I was intrigued by yesterday's story in the Politico about Fred Thompson's fundraising figure. It was not the figure that intrigued me. Rather, it was the reaction to it that flagged my attention. Mike Allen writes:

Fred Thompson plans to announce Tuesday that his committee to test the waters for a Republican presidential campaign raised slightly more than $3 million in June, substantially less than some backers had hoped, according to Republican sources.

But should it be?

I don't have the answer to the preceding question - which is exactly the point. There are several problems with these reactions of disappointment.

1. Fred Thompson is not a declared candidate. There are many implications to this fact, but a big one is that he does not have a robust fundraising organization just yet. Mike Allen's Politico article quotes anonymous sources essentially saying that, with all of the buzz about Thompson, he should have been collecting money hand over fist. This is nonsensical. Support in a poll does not necessarily translate into financial support. The candidate must help with the translation. Thompson does not have the infrastructure to do that just yet, nor does anybody expect him to. If they do not expect him to have the infrastructure necessary for fundraising, why do they expect him to have the funds raised?

2. $3 million a month since June works out to about $23.5 million before the Iowa caucus. Thompson will have less cash than Romney or Giuliani if he keeps this pace (which, importantly, he won't - he'll improve). But who is to say that this is not enough to get him some wins in early states? The expectations for Thompson differ from the expectations for Giuliani or Romney. If he wins an early state, that might be enough for him to catapult to the nomination. Thompson might not need the cash. Importantly, this is the first time we have experienced a primary fight such as this cycle's. We do not know how much cash will actually be needed. You might be able to do it on the cheap (fiscal conservatives should love to see that - wasted money is still wasted money, regardless of who spends it!)

So, I think these expectations might be too high.

On the other hand, whether or not expectations are proper - they are what they are. This, I think, is one of the negative consequences of starting late in the cycle. If Thompson had raised $3 million last December via his exploratory committee, people would not have raised an eyebrow. The trouble for Thompson is that December '06 was not his committee's first month. June '07 was. Political elites are going to infer incorrectly that Thompson should be raising as much as the rest of the candidates simply because that's what elites do. We can blame them for having faulty expectations - but that misses half the story because, whether they are right or whether they are wrong, elites are major players in our politics. That's why we call them elites!

I think there is great potential for Thompson here. I like the idea of running a presidential campaign that violates many of the elites' assumptions about what you need to do to win. I think many of them can be violated, and victory can be achieved. In fact, I think that violating some of these assumptions can give you an advantage at the ballot box. Violating assumptions excites and entices people. It is an easy way to generate attention and support - even from the elites who hold the assumptions. For instance, I think it is possible to win a nomination having declared after Labor Day - which is what Thompson intends to do. What's more, I think that a late declaration could generate enthusiasm and momentum precisely when it is useful. I think it is smart to be the only major candidate to declare after Labor Day.

However, one thing Thompson will have to do very well is manage the expectations of these elites. If he is going to be a non-traditional candidate, that means he will be doing things contrary to the way elites currently think things should be done. If he also appears weak to elites, they will connect the non-traditional campaign to the weakness, and he will begin to see stories like yesterday's. In other words, the non-traditional campaign - while there is a lot of promise to it - has the potential for peril. It offers elites an easy "meta-frame" to characterize and understand his various failures. This is why Thompson needs to manage the perceptions of these failures so intently - because elites will waste no time fitting any mistake, real or imagined, into a broader, and broadly negative, story that hinges upon the fact that he is running a different kind of campaign.

Unfortunately, Thompson has not managed elite perceptions of his campaign on these smaller matters effectively. And they are beginning to add up. Personally, I do not think any of the "problems" that have arisen are much more than problems of perception. For instance, I can forgive a few internecine battles in a new campaign organization. Heck, they make perfect sense to me. However, the media spun these as "Thompson's control-freak wife is impossible to deal with, and his non-traditional campaign is spinning out of control." This is where the non-traditional nature of the campaign actually damages Thompson - it is a fast-and-easy way, one that does damage to Thompson's image, for elites to understand these "problems."

And, of course, two observations enables one to draw a trend line. There were staff troubles and now there are money troubles. That's enables a trend line - with a downward slope - to be drawn.

Don't think that Mike Allen did not pick up on the trend. He continues:

Thompson plans to make the disclosure in a filing with the Internal Revenue Service, as he continues to operate his prospective campaign as a political organization that does not require disclosure to the Federal Election Commission.

Many Republicans had seen the "Law & Order" actor and former U.S. senator from Tennessee as a potential savior in a tough election cycle.

He attracted support from such top-shelf party figures as Mary Matalin, Liz Cheney, George P. Bush and other GOP stalwarts who saw him as a potential Hillary Clinton slayer.

But many Republicans have turned queasy as Thompson has ousted part of his original brain trust and repeatedly delayed his official announcement, which is now planned for shortly after Labor Day, in the first two weeks of September.

Allen even finds a third observation for the trend line - the "repeated delays" of Thompson's official announcement.

As I indicated, I think this is underdetermined. All of the evidence is explicable by causes that are unrelated to one another, and that are not signs of worry for Thompson supporters. However, this is is not going to discourage political elites, especially those in the press. They formulate all kinds of underdetermined hypotheses. They put together stories even if there are no stories to be put together. They draw inferences not because they are necessary but because they are interesting. They see change where there is stasis. They characterize candidates in unfair ways because those ways are titillating. And so on. It's what they do.

Thompson needs to work hard to manage these elites because, by being non-traditional, he already has raised their eyebrows. He's doing what they think he should not do. This puts a greater burden on him than, say, Giuliani to manage his image. Giuliani is basically following all of their rules of campaigning, so his individual "mistakes" are not so easily fitted into this kind of narrative. But Thompson's are.

As I said, there is potential here - all of us like to see the rules thwarted successfully. On the other hand, mistakes, real or perceived, will be connected, rightly or wrongly, to his against-the-grain strategy. So, while the potential benefits are great, so also are the potential costs.

Thompson needs to work harder to minimize these costs. What he needs to do is cultivate the impression that his campaign is non-traditional and effective. This essentially boils down to better image management - not of himself, but of his campaign.

Posted by Jay Cost at 01:00 PM | Permalink

I have commented on this phenomena several times at this blog - but it is worth another mention. It amazes me how poll-driven the analysis of the 2008 presidential race has been. Despite their current lack of value, polls remain a staple of almost all media analysis of the race.

A case in point is an otherwise excellent article from the Boston Globe today about Mitt Romney's rise in New Hampshire. The Globe goes into detail to cover how Romney has been paying attention to the state - by visiting, by advertising, by courting political elites. It's a good story - that is completely junked up by the introduction:

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Mitt Romney boasted an enviable advantage in the first-in-the-nation primary state when he launched his campaign for president: A governor of Massachusetts, he also owned a house on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee. But as recently as February, Granite Staters appeared to harbor little interest in the boy next door. Polls had him lagging far behind John McCain and Rudy Giuliani.

In the last few months, however, Romney has steadily pushed to the head of the Republican pack in New Hampshire, while his major rivals have lost ground. A mid-July poll had him opening up a 15-point lead.

Romney has benefited from larger forces shaping the race, notably, McCain's difficulties. But he has also run a campaign that might have been lifted straight out of "The Official Guide to Winning the New Hampshire Primary," if there were such a guide to the conventional wisdom. The formula: win over influential activists, advertise early, and lavish New Hampshire with attention.

Romney is leading in New Hampshire. Why? The polls say so. But why do the polls say that?

Perhaps most significantly, at least as far as early polls are concerned, Romney has spent nearly $725,000 since February on television ads highlighting his biography and fiscal conservatism on WMUR-TV, New Hampshire's only network-affiliated commercial station, as well as additional ads on cable stations. Neither McCain nor Giuliani has aired a single television commercial.

"You can't underestimate the importance of having ads right now," said Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, who has been tracking the race. "It doesn't mean they're going to vote for him necessarily, but he's fresh in their minds."

So, Romney's lead in the polls is due to the fact that he is the only one advertising on television in the state. As of July 1, Rudy Giuliani had $18 million in the bank. Just how much longer will Romney be the only candidate on the air in New Hampshire?

Thus, we should ask: are these polls worthwhile?

Early opinion polls are notoriously poor predictors of primary victors. In July 2000, George W. Bush was well ahead of McCain, who later won the primary by 19 points; Howard Dean towered over his rivals in the summer 2004. And in New Hampshire, Romney has had the luxury of being the only candidate on television for months.

I guess not! So, why does the Globe insist upon framing its story as "Romney has a lead because of all his smart work." This lead might very well be ephemeral. Would it not have been a better story to reference his lead, immediately argue how it is ephemeral, then go into how the lead right now is a consequence of Romney laying down a foundation to win New Hampshire in the winter? Reading the article, it seems clear that this is Andrew Smith's point. Why not turn that into the thesis of the article?

It was the same story over at Meet the Press this week. [Incidentally, this week was one of those weeks that MTP had nobody actually M'ingTP. It was all just journalists and pundits. I'm always struck by weeks like that. It's a sign of the authority of the media's pundit class. Why bring an Obama spokesman on to the show when journalists will come to talk about Obama?] The consensus was that Hillary is the frontrunner. Why? She is leading in the polls.

Unbelievable.

As of July 1, Barack Obama had $36 million in the bank. To argue that Hillary is the frontrunner in a way that is relevant is to argue that she will remain the frontrunner when Obama deploys this $36 million. Can anybody claim this? I sure can't. $36 mil can change a lot of minds. Hillary, meanwhile, has $45 million. Both are bound to collect more cash, too. And I honestly have no idea what will happen after the two top Democratic candidates spend $100 million (or more!) between the two of them to pick up the nomination. Anybody who claims they do is just tilting at windmills.

Posted by Jay Cost at 11:41 AM | Permalink

I have watched with interest this Obama-Clinton dust up. On the merits, I do not find it a very interesting disagreement (full disclosure: I agree with Clinton on this). However, it was valuable to me because it confirmed my belief that Barack Obama is not running for the vice presidency. I was about 90% sure of this, thanks to his financial successes. No candidate running for the veep spots needs to raise so much. But I have wondered, in the back of my mind, whether Obama's strategy was to see if he could catapult to the top - and, barring that, finish well, not alienate the nominee, and get the veep spot. I guess not. He's stuck right now in second place, but he obviously intends to push to the top, even if that means attacking Hillary Clinton.

I have further enjoyed this disagreement because it makes explicit the media's ever-so-subtle, and self-interested, role in our politics. The whole disagreement involves whether or not the President should agree to meet with the leaders of nations we currently don't get along with. Obama said yes. Clinton said no. Both answers were given during the CNN/YouTube debate - so there was not a lot of time for subtlety. A sound bite was all they got. They had to make it good.

Since it turned into the dust up that it has turned into, both candidates have had an opportunity to amplify their positions. But does the media treat their latter statements as amplifications of views given during a ridiculously constricted format in which the next leader of the free world must share time with Mike Gravel (who, of course, took time out of his busy schedule of building fires in the woods and throwing rocks into ponds)?

Not really!

This is how E.J. Dionne characterized Obama's amplification:

In fact, Obama clearly sensed his own potential vulnerability and quickly tried to cauterize it. He was careful to say repeatedly that in talking with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other Muslim leaders, he would send them "a strong message that Israel is our friend."

He also pulled back ever so slightly, insisting that "the notion that I was somehow going to be inviting them over for tea next week without having initial envoys meet is ridiculous."

To Mr. Dionne, it is not amplification - it is a backtracking for the sake of political expediency!

This is patently ridiculous. For Mr. Dionne to infer all of this about Obama's intentions simply because he could not say his peace in the time constraints imposed upon him by YouTube(!) is insulting to Mr. Obama.

Our politics is governed by the culture of the sound bite. Why is that the case? Is it simply because the sound bite is the way that the media prefers to operate? Not at all. After all, the sound bite is not in the interests of politicians - most politicians (hell, most everybody) cannot speak fluent soundbitese. Some of them can't speak it at all.

So, why do they go along with it? It is because there are penalties to those who refuse to participate. All cultures have within them such penalties for non-compliance - even if they are as simple as, "If you do not comply with our rules, you do not get our benefits." So also does the media's sound bite culture, and Mr. Dionne just delivered one of the penalties. Any time a politician tries to get around the regulations of the sound bite, he is simply cut off. Any time a politician tries to clarify his position later on, his intentions are questioned. The latter is what happened to Mr. Obama, who sadly could not convey his point in 60 seconds. He needed time later on to amplify it. And so, he is castigated as a back-tracker who is changing his tune to maximize his share of the vote.

What's the message to Obama here? The message is: learn how to do the sound bite thing better. Comply or face penalty.

Media elites like to kvetch about how our politicians are not doing what they should be doing. Here's a question for them. My intuition is that Barack Obama is going to spend extra time in debate prep so he can learn how to give a sound bite better. That way, he does not have media elites telling voters in so many words that he is a crassly self-interested backtracker. In other words, he does not want to face further criticism, so he is going to try to comply with this culture. How is learning to follow the media's narrowly self-interested rules on sound bites a good use of the time of Barack Obama, a senator to 13 million people and potentially the 44th President?

If media elites are so chagrined by how politicians do not focus on the "people's business," maybe they should think about the role they have played in their own disappointments.

Posted by Jay Cost at 01:03 PM | Permalink

I read with rapt attention Dan Gerstein's column in this week's Politico. It discussed the politics of impeachment. Specifically, it reviewed the desire of the left to impeach President Bush as a way to end the war. Gerstein notes the anger of the Democratic base at the congressional caucus' inability to end the war, and then explains:

That helps explain how impeachment--the true nuclear option--rather suddenly made the quantum leap from the mutterings of the Mother Jones set to the latest rallying cry of the party's increasingly powerful Netroots bloc. The progressive community increasingly does not trust the national party leadership to take on the president, so more and more of them are coming to believe that the only option is to take him out.

Gerstein clearly thinks it is a bad idea, and he intends in his next column to review the case against it, which should not be hard. The biggest problem with impeachment is that the Democrats will never land a conviction. There is no way they could acquire the 2/3rds majority in the Senate. So, impeachment will not end the war. Another major problem - I know that it looks to many Democrats that the President has committed "high crimes and misdemeanors," but many Americans would see the case against Bush as being quite weak. The last impeachment looked to many voters to be a partisan side-show, and it did according damage to the Republican Party. This might do the same to the Democrats. Finally, the fact that impeachment would move from "off the table" to "on the table" without any good reasons would make it look all the more like a political stunt, and therefore an attempted coup (because, after all, to end the war - Cheney would have to be impeached, too).

To be frank, I think the Democratic base is acting irrationally. Before my Democratic readers get up-in-arms over this comment, let me say that I mean it in a narrow sense of the word. Impeachment is an irrational strategy. "Irrational" can apply to people, and therefore whether they are endowed with reason - but it can also apply to strategies, and therefore whether they will achieve the goals the strategist wishes them to achieve. I mean "irrational" in the latter sense of the word. As in, impeachment is a manifestly irrational strategy in pursuit of the goal of ending the war. It will not accomplish the goals the Democratic base wishes to accomplish. Indeed, it would set those goals further back.

The anger of the Democratic base is neither surprising nor all that unique. They are not the first, nor the last, passionate group of active citizens to have had their desires quashed by what amounts to the super-majority requirement of our system. Unfortunately for the left, the Iraq War is the status quo - and our system's status quo bias is very, very great. This is why the Democrats have not been successful in stopping the war. They need about 30% of the Republican caucus to support them - and they simply do not have it.

How, then, did the base come to believe that the Democrats could end the war? The answer is obvious - this is what the Democrats told them! This is why the anger is neither surprising nor unique. Strategic politicians looking for votes promised them more than they could deliver. This seems to be an endemic feature of our politics: politicians over-sell, voters are left disappointed and frustrated. Next week, I will investigate it in more detail.

Posted by Jay Cost at 11:00 AM | Permalink

Many of you probably read the Washington Post story from Tuesday regarding political briefings given to Administration officials. One of the recent briefing included a list of Democrat-held House districts that the White House thinks might make for good targets next year.

WaPo reported:

White House aides have conducted at least half a dozen political briefings for the Bush administration's top diplomats, including a PowerPoint presentation for ambassadors with senior adviser Karl Rove that named Democratic incumbents targeted for defeat in 2008 and a "general political briefing" at the Peace Corps headquarters after the 2002 midterm elections.

The briefings, mostly run by Rove's deputies at the White House political affairs office, began in early 2001 and included detailed analyses for senior officials of the political landscape surrounding critical congressional and gubernatorial races, according to documents obtained by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Over at the RCP Blog, Reid Wilson does a great job of categorizing the races. I have no amendment to make to it, but I imagine many readers are left wondering why the Administration would brief political officials about its prospect list. What is the value of this? Might it not be better to keep it quiet?

The answer is: not at all. You might think that the answer is "yes" because it is tipping off those House members that they will have competitive races next year - but in all likelihood, those members are gearing up for competitive races, anyway (or, at least they should be).

The publication of a list like this is, I think, a good thing for Republicans. The reason is that these races are not yet competitive. In all likelihood, they will become competitive only if the Republicans manage to recruit quality candidates for them. This is why it is worth communicating to political elites what districts are on the White House's watch list. If the White House gets the word out that certain districts are on the agendas of the highest officials in the party, political elites who can make for quality candidates will be more likely to run in those districts. After all, they may then assess that they can count upon resources from the party in support of their bids.

The list, then, is a cue to political elites that, should they make credible runs for those districts - the party will be there to assist them. This includes not just providing them campaign cash, but also candidate training, helping them hire quality campaign consultants, giving them access to the party's extensive network of donors, providing them with on-demand strategic assistance, selling them campaign services at cost, and so on. The party does not do that for every candidate in every race. It picks and chooses the races that are the most promising. This list signals to political elites that, should they jump into these races, the party will consider their runs promising.

In fact, it is especially good news for the Republicans that these memos were made public when they were. After all, there has been a whole spate of stories lately about how Democrats are out-raising Republicans nationwide. This is a symptom of Republican malaise, I think. But it might also become a cause: if potential candidates assess that 2008 will be a bad year for the GOP, and poor fundraising figures might very well signal to them that it will be, those elites might refrain from running for office. And without good candidates, races usually do not become competitive. This is one way that the national political environment comes to affect local congressional elections - the responses of strategic elites to that environment determines which races have, and which races do not have, good candidates.

At this point, both party committees are working to recruit good candidates and to keep incumbents from retiring. My intuition is that both of these tasks are right now much easier for the Democrats. It is unlikely that many Democratic incumbents will retire - after all, they have just acquired the majority status for the first time in 12 years. What is more, it is likely that Democratic elites intuit that 2008 will also be a good year for the party. With Bush's continued low job approval numbers, and a general sense that the Democrats stand to do well next year, expect a lot of quality Democratic candidates to jump into the race. On the Republican side of the aisle, I expect both tasks to be problematic for exactly the opposite reasons. Elder Republicans in the House, who see little chance of the party reacquiring the majority, might be inclined to retire - thus creating vulnerable open seats. Meanwhile, quality would-be candidates will also assess that this might not be the year for them to run. So, they opt out.

Recent stories about Democratic fundraising edges probably exacerbate these differences - and so a memo about "White House targets" was probably of benefit to the GOP.

Posted by Jay Cost at 10:00 AM | Permalink

[This is the sixth essay on the major contenders for the presidential nominations. See the earlier ones on Clinton, Edwards, Obama, McCain (Parts 1 and 2) - and my introduction to the series.]

When Rudy Giuliani declared himself a candidate for the Republican nomination, many pundits were skeptical. I think that, deep down, many of them remain skeptical. They have backed off their predictions because Giuliani has been able to hold a lead - though, of course, the lead has diminished. However, I think that most of them have ceded the nomination question simply because the data is forcing them to do so - not because they have found any intuitively compelling reasons.

My intention here is to offer such a reason - which is not to say that this essay amounts to a prediction that Giuliani will win the nomination. I am going to offer a model, i.e. a simplified version of reality, whose purpose is to demonstrate my point that Giuliani is genuinely competitive, not that he will necessarily win.

In my essay last week on John McCain, I argued that several pundits had misunderstood his decline because they were working from a naïve understanding of the median voter theorem. The theorem predicts that a candidate can win an election by adopting the issue position of the median voter; however, it also makes a number of assumptions to arrive at that prediction. One such assumption is that there are only two candidates in the race. When we alter that assumption, we allow for the possibility that a moderate Republican might win the nomination not having secured the median Republican voter - i.e. a conservative. This is how a seeming moderate, like McCain, might nevertheless win the nomination.

I think that most pundits are rejecting, or at least were rejecting, the viability of the Giuliani candidacy based upon a similarly naïve view of the median voter theorem. I think that they have in their minds a notion that to win the Republican nomination, you mast tack to the median voter, something that Giuliani simply cannot do. He is a social liberal, after all. And social liberals do not win the GOP nomination.

I think this use of the median voter theorem is naïve. The problem for its application to Giuliani is not just that the number of candidates nullifies the equilibrium position - though this is surely a problem in using the model to predict Giuliani's fate. Like McCain, a moderate like Giuliani benefits from a multi-candidate field. So, what I argued in Part 1 of my essay on McCain can also be applied to Giuliani. But the theorem has further problems when it is applied to Giuliani. The two candidate assumption is not the only problematic one; I would argue that, should the race narrow to two candidates - say, Romney v. Giuliani or Thompson v. Giuliani - Giuliani could still win.

Why? Recall from my discussion of the theorem that one of its assumptions is that there is only a single "issue dimension." What does that mean? It means, simply, that voters are voting for a candidate for a single reason. It could be a reason as broadly defined as ideology. As an example, think of the American Conservative Union's legislative score. A voter positions himself as, say, an 85 on the ACU scorecard. He then chooses the candidate who is closest to that position. In this way, his vote choice is predicated upon a single dimension.

If we assume that there is a single issue (like ideology) in a three voter election, and we accept the rest of the theorem's assumptions, the median voter theorem produces the following result:

Both candidates (in a general election like this) will flock to the median voter.

Must an election be fought along a single dimension? No. Theoretically, an election could be fought on any number of dimensions. Practically speaking, the addition or subtraction of issue dimensions from the public forum is an act of political power, one that is strategically employed to maximize the likelihood of electoral victory. A good example is the cultivation of the "personal vote" in congressional campaigns. When incumbents try to get voters to vote for them based upon personal/biographical reasons like experience, and not based upon issue positions, they are adding another dimension to the electoral contest.

To appreciate exactly what I mean here, consider a hypothetical example. You and your friends are voting on what movie to go to. This is an election based on a single dimension. However, you soon realize that there is disagreement about what restaurant to go to afterwards. So, you decide to vote on both questions at the same time - with several of your friends making proposals for restaurants and movies. Then, each of you votes upon the proposals. For instance, Robbie proposes Die Hard and Applebee's, Richard proposes Transformers and Chili's, Levon proposes Harry Potter and P.F. Chang's - and the group decides between Robbie and Richard and Levon's proposals.

Of course, you are probably thinking that it is much more efficient to distinguish the movies from the restaurants - have a separate vote on the movie and a separate one on the restaurant. But we cannot do this in a representative democracy. We do not vote for issue positions, we vote for persons who represent a cluster of issue positions. And so, elections are fought upon multiple issue dimensions.

When we factor in a second issue dimension, we lose the equilibrium position of the median voter. In other words, no longer is it the case that the candidate who adopts the median position will beat the candidate who chooses any other position. To see what I mean, consider the following example. Suppose that an election decided by three voters - A, B, and C - is fought over foreign policy and domestic policy.

The dots with the letters indicate each voter's ideal points - that is, if a given voter was in charge of selecting the "mix" of foreign and domestic policy, he would choose his ideal point. The circles around the dots indicate what we might call "indifference zones." A given voter prefers points on his circle equally - i.e. he is indifferent between them. He also prefers points within his circle to points outside his circle.

Importantly, there are no points that are equilibria like the median voter is in the single dimension. In other words, there is no place where candidates are in a "best response" to one another. This means that there is no way to predict where candidates will ultimately position themselves. Therefore, there is no way to predict who will win. [Of course, it is possible for voter preferences to be distributed in a way such that there is at least one equilibrium. However, the requirements are fairly stringent.]

This is not to say that there are not positions that benefit society more than other positions. The triangle with the dashed line represents such an efficiency zone. If a candidate takes a set of issue positions that places him within this zone - there is no way that he can alter his policy positions to satisfy the group's aggregate preferences more efficiently. Any movement within the triangle will move him closer to some voters, but at the expense of others.

In the median voter theorem, there is only one point that is efficient in this way - the median voter! So, this is what happens when we assume that an election is fought over two issues rather than one. We move from a single point to a zone of points that are efficient. The consequence is that candidates potentially have more leeway to position themselves. They can place themselves anywhere in that triangle and be efficient. Importantly, in a two-dimensional race between two candidates - simply being at the median on one of the dimensions is not sufficient for electoral victory. The other candidate might be able to split your voting coalition by making clever use of the other dimension.

This is why I would claim that Giuliani is viable - even in a two candidate contest. There is more distance between the median voter and him on the domestic ideology dimension than there is between the median voter and, say, Mitt Romney. However, Giuliani is closest to the median voter on the foreign policy dimension. This places him well within the efficiency zone of the electorate. It does not mean that he will win the nomination. But it does mean that he is a viable candidate whose policy positions are an efficient expression of the sentiments of the Republican Party.

This, then, is the basic intuition. It is why I have taken the trouble to draw up a graph with all of these symbols and what not. It is to demonstrate that, with in a race over multiple issue dimensions with two candidates, voting coalitions in one dimension may be split by the other dimension, and so tacking to the median of one dimension is not sufficient for electoral victory.

In most presidential primary contests, I would argue, you do not really have two salient issue dimensions. Republicans and Democrats usually select their nominees on a single dimension - namely, domestic ideology. Foreign policy is rarely an issue.

However, I would argue that it is an issue in this campaign. Specifically, I would argue that Republicans are looking for a candidate who can credibly warrant that he will be a competent leader in the fight against terror. Thus, theirs is an election that is being fought on two distinct dimensions. And it is on this second dimension that Giuliani appears to have a distinct advantage over his opponents. No candidate, with the possible exception of John McCain, can make warranties on the fight against terrorism as credibly as Giuliani can. No candidate maximizes the ideal point of the median Republican primary voter as well as Giuliani does. As I said, this buys him latitude in the domestic ideological dimension. This is the way that a social liberal might win the nomination of a socially conservative party.

Importantly, this is not reducible to strategic primary voters compromising their issue positions to vote for a candidate they believe will win. Giuliani voters are voting their preferences.

Does this mean that Giuliani will win the nomination? No. As I said, in a two-dimensional election, there is probably no equilibrium position. So, in theory, a candidate could take the issue position of Denny Kucinich and still win the Republican nomination (it all depends upon what the alternatives are). The point is that Giuliani is a viable candidate whose mix of foreign and domestic policy are efficient aggregations of party sentiment. Even though he is a poor match on one dimension, he is an excellent match on another.

Of course, there are problems with this model - as with any model. After all, it is a highly simplified version of reality that we have used to give us some purchase on what is going to happen. We have learned from it - but we should not tie ourselves to it slavishly because, after all, the real world is more complex than a triangle, two lines, some circles, and a few dots!

One major problem with this is that we have assumed that voters have perfect information. I mentioned last week that this is one reason why McCain is in such trouble. In reality, voters have imperfect information about him, and so are going to avoid him because he is far too risky. This could cause trouble for Giuliani as well. I made the general point last week that voters use "heuristics" - or informational shortcuts - to make decisions despite imperfect information. One such heuristic is the political party. Another heuristic would be, I'd wager, cues from elites whom voters respect. Rush Limbaugh is a great example of such a heuristic for conservative voters. It is not that people who listen to Limbaugh do not think for themselves. It is, rather, that Limbaugh is an informational elite who shares his listeners' views. Thus, if Limbaugh is opposed to a certain proposal, listeners can safely assume that, if they knew as much about the specifics as Rush knows, they would oppose it, too.

This is a function that people like Pat Robertson and James Dobson also serve. They act as informational cues to their constituents. This could be trouble for Giuliani. Many of these religious leaders seem to be opposed to Giuliani's candidacy - and this might have the effect of signaling their constituents that Giuliani is, for them, an inefficient selection. The effect of this might be to place Giuliani, in the minds of these voters, further from their ideal points than he might actually be. This, I would wager, is why Giuliani is taking such pains to certify himself on the question of judges. He is trying to signal to voters that he is not too far from their ideals on the domestic ideology dimension.

I'll close with a final question, one that - like the informational cue that Focus on the Family offers - cannot really be captured by the model I have delineated. It's just a question. I am not sure what the answer is.

How many Republicans can actually vote against Giuliani when given the chance? I mean this regardless of the purely rational calculations I outlined above. I am talking about emotions and sympathy - i.e. voting against your rational interests because of your emotional response to a particular idea or person. Rational choice theory fails to capture this in a way that is not reducible to ad hoc modifications of its basic principles. This is a major drawback to the theory because emotions run high in politics - and they can be of great use to candidates. I wonder if they will not help Giuliani.

In the minds of, minimally, conservative Republican voters - 9/11 initially produced two political heroes. George W. Bush managed the nation's response to the attack, but Rudy Giuliani managed the city's response. For a whole host of reasons, Bush's status as a hero has since been compromised - even in (I would wager) the minds of many Republican voters who continue to offer support of him to pollsters. Giuliani's status, on the other hand, has not been compromised. My intuition is that for Republican voters, he is the last untarnished hero of 9/11. Can they actually vote against him?

I am reminded of the politics of the post-bellum era - in which average-to-below-average Republicans in the North could be elected by "waving the bloody shirt," i.e. referencing their (seemingly) prominent roles in the Civil War to win the support of Northerners. In many respects, Giuliani's candidacy is similar (though I think there is a great difference in talent between Giuliani and the Gilded Age presidents). He is, in a certain sense, waving the bloody shirt of 9/11. Can the Republican Party refuse it?

Posted by Jay Cost at 12:00 AM | Permalink

In response to today's column, Robert made this very insightful point:

You neglected to mention another reason that the debates benefit the media in their current format. Each time any candidate opens his or her mouth, it's another opportunity for one of those Herculean gaffes like the one you displayed by Dan Quayle. This is a HUGE payoff for the media, even if it happens to a lower-tier candidate, because it gives them a juicy story in a long and mostly boring race. In fact, having to respond to complex questions in thirty-second sound bites may actually increase the likelihood of one of those gaffes-for-the-ages.

Posted by Jay Cost at 03:15 PM | Permalink

Yesterday, CNN and YouTube hosted yet another Democratic presidential debate. This go-round elicited stories from the newspapers about debate "fatigue." In particular, there were indications that the candidates might be a little fatigued.

Why would they be fatigued by these debates? I think the answer is reducible to a simple calculation of costs versus benefits.

First, some basic principles. I assume candidates are rational utility maximizers - just like financial actors. However, they are not looking to maximize profit. Rather, they are looking to maximize electoral support. They are willing to deploy their resources to win this support. And, so it follows, they wish to deploy those resources as efficiently as possible.

The debates are quite inefficient. This is why they are getting fatigued.

The nice thing about these debates is that it is relatively easy to "do well" in them. I'd say that for the top-tier candidates, there is at least a 95% chance that they will not damage their prospects. Accordingly, there is no more than a 5% chance that they will damage their prospects. So, that is good.

However, consider the costs that the candidates must invest for the debate. They must study up. This costs time. They must take their campaign organizations to the debate. This costs time and money. They cannot conduct other activities they might otherwise have conducted. These are opportunity costs.

And what are their payoffs if they do well? In point of fact, they are slight. They get a declaration of victory-of-a-kind on the bottom half of the fold of the newspaper (so to speak) saying, at best, that they "won" the debate, or more likely they "did everything they had to do." This is not worth much to them - at least not to the top-tier candidates. They do not get any noticeable bump in the polls - most people are not watching. Those who are do not see enough of the top-tier candidates during the debate to begin supporting them; with 10 or so candidates, nobody gets to speak very long. Furthermore, I am sure that no candidate has enjoyed a bump in contributions based upon debate performance. In reality, all they get is the temporary estimation of the political elites. This is not worth all that much.

Meanwhile, what happens if they "lose" the debate and damage their electoral prospects? Well - we all know the answer to that. Electoral prospects that are damaged by a debate are usually damaged in a dramatic way. Recall:

Zing!

The chance of this happening in any given debate to any given candidate is, of course, really small. I indicated 5%. It is probably smaller than that. However, consider the costs inherent to such loses. They are incalculably large. There is no way to recover from a gaffe like this.

Thus, we might say that the payoffs from the debate are asymmetric. A win is a high-probability event that carries little benefit. A loss is a low-probability event that carries a great cost.

Now, of course, the benefits calculus changes greatly after Labor Day in the general election campaign. At that point, voters are paying attention. So, the potential rewards from doing well increase. Now, however, the potential rewards are low. And, while I imagine the damage done by such gaffes would not be as bad now as they would be in mid-October of the actual year of the election - they can still be quite significant. After all, gaffes can be replayed again and again on, ironically enough, YouTube. And what you say now is potential ammunition against you when you face the opposing party in the general campaign. Michael Dukakis probably would not have been punished as badly if he had flubbed that death penalty question in July, 1987 - but he still could have been quite damaged.

So, all in all, there is probably no net benefit from these debates, at least for the top-tier candidates. "Winning" the debate carries with it no net benefit - the meager benefits are probably outweighed by the costs in time, money, and opportunity. Meanwhile, the chance of defeat - and the major costs it entails - further diminishes a candidate's expected net benefit.

Why, then, are the top-tier candidates doing all of these debates?

The answer, I believe, is that there is no coordination between them. What the top-tier candidates have on their hands is a collective action problem. If all of the top-tier candidates coordinated their actions, and collectively reduced the number of debates, all of them would be well off. However, there are no formal institutions in place to facilitate this kind of coordination. Thus, each candidate must choose on his own to debate or not to debate. This changes their strategic calculations dramatically. They are placed within an interaction that can be modeled by the classic prisoners' dilemma game.

Assume two candidates who must choose, on their own, whether to debate or not to debate:

What happens to a candidate if he does not debate and the other candidate does not debate? They both do well (i.e. their payoffs are "good"). They do not do very well, (i.e. their payoffs are not "great"); but they probably do not do badly, either (i.e. their payofs are not "bad"). There is some scorn placed upon them by the press - but it is diffuse and short-lasting. Meanwhile, they save all the costs they must pay to debate - and they avoid the risk. So, all in all, we'd say their payoffs are good.

What happens if both candidates debate? They do OK. The chances are they will not embarass themselves, but they do not really get anywhere electorally, they have to pay a lot to get nowhere, and they run the risk of a major setback.

What happens to a candidate if he debates and the other does not debate? He does really well and the other guy does badly. After all, he can go to the debate and be a hero of "participatory democracy" (or whatever plaudits the press will offer). His opponent looks like the jerk who "refuses to face the people's questions!"

If he does not debate and the other guy does - the payoffs are reversed.

Without any coordination, each candidate is left making his own choice. And look carefully at the choices - even though the collective benefit is greatest with both candidates not debating, both candidates always are individually better off by debating. In other words, the choice to debate "dominates" the choice not to debate.

What is the way around this? One way is, as I said, coordination. If the candidates set up some kind of (formal or informal) contract with one another so that they agree to limit the numbers of debates, and the contract includes penalties for breaking it - they might be able to avoid this collective action dilemma.

Hmmm...an informal contract? Well:

This is not a conversation about cutting the number of debates, but it is a conversation about altering the payoff structure. With fewer candidates, the top-tier candidates will have more time, and thus, if they do a good job, their participation will be of more value to them.

So, why did the Democrats individually decide to bail on the Fox News debate? Well, hey - they're Democrats and its Fox News. They could bail on it without looking bad. Heck, bailing on it made them look good. In other words, the fact that it is FNC alters the payoff structure. A given Democratic candidate can individually choose to avoid Fox without reaping the penalties that would accrue to he if he avoids CNN/YouTube and the rest of the candidates participated.

We'll see if the Democratic candidates do something about these debates. The best way for them to do this would be through the Democratic National Committee - which could be the organization that can bring about some coordination among the candidates. It might also take the heat that the party would feel for cutting back.

Incidentally - who is best off because of these debates? It's not the candidates (at least the top-tier ones). It's not the voters (who are not really watching). It's...the media! It's a perfect setup for the media. Having 10 or so debaters means that each candidate only gets 30 seconds or so to respond to any given question, which is perfect for the media's sound byte methodology. They can also put it on their cable networks, where the average viewership for these summer debates is a boost for their ratings. It's perfect for the media.

Posted by Jay Cost at 12:00 AM | Permalink

There is a strange new tactic that has become surprisingly popular in recent months - the "campaign memo to interested parties." So far, Clinton, Obama, McCain, and now Romney have offered one up. This is what Romney had to say, via the Washington Post:

"Rudy Giuliani continues to lead the Republican field as he has since polling on the race began last year," writes (Romney campaign senior strategist Alex) Gage in a document dated July 20. "However, Giuliani's support began to ebb in February and has slipped 2-3 points per month since then."

As evidence, Gage points to a compilation of national polls done by Charles Franklin, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, that seems to show similar negative trend lines in national polls for both Giuliani and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) (For what it's worth, the Giuliani operation pushed back hard on Franklin's comparison; "The Giuliani campaign is in a very strong position at this point and is clearly best-positioned to win the primary," director of strategy Brent Seaborn wrote in a direct rebuttal to Franklin's argument.) Even if you grant that Giuliani's slippage in national surveys has stabilized, Gage says, there is ample evidence in polling conducted in early voting states that it is Romney, not Hizzoner, who is in the best position.

Giuliani "is now trailing in four of the five key states that fall before Feb. 5," Gage writes. The memo goes on to note that the average of public polls conducted in June and July show Romney leading comfortably in Iowa and New Hampshire and more narrowly in Nevada. Former senator Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) leads the way in South Carolina, while Giuliani is a strong first choice only in Florida.

Here's the problem with these memos. They are politicking disguised as analysis. The polls are not nearly meaningful enough to support the conclusions they draw. The race is fluid, and it is too early to make anything approaching such claims. Why? It is because voters - unlike political elites - are not yet paying enough attention to the political campaign. Their opinions are not really as stable and well-informed as so many pundits mistakenly take them to be. So, the answers they provide in polls are of little value for inferring what the election results will be.

In a strange way, though, I actually appreciate the Romney memo - for it gives me an opportunity to review an intuition I have had about him for a while.

Why is Romney gaining in the polls? Is it real strength, or is it something less than that? I think it could very well be the latter. I think it could be because he and he alone is flooding the airwaves with advertisements. Again, as I said, voters are not actively thinking about the election right now. They see all these Romney ads (at least in Iowa and New Hampshire) and he is placed in their minds. So - when they offer a response to a pollster, they answer "Romney." But this does not mean that they are true Romney supporters. After all, the other candidates have not yet begun the television advertising blitzes. This is not coincidental - if Giuliani et al. thought that the voters Romney "wins" in July will stay Romney voters through January, they would be on the airwaves as much, too!

I suspect that Romney knows that this support is not per se real. I think he has spent all of this money so that he can gain access to the media's "top tier." He's low nationwide (and he is not gaining; no real movement since April) - but he's leading in Iowa and New Hampshire. So the media treats him like a top-tier candidate. The strategy is to earn the support or estimation of the political elites who pay attention to presidential elections so early (but who fail to appreciate fully how a lead now means very little). This memo speaks exactly to this strategy.

On the one hand, I find it infuriating because Romney is simply trading off the general ignorance of political elites about average voters (the former think the latter are exactly like they - they know as much about politics, they pay as much attention, etc). When campaigns talk about presidential polls from Nevada in mid-July, 2007, they legitimize a form of political analysis that really is not legitimate.

On the other hand, there is a dash of brilliance to it that I cannot help but admire. Here's a question. Why is Romney the only top-tier candidate between the two parties who was not a legitimate celebrity before the campaign began? Of the seven top-tier candidates - Clinton, Obama, Edwards, McCain, Giuliani, Thompson, and Romney - the former Massachusetts governor is the only one who was not a bona fide star to begin with. How is it that Romney - and only Romney - is the non-celebrity to have broken into the top? A big reason has to do with his very well-conceived, well-executed campaign strategy, which - as I said - includes running up his numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire. This memo is the latest action in keeping with that strategy: he is looking to cultivate elite support as a prelude to his mass campaign (not to mention build name recognition, which is another function of this advertising). He seems to be doing a damned fine job of it.

Posted by Jay Cost at 12:00 AM | Permalink

I read with bemusement the back-and-forth between Michael Gerson and Christopher Hitchens in the Washington Post last Friday and Saturday. It is disappointing to me that this is what counts for theological discussion in the popular press. Between the two of them, not a single point of value or interest was made.

On Friday, Gerson offered a rather lame defense of religious belief. He began by asking:

Proving God's existence in 750 words or fewer would daunt even Thomas Aquinas. And I suspect that a certain kind of skeptic would remain skeptical even after a squadron of angels landed on his front lawn. So I merely want to pose a question: If the atheists are right, what would be the effect on human morality?

Gerson seems to me to frame his argument in this strange way so that he can vacillate between two points, both of which are weak. On the one hand, he seems to want to argue that morality itself is proof of God's existence. He goes out of his way (oddly, twice) to note that morality is not proof of God's existence - but he essentially argues that it is when he asserts that atheists cannot explain morality without recourse to cruel irony, nor can they offer any reason why morality is binding. Of course, this is a highly problematic proposition - the whole thrust of modern moral theory implies that God's existence is not a necessary condition for moral maxims to have influence and value.

This is why I think he seems also to argue a related point - which is that belief in God's existence has a salutary effect on morals. But this proposition is much more problematic than Gerson seems to realize. Belief in God is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for moral living, as Gerson admits. If Gerson wishes to offer a generalized empirical claim that certain religious beliefs have a salutary effect on morals - I would be interested in the argument. However, consider the massive size and problematic scope required for the task. He would have to (a) operationalize and then catalog the diverse religious beliefs across cultures, (b) operationalize and then catalog the diverse moral behaviors across those cultures, and (c) determine whether the two correlate with one another, i.e. whether certain religious beliefs imply more salutary morals.

At any rate, this argument is also subtly condescending to the Judeo-Christian tradition. The God of the Old and New Testaments has not involved Himself in the world solely so that we might all be nice to one another. Rather, He has done so to redeem humanity and restore it to its intended position in creation. Niceness enters into it, but there is much more going on, as Gerson of course knows. However, defending religion by discussing the salutary effect it has on morals misses - and diminishes - many of both Testament's central points, which are eschatological in nature.

And so, in shifting a discussion of Judeo-Christian theology from its central themes to an ancillary consideration - Gerson gives the indefatigable Christopher Hitchens an opportunity to do what he never fails to do: condemn religious belief by attacking a convenient mischaracterization of it. Hitchens reminds me of the sophists against whom Plato so often railed. It does not matter how mellifluous your adverbs and adjectives sound when they roll off your droll English tongue - attacking a straw man is still attacking a straw man.

This is precisely what Hitchens does in all of his many, repetitive polemics against religious belief. As a believer, I find him so completely unpersuasive because he always mischaracterizes my positions as a prelude to his snide attacks upon them.

I have long inferred that Hitchens holds firm to that tired pretension that naturalists are the only rationalists and "free thinkers." Indeed, he seems convinced that non-believers are the only ones who have thought seriously about issues like the theodicy problem, or the role that God plays in His church on Earth, or exactly what Christ accomplished on the cross, or what posture we should have toward those whose beliefs diverge from our own, and so on. What else to make of his laundry list of religion's sins? The implication is that nobody on the other side has a compelling explanation for them. Well, of course they do. Those of us who hold to considered beliefs are happy to stipulate his facts (as well as the instances - oddly short-shrifted by Hitchens! - where belief has had a benevolent effect) so that we may have a discussion of how we should understand them. We are more than ready for this debate - as the understanding of his laundry list is one of the purposes of theology.

It might come as a surprise to Mr. Hitchens that those of us who believe can do so without rejecting facts or logic. His ignorance notwithstanding, I am glad to report that we can. He'd know this if he'd just exercise a little care when considering the arguments of those who dare to disagree with him. He reads as a man who does not do this, as a man who is so infuriated by the very idea of theism that he cannot sit still until the end of a work by Augustine - who was far more clever than he. If he took a deep breath, ceded the possibility that his own judgments might be in error, and thoughtfully read those who disagree - he would see that, while it might still be the case that he is right and they are wrong, it certainly is not the "slam dunk" that he thinks it is. He would see that, as it turns out, those who dare to disagree actually have some decent points to make.

In that instance, he might say something of value on the question of religion. But, so long as he refuses to show his opponents any respect, his arguments will be what they were last Saturday - adroit non-sequiturs that titillate rather than edify. Attacks against straw men appeal to the party base, but they do nothing to advance the cause.

Posted by Jay Cost at 12:00 AM | Permalink

Yesterday, I began an analysis of John McCain's presidential prospects. In my attempts to explain why these prospects have dimmed in recent weeks, I argued that we cannot understand his troubles simply by recourse to his relatively moderate issue positions. In a multi-candidate race such as the Republican nomination, reflecting the ideological preference of the median voter - in this case, a conservative Republican - is not necessarily the winning position. A moderate Republican could, in theory, win the GOP nomination.

So, why has he had so much trouble? The following is an attempt to answer this question. I don't think this is the only answer - but I do think it explains much of McCain's dilemma.

My intuition about McCain's problem is that it is due, in part, to his cultivation of the maverick label. A moderate Republican is different from a maverick Republican. If I say to you that I am a "moderate Republican," you can probably estimate my views with some precision - you take the conservative positions and dilute them by a little bit. But a "maverick Republican" implies a kind of irregularity that the moderate label does not. McCain's status as a "maverick" means not that he always acts like a moderate Republican, but that his actions are unpredictable based upon his partisan identification. Sometimes he acts like a staunch Republican, sometimes like a Democrat. In other words, the "maverick" adjective qualifies the noun "Republican" so much that the latter offers relatively little information about McCain's issue positions.

Think about the function that partisan identification serves for the average voter. If a candidate tells a voter, "I'm a Republican" - what does that mean to the voter? It offers the voter what might be called a cognitive shortcut for understanding exactly what that candidate would do once he assumes office. Thus, that voter can get a sense of whether he can support that candidate - even if, unlike political elites who possess a great deal of information, he has neither the time nor the inclination to review and parse that candidate's issue positions to determine whether they cohere with his own ideals. He knows that he is a Republican - so he can estimate his position on taxes, abortion, government regulation, etc.

And so, partisan identification is a way to acquire information at a low cost. When it comes to making decisions, information of this kind is an unqualified good. In other words, no matter how well off a political actor is, he will be better off if he knows more about the environment. Why? It is because information diminishes uncertainty, which in turn diminishes risk. And all of us are risk averse to one extent or another. We would all like to be able to minimize it as much as we are able. While it is true that, in some instances, actors have an interest in keeping information from other actors, in no instance is an actor less well off if he knows less.

On that note, return to the median voter theorem, which I discussed yesterday. Implicit in the theorem is the assumption that voters have perfect information. That is, if a candidate takes a certain issue position, we have implicitly assumed that all of the voters know that he has taken this position. And so, the risks involved in voting for one candidate over another are zero. You know exactly what you will get if you vote for that candidate.

What happens when we assume that voters have imperfect information? Their desire is to vote for the candidate who will mirror their issue positions as closely as possible upon election - but they do not know enough about every candidate's issue positions to determine with perfect certainty whether they will. That is the risk that they face - they might support somebody who, as it turns out, does not agree with them. In the face of such risk, a candidate's partisan identification is a useful tool. It can help to reduce this risk. It is a low-cost way for voters to get a sense of exactly what the candidate will do in office.

This means that a candidate who does not offer clear partisan identification may be harmed, especially when there are many candidates in the race who do offer such clarity. In an environment filled with uncertainty - what is the rational decision for an information-starved voter? Should he support a candidate about whom he has no information regarding partisanship - or should he support a candidate whose partisanship is, by the voter's estimate, roughly close to his ideal? Clearly, the latter is the better selection. The candidate about whom nothing is known is too risky. The voter cannot be sure exactly what he will do when the candidate enters office - his best move is thus to vote for the person who is a known quantity. Importantly, this is the case even if it turns out that the unknown candidate is closer to his ideal than the known candidate. Because the voter does not know this in advance, he cannot rationally support the unknown candidate. This would be like justifying the irrational purchase of a lottery ticket with the fact that you won the lottery. Sure, you won the lottery - but this event could not have been predicted before you bought the ticket, so the purchase is still irrational!

I think that this is part of McCain's problem. Of course, partisanship is not as much help in primaries - because everybody, after all, is of the same party. However, McCain has intentionally cultivated this "maverick" adjective - so that, he is not "a Republican," but "a maverick Republican." This has earned him kudos with the national press, which does not like partisanship (more on that next week), but what it does is signal to voters who lack information that he is not as firmly affixed to the party - and all of the issue positions which that affixation implies - as other candidates. In other words, in a primary where all candidates swear equal fealty to the party - the party label is not much help as an information shortcut. But when there are differences in partisan loyalties - e.g. when one has a reputation as a "maverick" - the party label becomes more helpful to voters, and problematic for the "maverick."

This is what I think has turned Republican voters from John McCain. They know that he is a "maverick Republican" - and therefore they cannot use their knowledge of what it means to be a "Republican" to estimate what he will do. The word "maverick" qualifies "Republican" so much that the latter ceases to offer much of a cue. They have trouble estimating what kind of president he would make - and so, even if objectively speaking his presidency would satisfy their policy preferences, they do not know this, and are thus now finding another candidate.

This logic applies to elites as well - and so it might also explain McCain's fundraising woes. Elites - who are characterized by the fact that they possess a large amount of relevant information - know enough about politics that they can estimate many of a candidate's positions without relying upon party labels. McCain has undermined the utility of the label for estimating his opinions, but elites do not need the label as much because they have other sources of information that they may use. However, the label can still be valuable to elites. Because McCain is a "maverick" Republican, it is difficult for anybody, elites or average voters, to estimate exactly what he will do on issues about which he has not made some kind of public pronouncement. On issues that are already in the public forum, political elites can do what average voters cannot do - draw upon their knowledge of his stated issue positions to estimate confidently what they can expect of him in office. But what about issues that are not yet salient enough for McCain to have stated his opinion, but that might become salient during a McCain presidency? If McCain was not a "maverick" Republican, informational elites could estimate what McCain would do by imagining what the average Republican would do. However, because he has eschewed the party label, none of us, not even political elites, can estimate what McCain's response would be to a surprising issue development. He might do what a Republican would do; he might do what a Democrat would do; he might do what neither would do. One might say that, even for political elites, a vote for McCain carries with it no warranty. They thus face enhanced risk in support him.

The average voter has this problem on both the salient and not-yet-salient issues of the day - because of his informational deficiency, he is not sure exactly what McCain thinks about policy matters. What is the rational response of the risk averse voter in this instance? It is to avoid McCain. He should select the candidate closest to his ideal about whom he has sufficient information. This is the best decision even if, objectively speaking, McCain would be closer to the voter than the other candidate.

Thus, McCain's problem is not simply that he is too far to the left on the ideological scale. My intuition is that, thanks to his cultivation of this "maverick" qualifier, voters cannot place him on that scale. Risk averse voters thus support the candidate closest to their ideal ideology and about whom they know more.

As I indicated yesterday, I am sure that this does not explain all of the reasons that the McCain campaign has faltered. However, I think this explanation gives us some purchase on understanding McCain's decline. To put it intuitively, I would say that voting for McCain is like buying a used car "as is" without taking it to a mechanic for inspection. You have no idea whether the car is what you are looking for until after it is already yours. It is thus a highly risky purchase - too risky for most of us.

Posted by Jay Cost at 12:00 AM | Permalink

This essay is the fifth in my series on the presidential candidates (see my introductory comments about methodology, and then my essays on Clinton, Edwards, and Obama). Because it concerns John McCain - the central question that it must answer is why his candidacy has had so much trouble acquiring traction.

In recent days, many answers have been offered in response to this question. I think many of them have validity. My task here will not be to give a definitive answer that wholly explains McCain's collapse. I think that no single answer can do that. Rather, my agenda here shall be twofold. First, I shall argue why one typical answer - McCain is too moderate for the Republican Party - is based upon faulty intuitions and, while not necessarily wrong, is oversimple. Second, I shall offer an alternative explanation that, while I do not think explains McCain's decline entirely, is an intuitive and compelling account that helps illuminate a good deal.

It is part of the conventional wisdom in Washington that presidential candidates have to "run to the base" in the primary, and then "run to the middle" in the general election. This conventional wisdom is partially accurate, and it is a simplified version of what is known as the median voter theorem.

I do not wish to bore you with the details of the theorem. I will just say that the median voter theorem is a solution to what has come to be known as the problem of social choice - or how we may develop reasonable and morally satisfactory rules to aggregate the preferences of individuals in society. The median voter theorem argues that, under certain conditions, the voter whose preferences are in the ideological middle of the electorate will be the winner in a simple majority rule procedure. In the case of the Republican Party primary, the median voter is a staunch conservative - hence the intuition that Republican contenders must move to the right.

To obtain the result of the theorem, we first assume that voters have "single-peaked preferences," i.e. we assume that every voter prefers one ideological position to all other positions. We also assume that there are only two candidates in the race, that candidates are free to change their stated issue positions as they like, that voters possess perfect information about these positionings, and that voters make their choices based upon one issue "dimension" (like ideology). With these assumptions, we obtain the result of the median voter theorem: the ideological position of the voter who has half of the electorate on one side and half on the other side can beat any other position in a two-way contest. Accordingly, both candidates will adopt this issue position, and thus "run to the center" of the electorate.

Graphically, it would predict the result of a general election campaign in the following way.

The line represents the issue positions one can take - as you move from the right to the left, your issue positions become more liberal. The three letters - A, B, and C - represent the ideological positions of the voters (in this simplification, our electorate consists of only three people). D and R represent the issue positions taken by the Democratic and Republican candidates. The equilibrium position of the campaign is for both candidates to take issue positions consistent with Voter B. What do I mean by equilibrium? I mean that it is the best response of the Democrat to the Republican's decision to take the median position, and vice-versa. It is a Nash equilibrium.

The median voter theorem is quite intuitive, and most people who are not trained political scientists have some notion of it that is of utility in analyzing politics. Many pundits are relying upon their intuitions of the theorem to explain McCain's troubles. In the Republican primary election, the median voter is a conservative Republican - to whom McCain refuses to "pander." One might point to the most recent Republican debate where McCain was the only candidate on stage who expressed support for immigration reform. This is a sign, they argue, that McCain is not appealing to the median Republican, and this is why he is in so much trouble.

This, however, makes use of a notion of the median voter theorem that is naïve. The median voter's position is only an equilibrium in a two candidate race. There are many more than two candidates in the race for the Republican nomination. What happens when there are more than two voters? The ideological position of the median voter ceases to be a candidate's best response to the decision of the other candidates to adopt the median voter's position. Thus, it is no longer a Nash equilibrium.

Imagine a race with three major candidates - R, G, and M - all of whom are trying to espouse an ideological position that will win them the election. We continue to assume that they are free to espouse any position they like, that there is only one issue dimension, and that voters have single-peaked preferences and perfect information. This time, let us also imagine more than three voters (any odd-numbered will do) who are spread out evenly along the left-right continuum (between the arrows, which are retained to indicate that candidates may take any issue position they like).

The goal of each candidate is to take an issue position that wins them the election. So, let them all start around the median:

Obviously, G's position is a loser. The median is not a "best response" for G, based upon what R and M have chosen. G will increase his vote share if he does the following:

But now R is sandwiched in between G and M, and can expect to lose. So R responds:

This, in turn, forces M to change his position because the median is no longer his "best response."

And G responds:

And so on - this is a cycle that would end only because the election ends the campaign.

Notice how we are slowly moving from the median voter. The median is not an equilibrium position in a three-way race. If all three candidates are at the median, all three candidates can increase their expected vote shares by moving either to the left or to the right. We therefore cannot say that those who refuse to espouse the median position are doomed to lose the election. It is simply not true. In a three-way race, a candidate could win with an ideological position that is quite far from the median. What matters is what issue positions his opponents espouse immediately before the election, and what the exact distribution of voter preferences is.

And so, theoretically speaking, it is possible for a candidate to win the Republican nomination in a multi-candidate race by taking moderate issue positions. For instance, if multiple candidates are spread from the center to the right and voters are again evenly distributed, a Republican nominee could win the GOP nomination by taking an ideological position that is more liberal than the others. Consider:

If this was the last iteration of ideological positioning before the actual election, candidate M would win with a centrist ideology! He would take all of the voters to the left of his position, and half of the voters between G and him. This would be greater than either the voters that G would win or that R would win. And so, one need not necessarily pander to the party base (i.e. appeal to the median voter in the party) to win the nomination. In this example, candidate M wins the nomination despite being more liberal than the rest of the party.

McCain's problem, therefore, is not simply that the Republican electorate will not select a moderate Republican. Depending upon the issue positions of the other candidates and the distribution of voter preferences, there are some instances in which we should expect it to. Of course, under certain circumstances, we should also expect the party not to select a moderate. Again, it depends upon how voter preferences are distributed, and how candidates position themselves. The point is that the argument that McCain's moderation is the source of his problem is oversimple and is based upon a false understanding of the median voter theorem. Tomorrow, I will offer an alternative explanation that I think is more compelling.

Posted by Jay Cost at 12:00 AM | Permalink

Yesterday, I began sketching a few comparative points about the major Democratic candidates. Today, I continue this project.

Let me start by clarifying my argument about Obama from yesterday. More than a few readers wrote to object to my criticism of Obama. However, I did not feel I was being critical. I think the confusion stems from the distinction between "self-conceit" and "conceited." A few readers interpreted my essay to imply the latter, but I intended it to imply the former.

"Self-conceit" is defined principally as: "One's opinion or estimate of oneself; esp. high or exaggerated opinion of oneself, one's talents, attainments, etc." Meanwhile, "conceited" can be defined as: "Having an overweening opinion of oneself, or one's own qualities, etc.; vain." The latter implies that a person's opinion of self is inaccurately high. This is what "vain" and "overweening" indicate. "Self-conceit" can imply this, but not necessarily so. It can be used in a more neutral manner, i.e. "high" rather than "exaggerated." I intended this neutral use. I was not commenting on whether Obama has an overly high opinion of himself. My point was simply that he has a high opinion. Nevertheless, I should have been more careful to indicate the neutrality I wished to convey. "Self-conceit" can be defined as something approaching "vanity," "overweening," and "conceited" - and I should have been more careful to distinguish the use I was intending.

3. I'd like to return to Clinton's public style, which - as I argued - I think is frequently ineffective. I think that, for Clinton, her lack of natural ease and grace is not the only factor that makes her public style ineffective. I think that explains most of it - certainly I think that is why the average voter is less-than-enamored of her.

However, I wonder if - at least with political elites - there is something else to it. After all, her public style is not very good, but many politicians have cultivated an effective public style even though they are obviously unnatural and graceless in many political situations. George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush both come instantly to mind. I wonder if one of Hillary's problems is that she has retained the Clinton strategic "machine." You know - the cast of political operatives who helped win Bill Clinton two terms in the White House. Never has such a machine been so celebrated as the Clinton machine: Billy Bob Thornton never played Lee Atwater! This crew is still around - either working formally for Hillary Clinton's organization, or operating informally. I wonder if this is part of her problem.

Political campaigns are a lot like theater. Everything you see is, technically speaking, artificial. But effective campaigns - like effective theater shows - induce you to suspend your disbelief. They influence you to forget that what you are seeing is artificial, so that you can grasp - not in spite of, but because of the artifice - ideas that are real and true. They say that art tells the truth with lies. Political campaigns can be similar.

Bill Clinton's artifice was so effective that members of his stage crew became celebrities in their own rights. James Carville, Paul Begala, Mandy Grunwald, Ann Lewis, and so on. Hillary Clinton has retained many of these people. Beyond the actual individuals is the sense that Hillary Clinton has cultivated a