David Boaz

What a long way we’ve come since David Kirby and I first started writing about the libertarian vote in 2006. Back then liberal blogger Matt Yglesias neatly summarized the conventional political wisdom: the libertarian vote is “zero percent,” “a rounding error in the scheme of things.” Why would anyone care what libertarians think? And National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru suggested that Republicans would actually lose votes by appealing to libertarians. In our new ebook, The Libertarian Vote: Swing Voters, Tea Parties, and the Fiscally Conservative, Socially Liberal Center, Kirby, Emily Ekins, and I bring together our studies and other writings on libertarian voters, along with some spiffy new graphics. (That's the Amazon link; for multiple formats, go here.) Today, libertarians are an increasingly influential and accepted part of the political mix. Ron Paul went deep into the 2012 Republican presidential primary, drawing crowds of thousands of young people and 2.1 million votes; and his son Sen. Rand Paul is being joined by other libertarian-leaning members of both houses of Congress. Tea partiers have strong libertarian roots, as Kirby and Emily Ekins discuss in two articles in this ebook. The “Audit the Fed” bill passed the U.S. House 327 to 98; all but one Republican and 89 Democrats voted yes. In academia, social scientist Jonathan Haidt teamed up with scholars at UCLA, USC, and NYU to conduct the largest study ever on “libertarian psychology.” Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch write about a “libertarian moment” in their book Declaration of Independents. The latest Governance Survey from Gallup, earlier visions of which are cited throughout the book, finds 25 percent of respondents gave libertarian responses to two questions (“government is trying to do too many things” and “government should promote traditional values”), up from 17 percent in 2004, 21 percent in 2006, and 23 percent in 2008 and 2010. Analysts from GOPAC to Nate Silver at the New York Times have tried to measure the libertarian – or “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” – constituency. Read all about it in The Libertarian Vote. Those who doubt the relevance of the libertarian vote might consult the last commentary in the book, “The Real Swing Voters,” which finds evidence in an August 2012 ABC-Washington Post poll that the truly independent voters still up for grabs lean strongly libertarian.

Buried inside a Washington Post feature on "America's worst candidate" is this revealing look on politics as it is played:

Tennessee Democrats, who’d watched their conservative voters drift to the GOP, finally lost the state House in 2010. That had been a financial lifeline for Democrats, since the legislature has broad powers over patronage. “That pretty much was the end,” said [Will T. Cheek, a Nashville investor who has been a member of the state Democratic Party’s executive committee since 1970]. “Because we have nothing left. In the other low points, we had the Election Commission, we had the Building Commission. .?.?. If you wanted to get state deposits into your bank, those were all ours. And that’s where you’d raise your money.” Losing those powers “really kicked the props out from under the financing of the party,” Cheek said.

If the season's got you thinking cynically about politics and politicians, TCM has the movies for you. It's running a series all this month called "American Politics on Film." You've missed classics like "A Face in the Crowd," but there's still time to catch "All the King's Men" this Thursday night, about a Southern reformer who becomes corrupted by power, and "All the President's Men" on Friday night, about an ambitious Westerner who was probably corrupt long before he got power. Also on Friday night: "Advise and Consent" and "Seven Days in May," made from the great political novels of the 50s and 60s. Whatever happened to great political novels, anyway? For movies about freedom, click here.

George McGovern, longtime senator and the Democratic nominee for president in 1972, has died at the age of 90. I recall a friend at Vanderbilt University telling me, "The night McGovern was nominated, the Republicans and the hippies partied together." Nixon won in a landslide, of course, as McGovern was accused of supporting "acid, amnesty, and abortion." Not to mention opposing the Vietnam War. Someone -- maybe Art Buchwald -- said it was McGovern's fault that Nixon was reelected, because if he had run unopposed he would have lost. Over at Reason, Jesse Walker and Nick Gillespie offer libertarian appreciations of McGovern. Quoting Bill Kauffman, Walker reminds us:

In the home stretch of the '72 campaign, McGovern was groping toward truths that exist far beyond the cattle pens of Left and Right. "Government has become so vast and impersonal that its interests diverge more and more from the interests of ordinary citizens," he said two days before the election. "For a generation and more, the government has sought to meet our needs by multiplying its bureaucracy. Washington has taken too much in taxes from Main Street, and Main Street has received too little in return. It is not necessary to centralize power in order to solve our problems." Charging that Nixon "uncritically clings to bloated bureaucracies, both civilian and military," McGovern promised to "decentralize our system."

Would that have happened, especially under a president elected by a party heavily populated and directed by the people who run those bureaucracies? Probably not. But it would be nice to try it one of these days. And the Wall Street Journal reminds us of what McGovern learned after he left the Senate and tried running a small business. If you're not a Journal subscriber, Google "George McGovern in the Journal" or "A Politician's Dream Is a Businessman's Nightmare," and you can probably find the article. But here's a taste:

But my business associates and I also lived with federal, state and local rules that were all passed with the objective of helping employees, protecting the environment, raising tax dollars for schools, protecting our customers from fire hazards, etc. While I never have doubted the worthiness of any of these goals, the concept that most often eludes legislators is: "Can we make consumers pay the higher prices for the increased operating costs that accompany public regulation and government reporting requirements with reams of red tape." It is a simple concern that is nonetheless often ignored by legislators.... In short, "one-size-fits-all" rules for business ignore the reality of the marketplace. And setting thresholds for regulatory guidelines at artificial levels -- e.g., 50 employees or more, $500,000 in sales -- takes no account of other realities, such as profit margins, labor intensive vs. capital intensive businesses, and local market economics.

 

The movement for smaller government must really be doing well, considering all the attacks it has generated of late. Journalists decry “austerity” and “slashed” government spending from Athens to Albany. President Obama seems to think he’s running against people who wish that (as he put it) “everybody had their own fire service.”

That's how my book review in the November 2012 issue of Reason begins. I take a look at two new books from impressive authors making the case for big government: To Promote the General Welfare: The Case for Big Government, edited by Steven Conn with a lot of distinguished professors, and Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent, by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. The professors tell a tale of a “Dickensian America” languishing in “semi-barbarism” (seriously) until the federal government took responsibility for dragging us out of the swamps and into civilized life. And Dionne frets that we are falling back into an era of “free-market fundamentalism” and a “radical form of individualism that … denigrates the role of government.” So what's my response? Read the review. But here's a precis:

The case for big government should be cross-examined by looking at costs as well as benefits, risks as well as achievements, what is not seen along with what is seen, and the repeated horrors that have stemmed from leaving state power unconstrained.

Back in 2003 psychiatrist-turned-columnist Charles Krauthammer "discovered" a new psychiatric syndrome:

Bush Derangement Syndrome: the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- nay -- the very existence of George W. Bush.

I myself identified -- but sadly, never in print -- Bush Derangement Syndrome-II, the onset of unfounded enthusiasm for George W. Bush in people who otherwise supported smaller government. BDS-II manifested itself most publicly on February 8, 2008, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, when after seven disastrous years of overspending, federal intrusion, entitlement expansion, civil liberties abuses, and foundering wars -- and indeed the day after Bush's Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 passed Congress -- President Bush spoke at CPAC, and the assembled conservatives greeted him with chants of "Four More Years!" Really? Four more years of that? And of course I hardly have to mention Obama Derangement Syndrome, which found many people convinced that Barack Obama was a Kenyan, a Muslim, the son of Malcolm X, or some other wild fantasy. Now, even before the current election, while Mitt Romney remains a 64-36 underdog on Intrade, I'm seeing the first signs of Romney Derangement Syndrome. Take this item on NPR this morning:

A woman in the audience named Mary Ann ... says she's not impressed by Governor Romney's claim that he recruited women to serve in his Cabinet in Massachusetts. "Yes, he hired women, and I'm thinking to myself yeah, because he could get them at a lower rate. That's the only reason Mitt Romney hired women."

He hired women to serve in the state Cabinet, where I'm sure the salaries are set by law. And he wasn't all that frugal with taxpayers' dollars anyway. And yet Mary Ann just can't imagine that Romney would hire women for top positions -- positions that would play an important role in his success as governor -- unless "he could get them at a lower rate." Romney Derangement Syndrome. You read it here first.

Tomorrow, Robert L. Bradley Jr. will discuss "Give Me Regulation: From Samuel Insull to James E. Rogers in the Electric Power Industry" at a Cato Policy Forum. The talk draws upon Bradley's most recent book, Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies, the second volume in his trilogy on political capitalism in the energy industry. Maybe he should call it, "From Samuel Insull [who organized Commonwealth Edison back around 1900] to Al Gore." The Washington Post reports today that former vice president Gore's "clean energy" companies have received $2.5 billion in taxpayers' money from the Obama administration. Which is perhaps not unrelated to the fact that "[j]ust before leaving public office in 2001, Gore reported assets of less than $2 million; today, his wealth is estimated at $100 million." I suppose it could be worse---Gore's companies didn't get all the $90 billion that the Obama administration doled out to uneconomic energy firms. Attend the forum or watch it online at noon Friday.

Many Republicans believed after the 2004 election that 11 ballot measures to ban gay marriage brought conservative voters to the polls and helped to increase President Bush's vote over 2000. There's good reason to doubt the 2004 story, notably the fact that the increase in Bush's share of the vote rose just slightly less in the marriage-ban states than in the other states. But now there's new evidence that this isn't going to be a winning issue for Republicans. The Washington Post reports:

In February, a poll by the [Des Moines Register] newspaper found that 56 percent of Iowans were opposed to legislative efforts to pass a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. That is consistent with other swing states: Voters back gay marriage by 21 points in Florida, 15 points in Ohio and nine in Virginia, new Washington Post polls found.

Read that again: "Voters back gay marriage by 21 points in Florida, 15 points in Ohio and nine in Virginia." The poll also found that nationally 63 percent of the tiny number of genuine swing voters support gay marriage. No wonder Romney isn't talking about it. Another Post article gave more details on the swing-state polls:

In Florida, 54 percent of voters think same-sex marriage should be legal, while 33 percent say it should be illegal. In Ohio, 52 percent say it should be legal, while 37 percent say it should be illegal....In Virginia, the nine-point gap between those who support and oppose same-sex marriage — 49 percent in favor and 40 percent opposed — represents a significant gain in support compared with a Post poll in May, when 46 thought it should be legal and 43 percent said it should be illegal.

And then there's this, which is perhaps more important for the future than for next month's election:

Age is an important factor: About two-thirds or more of those younger than 40 support legalizing gay marriage in each state. Among voters ages 40 to 49, the figure in Florida is 58 percent, but that dips to under half in Ohio and Virginia. Those ages 50 to 64 appear more divided, with a majority of seniors in Ohio and Virginia opposed to gay marriage.

Whatever happens in this year's elections, in the long run Republicans are on the wrong side of this issue. And some Republicans are noticing.

The Wall Street Journal's Saturday "Review" section is one of the best weekly magazines around, because of articles like this one from Camille Paglia:

Capitalism has its weaknesses. But it is capitalism that ended the stranglehold of the hereditary aristocracies, raised the standard of living for most of the world and enabled the emancipation of women. The routine defamation of capitalism by armchair leftists in academe and the mainstream media has cut young artists and thinkers off from the authentic cultural energies of our time.

Just when you thought economic ignorance couldn't sink any lower, a letter in the Washington Post criticizes Mitt Romney for repairing a brick walkway at his house rather than hiring a contractor -- and thus "cheating people out of jobs." Uh-oh. I just made myself a sandwich, thus cheating a deli employee out of a job. I drive myself to work instead of using a chauffeur, thus putting chauffeurs out of work. I do my own laundry -- well, this could go on all day. Of course, the writer's argument isn't really any different from the usual complaints about trade, outsourcing, and shutting down unprofitable businesses. Everyone seeks to produce as much output for as little expenditure as possible. That's why we trade with each other, so as to improve our standard of living.  Lord Keynes himself, encountering a stack of towels in a men's room, is said to have "swept the whole pile of towels on the floor and crumpled them up, explaining that his way of using towels did more to stimulate employment among restaurant workers." I would like to have seen the look of gratitude on the face of the restaurant worker who saw Lord Keynes creating jobs. Economic progress happens when people find more efficient ways of doing things. Sometimes that means "outsourcing" a task, whether it's a business's payroll function or taking your laundry to a service. Sometimes it means "insourcing," as when word processors made it easier for writers and executives to do their own typing, or the price of shipping rises and a company finds it cheaper to manufacture in an American plant rather than in China, or when a homeowner decides he could repair his own walkway for less than the cost of hiring a contractor. And as long as we allow markets to function, billions of people will make tens of billions of decisions every day that will push toward the optimal use of resources to satisfy as many human wants as possible.