Elizabeth Warren Is A Technocratic Ratchet Up, Republican Debate Disappointing, NM Gov Best On National Security

The title pretty much sums it up for me. I think Elizabeth Warren is a great technocratic ratchet up, although I disdain Senators and Representatives -I'd prefer they be replaced by Governors and County Executives, respectively.


The Republican Debate was too stupid. I liked the Chief Economic Advisor presidential debates back in 2008, I'd rather listen to those debates at the primary level too, at least until we start getting higher iq, more public administrative science literate presidential candidates. I though the NM Governor (I forget his name) had the best lines when he talked about reduction in US defense spending. My caveat is that I'm not sure we want a smaller military, but for sure the gap should be funded by wealthy allies so we're all spending proportionately on global defense. Simple reduction of American military, and worst case scenario regions like Europe and East Asia fuck up the pax all over again.

Hillary Clinton Would Have Been A Worse President Than Obama, Because She's Dumber and a Poorer Manager

My response to this:

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/09/next-time-support-the-unknown-southern-or-midwestern-governor-in-the-presidential-primaries.html

There's a notion that's floated pretty much since the day President Obama became President that Secretary Hillary Clinton would have made a better president. There are people who I think would have made a superior President: Bloomberg, Prime Minister Singh, Secretary General Ki-Moon, and plausibly Secretary Sebelius and Secretary Napolitano, but I'm skeptical about Hillary Clinton of 2008.

First, I observed both during the Democratic Primary, and Secretary Clinton lost on grounds of managerial competence -she managed her campaign worse than President Obama managed his. I recall a moment where she seemed destined to do much worse than Obama in Texas because she didn't pay as close attention to their delagate rules.

Second, he just seems to me to have a superior intellectual pedigree. Magna grads of Harvard Law are generally smarter than Yale Law grads, and his thoughts and commentary seem smarter to me.

So, I'd like to see Obama challenged in the 2012 election for the Democratic Nomination, and I think it would be awesome if Secretary Clinton was one of his challengers, but if anything I think the weight of evidence is that she'd have been a worse president the past few years.

Forecasting more cold, dead hands

My thoughts on the Andrew Sullivan post saying gun purchases have rised dramatically under Obama:

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/09/obama-is-better-for-the-gun-industry-than-perry.html


I was a huge Mayor Bill White fan when he was running for Texas Governor.

I think when visible administrators don't resemble their populations in ways salient to the population, it gives power to legitimacy hecklers. So there can be tension between best available administrators and the easiest ones to legitimize.

Bill White reminds me of an Obama level technocratic administrator who better resembles the American population -thus I think he'd be an easier face to neutralize legitimacy hecklers.

It's hard to gauge the cost of Obama legitimacy hecklers regarding things like demands for birth certificates, which seem almost costless. But increasing guns in society seems to me to plausible increase social risk (I'm not an expert my intuition is that's the empirically derived expert consensus).

It's a repugnant conversation to have openly, but the ideal (which doesn't seem to me to be that asymptotic) is to have highly able technocratic administrators that sufficiently resemble the populations they govern. Bill White would have been an awesome Governor and President, in my opinion.

Sometimes the peasants ARE revolting

Prof. Krugman hedonistically gentrifies a posture ("I'm a technocrat with the people") -although he may be right on some details here, if your shtick is always to be the technocrat showing how the people are right and with the technocrats and the middlebrows and craven are wrong, your god is not optimized social epistemology or even optimized human welfare, IMO.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/the-peasants-are-revolting/

Bill Gates promotes Deficit Reduction, not Keynsian stimulus?

Bill Gates jumps into keynsian stimulus / Deficit Reduction debate -on the side of deficit reduction through spending cuts and higher taxes.

http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Personal/Can-USA-Inc-Avoid-Bankruptcy?WT.mc_id=8_1_USAinc_TW&WT.tsrc=Twitter


I admit my intuition is that the DeLong/Romer camp of macroeconomists is right, and the Deficit reductionists are either dumb or pandering to the dumb.

So I'm kind of surprised by Bill Gates' stance here. Is it good faith? I can't think of many bigger beneficiaries of the US getting its policy right than young, pinnacle wealthy Bill Gates. So is he promoting a policy that increases future instability? It's not just that he's being quiet about promoting for Keynsian stimulus to avoid stigma or to avoid tainting the idea -he's actively promoting deficit reduction in a way I think keynsians would think of a pro-cyclical.

What are your thoughts?

Blog reactivated, but we're probably all doomed anyways.

I'm motivated to reactivate this blog mostly because my sense is Yglesias, DeLong, Gelman and Krugman have all become ridiculously censorious with the comments of their own blogs and TGGP's comment sections seem rather dead and unengaged with regard to public policy.

My recent fascinations are with policy failure with regards to the "Great Recession" the conservatives seem to be zombies, the Obama inner circle seem to be Chamberlainesque, and Krugman and DeLong seem to have put themselves in a Semmelweiss trap. I seem to be in my own Semmelweiss trap.

We'd probably all be doomed no matter how well we played this game, but my god is us playing the best survival game.