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On the coronavirus stimulus package front, Biden has refused to compromise on his commitment to sending $1,400 checks to Americans. Is it wise for the president to push such a bill through Congress in spite of Republican opposition? As Steve argues on today’s episode, “If Joe Biden’s intransigence this early is pissing off people like Rob Portman and Anthony Gonzalez, that’s a tough place.” Also on the menu for today: GOP House Leader Kevin McCarthy’s intra-party spats with Rep. Liz Cheney, the media’s obsessive fixation on Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the United Kingdom’s decision to welcome Hong Kong citizens.
Show Notes:
-“The Challenge of Going It Alone” by Amy Walter in the Cook Political Report.
-“An Interview With Sen. Rob Portman” by Steve Hayes in The Dispatch.
-“Can We Have (Another) Conversation About Cancel Culture?” by David French in The Dispatch.
-“Republicans Are Playing a Risky Game in Elevating QAnon” by Jonah Goldberg in The Dispatch.
-“The GOP’s Conspiracy Theorist Problem” by Audrey Fahlberg in The Dispatch.
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**As someone who recently went on a rant among my lefty friends against identity politics and how much it hurts the Democrats, I have every sympathy for Ms. Isgur’s fury in this podcast. I love the fact that you all can passionately disagree and still admire each other. Your collective conversation post-rant inspired me to both subscribe and post this comment!
Dispatch crew, first of all, thank you so much for this new media creation! I read NR and the Weekly Standard for years, but your website is definitely scratching the conservative, yet practical, itch in a way little else does. I am a high school teacher and enjoy bringing in current events and politics into my history classes when I can, but I also like to challenge myself and my students to think about what “they would do” if they held some lever of power somewhere. Of late, it has been difficult to contemplate actionable changes that could improve the nation--things are just awfully grim. But I have been daydreaming about a couple of ideas and wanted to throw them out into the universe (in this case, you all!).
Your podcasts have me thinking an enormous amount about incentives. I believe we have worked ourselves into a corner where a huge swath of various incentives for different actors are pointing us in the wrong direction. It saddens me greatly, but so many of the wonderful ideas and criticisms you are all voicing seem perhaps doomed to failure because of this perverse incentive structure. For example, Mr. Goldberg’s idea to have conservatives debate one another on cable news programming is praiseworthy “low-hanging fruit,” as he called it. But will it “sell” well on fox news, which is where it most needs to be aired. At the moment the channel seems more inspired to chase off voices of moderation and woo back the OAN crowd.
I think Will Saletan is absolutely on target with his piece on the importance of facts and combating lies. And your recent interviews with congressmen make clear the desire for better political leadership to stand up against the cancer on our body politic. But here, again, the incentives are in favor of lies and ethical relativism. We may admire Cheney, Portman, and Gonzalez, but they are endangered leaders precisely because their party voters are eager to punish moral backbone.
Similarly, Ms. Isgur and others seem spot on when she complains that congress has stopped legislating. This has released an entire pandora’s box worth of knock-off effects on our body politic, but are there incentives to legislate? We are enamored with Manchin and other centrists that crave compromise. But for every one of those individuals there are probably a dozen burnt out politicians leaving Washington because of its unrelenting partisanship. But the voting incentive of rage is far more powerful than the incentive of actual legislative accomplishments.
Davids French and Brooks may correctly diagnose cultural breakdown as a major element of our current malaise, but what can be done about that issue in the near term? I would be all for incentivizing local community groups, greater church attendance, and family strengthening. But in our hyper-connected, yet somehow disconnected, social media world, political and cultural tribalism seems to be the heartbreaking way of the future. There are deep evolutionary incentives to bond together in human tribes, and in the absence of family/village/church units we will choose political or culture issue groups instead.
Mr. French, I think, has been dancing around the issue a bit perhaps out of concerns for antagonizing The Dispatch's patrons, but he is striking at the heart of the beast. The core, root, fundamental problem is us. We, the people, are the key problem. We are the ones that are incentivizing Fox News and MSNBC to poison us with rage porn. We are the ones that are rewarding the AOCs and the MTGs of the political world by electing them (by the way, MTG is an acronym for Magic: the Gathering card trading game, and the “Mind the Gap” announcement in London subway stations, both of which seem appropriate for the latest crazy face of the republican party). We are the ones incentivizing tribalization and the electronic desire for “our version” of the news instead of some shared factual foundations. We are the ones crying out for leadership while simultaneously punishing those we see as consorting with the enemy.
Sadly, I’m not optimistic this is changing any time soon. So many of these dynamics seem baked in to our technological and economic system. So what can we do, then? Would it be possible to change the incentives of our political calculus? Would it be possible to encourage and empower moderates in a manner that they just simply aren’t today? I would love to see you collection of passionate and learned folks take a serious look at voting and legislative process reform.
Regarding the first proposal, could we somehow create a movement to push hard the adoption of ranked choice voting, or proportional representation in a few states? I know I am getting perilously close to advocating for a third party, which is probably where reform dreams go to die. Nonetheless, imagine this scenario . . .
Think tanks, news programs, and donors start talking about voting reform more often. Money starts flowing into “educate the populace” campaigns to drum up support. They hit on the ideas that Washington is deadlocked, there is no incentive for politicians to compromise, and the two party primary system elevates the radicals over those that want to accomplish things for their state and the nation as a whole. Ranked choice voting is passed by ballot initiatives in California, Arizona, Oregon, Missouri, and Ohio. Over the next 10-20 years, a number of new parties develop in those states. A socialist party and an America first party actually flourish and gain a following, because voters learn they can vote for the radical candidate first and still not waste their vote. This voting methodology incentivizes the two big parties to cleanse a good portion of the crazy from their midsts, and fringe parties are ready to welcome them in the radicals. Perhaps even a moderate Problem-Solvers party (with no primary system in favor of old-style nomination methods) develops in the dead center. Suddenly, in 2040 we have four senators and twenty representatives from a moderate rump. As they aren’t beholden to the two party system they wield immense power as tie breakers on legislation supported by either side.
Another idea I would love to see you all deeply dive into would be re-introducing more back channel discussion and pork legislation in congress. I believe Ben Sasse talked about reforming some processes and banning news media from some debates and discussion. Jonathan Rauch had a wonderful article years ago in The Atlantic, “How American Politics Became Insane,” where he laments the death of middle men, the lack of pork earmarks, and smarmy political horse trading. No one wanted to see that sausage being made anymore, but we didn’t realize that what we would get was way less sausage overall.
At any rate, I am no expert, and so I am sure there are thousands of holes just waiting to appear in these two proposals. But voting reform and sullying the political process seems to me perhaps a way to change incentives. As flawed as we individuals are, maybe we could support an affable moderate candidate as long as we get to cast our first choice vote for our own brand of nut job. Maybe we could support compromise legislation if it builds a harbor in our town.
Sarah ROCKS when she rants!