2013 Playoffs, Round 2 Pens v. Senators

The last series against the Islanders showed us; the NHL playoffs are about guts, and determination, and luck, and coaching. More than anything else, they're about clutch goaltending. You can pretty much throw the statistics away before each series. Nevertheless, I refuse to concede my inability to predict results.

This and unlabeled mages from Wikimedia Commons

You'll note that I continue to use regular season statistics rather than those from Round 1. That will be true until the Finals, when we've got enough games to constitute a reasonable sample.

Pens Goals per Game Average: 3.38 (1st in the League)
Sens Goals Against Average 2.08 (2nd best in League)

Sens GPG Average: 2.33 (27th)
Pens GA Average: 2.48 (12th)

Advantage: Pens

This is going to be an amazing series; the Penguins have the most offensively talented teams in League history right now. They're going up against the 2nd best defensive team in the League. It would be an interesting case of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object, except Ottawa is an extremely weak team, offensively. On paper. Statistically. During the regular season.

The truth is, any team with Daniel Alfredsson is going to score on you. We're just damned lucky Spezza isn't playing.

Pens Power Play Percentage: 24.7% (2nd)
Sens Penalty Kill Percentage: 88% (1st)

Sens Power Play: 15.9% (20th)
Pens Penalty Kill: 79.6% (25th)

Advantage: Sens 

As with the Pens offense v. the Senators defense 5 on 5, the Pens power play v. the Senators' penalty kill will match the best units in the league against each other. And while the Pens penalty killing against the Islanders was the highlight of an otherwise dismal performance, it's hardly characteristic. We're going to have a very tough time scoring on the power play. Ottawa will probably have an easier time. This means that they'll be more able to rough up our guys more than we can theirs.

It's a problem.

Vokoun's Save Percentage: 91.9% (15th)
Anderson's Save Percentage 94.1% (1st in the league)

Advantage: Sens

Anderson's save percentage is just sick. In fairness, that's only over 24 games played; he was only in for half the games this season. He severed a tendon while preparing dinner. I'd mock him, but I've done damned near the same thing. Slippery vegetables.  And of course, Vokoun, played fewer games than that. It was a short season. But "in 24 games" is the only explanation for a save percentage that high.

This is going to be an absolute dogfight, Ottawa advantages in goaltending and special teams are made up by the larger advantage the Pens have 5 on 5. You can expect prodigious hockey out of Alfredsson, but the same thing should be true of Crosby, Malkin and Iginla.

This is going to be a great series. Ottawa is a MUCH better team than their regular season record indicates. Pens in 7.

The Burned Hand Apparently doesn't Teach at All

If the United States were a puppy, it's sheer inability to learn from past experience might be cute. Adorable even.

But it's a nation-state with the most over-funded military in the world, and so the current impulse in our policy circles to "do something" about Syria is frustrating, and scary, and DANGEROUS, in a way a puppy's antics are not.

This and unlabeled images from Wikimedia Commons

The debate is not about the nature of the Syrian regime. Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian Baath Party are savage, murderous abusers of human rights. Syria is a clear case of a demographic minority tyrannizing a majority population Their role in the sufferings of their neighbor Lebanon  is unforgivable. Their alliance with Iran destabilizes the region and threatens Israeli national security. The current civil war raging in Syria is the inevitable result of the despotic and authoritarian nature of Syria's ruling elite.

Given the despicable nature of the Syrian government, it's not surprising to find wide-spread sympathy for "The Free Syrian Army". Humans don't deal that well with complexity, and confronted with a "bad guy", our cognitive limitations incline us to find a "good guy". The Free Syrian Army can legitimately be seen as an agent of majority Sunni Syrians seeking self-determination against minority Alawi Syrians. But to think of them as "the good guys" is to both ignore the wide diversity within the rebel coalition and some of the more spectacular actions they have taken against the regime.

Bashar al Assad

Syrian rebels have been responsible for attacks causing disproportionate numbers of civilian casualties. They have used children on the front lines of combat. And there's "strong evidence" that they may have been responsible for the use of nerve gas against their enemies.

American interests in this conflict are quite clear. We have a strategic interest in seeing the end of Syria's alliance with Iran. Through our alliance with Israel, we have an indirect interest in seeing the end of Syria's support of Hezbollah. We have a moral interest in seeing the end of the atrocities and human rights abuses perpetrated upon the Syrian people by Assad's government.

These guys make Xi look like a bunch of murderous thugs. Oh. Wait...

It is equally clear what American interests are NOT. We have no interest in adding to the stresses on already over-burdened military personnel. We have no interest in replacing a horrible but explicitly secular government with an Islamic theocracy.

Like we did when we helped drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

There is no shortage of parties whose interests in Syria are more urgent than our own. Turkey faces a severe refugee problem as people flee to it from Syria. Most of the policies being urged by advocates of American intervention are well within Turkish capabilities, particularly with NATO helping share the financial and material costs. The Turkish air force can establish a no-fly zone. The Turkish Army can establish safe havens within Syria's borders. And as John McCain knows perfectly well, the US and Turkey are ALREADY supplying aid to the Syrian revolutionaries.

The Arab League has suspended Syria's membership and turned its seat over to the rebels. The organization includes some of the wealthiest nations on Earth. They could end this in 6 months with 50 million dollars and some South African mercenaries. For the most part they have not chosen to act.

Member States of the Arab League

In his phenomenal work Politics Among Nations, Hans Morgenthau discussed the "strategy of prestige" where a great power felt obligated to demonstrate its continued importance within the International System. This explains the reflexive neoconservative need to intervene in every conflict, dispute and argument over a parking place. At the heart of their policy preferences is the unexamined postulate that since the United States is at the apex of the international hierarchy it must be a central participant in every interaction that takes place within that system.

It is precisely this conviction which got us involved in Vietnam, by the way.

If it were only the Neocons urging us to greater involvement in Syria it would be easy to ignore. Iraq has cost them their credibility for a generation. But much more sensible Neorealists are also urging similar policies.

I don't wish to be unfair, but James Rubin has been everywhere the last few weeks urging increased American intervention in Syria.

I don't want to get bogged down here in a bunch of technical International Relations theory, because it fascinates me. On that basis I conclude that it bores everyone else. So without employing the jargon...

Neorealists believe that norms and rules in the International System prevent nation states from doing truly crazy stuff. Like using WMDs, for example. But if a nation-state DOES break the "rule", other states become much more likely to break the "rule" as well.

In other words, if Syria gets away with using chemical weapons, every brutal authoritarian will start using them.

I am a Classical Realist, so I have a soft spot for Neorealists. But I'd think the Iraq debacle would have taught them some humility. 1) They need to be a lot more cautious and skeptical regarding "intelligence", especially about WMDs, and 2) any large scale intervention in the affairs of a sovereign state needs to be done as part of a multi-lateral effort. At the very least the Turks need to formally request the specific actions we will take under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.

National treasure and Classical Realist Hans Morgenthau

Remember? The way it worked in Libya. 

Ultimately, the United States need not and certainly should not intervene internationally except in those instances where our interests are unequivocally at stake and where our involvement is as part of a legitimate international coalition.

These conditions have not been met in Syria, and the prospect of more demands being made on our exhausted military and our threadbare international credibility as an honest broker unmistakably tells us something depressing.

A large segment of the foreign policy establishment of this country has learned nothing from the last 12 years.

2013 Playoffs, Round 1. Pens v. the Islanders

An important aspect of my hockey fandom is hatred. I absolutely loathe the Philadelphia Flyers. I despise the Washington Capitals. I hate the New York Rangers and the Detroit Red Wings and the New Jersey Devils with "the heat of a thousand suns". And in the playoffs...

You may have noted I didn't link to any of the teams mentioned above. Fuck them, let them generate their own web traffic. Assholes. Oh, the image above is from Wikimedia Commons. And, my dart board.

well, just push the slide rule all the way to the right.

Which makes this years first round opponent, the New York Islanders, a little problematic for me. I don't hate the Isles. They've been too pathetic, for too long to get a good hostility built up. I deeply admire Al Arbour. I absolutely love Bryan Trottier, who joined the Pens for two Stanley Cups. John Tavares is an exciting young player who is an absolute blast to watch. And of course the Isles have something the Pens do not, despite all of our success. The Isles have a dynasty.

We were supposed to have a dynasty. In 1991 and again in 1992 we won the Stanley Cup under the leadership of Mario Lemieux. I think of him as God the Father. Those teams were thick with talent; including my favorite hockey player of all time, Ron Francis (the Holy Spirit) and Jaromir Jagr (God the Son). I had the most meaningful spiritual experience of my life at a Christmas Eve Mass when Jagr and Martin Straka showed up for communion.

After winning 2 Stanley Cups in a row, the Pens set the NHL record for consecutive wins the next season: 17. Scotty Bowman autographed a schedule for me from that season during the streak. The dynasty was a done deal in my mind; a third consecutive championship is a dynasty in the mind of any rational sports fan.

Having amassed the most wins that season, we drew the New York Islanders, who had squeaked into the playoffs as the 8th seed.

And, they beat us in 7 games. Darius Kasparitus and Rich Pilon hacked, and slashed, and held, and cheap-shotted our guys so brilliantly that we completely lost the chemistry and flow that had made us a success. Sure, it was dirty hockey...

and SO WHAT? It was the playoffs! Winning the Stanley Cup is the single most difficult feat in team sports; you have to win 4 "best of 7" game series, in an activity in which you are being slammed into by people traveling MUCH faster than a football player, in pursuit of a frozen rubber puck that can crack 100 mph... ON SKATES. It calls for levels of courage, and determination, and talent, and sheer indefatigable zeal that typically exist only in warfare.

We lost in overtime, after my 2nd favorite hockey player of all time fractured every bone in his face trying to run Rich Pilon. No dynasty.

You know what? Forget everything I said; I DO hate the New York Islanders. I hate their stinking guts. Let's do this.

Penguins Goals per game average: 3.38 (1st in the league)

Islanders Goals against per game average: 2.83 (21st)

Islanders Goals per game: 2.81 (7th)

Pens Goals against per game (12th)

Advantage Pittsburgh

We're going to score on these guys. Neal, Malkin, Iginla, Letang, Kunitz (full disclosure, I wanted to trade Kunitz early in the season) the inimitable Sidney Crosby... this is a preponderance of firepower that rivals the Edmonton dynasty. Make no mistake, the Isles will score on us, too. But we ought to be able to overwhelm them will sheer quantity.

Pens Power Play percentage: 24.7 (2nd)

Isles Penalty Kill percentage: 80.3 (21st)

Isles PP: 19.9% (11th) 

Pittsburgh PK: 79.6% (25th)

Advantage Pittsburgh... BARELY

It is absolutely essential we stay out of the penalty box. This team can hurt us on the power play. I will note that the addition of Brendan Morrow to the team, and his pairing with  Matt Cooke has made us a much better penalty killing team. I will also note that putting Jarome Iginla on the left point  during the power play has the potential to devastate the Isles. I haven't seen a slapshot that hard since Al Iafrate retired.

Pens Marc-Andre Fleury's save percentage: .916 (16th)

Isle's Evgeni Nabakov save percentage: .910 (22nd)

Advantage Pittsburgh... on paper

Fleury is a great goaltender. His stats are better than Nabakov, although Nabakov is playing for a mediocre team, and Fleury is playing for a great team. (This is why I cite save percentage rather than goals against average.) But in the playoffs, Fleury is infamous for giving up the occasional soft goal. Often, he does so on the first shot he faces. This is guaranteed to discourage his team, and encourage the opposition. In a playoff setting, where guts and determination and the weight and diameter of one's testicles are the key determinant of success, this is absolutely deadly.

So, I have a "system" I developed back when I was gambling on hockey. Over the years, it's been about as accurate as flipping a coin. I've stuck with it because damn it, it OUGHT to work. It does work in the regular season, but the playoffs are very, very different. Statistical analysis doesn't help when the most important variable is something as intangible as "guts".

Nevertheless...

I'm predicting Pittsburgh in 4 games

Going Django on Chained CPI

The inclusion of chained CPI in the President's latest Federal Budget has caused renewed wailing and gnashing of teeth throughout the progressive community. The President has been called "deceptive" (again), he's been accused of being a lousy negotiator (just a few weeks after forcing the GOP into the first tax increase in decades) he's being called naive...

this reaction reminds me of lots of things. I keep hearing "he just handed Romney the election!"

This and unlabeled images from Wikimedia Commons

I should note first that I don't oppose chained CPI. It is opposed by MUCH smarter people than me, however. My inclination is to defer to Robert Reich and Paul Krugman, so rather than defend chained CPI I'll just make a few quick points and move on to the real topic of this post.

1) Supporters of chained CPI claim it is a more accurate measure of inflation than standard CPI. This claim is disputed, on the grounds that the elderly have a different mix of expenses than the rest of us. Except, most of those expenses are related to Healthcare. Obamacare is supposed to sharply reduce the rate of healthcare inflation, according to many of the same people arguing against chained CPI.

2) Opponents of chained CPI claim it's a cut to benefits. This is dishonest. It's a very small cut to the rate of increase in benefits. To make the reduction seem larger than it actually is, opponents have to extrapolate the cumulative effect of minor annual reductions over a decade or more. Perhaps they could spend that decade lobbying for an increase in benefits that doesn't deliberately over-state the rate of inflation?

3) Progressives OUGHT to be empiricists. If the scientists tell us they have a better way to measure something, we should at least look at the new measure, rather than reject it because it's at odds with a particular policy goal we hold.

But this is all a long digression from the thesis of this post, which is that the chained CPI issue has revealed an ignorance of Federal budgeting in the progressive community. People are outraged over a fairly insignificant early step in a long, multi-stage process.

The President's budget proposal is NOT the same thing as the Federal Budget

Here's how the process works:

1. The various Federal agencies submit spending requests to OMB. These will be cut sharply.

2. OMB goes through the spending requests, and changes them to reflect the administration's policy goals and initiatives. After further tweaking within the West Wing, the president formally submits his budget proposal. THIS IS NOT THE BUDGET!

director of OMB, Jeffrey Zients

3. Congress throws away the President's budget. And that's  only a sliver of exaggeration. The statutory authority to decide how much we spend, and on what, rests entirely with Congress. The President can't spend money without Congressional authorization. Congress takes the power of the purse very, very seriously. If the President's party has effective majorities in both chambers, AND the President has good control over the party, the final budget MAY reflect the president's budget. It probably won't; typically Presidents get their tax cuts but not their spending cuts.

4. The House and Senate Budget committees pass a "budget resolution". THIS IS NOT THE BUDGET! It's not even "law", it's an internal congressional thing instructing the committees that ACTUALLY write pieces of the budget how much money they can spend in their particular areas. An example of this is "The Ryan Budget". It sets general spending guidelines in broad categories. 

Lyin' Ryan

5. The House and Senate vote on the budget resolution. Amendments are added, some numbers get changed. THIS IS NOT THE BUDGET!

6. The authorization bills are written in the various House and  Senate committees. THIS IS NOT THE BUDGET! The ACTUAL Federal budget is in fact 12 different pieces of appropriations legislation, divided up by the type of government activity each piece is funding. There is a "defense" appropriation, and an "agriculture" appropriation, and a "Homeland security" appropriation...

but each of these activities must be authorized, by the committees with jurisdiction over each of these areas. Not surprisingly, a hypothetical politician with a seat on the 
House Armed Services Committee may have interests and priorities which are different from a hypothetical politician on the House Budget Committee. There's a constant struggle between the committees of jurisdiction and the Budget committees over how much money can be spent on special interests and pet projects. 

7. The Appropriations Committees appropriate money for the line items in the authorization bills. THIS IS NOT THE FEDERAL BUDGET. Each of the 12 bills reported by the Appropriations Committees must be voted on by the whole chamber, and may be amended, altered, changed, mutated or poisoned to death on the floor. And remember...

8. There are still 2 different versions of the budget, the House version and the Senate version. The 2 versions of each Appropriations Bill must be reconciled in Conference between the House and Senate, and then each must be passed by both chambers again, without amendment. THAT'S THE FEDERAL BUDGET.

You'll be astonished to hear that this straightforward and simple process doesn't always work perfectly. In recent years, budgeting has often been done by means of a "continuing resolution", which is simply a law that instructs Federal agencies "spend what you did last year". It's an emergency expedient to keep the Federal Government from shutting down when a budget agreement can't be reached between the 2 parties.

OMB models the Federal budgeting process. Not really.

So, in this multi-stage, complex, year-long process, the one that has the progressive community upset with the President is one aspect of step number 2, above.

People currently screaming their outrage about the inclusion of chained CPI in the President's budget lack the perspective obtained by considering the entire Federal budget process. Why so much anger at what is a mere triviality, unlikely to exert the slightest actual impact in terms of dollars and cents? In fact...

why would the President RISK such angry progressive outrage in an exercise that lacks the slightest policy significance? Why take the hit over a procedural step?

Here's a conspiracy theory for you. This budget proposal, which sparked outrage on the Left, which failed to move Republicans, which is a mere formality in a process over which the president has little influence, is aimed at the mid-terms in 2014.

This is how I see it working. The President has made a purely symbolic concession to Republicans, one which will NEVER be fulfilled. But everyone is treating this concession as real. Republicans cannot accept this concession, and the negative campaign ads write themselves. "Gary Miller would rather preserve tax breaks for the rich than balance the budget".

Likewise, the positive spots write themselves. "Mike McIntyre took on his own party's President to preserve Social Security for North Carolina Seniors."

Of course, to make this "concession" seem real, it'd be necessary for the President's base to scream bloody murder about it.

Guest Post: Economic Austerity in the UK

The issue is that the current coalition has doubled down on policies that have a failed record. They've cut the fuck out of social welfare, education funding, unemployment, and housing benefits while raising a regressive tax that overwhelmingly affects the spending capital of middle and lower class people while having little noticeable effect on the spending habits of the wealthy. That has helped to severely curtail economic growth because people buy both services AND goods, some of which are imported, but many of which are based right here in the good old UK. Sure, I bought a Samsung Blu Ray player with my tax refund, but I bought it from a local guy who made a profit and used it to buy a car made out somewhere near Milton Keynes or something. The idea drops in consumer spending aren't a significant drag on growth because we import shit has been pretty roundly disproved. 

Instead, the government has spent a lot of money on a shit-load of QE, which has its uses and has worked to stymie the economic decline, but also has its limitations. For one thing, it's done wonders for the equities markets, which are miraculously back to where they were in 2007, and has utterly failed to trickle down in to substantially increased investment in hiring or infrastructure, despite that being kind of the idea behind keeping asset prices high. What it's done is inject an enormous amount of liquidity in to financial markets, boosted asset prices and made the rich VERY rich, but is essentially the same trickle-down bull-shit that exacerbated income inequality in the 80s. If QE went away tomorrow, the price of oil would drop sharply, and for good reason - global demand currently doesn't support oil prices, but all that extra money? THAT sure does! This has actually been underscored recently when recent rumblings that the Fed could cut back on quantitative easing prompted big and really sudden drops in commodity prices. Actually, it happened last week, come to think of it. I wrote a couple of articles about it.

Is there a moral problem with that? Yes. Yes there is. You know there is. In fact, we basically agree about that. What I object to INCREDIBLY strongly is the idea that countries who run deficits are somehow morally bankrupt, while countries that don't are somehow morally superior. That is an incredibly puritanical concept and it's one that is used ALL OF THE TIME when people talk about the current economic climate. Countries fall in to arrears for all sorts of reasons -- sometimes for really good ones -- and pretending that all debt is bad and all surplus is good is ridiculous.

What it all comes down to what qualifies as an acceptable level of debt, doesn't it? Who decides that? You? The government? The bond markets? For the last four years, people have said that deficit spending is something we have no hope to repay, but it's predicated on a fundamentally flawed idea - namely that growth has infinite potential and yet somehow there is a finite level of acceptable debt. Quite frankly, that essential misconception is the most insane part of the whole argument. The idea that the same rules that apply to debt amongst individuals applies to nation states is extremely flawed. There is no lifetime cap on nation state earnings - they can grow as far as the innovation of their people and businesses can take them - whereas there is a cap on what people are capable of earning and repaying within a lifetime. Debt is a huge weight on the agency of the individual, but it is arguably less of a thing for most nation state governments UNTIL THEY MAKE IT ONE. Greece would be in a much better position if they were able to structurally adjust out of it like a normal economy, but since they're tied to an incredibly draconian monetary policy, they're mired in the opposite of growth and a spiralling debt problem they will never be to pull out of until the economy grows.

People have been warning about borrowing costs in the US and UK for YEARS, and their justifications for why they haven't spiralled out of control have evolved and shifted and gotten increasingly weird, and the dire predictions have continued unabated. They haven't spiralled out of control. Perhaps that's to do with low growth, perhaps that has to do with asset purchasing, perhaps it has to do with the fact that bond vigilantes are a made up concept, the explanations are pretty endless. The fact is they haven't spiralled out of control, so the fact that people think they could someday is kind of a moot point.

Paul Ryan has no clothes. Someone should say so.

I apologize for the visual.

Paul Ryan, failed Vice-Presidential candidate and Chairman of the House budget Committee released his budget today. In a just world, his appearance before the press would have been met with jeers, heckling and perhaps a few accurately aimed, over-ripe tomatoes.

Image from The Atlantic Wire

But "there ain't no justice". Ryan is an indefatigable phony. He lies more than my cats, and I think they may be narcoleptic. In the coming days, his budget will be dissected line-by-line, and will be shown to be based on delusional assumptions, accounting gimmicks and intentional misrepresentation. Everyone who follows this stuff, and I mean everyone, knows this is the case. Certainly the Beltway media know it.

In fairness to Ryan, this budget isn't intended to be a serious contribution to the actual public policy process. It's a symbolic budget, released to legitimize the Republican Economic paradigm, and as an opening offer in the legislative bargaining process, and as the first step in Ryan's candidacy for the Presidency in 2016. Responsible observers of our political elites have already called bullshit on a number of its provisions.

Image from the Washington Post's Wonkblog

Responsible political observers within the Beltway are limited to a precious few. We are living in a "Tale of Two DC press corps", where it is simultaneously the best of times and the worst of times. We have Ezra Klein and Dave Weigel and Greg Sargent. We also have Dana Milbank and Thomas Friedman and Chuck Todd. I intentionally leave the explicitly partisan media, represented by FOX, the Daily Caller or the editorial page of the Wall St. Journal, out of this. They're not Beltway Media, they're part of the Conservative Scandal Machine. 

The majority of the political press have treated Ryan's budget as though it is a serious contribution to our nation's policy dialogue. They haven't called him a "liar", or a "hypocrite" or a "charlatan", despite the fact that these are objective and justified adjectives for the author of this budget. To do so would be to violate a key value of the Beltway Community: False Equivalence.

This and unlabeled images from Wikimedia Commons

The Beltway policy community is an identity group composed of sub-communties, such as the political press, politicians, political staff, bureaucrats, lobbyists and a few academics. As with any identity group there are mores and values and conventions. There are elite and mass members. There are in-group and out-group identity markers allowing members to identify "us and "them". Status within the group is determined by how successfully a member epitomizes the group's values, and the group's values are communicated to the mass membership by the modeling of those values by the elites.

Key values within the Beltway are "success" "access" and "sophistication". Success is measured by one's status within one's occupational sub-community. A writer for TPM is less successful than a writer for the New York Times, and both are less successful than the White House correspondent for a major television network. The Chief of Staff for the Senate Majority leader is more prestigious than an intern for an obscure member of the House. Just ask Virginia Foxx.

Congresswoman Virginia Foxx. I am informed that to claim she owns a gingerbread cottage is sexist, so I'll just call her a prick and leave it at that.

The "sophistication" value is measured by the extent to which someone displays a world-weary cynicism regarding the entire process, and the motives of the people taking part in that process. Politicians come and go. Presidents come and go quickly. Staffers get recycled, and a bureaucrat, or a lobbyist may be a "lifer", having been an observer of the process for decades. Adding to this is the "revolving door" phenomenon, where (for example) a legislative staffer may become a lobbyist, and then be nominated to a position within the bureaucracy that oversees the industry for which they lobbied. After a career of lying to people to advance your agenda, and being lied to by people doing the same thing, after seeing the most crass personal motives wrapped in the flag of selfless patriotism, after seeing idealistic and charismatic leaders brought low by the most squalid personal failings...

one becomes "sophisticated". Everyone's a sell-out, everyone lies, and the "national interest"...

well, that's in the eye of the beholder, right?

Image from Newsweek via Huffington Post

You CAN'T call Paul Ryan a liar, because your editor would want to know if you could read Ryan's mind. Maybe he really believes this stuff? You can't call him a liar, because you're going to get an angry phone call from Ryan's staff. Or worse... your PUBLISHER might get an angry call from John Boehner. You can't call Ryan a liar because Republicans will spread the word that you're a bad guy, and you'll never get another quote again. You'll lose access. You can't call Ryan a liar, because that would imply that perhaps someone in DC was telling the truth. Your friends will make jokes about your naiveté, people will call you a "lightweight" behind your back, and you'll never, ever get invited to one of Cokie Roberts' cocktail parties again.

The Beltway community, and the media that is an important element of that community is deeply invested in the "equivalency" narrative. The mass migration of the Republican Party away from the center and towards the radical right of the ideological spectrum has undermined any basis this narrative ever had in fact. The GOP has been captured by ideological purists to whom compromise is anathema and for whom contradiction is treasonous. The parties are NOT the same; one of them is led by crazy people and one of them is not. But to acknowledge that fact would undercut "equivalency".

The Beltway HAS to pretend Ryan is a serious figure. He's the closest thing the Republicans have to one.

Post Script: My delightful and wise editor tells me the tone of this post is too personal. I disagree. The whole point of this post is that Paul Ryan is an unethical liar subordinating the national interests to his own career intentions. There aren't enough people willing to say so, directly. He doesn't have a different viewpoint. He doesn't see things differently. This isn't an honest disagreement about the facts from equally well-intentioned parties. Paul Ryan is a shameless and inveterate liar, and anyone who glosses over that central point is doing a disservice to the country. The young Republican prince has no clothes.

Image from Wonkette

Why are Democrats so timid?

Let me start by admitting that's an unfair question. It is NOT the case that "Democrats" are timid. The party is blessed with a number of bold, daring thinkers, unafraid of conservative bluster and willing to take courageous stands in pursuit of social progress. Our President is the most obvious example of such a leader, but others include Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren and Patty Murray.

This and unlabeled images from Wikimedia Commons

Furthermore, the "timid" charge applies to politicians generally, not to politicians from either party. As David Mayhew points out in his brilliant book Congress, the Electoral Connection, members of Congress are "single minded seekers of re-election". They have to be; the system selects for that behavioral value. Anyone who isn't absolutely focused on the next election loses, usually at the state or local level. Getting elected to Congress is usually the final outcome of a Darwinian process of selection, a career path marked with the defeated campaigns of one's opponents. Politicians who gamble too much lose, and go off to find more lucrative careers elsewhere.

Nevertheless, it is absolutely fair to observe that Democrats in the House and the Senate tend to be be more timid than their Republican colleagues. Their rhetoric is more moderate. Their policies are more incremental. They have a frustrating tendency to adopt the assumptions and narratives of the Beltway press, even when those narratives involve a false equivalence, and attribute a subjectivity to things that are objective, empirical facts.

The most recent example of Democratic chicken-shittedness has been "Dismal" Harry Reid's capitulation on the filibuster. Given the opportunity to reform the filibuster and finally allow    Democrats to legislate, Reid instead opted to preserve the traditions of his beloved Senate. It remains to be seen just how damaging this choice will be for President Obama's policy agenda, but if we get a filibuster of his nominees for the Supreme Court, we'll have Dismal Harry to thank.

Mitch McConnell and Dismal Harry (right) negotiate filibuster reform

Democratic timidity has been a source of intense frustration for many Progressives, going back years. We saw that frustration manifested over the failure of Healthcare Reform to include a public option, the President's tardy enlightenment on Same Sex Marriage and his decision to "surge" in Afghanistan. But it is important to realize that there are reasons for that timidity, and that indeed, timidity is a rational paradigm for people whose guiding motivation is to win their next election.

I have noted elsewhere that the defining characteristic of the American electorate is apathy. Americans (taken as a whole) of this era don't like politics. It bores them. They have only a superficial understanding of their political system. They can't tell you who their elected representatives are, or what positions those representatives have taken on most policy issues. They don't know what their own position is on most policy issues, with any certainty.

But while the average American voter can't recall the name of their Senator, or their Congressman, or (God help us) the Vice-President, they can recognize that name and choose it from a list. A list like, for example, a ballot.

This "recognition" phenomenon explains one of the enduring anomalies of the American political system. Congressional approval rates are lower than David Vitter's morals. The American people regard Congress as corrupt, lazy and completely self-serving. Nevertheless, they continue to vote for them. Incumbent re-election rates were at 90% in 2012. They were at 85% in 2010, commonly portrayed as a "wave" election. We nearly always choose to return the same people we hold in contempt to office, because confronted with a list of names about which we know as little as possible, we select the one we recognize.

It's an odd way for a free people to govern themselves.

The old saying goes, "the only way to lose an election is to get caught with a dead girl or a live boy". There are other ways; anything that gets enough publicity to pierce the willful ignorance of a politician's constituents is dangerous. Keeping a stack of bribe money in your freezer is colorful, it gets lots of press and the voters will hear about it while waiting for the weather on the 11:00 news. An attempted bathroom tryst with an undercover cop is titillating, people don't forget that kind of detail. And a big policy initiative, or a controversial vote, or a deviation from local prejudice or conventional wisdom may have the same effect. Supporting an assault weapons ban won't get as much ink as having an affair with your chief of staff's wife, but it will get some ink, and you can be damned certain your next opponent will try to publicize it.

Adulterer and poster child for Evangelical Christianity John Ensign.

Incumbents thrive on anonymity. Any publicity they seek is of the safe, "I brought you Federal money!" type. They agonize over the tough votes, and pressure their leaders to write legislation to be as uncontroversial as possible. If they keep their heads down, and use their frank to promote name recognition, and don't make anyone in the district too angry, they're a lock to win their next election. They can live in Washington, and make 6 figure salaries, and be wined, and dined, and stroked, and gifted (although they need to be careful about this) and fly to exotic locations on the public dime...

as long as they don't make too many waves.

But that is an explanation of the timidity of politicians. It does not explain the peculiar and institutionalized timidity of Democratic politicians. Political apathy emerged as a dominant value in the electorate in the mid 1950's. As with any complex phenomenon, there are probably many causes. Some of these may be with the gradual replacement of newspapers by television as an evening activity, the rise of consumer values and identity at the expense of community identity, and a broad policy consensus between the two political parties on the basis of support for the Cold War and the existing welfare state as an acceptable status quo. Or maybe not, it's awfully hard to test those hypotheses from the early 21st century.

Liberal Democrat and ardent Cold Warrior Harry Truman

What we do know empirically is that the House of Representatives stopped changing hands. Between 1955 and 1994, Democrats had a majority in the House every single Congress. It was an unbroken hold on power reminiscent of the LDP in Japan or the PRI in Mexico. Democrats controlled the Speakership, the committee chairmanships, the committees themselves. Republicans were limited to the role of a largely symbolic opposition, raising objections from time to time but never exerting any control over the actual process of public policy.

The Senate was nearly the same; Democrats controlled the Senate for the exact same stretch as in the House, with the exception of 6 years under Ronald Reagan. The political timidity that guaranteed reelection for nearly all incumbents also guaranteed Democratic control of the legislative branch. Timidity became ingrained in the culture of the Democratic party more deeply than in the Republican party. Timidity was to the advantage of individual Republican politicians; it was to the advantage of the entire Democratic party, providing them with nearly monopoly control of 1 branch of government, a guaranteed influence over the policy process and domination of that process when they could elect a president, as well.

No strategy is always effective, however. The wave election of 1980 frightened Democrats badly. Not only did they lose control of the Senate for the 1st time in a quarter century, they lost the White House to a candidate who openly challenged the broad policy consensus between the two parties. Ronald Reagan did NOT accept the desirability of the status quo. Rather than the "containment" approach to the Cold War, Reagan was a proponent of "roll-back", the idea that the United States should aggressively attempt regime change in those countries allied to the Soviet Union. He was equally aggressive on "rolling back" the policies of the welfare state, slashing taxes on top wage earners and savaging many programs aimed at the poor.

"Amiable dunce" and national disaster Ronald Reagan. And no, he didn't win the Cold War, either.

And congressional Democrats supinely acquiesced. Democrats were spooked; 1980 was a terrific year for the Republicans, 1982 was just around the corner and opposing the party the electorate had just selected was too much to ask of Democratic politicians who equated controversy with risk. Reagan's entire program was implemented with token opposition, and the Republic suffers from that colossal error to this day.

On the other hand, Democrats held onto the House for another 15 years, so there's that.

Newt Gingrich ended that string of wins by learning the lesson of Reagan; timidity might serve the interests of individual Republican incumbents taking advantage of an apathetic electorate. But timidity was poison for the party, and for ambitious Republican megalomaniacs who wanted to govern rather than simply quietly enjoy the perks of office. Gingrich's time in office illustrates both the advantages and costs of demagoguery. He broke an historic Democratic monopoly on the House, achieved the Speakership... and promptly destroyed his party's brand with an unpopular government shutdown and a nakedly partisan impeachment.

Controversy is a tactic, Newt. It's not a lifestyle choice. 

Through the entire conservative realignment initiated by Ronald Reagan, Democrats have assiduously avoided controversy. They're happy to take advantage of Republican missteps, of course. Iran-Contra, Gingrich's own political scandal, the Katrina debacle have all been used to good political effect by Democrats. But Democratic policy can be viewed as an acceptance of the narrative established by Ronald Reagan; government is too big, and incompetent. The financial elite in this country must be given every possible incentive and subsidy or they'll... choose to be less wealthy, and we'll all suffer. We must spend more on defense than the next 14 countries on the list combined.

A jellyfish. Note the striking absence of a spine.

To challenge that narrative would be to court controversy. It would invite charges of being a "tax and spend liberal", or "Washington insider" or "soft on defense". It would risk reelection, and that is something Democratic office holders do not do.

Democratic politicians operating in an electoral environment of pervasive political apathy can count on reelection. An inattentive electorate will cheerfully choose their name off a list of total strangers, as being the one that rings a bell. A secure career of perk and privilege and deference is almost guaranteed after your second term...

if you don't make anyone mad. That value, and the institutional culture which generates it are why Democrats are so timid.

It's an horrendously bad way to govern, however.