Brookings: Topics - Political Conventions

From Bad Cop to Good Cop: The Challenge of Security Sector Reform in Egypt

Omar Ashour — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0500

After decades of abuse under the old regime, how can the civilian government of President Mohamed Morsi turn Egypt’s security apparatus into one befitting a new democracy? What are the necessary steps in overcoming institutional barriers to reform and creating an Egyptian police force in the service of its citizens?

In a new "Project on Arab Transitions" paper from the Brookings Doha Center and Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), From Good Cop to Bad Cop: The Challenge of Security Sector Reform in Egypt, nonresident fellow Omar Ashour discusses the political dynamics of transforming Egypt’s security establishment.

Based on months of interviews with current and former officers and generals in the police, army, and intelligence services, Ashour lays out the workings of the Mubarak regime’s repressive security apparatus and assesses current reform initiatives, drawing on lessons from other transitions in the Arab world and beyond. He offers a set of policy proposals for establishing an accountable, civilian-led security sector, ranging from a presidential commission on reform to new oversight mechanisms. Ashour cites the brutality and abuse of Egypt’s police as a key catalyst of the January 25 Revolution; the success of that revolution, he says, will hinge on effective security sector reform.

Download » (English PDF)
Download » (Arabic PDF)

Downloads

Authors

Omar Ashour

Publication: Brookings Doha Center

Image Source: © Amr Dalsh / Reuters

What the Presidential Campaigns Reveal about Obama's and Romney’s Leadership Styles

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 09:00:00 -0400

Event Information

October 3, 2012
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

A presidential candidate’s campaign conduct offers insight into that individual’s leadership style and approach toward governance. What does the 2012 presidential campaign illuminate about President Obama and Governor Romney as leaders, and what do their campaigns say about how they will govern? What can the American public infer about their future administrations based on how they have run their campaigns and conducted themselves on the trail?

On October 3, Governance Studies at Brookings held a discussion on the 2012 presidential campaign and what President Obama's and Governor Romney’s campaigns reveal about each man’s leadership and management philosophies. Moderated by Brookings Vice President Darrell West, a panel of experts, including Distinguished Fellow, former 2012 Republican presidential candidate and Former Governor of Utah Jon Huntsman, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol and former U.S. Representative Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), discussed how the 2012 campaigns act as lenses through which one can assess President Obama and Governor Romney as leaders. This event was part of the Governance Studies leadership and management initiative. After the program, speakers took audience questions.

Not All Deficit Reduction is Made Equal: Three Tips For Obama’s Second Term

William A. Galston — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 10:22:00 -0400

It’s easy to find surveys purporting to show that Americans want a smaller government offering fewer services. It’s even easier to find conservatives who believe them. But it’s not true, or if it is true, only with a implicit qualification—fewer services for someone else.

If Barack Obama wins reelection in the face of a mediocre economy, it will be hard not to interpret his victory as a rejection of the massive domestic spending cuts at the heart of the Ryan budget. Premium support for Medicare? Block grants for Medicaid? Repealing Obamacare? Massive reductions in food stamps? Private accounts in Social Security? Forget about them.

In five weeks, the American people may well ratify a view of the role of government that implies federal spending averaging 22 percent over the next decade, and considerably more after that. If so, the question before them will be how—or whether--to pay for all the government they collectively say they want.

I say “or whether” because there is a respectable view that they need not, at least for quite some time.

Writing in the New York Times on October 1, Paul Krugman says that “[W]e are not facing any kind of fiscal crisis. Indeed, U.S. borrowing costs are at historic lows, with investors actually willing to pay the government for the privilege of owning inflation-protected bonds. So reducing the budget deficit just isn’t the top priority for America at the moment; creating jobs is.” I take this to mean that we should, and can safely, spend even more than we are spending now, without raising taxes on anyone other than the wealthy, until the United States is a lot closer to full employment. If that means a substantial increase in the debt to GDP ratio, so be it, because the medium-term economic benefits would far outweigh the costs.

Krugman’s thesis raises a number of issues. First, even after the collapse of the 2011 “grand bargain” talks with House Speaker John Boehner, the Obama administration has remained committed to deficit reduction, taking the position that the question is not whether to get the deficit under control, but how. I suppose the administration could just say “never mind” after the election, but that would be a significant and potentially costly reversal.

Besides, it’s not clear that the administration could walk away from deficit reduction, even if it wanted to. If the president is reelected, his first challenge will be to manage the policy and politics of the notorious fiscal cliff. While no one thinks that the lame duck Congress will be able to make long-term decisions, enacting even a framework for getting to 2013 will require negotiations within and across party lines. And reaching a deal is important because failing to agree on such a framework will trigger tax increases and spending cuts that could push a decelerating economy back into recession.

Third, there is a debate among economists as to the amount of debt nations can take on without destabilizing their long-term finances and slowing economic growth. I’ll let the economists fight that one out and content myself with a single arithmetic truth: the larger the debt base, the bigger the fiscal impact of increasing interest rates. It’s hard to believe that today’s historically low rates represent a new normal for the next generation, or even the next decade. So while there is a strong case for doing more to get the U.S. economy out of its slow growth/high unemployment rut, there are risks to consider down the road.

Even if Krugman is right about the next few years, note his quiet phrase “at the moment,” which suggests that we will have to address the long-term mismatch between the social insurance programs to which we are committed and the funding streams we have thus far been willing to commit to them. In my view, this will require some rethinking. Here are two possibilities.

(1) According to an analysis by Eugene Steuerle and Stephanie Rennane of the Urban Institute, high-income couples turning 65 in 2011 on average paid $154 thousand in lifetime Medicare taxes but would receive more than twice as much ($357 thousand) in lifetime benefits. Looking ahead to 2030, the gap widens to $527 thousand in benefits versus only $227 thousand in taxes. (All amounts are in constant 2011 dollars, adjusted to present value at age 65 using a 2 percent real interest rate.)

Whatever may be appropriate for households with lower incomes, I just don’t see why Medicare should offer subsidies to upper-income taxpayers. People such as my wife and I will retire with an income stream that is ample if not lavish. For this part of the population, the advantage of Medicare should be guaranteed issue—period. The gap between the value of the payroll taxes we have contributed to Medicare over the years and the benefits we receive from it should be fully reflected in additional post-retirement premiums that we pay monthly. Universal social insurance is one thing, universal social subsidies quite another.

(2) Although many people believe that Medicaid benefits go primarily to medical care for poor and near-poor individuals, a recent Kaiser Family Foundation study shows that nearly one–half of all Medicaid spending goes for long-term care (home-based as well as institutional) for elderly and disabled Americans, even though these individuals constitute only 6 percent of all Medicaid beneficiaries. Unlike many other medical services, long-term care expenditures are driven more by labor than by technology, making it even harder to control costs in this area.

As the pool of physically dependent elderly Americans expands rapidly, Medicaid will crack under the dual burden of delivering medical care to low-income families while also serving as the primary source of funding for nursing home patients. But reductions in Medicare support could devastate long-term care; the program now provides nearly 50 cents of every dollar spent for this purpose. To avert this foreseeable train wreck, we should start thinking about how best to craft a national contributory system of long-term care insurance that would reduce the pressure on Medicaid by using the federal government as the catastrophic backstop rather than first-dollar funder of nursing homes. (Readers interested in one version of such a plan can consult my article in the most recent issue of Democracy.)

It’s often assumed that in the talks that are likely to dominate the year after the 2012 election, Congress and the administration will have to choose between medium-term efforts to boost growth and the longer-term imperatives of fiscal stabilization. That’s just not the case. There’s a distinction, too often overlooked, between when laws are enacted and when their key provisions go into effect. The 1983 Social Security compromise built in long-term adjustments—for example, an increase in the “normal” retirement age from 65 to 67--that are taking effect so gradually as to be almost imperceptible. (We won’t complete the shift from 65 to 67 until the year 2027, 44 years after its enactment into law.)

There’s no reason why we can’t adapt this strategy to the much broader problems we face today. We can agree next year on policies that put growth and job creation first in the near-time while gradually narrowing the gap between the cost of our commitments and the resources needed to fund them. More precisely, there’s no policy reason why we can’t do that. The politics may be another story altogether.

Authors

William A. Galston

Publication: The New Republic

Image Source: Jason Reed / Reuters

Romney’s Miserable Campaign Has One Last Chance

William A. Galston — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 15:39:00 -0400

Mitt Romney has run a miserable campaign. If the election were held tomorrow, he would lose—a stunning situation, given our continuing economic woes. Absent a catastrophe at home or abroad that shifts public perceptions, he has only one opportunity to turn things around—the first presidential debate. But if the past is any guide, the opening is wider than many now believe.

In 2004, on the eve of the Republican convention, George W. Bush and John Kerry were essentially tied. On August 30, to be precise, Bush’s support averaged 45.7 percent, Kerry’s, 45.0 percent. The Democratic convention had failed to give the party’s nominee much of a bounce, and many observers expected the same result for the Republicans.

Nonetheless, the Republican convention successfully rallied the public behind its nominee. Within a week, Bush’s margin had soared to 7.6 points (50.4 to 42.8), a gain that was slow to erode. For the four weeks between the end of his convention and the first debate, his support averaged 49.2 percent, and his margin averaged 5.9 points. Despite the mounting unpopularity of the war in Iraq, Kerry was having difficulty establishing his bona fides as an alternative, and Bush seemed to be on course to a comfortable reelection victory.

Then on September 30 came the first debate, in which Kerry’s performance substantially exceeded expectations. Within a week, Bush’s lead had fallen by more than two thirds, to only 1.8 points, and it stayed in that zone for the remainder of the campaign. The second and third presidential debates perturbed this pattern only slightly. From October 1 through Election Day on November 2, Bush’s edge over Kerry averaged 2.5 points—precisely the margin of his eventual victory.

In sum, the 2004 conventions established one equilibrium, which the first debate replaced with a very different one. The former didn’t come close to predicting the final result, while the latter mirrored it. And the change between the two was a shift of 3.4 points in favor of the challenger. If history were to repeat itself, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney would be in a dead heat within days after the first 2012 debate.

Can Romney change the flow of the 2012 election the way Kerry did eight years ago? Not on the basis of what he has done thus far. Consider the opportunity he had last spring. Economic growth was slowing, as was job creation. Unemployment was stuck above 8 percent. Household incomes were mired well below the depressed levels of 2009. A majority of the people opposed the president’s signature domestic policy achievement—the Affordable Care Act—as they had for more than three years. An even larger majority believed that the country was off on the wrong track.

Romney squandered his chance. He failed to develop either a consistent line of attack against the president’s economic management or a persuasive alternative to it. Rather than sustaining a consistent theme, he lurched from issue to issue in response to the events of the day. He failed to counter the entirely predictable attacks on his leadership at Bain. He allowed the controversy of his tax returns to linger. He compounded these felonies with a seemingly endless series of gaffes, capped by a pratfall-filled foreign trip. His convention was by a considerable margin the least effective in decades. His selection of Paul Ryan shifted attention from his greatest potential strength—the economy—to the House Republicans’ politically toxic budget. And for a man whose supposed calling-card was managerial competence, Romney has run his own campaign very poorly indeed. If the plausible and thus far unrebutted stories about the chaotic composition of his acceptance speech are true, something has gone badly awry. He has no one to blame but himself, because every presidential candidate gets the campaign he deserves.

And now, with his back to the wall, no strategist or speechwriter can help. Only Mitt Romney can turn his campaign around. In little more than a week, we’ll find out whether he has what it takes to stare down an incumbent president. Nothing since he secured the Republican nomination should give his supporters much confidence that he does.

Authors

William A. Galston

Publication: The New Republic

Image Source: Â© Brian Snyder / Reuters

Mitt Romney’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Campaign

William A. Galston — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

During the past two weeks, the dynamic of the 2012 presidential election has shifted, and President Obama has moved out to a modest but significant lead against Mitt Romney. No developments in the economy or the world can explain this shift. That leaves the campaigns themselves. And during the past two weeks, Romney’s campaign has revealed itself to be stunningly incompetent.

Let’s start with a key structural feature of the 2012 campaign: Romney’s challenge has always been to keep his distance from the party he is leading—the Republican Party, after all, is farther ideologically from the median voter than is the Democratic Party. And as recently as a few months ago, Romney was in good position to do just that: While the public has seen Barack Obama and his party as more or less indistinguishable, they have viewed Romney as a moderate conservative within a highly conservative party.

But, astoundingly, his convention managed to achieve precisely the opposite of what it needed to. The Republican convention was a three-day display of what the Republican Party has become, and by the end of it, Americans viewed Romney, not just as an individual, but as the standard-bearer of his party. Only 36 percent of those who listened to or watched the Republican convention said that it made them more likely to vote for Romney, versus 46 percent less likely. As far back as 1984, there is no precedent for a convention that repels more voters than it attracts. Indeed, during the past three decades, national conventions have generated—on average—a positive response (more likely minus less likely) of 18 percentage points. So while the impact of the Democratic convention (plus 10) was below average, the Republicans managed to stage the least effective convention in modern political history.

And that disastrous convention was soon reflected in the polls. On September 5, the average of national polls showed the candidates in a dead heat at 46.8 percent of the popular vote; by the 13th, Obama’s support had risen to an average of 48.6 percent, while Romney’s fell to 45.3 percent, and Obama had moved out to a lead of 3.3 points. (Recent reports suggest that the Democrats backed up their convention with a pedal-to-the-metal advertising barrage in battleground states.)

Meanwhile, since the end of the convention, the president has run an effective and efficient campaign. He has a theory of the case and a strategy to match it. By contrast, Romney has been campaigning at a pace that can charitably be described as languid, lurching from one tactical statement to the next without a consistent theme or strategy.

The dust-up over events in Cairo and Libya is a good example of what has gone wrong with Romney’s campaign. Setting aside the dubious merits of his attack on the president, this is not an election that will hinge on foreign policy. And besides: If it were, Romney would lose badly, because Obama is getting high marks for his conduct of international affairs, and the Republicans have zero chance of reversing that public judgment between now and election day. Barring a genuine crisis—such as an Israeli attack on Iran—every day Romney spends on foreign policy is a day wasted.

But his problems go deeper than tactical misjudgments. For months, it appeared that he would run a campaign focused on Obama’s management of the economy. Romney’s argument would be simple: He hasn’t produced a real recovery, and I can. If you’re satisfied four more years of tepid growth and high unemployment, vote for Obama. If you think America can do better than that, vote for me. Selecting the unexciting but highly competent Rob Portman as his running-mate would have underscored that case.

But then came his surprise selection of Paul Ryan, which seemed designed to broaden the focus of the campaign to include the deficit and to shift the conversation from a pure referendum on the past four years to an agenda for the future. Yes, Ryan’s proposals were controversial, but Romney seemed to signal that moving from bland to bold, from management to vision, from incremental change to radical reform, was more than enough to compensate for the baggage he was taking on.

And then—Romney reverted to type, with an acceptance speech better suited to a Portman pick. When conflicts emerged between Ryan’s budget and positions the Romney campaign considered more politically convenient, the young vice-presidential nominee reversed course. And if Romney has been campaigning since the convention on a theme of bold reform, it has escaped the attention of the press corps and the American people.

Not for the first time, Romney is trying to have it both ways, using Ryan to excite his base while running as a non-threatening moderate conservative. But two strategies are one too many. To the extent that the Ryan selection tied Romney to the least popular part of an unpopular party, it strengthened the fear that Romney’s election would unleash a harder-edged agenda than a majority would accept.

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the race is effectively over and that Obama can just run out the clock. At precisely this point of the 2004 election, George W. Bush led John Kerry by 5.7 points—49.0 to 43.3—but ended up winning by only 2.4 points, 50.7 to 48.3. Between September 13 and election day, support for Bush increased by only 1.7 points while Kerry’s support jumped by 5 points.

What happened? Several things, but mainly the first presidential debate. On the eve of that debate, Bush led Kerry by 6 points. Six days later, his lead was down to 1.8 points. Bush’s support fell by 1.7 points, while Kerry’s rose by 2.5. The Massachusetts senator’s strong performance had encouraged a number of voters to give him another look.

History could repeat itself. To judge from the amount of time Romney is spending preparing for the debate rather than campaigning, he understands that it represents his best, and maybe last, chance to reverse the impression that his ill-judged convention and lackluster campaign have created. If he were to repeat the gains that Kerry made, he would turn a significant deficit back into a dead heat.

Still, the current state of the campaign is surprising, at least to me. The people say, as they have for a long time, that the economy is their principal concern. But job growth has languished since late winter. Unemployment remains above 8 percent, where it is likely to stand on Election Day. Household income remains well below where it was when the recession officially ended more than three years ago. Manufacturing is weakening, as are exports. Gas prices are very high. Most people continue to say that the country is off on the wrong track. Political science suggests that elections involving incumbent presidents are closer to referenda on past performance that a choice between two futures.

And yet, Obama leads. If he ends up winning, the skeptics—of whom I have been one—will have to acknowledge that the Obama team understands something important about twenty-first century politics that we don’t. An Obama victory would suggest a more personalized, identity-based brand of politics can trump traditional economic metrics, even when times are tough. For their part, Republicans would have to acknowledge that the current stance and demography of their party don’t provide the basis for a lasting national majority. But then, that’s a lesson they should have learned some time ago.

Authors

William A. Galston

Publication: The New Republic

Image Source: © Jim Young / Reuters

The Republican and Democratic Conventions – Who Came Out Ahead?

Thomas E. Mann and William A. Galston — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

With the Republican and Democratic conventions now wrapped up, Tom Mann and William Galston discuss the winners and losers, which party gained the most traction, and where the campaigns go from here.

Video

The Republican and Democratic Conventions – Who Came Out Ahead?

Authors

Image Source: Joe Skipper / Reuters

Are the Political Conventions Still Relevant?

William A. Galston and Thomas E. Mann — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

While the political conventions can still dominate the news cycle, many question whether they continue to serve a meaningful purpose in the election process. William Galston and Tom Mann discuss the role the conventions play in contemporary presidential campaigns.

Video

Are the Political Conventions Still Relevant?

Authors

Image Source: Rick Wilking / Reuters

Romney and Obama: The Presidential Candidates’ Solutions to Making College More Affordable

Beth Akers — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 09:22:00 -0400

"Help us work with colleges and universities to cut in half the growth of tuition costs over the next ten years. We can meet that goal together,” declared President Barack Obama last night at the Democratic National Convention.

The discussion about the rising costs of higher education in this country has been heating up with prices across all categories of institutions rising at a rate that is well above the rate of inflation for other goods.

Both President Obama and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney have expressed a commitment to making college more affordable for American students. However, the candidates have very different ideas about how best to reform the federal student aid program to achieve this common goal.

The reforms that Romney would likely put in place reflect a market based solution to this problem. He supports reforms that would make information about school quality more readily available to prospective students. Policies of this nature would allow prospective students to have a better understanding of the value that different programs provide. Since informed students are less likely to over-pay for a degree this will coerce colleges to charge prices that reflect the actual value of their services. (The value of a degree should be measured in terms of the additional future earnings that it provides.) An advantage of this system is that it keeps the government out of the game of policing schools. However, it also relies on students taking the responsibility to make decisions that are best for them.

Romney has also expressed a preference for redistributing aid dollars toward the neediest students. While it was likely not the intention of the policy, this may also serve to put some downward pressure on prices. Since grants generate inflationary pressure, it is wise to limit their use to instances in which the grant is likely to cause a student to obtain more education than they would have otherwise. Pell grants will have the greatest impact on enrollment and completion when given to the least wealthy students.

In contrast to these market based approaches, the reforms supported by President Obama rely on a greater degree of intervention. His platform focuses on making sure students have the resources to pay for college rather than managing the rising costs directly. This objective would likely be achieved through expansion of Pell grants, campus based programs, subsidies on education loans and loan forgiveness. This could be a good way to provide relief to students and their families in the short run, but may be an unsustainable model because of the upward pressure that it puts on tuition prices and the cost it imposes on taxpayers.

Obama has also suggested the use of price controls to manage tuition inflation. Price control could be achieved through tying eligibility for federal subsidies to regulations regarding allowable annual tuition increases. This would likely be a more than sufficient incentive for school to stabilize tuition because schools would find it difficult to compete without the ability to offer their students access to federal aid. However, this would not come without a cost. Price controls have the potential to stifle innovation in the higher education industry.

Despite the differences in approach, it seems that each candidate is both anxious and prepared to tackle the problem. That should be a comfort to those Americans who are trying to figure out a way to pay for college.

Authors

Beth Akers

Image Source: Chip East / Reuters

Web Chat: National Conventions

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 12:30:00 -0400

Event Information

September 5, 2012
12:30 PM - 1:00 PM EDT

Online Only
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC

The Republican National Convention wrapped up last week and the Democratic National Convention is well under way, but the outcome of the November election is far from certain. Competitive congressional races and candidates' desire to distance themselves from national party politics interfered with attendance at this year’s conventions, and some claim that the conventions have lost relevance in today's campaigns.

Do voters still care about the convention speeches? How will the conventions impact the race leading up to November? On September 5, Brookings expert Thomas Mann took your questions and comments in a live web chat moderated by Vivyan Tran of POLITICO.

12:30 Vivyan Tran: Welcome everyone, let's get started!

12:30 Comment From Anonymous: What was your overall impression of the Republican National Convention? Did Romney succeed in selling himself to voters?

12:33 Tom Mann: I thought the Republican Convention succeeded in framing the election as a referendum on Obama's management of the economy and in raising Romney's standing as a plausible alternative. Romney mainly reassured Republicans and Independents who were already disposed to vote against Obama. This did not lead to major headway in the horse race but modest improvement in other elements of the contest.

12:33 Comment From Alexandra: Even Fox News reported that Ryan's speech at the Republican Convention was full of flat-out lies. What does this say about the state of political discourse in America today - that a politician can make a prime time speech full of falsehoods?

12:36 Tom Mann: All conventions and campaigns play fast and loose with the truth, but I believe the Republicans have broken new ground in their scorn for facts and evidence that is not consistent with their ideological or strategic position. Factual errors are bad enough; more worrisome are absolute distortions of reality.

12:36 Comment From Eric, Fairfax: In your opinion, what's the most important thing for Democrats to accomplish this week in order to help Obama's campaign?

12:39 Tom Mann: The first is to reenergize the base in a way that increases turnout. The second is to frame the election as a choice between two vastly different sets of values and visions. The latter must include conveying a clear sense of what a second term for Obama would be about and how it might improve the life prospects of Americans. The former involves an aggressive defense of what has been accomplished in the first term.

12:40 Comment From David: What impact have you seen on Romney's campaign from his selection of Paul Ryan? Was that a good choice? How do you think he performed at the convention?

12:43 Tom Mann: Ryan has strengthened Romney's position with the Republican base and increased its enthusiasm for the ticket. It has also increased the ability of the Obama campaign to frame the election as a choice between a center-left, problem-solving approach to governing and a radical transformation of the role of government. That probably nets out to an advantage for Obama.

12:44 Comment From N. D.: What's the biggest challenge Obama needs to overcome in order to win this election? What do you think he'll be trying to prove at the convention?

12:47 Tom Mann: In spite of the difficult economic times, I think Obama now has a slight advantage in winning the election. Further bad economic news could change that. He needs to reassure discouraged but sympathetic voters that we are recovering from a very bad patch and he has plans that will lead us to a better future. He also has to keep the pressure on Romney and Republicans as favoring extreme measures that would shortchange the middle class.

12:47 Comment From Anonymous: In today's partisan political environment, what purpose to the conventions play within political parties? Are conventions serving mostly to unite the party or to define the party for those outside of it?

12:49 Tom Mann: The conventions continue to provide both parties an opportunity to define their candidates and construct their narratives about the election. This serves both to unite and mobilize their partisans and to try to appeal to the sliver of undecided voters. Of course, the reduced time on the national networks means these opportunities are limited.

12:50 Comment From Gail, Arlington: I'm interested to know your thoughts on the role that political spouses play at conventions. What are your thoughts on Ann Romney's speech v. Michelle Obama's? What were they trying to accomplish and did they succeed?

12:53 Tom Mann: But of their speeches were major events at the conventions. Ann Romney sought to humanize her husband and make him more acceptable to potential supporters. Michelle Obama's was a more ambitious effort to link her personal validation of her husband to the larger themes of his presidency and the campaign. Both appeared to be successful, but Michelle's may well go down as the best performance at either convention.

12:54 Comment From User in TX: How do you think the coverage has been of the Conventions this year? Media have obviously flocked to both, but have they been reporting on the important issues?

12:59 Tom Mann: The media is a dominant presence and force at the conventions. The corporate sponsorship of many of their activities in Tampa and Charlotte reflects the new business models being developed for media organizations. The best coverage remains the unmediated coverage of the podium, but their sampling and synthesis of the convention highlights is what will eventually reach the broadest audience. There is a lot of excessive and inconsequential reporting but also a treasure of interesting and important stories.

1:00 Comment From Ellie: In light of Clint Eastwood's bizarre speech, and the star-studded Democratic convention, do celebrity endorsements really matter at all, do they help?

1:01 Tom Mann: Not much. Useful for fundraising. But as we saw from Eastwood, they can get in the way of the convention planners' message operation and become the focus of unflattering stories.

1:02 Vivyan Tran: Thanks for the questions everyone, see you next week.

Truth-Telling a Casualty in the Presidential Campaign

Philip A. Wallach — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

“Our problems are big and the solutions will not be painless. We all must share in the sacrifice. Any leader that tells us differently is simply not telling the truth.” So said New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in his Tuesday night Keynote address to the Republican National Convention, focusing mostly on the need to confront hard truths about America’s massive deficits and debt. He is absolutely right: real leadership at this moment requires forcing voters to confront facts that they would prefer to ignore. Unfortunately, this quality was almost totally missing from the speeches of the Republican candidates, Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney.

The gap is most apparent on Medicare. Christie confidently declared that Republicans trust seniors’ willingness to sacrifice for their grandchildren in confronting entitlement reform. Paul Ryan’s reputation as a proposer of bold changes to the program seemed to signal that the Republican ticket would embrace this message. But he and Romney have instead aggressively pivoted to represent themselves as defenders of high Medicare spending against Obama’s hurtful cuts, and promise that they will not touch Medicare for Americans over 55. Specifics about cost control are conspicuously absent.

For all the talk of how the GOP is ready to ask Americans to sacrifice, the Republican candidates have been unwilling to give details about what hard choices they support (with the possible exception of making cuts to Medicaid). Ryan’s budgets have been distressingly thin on specific ways to broaden the tax base to pay for marginal rate cuts that have always been front and center. Early in the process, such vagueness can be forgiven; but by now it seems only fair to expect specific and credible identification of loopholes to close or spending to cut, expectations which Romney/Ryan have resisted with almost incredible totality. For those hoping to hear about the policies a Republican administration would champion, Romney’s speech had nothing to offer.

In 1976, Wall Street Journal writer and future Reagan adviser Jude Wanniski began pushing the “Two Santa Claus Theory,” which said that if Democrats were the Santa Claus of government spending, Republicans would have to become the Santa Claus of tax cuts to compete. By and large, Republicans have heeded this advice with reckless abandon through my entire lifetime. Today, neither party shows willingness to deliver coal instead of presents, with minor exceptions: Democrats for the rich, Republicans for the poor. Christie purported to demand the message of the anti-Santa for the broad middle class: sorry, it isn’t fair, but you are going to get less from the government than you thought.

But at the Republican convention, such remarks remained at the level of partisan-friendly abstractions: unions must get real, entitlements and tax expenditures must shrink in unspecified ways. Christie deserves credit for his famous willingness to tell firefighters and teachers in New Jersey that they must pay more toward their pensions, which came with real political risks. But bold leadership would mean telling the GOP faithful that their insistence that taxes never rise is sheer lunacy; that everyone will have to pay more, even the rich; and that “cutting entitlements” means that Medicare must control costs for everyone, not just Americans under 55.

Unfortunately, the problem is not entirely a Republican one. Republicans’ math is more offensively dependent on “magic asterisks,” but so far President Obama is not distinguishing himself for bold truth-telling on the campaign trail, styling himself as a tax cutter (for everyone except the rich) despite record deficits. One of his most prominent TV spots tells American voters that “asking the wealthy to pay a little more” will allow us to “pay down our debt in a balanced way” while also giving us the chance to “invest in education, manufacturing, and homegrown American energy for good middle class jobs.” That is not a serious pitch. Democrats may be right to reject “austerity now” given the continuing weakness of the economic recovery, but they cannot pretend that the debt problem is for another decade, or portray the “Bush” tax cuts as responsible for our debts while simultaneously trying to extend them indefinitely for all but the highest earners.

Election season may be a bad time to face up to uncomfortable facts. But at the very least, if party leaders of either side are going to insist they are tellers of hard truths, they should do better than serving up warm feelings about America and generic praise of truth-telling. As the campaign goes on, Americans should demand real leadership rather than settling for a hollow imitation of it.

Authors

Philip A. Wallach

Publication: The Hill

Image Source: Rick Wilking / Reuters

Reflections on the Republican National Convention

Darrell M. West — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 10:51:00 -0400

The GOP had a very puzzling convention this week. It lost the first day to a possible hurricane, but then made a number of decisions that opened itself up to serious criticism and squandered opportunities. National conventions generally are tightly scripted and operate with ruthless precision in regard to party messaging. Speakers are supposed to focus on the top of the ticket and why their side is better than the opposition.

Yet despite hours of television prime-time, scores of articles in leading news outlets have accused top Republicans of moving into a “post-truth” world where leaders make claims that fact-checkers have labeled misleading or outright false. It is hard to remember another national party convention where presidential and vice-presidential candidates made so many questionable arguments. This includes accusing President Obama of raising taxes on the middle class when he has cut taxes, blaming him for plant shutdowns that occurred during the George W. Bush presidency, and complaining that the chief executive dissed the Simpson-Bowles fiscal commission when the GOP vice presidential nominee himself voted against the group’s recommendations.

If lack of veracity isn’t enough, this was a convention where a last minute speaker (Clint Eastwood) generated more buzz than the nominee himself. In a rambling and apparently unscripted speech in prime-time, the movie star and director made wild charges in addressing an empty chair he called Invisible Obama. This was an out-of-the-box programming choice on the part of Republicans that was problematic both from the standpoint of the message and messenger. Numerous commentators described Eastwood’s appearance as bizarre and out of touch as opposed to helping the GOP make its case against the President.

For much of his campaign, Mitt Romney has fluctuated between moving hard-right to rally his conservative base and appealing to undecided voters by reassuring them he is a nice and competent manager. For the last few weeks, the presidential candidate looked like he had resolved that tension in favor of a tough conservative message focused on the party base. He chose a very conservative vice presidential nominee in Paul Ryan who is the intellectual leader of House Republicans. And together, the two have promised strong leadership that will tackle hard policy choices and give America the tough medicine it needs. Indeed, Ryan set up Romney perfectly in this regard by giving a speech that was visionary and focused on the challenging issues facing the country.

Yet when faced with the biggest platform of the campaign, Romney went soft rather than hard. Rather than lay out his policy vision and explain why he was a superior leader, he used the speech to introduce his background, utter vague platitudes, and avoid the hard choices altogether. There was very little policy substance to the hour-long speech, which robbed the GOP nominee of a valuable opportunity to explain why his vision is better than that of the current incumbent.

The brightest spots in this convention were speeches by the candidate’s wife and a number of rising stars within the Republican party. Addresses by Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Condoleezza Rice, and others were very compelling. However, many of them spent far more time extolling their own virtues as opposed to those of the Republican ticket. This was a lost opportunity for Republicans to make their case why Romney/Ryan deserve public support, not why certain speakers would make great presidential candidates in 2016.

Republicans had a week in the national spotlight and probably will earn a polling bounce that could move Romney into a small lead nationally. Getting unfettered media time always generates an upward ticket in party support. But Republicans raised as many questions as they answered this week and gave valuable openings to Democrats to explain why truthfulness is important for leadership and why their vision is better than that of the GOP.

Authors

Darrell M. West

Missouri Loves Company: Romney’s Tightrope Act at the GOP Convention

John Hudak — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 08:30:00 -0400

No major political party at any point in history existed without division. Different factions within each party have caused headaches for party leaders and, without fail, require presidential candidates to walk a fine line at their conventions. This year is no different. For Republicans, the past ten days have brought such division to the fore and have made Governor Romney’s task even more precarious.

Congressman Todd Akin’s offensive comments regarding sexual assault, conception, and abortion were in many ways outside of the mainstream of even Republican Party ideology. But, in other ways—the idea that abortion should be illegal in all cases, including rape and incest—expressed views that have measurable support, (~20% in the latest Gallup poll) and have become part of this year’s draft Republican platform. In fact, the division over abortion exceptions not only pits Republican voters against their partisan brothers (and sisters), but illustrates a divide among the two people running on the GOP ticket.

The abortion issue aside, Republicans (and Democrats, too) support controversial issues that spark deep divisions in the American electorate. These include a restructuring of Medicare, tax cuts even for the wealthiest of Americans, and opposition to civil unions—much of which is contained in the draft Republican Party platform. These issue positions appeal strongly to the most vocal, motivated, active, and energized voters in the Republican Party, and Governor Romney’s election-week ground game will require continued activism from these voters to be successful. However, Romney also needs to appeal to moderate, working class voters who have lost favor for the president, but who also hold beliefs that differ dramatically from Republican activists.

So, what can a candidate do? Romney must be careful to ensure the words spoken from the dais in Tampa reach the ears of the appropriate listeners, capitalizing on the limited network coverage of speaking slots. Parties may lament that network coverage of conventions shortens each year, harming a thriving democracy by limiting voter access to the party gala. Believe none of it. Parties—Democratic and Republican, alike—embrace the fact that the major networks don’t cover speakers from lunch to dinner. It is during this time the ideological and activist voices have their time to shine, and are out of (live) view of most American voters. Surely, 24-hour news channels like CNN, MSNBC and Fox News may broadcast it live, but many voters who are too busy for or too tired of continuous political news will see none of it. They may only tune in to hear a candidate speak or the “big name” or watch a fresh face, like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, give a keynote, missing parties’ unabashed ideologues.

The activists and the Tea Party faithful will speak in Tampa, but the structure of coverage almost ensures that the viewers who watch these speeches are core voters who have decided far in advance they will cast a ballot for Romney. Todd Akin will not speak or even attend the convention, but the Todd Akins of the party will be there. They won’t spout outlandish claims about innate pregnancy prevention or the semantics of rape, but they will be steadfast in support for pro-life policies in the same ways Akin and kin have done for generations. They will do this to stir up the base, ensure the checks keep flowing to Republicans, and keep values voters motivated for a candidate about whom they have been skeptical. And this will all be done with low visibility mid-day convention speeches.

When the cameras from ABC, NBC, and CBS fire up, the lineup of speakers and the tone and content of the rhetoric will change. Marco Rubio will not speak about abortion. Paul Ryan will not discuss gay marriage. Condoleeza Rice will not harangue the socialists in the opposite party. They—and their party’s standardbearer—will focus on President Obama’s greatest vulnerability: a sluggish economy, a failed recovery, widespread unemployment, and the need for a president who can do better.

In the past, primetime Republican Convention speakers have had more freedom to wade into social issues, as they had politics and polling on their side. This year, however, such a proposition is riskier. In fact, with a nominee who disagrees (or has disagreed in the past) with social planks on this year’s party platform, avoiding those issues will help gloss over deep and impassioned divisions within the GOP (and between the party and the center). A task for both parties is to appeal to the necessary voters in the right states.

The Republicans will put forward a battery of speakers that show the racial, ethnic, religious, and age diversity within the party. Yet, diversity is a less important issue. They will direct to the dais candidates for competitive, down-ballot races. Yet, the down ballot is a less important issue. Instead, Romney and the major speakers at the convention will join hands and speak strongly about the issue the former Massachusetts Governor wants to be front and center, the biggest issue on the minds of swing voters, and the issue that unites a fractured party: the economy. Romney wants to put aside a congressman’s stupid comments and remind everyone it’s the economy, stupid.

Authors

John Hudak

Brookings: Topics - Political Conventions

From Bad Cop to Good Cop: The Challenge of Security Sector Reform in Egypt

Downloads

Authors

What the Presidential Campaigns Reveal about Obama's and Romney’s Leadership Styles

Event Information

Video

Audio

Transcript

Event Materials

Not All Deficit Reduction is Made Equal: Three Tips For Obama’s Second Term

Authors

Romney’s Miserable Campaign Has One Last Chance

Authors

Mitt Romney’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Campaign

Authors

The Republican and Democratic Conventions – Who Came Out Ahead?

Video

Authors

Are the Political Conventions Still Relevant?

Video

Authors

Romney and Obama: The Presidential Candidates’ Solutions to Making College More Affordable

Authors

Web Chat: National Conventions

Event Information

Truth-Telling a Casualty in the Presidential Campaign

Authors

Reflections on the Republican National Convention

Authors

Missouri Loves Company: Romney’s Tightrope Act at the GOP Convention

Authors