more signs of a moderate America

Polls are fickle things. A few weeks ago, one was ringing the death knell for Obama's popularity - showing he had slipped below the fatal 40% approval bar. Pundits were ready to read into the low numbers announcing that Obama's willingness to give in to Republicans was losing the faith of Democrats yet not winning him any love from Independents and conservatives.

A new poll from the bi-partisan polling team of McInturff and Hart shows Obama's approval numbers at 45%. I'll try not to repeat the pundit mistake of reading too much into the tea leaves, but three observations come to mind.

• First. Again, polls are fickle. They'll blip and swerve - even when you account for "margins of error." Reading anything into a single poll is just shy of senseless.
• As the authors of the WSJ article point out, if you look at the trendline of Obama's approval ratings, they're pretty consistent for the last six months - and haven't changed that much since last year. This is somewhat remarkable given the state of the economy and ongoing joblessness.
• What that says about Americans and Obama is an open question. Perhaps Americans are becoming more forgiving of leadership and less willing to heap blame on politicians just 'cause the economy sucks. But it could be that there's something about Obama's leadership which have people willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe his conciliatory, cross-the-aisle attitude is not as hateful to Americans as some have said. Who knows? Only time will tell how history rates our Compromiser in Chief.

Americans can compromise

Now we'll see if Congress can compromise too.

The Washington Post polled Americans on the four major provisions in the tax deal Obama negotiated with Republicans last week.

Asked about the provisions one at a time, only 11% of those polled approved of all four.

But when asked if they backed the entire package - with all four provisions bundled together - 69% gave it the thumbs up.

This, of course, is the nature of compromise. I'll take a bit of what I don't like in order to get some of what I do.

Politicians, however, have gotten into the habit of rejecting compromise as lilly-livered flip-flopping. Hatching a deal with opposition, according to some lawmakers, is akin to selling your soul.

Thank goodness Americans still recognize the sense in lilly-livered compromise. Hopefully some of that common sense will brush off on their elected leaders.

why are so many smart people just focused on making money?

Today someone asked that question on Facebook. I just had to answer...

Because we are social animals designed to seek power. Back in the hunter-gatherer day, power could mean the difference between survival and starvation - or between getting the ladies (and so offspring) or having your genes die out.

Today, with food stamps and birth-control, the power-survival equation no longer makes sense, but our human DNA hasn't caught on. We are still driven to accumulate power. For men, that usually means making money. Women don't have the power-drive as strongly as men (that's because a powerful male hunter could have dozens of kids, but even the most powerful woman gatherer could only knock out 10 children over a lifetime); even so, they'll also aim to get on top either by making money or marrying money.

But that all doesn't explain why the power of choice is money - and not political power, physical might or prestige in non-remunerative fields (academia, nonprofit, etc.) - which may be the question you're really asking. That's a trickier question, but it may be easily answered by the fact that money is the only common currency we all have. While we may seek to get ahead in our occupation (real-estate, law, engineering, etc.), the field of competition is narrowed by the people in that field. In the competition for money, however, everyone's a player. Being the most popular game, it'll also have the highest stakes and the biggest winners.

Finally, I doubt that smart people are any more or less driven to make money. But if most people are money hungry, and you assume smart people are also smart at making money, it'll look like there are "so many smart people just focused on making money."

designed for deadlock

Another week, another round of bills killed in the Senate by the dread filibuster - this time taking down a Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal, the DREAM act and a health bill for 9/11 rescue workers.

When our founding fathers designed our federal government, it was no accident that they created a system built for logger-jam. Wary of giving a central government too much muscle, they architected the famous "balance of powers", making sure that neither the president, the House, the Senate or the courts could run amok. That caution is in large part why DC can't get anything done today; the writers of our Constitution only wanted us to act when there was broad-based consensus to do so.

But even our worry-wort founders might agree that the filibuster is taking caution a little too far.

The filibuster doesn't come from the Constitution; it was an early Senate practice that got formalized into a rule in 1917. Back in the 19th century, there was no way for senators to officially end floor debates (a rule for ending debate got cut in 1806, because it was thought it would never be needed). Starting in the 1830s, lawmakers who strongly disliked a bill would simply (though exhaustingly) debate the bill to death, allowing the Senate to move on to other matters only after relenting to the "filibustering" senator. In 1917 fed up senators finally created a new bill, allowing the chamber to end debate - but only if 60% of the senators agreed. But even the newly formalized "filibuster" isn't the one we're used to today; a few decades ago it was still used only for highly contested bills, whereas today no bill comes up for a vote unless it passes muster with 60 senators.

A 60% majority may not seem so anti-democratic, but when you add it to the fact that 2 senators come from every state - regardless of their size - you get a very funky democracy indeed. Out of curiosity, I added up the populations of the smallest 21 states to see exactly how funky.

In theory, senators representing 11% of the nation's population can block a bill from passing. In other words, for some bills to pass you might need backing from lawmakers representing 90% of the country.

I know "democracy" is a loose term, but even I'm not certain it includes a 90% majority.

the sunlight that works

It may be a statistical aberration, but October was the first month that no US passenger sat on the tarmac for 3 hours waiting for lift-off - at least since the FAA started keeping track in 2008.

It was that year the government also threatened to fine airlines for holding travelers prisoner while waiting for take-off. Although the threat has never been followed through with, it could be that the FAA's onlooking eyes are enough to incentivize airlines to clean up their act.

While "sunlight" laws are most commonly known for making government transparent, throwing sunlight on corporations has become popular lately as well. (Tracking airline delays is just one example - if you live in a city where restaurants have to display their health department grade, that's another.)

It may be that, when it comes to the private sector, sunlight is a more effective disinfectant. That makes market sense: if an airline has a shoddy on-time record you may choose to spend the extra couple of bucks to fly a more reliable company - but if our government is doing a below-par job, we have less leeway to choose another government (voting a party out of office or moving across the border are not easy options).

reality-based general

As the Daily Beast pointed out this morning, it's not all that common when politicians come out and say "I don't know."

You can include in that group of confident "knowers" political pundits, experts, consultants and more and more the man on the street. We live in a time where people aren't only really damn confident about what's what today - but also about what the future will bring. Of course, people like Nassim Nicholas Taleb will tell you that reading the future is generally an utter waste of time. Philip Tetlock will add on that the more "expert" you are in an area, the more your predictions are likely to be way off.

That's why it was refreshing to hear military expert (and future politician?) Petraeus say he didn't know if we'd be wrapped up in Afghanistan by 2014.

From his interview with Stephanopoulos:

'“I think-no commander ever is going to come out and say, ‘I'm confident that we can do this.’ I think that you say that you assess that this is-- you believe this is, you know, a reasonable prospect and knowing how important it is-- that we have to do everything we can to increase the chances of that prospect,” the top commander in Afghanistan told me. “But again, I don't think there are any sure things in this kind of endeavor. And I wouldn't be honest with you and with the viewers if I didn't convey that.”'

Thank you for your honesty, General. We could use more of that these days.

room for reciprocation

Calls for bi-partisanship - thankfully - are coming into vogue.

But while Americans may be yearning more and more for greater cooperation across the aisles, the question of how to get the parties to get on the bi-partisan bandwagon has no one answer.

Yesterday I mentioned a couple of promising solutions suggested by the new group No Labels (not the first by far to recommend them), all which would tweak the election process to deliver fewer extremists to Congress.

Today I want to try out some reforms that would nudge lawmakers toward collaboration once they've gotten into office.

Those ideas come - indirectly - from Robert Cialdini's "Influence," the 1984 marketing classic on the six "weapons of influence" - that is, how to get people to say "yes" without them knowing that's what you're trying to do (and even make them like you while you're doing it). It could be called a manifesto for manipulation, but as with all tools their value is in whether they can be used for evil or good.

The first weapon I propose to use for the good of collegiality on Capitol Hill is "reciprocation." Human beings are natural reciprocators. Studies suggest that our propensity to dole out and return favors is not just something we learn, but rather a behavior hard-coded in our DNA. Unlike most species that usually just help out their immediate kin (ie those who share genes), humans are surprisingly altruistic toward people with no familial relation. Evolutionary biologists theorize that this altruist - or more accurately "quid pro quo" - trait would be beneficial to groups of humans in the early days; a small tribe which naturally helped each other out in hard times might be more apt to survive than tribes without a similar help-thy-neighbor instinct. (Humans are not naive enough to be pure altruists though; we also have a strong instinct to punish "free riders" who don't live up to their half of the "quid pro quo" bargain.)

Cialdini charts out a few modern day examples of this reciprocation instinct in action. Joe, the plant in one study, casually buys a participant a coke while he goes to get himself one at the vending machine. The unsuspecting participant thinks Joe is just another subject in a fake study. Later, when the "decoy" study is over, Joe asks the other guy if he wants to buy raffle tickets for a local charity. If Joe hadn't bought a coke, participants on average bought 25 cents of tickets. If he did come back with a coke, the other guy would buy 50 cents of tickets. Given that a bottle coke back in the 70s was 10 cents, Joe made a good return on his "gift" investment.

Apparently we have a strong urge to return favors. Or more precisely, according to Cialdini, we have a strong urge to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling of being in someone else's debt.

Cialdini doesn't mention it himself, but at least one other great mind has noticed that being in someone else's credit also makes them more apt to help out. As Ben Franklin famously noted, "he that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged."

Either way, gifts have a way of producing more gifts.

One kind of favor - a "concession" can be particularly effective at eliciting return favors. In negotiations, a "concession" is essentially a gift. If I'm splitting the responsibility of a project with a co-worker, I can start start with a demand that he handle 70% of the work, which will likely make him balk "no friggin' way." I can then backtrack, splitting up the work a little more fairly, say 55% and 45%. That concession can win me some good will and perhaps a concession in return, so I end up doing 40% of the work, but getting 50% of the credit (which, of course, I would never do).

Remarkably, studies that set up quasi real-life negotiation show that when there is a concession back-and-forth people are happier with the result - even if they they had reached the exact same result without a concession. (The technique - which Cialdini calls "rejection then retreat" - can, however, backfire if the initial demands are seen as extreme and made in bad faith.)

With all the mutual benefits of giving and giving-in, you can imagine how they'd come in handy on Capitol Hill. It wouldn't be just during legislation negotiations that favors (in the form of concessions) would reap favors - and ultimately lead to compromise and bipartisan solutions. But even small favors out of the committee rooms - not of the grease-palming but of the "could you pass the salt" variety - would naturally spur collegiality.

Of course, giving and giving-in face two obstacles in DC. The greater obstacle by far is the culture that "giving-in" is a sign of weakness. We've bred a generation of partisans that think any compromise is akin to trouncing on your principles, if not selling your soul. The other obstacle is a logistical one; according to Ron Brownstein, the combination of low airfares and high fundraising demands means that congressmembers no longer have any downtime in DC - that is, downtime they used to use socializing with each other often across party lines. With no off-the-clock face time, lawmakers have no opportunity to build up good faith in the everyday quid-pro-quo humans are used to.

The question then becomes how do you surmount those obstacles? How do you fight a culture of "stand your ground" and how do you encourage lawmakers to spend more time with their colleagues across the aisle?

I'm not sure, but one thing I know: changing a "culture" is near impossible. You can, however, lessen the effects of that culture by putting some teflon between it and lawmakers. This is certainly an unpopular position, but giving lawmakers a space - free from onlookers - where they can freely concede without be charged as "spineless flip-floppers" would be a start.

As I said, it's not a popular idea. America, of course, is heading in the direction of more transparency in DC discussions, not less. It would be impossible to backtrack and close the doors on committee meetings that were opened in the 70's when the transparency movement took off. But we could stem the tide of greater openness in Capitol Hill chambers. That is, unless Americans can embrace "giving a little to get a little", which I don't see happening soon, we need to give our lawmakers the closed-door room to reciprocate on their own.

a conservative case for civility

Brought to you by Commentary's Peter Wehner.

a new bi-partisan kid on the block

Talking to a colleague the other day I wondered aloud "Is it just because I'm hopeful and so am imagining it, or does America truly seem sick of hyper-partisanship?"

I don't have an answer to that question, but a little more evidence trickled in today that America is, indeed, fixing to move on from extreme partisan politics.

No Labels is now here to "bring together leading thinkers from the left, right, and all points in between" and "work to break down false divisions and lift up the common ground on which we can build solutions." It has a snazzy new website and a couple of ex Clinton and Bush administration leaders at its helm, so it clearly has smarts and gravitas to back up its pollyanna goals.

It's not entirely clear how they plan to turn the tide of hyper-partisanship, but they have some initial ideas: cut down on gerrymandering so districts are actually competitive; open up primaries to do the same; and change campaign finance rules so money is the overwhelming driver it is today.

But even with these great ideas, their fundamental principle - that labels are bad - may be a faulty one. Sure, our political parties can seem like pretty sleezy and unprincipled groups, but party affiliation serves a purpose. Without parties, it becomes that much more difficult for citizens to figure out who to vote for and to keep their elected officials accountable. Parties help define the issues, simplifying the decision of voters. While it's common (and justified) to complain that parties over-simplify the issues, the reverse prospect - of every candidate defining and explaining policy positions - could create a cacophony of ideas that overwhelms voters and makes it hard for legislators to align on any policy solutions.

No Labels doesn't seem to go as far as to want to abolish parties (which would be politically and logistically impossible to do), but I wonder if even putting the emphasis on the negative of labels hampers the ability of labels to do good. Perhaps we shouldn't be trying to impair the power of parties - but rather find ways to force them to use their power responsibly.