direction of our politics.
Here was an Obama unafraid to lay out a compelling argument for the urgency of acting on global warming. He was undaunted in challenging the obsession with the federal budget — and in scolding Congress for going from “one manufactured crisis to the next.” By insisting that “we can’t just cut our way to prosperity” and that “deficit reduction alone is not an economic plan,” he brought to mind the great liberal economist John Maynard Keynes. He sought to add another big achievement to near universal health-care coverage, announcing a new goal of making “high-quality preschool available to every single child in America.”
And Obama made clear his determination to shift the center of gravity in the nation’s political conversation away from anti-government conservatism, offering a vision that is the antithesis of the supply-side economics that has dominated conservative thought since the Reagan era.
If supply-siders claim that prosperity depends upon showering financial benefits on wealthy “job creators” at the economy’s commanding heights, Obama argued that economic well-being emanates from the middle and bottom, with help from a government that “works on behalf of the many, and not just the few.”
The “true engine of America’s economic growth,” he said, is a “rising, thriving middle class.” He continued: “It is our unfinished task to restore the basic bargain that built this country, the idea that if you work hard and meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead, no matter where you come from, no matter what you look like or who you love.” With that last phrase, he linked gay rights to an older liberalism’s devotion to class solidarity and racial equality.
An Obama no longer worried about reelection was the worst nightmare of conservatives who feared he would veer far to the left if given the chance. In the GOP’s response, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) conjured that liberal bogeyman, declaring that the president’s “solution to virtually every problem we face is for Washington to tax more, borrow more and spend more.”
But Rubio’s rhetoric felt stale, disconnected from the Obama who spoke before him. Obama did speak for liberalism, yes, but it is a tempered liberalism. His preschool proposal, after all, is modeled in part on the success of a program in Oklahoma, one of the nation’s reddest states. Most of the president’s initiatives involve modest new spending and many, including his infrastructure and manufacturing plans, are built on partnerships with private industry.
Even the president’s welcomed call to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour and to index it to inflation was cautious by his own standards. In 2008, Obama had urged a $9.50 minimum wage, and it rightly ought to be set at $10 or above.
Moreover, the president’s words were carefully calibrated to the issue in question. On immigration reform — in deference to cross-party work in which Rubio himself is engaged — Obama kept the rhetorical temperature low, praising “bipartisan groups in both chambers.” But he invoked all of his rhetorical skills on the matter of gun safety, a more complex legislative sell. His gospel-preacher’s variations on the phrase “they deserve a vote” will long echo in the House chamber.
No, the liberated Obama is not some new, leftist tribune. He’s the moderately progressive Obama who started running for president before there was a financial crisis or a tea party. In his 2006 book “The Audacity of Hope,” he proposed to end polarization by organizing a “broad majority of Americans” who would be “re-engaged in the project of national renewal” and would “see their own self-interest as inextricably linked to the interests of others.” On Tuesday night, creating this majority was what he still had in mind.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 13, 2013
“The Weighty Issue Of The Day”: Irresolution Of The Schizophrenia Of Fat People
So it turns out Chris Christie is fat.
If, somehow, that fact had escaped you before, surely it came slamming home last week after he appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman. There was the 50-year-old governor of New Jersey jokingly snacking on a doughnut as the talk-show host — who has taken a jab or two at Christie’s weight — gently asked him about his girth. The bit was in keeping with how Christie usually deals with weight-related humor. He seems to feel the best defense is a good fat joke.
The laughter curdled the following day, however, as Dr. Connie Mariano, a former White House physician, told CNN that Christie is a “time bomb” who, if elected, might die in office. Christie exploded, calling her “completely irresponsible,” and a “hack,” and told her to “shut up” about his health. After that, Christie reportedly spoke to her by phone and, presumably, told her what he really thinks about her. All of which has ignited a national debate that has raged from the couch on The View to the op-ed page of The New York Times.
And here, several things need to be said.
The first: Christie says what really bothered him is that one of his young children heard the doctor say his dad might die and came to ask if that was true. Even granting that Christie’s response was over the top, is there anyone who cannot empathize with the fatherly anguish that caused it?
The second: Does anyone really believe Christie does not already know he is overweight? Or that he is not already aware that this carries serious health risks?
The third: When has the hectoring of friends ever convinced an obese person to make a serious and lasting commitment to weight loss? Does it not more often trigger resentment than resolve? So how much less effective is national hectoring likely to be?
The fourth: There is something disingenuous in framing this as a question of Christie’s medical fitness for the presidency. The present holder of that office is a recovering nicotine addict and surely the lethality of tobacco is at least as great as that of fat, if not more so. Yet, in 2008, when the nation was debating his fitness for office, the fact that Barack Obama was a smoker rated barely a mention.
What is on display here, then, is neither noble concern for Christie’s health, nor high-minded rumination over what constitutes physical fitness for the presidency, but, rather, irresolution, the schizophrenia of a fat people, hooked in equal measures on fried chicken and Nikes, supersize drinks and fad diets. It is a blithe duality that makes it possible for a morning show to do a cooking segment filled with butter and cheese one moment and then in the next, with barely a twinge of irony, pivot to a segment on how to choose the best exercise equipment.
The problem with Christie is that he makes the irresolution manifest. His corpulence registers differently than does that of a Kirstie Alley or an Al Roker. On a celebrity, it is seen as human drama in which we have a rooting interest. Christie doesn’t get that pass, because he isn’t a celebrity — he is a politician, a leader, and maybe, a future president.
And the tone of this conversation, the high profile of this conversation — indeed, the very fact of this conversation — seems to suggest that in such a person, fat is almost a betrayal. If elected president, after all, Christie would be the living representative of all of us. One suspects that fact gives many people pause.
Because if Christie does, in fact, represent us, irresolution becomes more difficult, duality more threadbare, and the guy who says his pants shrunk in the wash must find a new excuse.
So don’t hate him because he’s bountiful. The governor is a mirror, reflecting truths we decline to accept. Some people seem to think that, once declined, a truth thereby goes away.
Fat chance.
By: Leonard Pitts Jr., The National Memo, February 13, 2013
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