Peter's blog

On Monday morning I am temporarily returning to Capitol Hill and suspending Milo Public Affairs LLC. For the next several months I will be serving as a Senior Policy Advisor to U.S. Representative Steve Kagen, M.D. of Wisconsin, primarily working on health care reform and small business issues. Out of respect for the Congressman and his constituents, I will not be doing any other paid work through Milo Public Affairs LLC while I am a member of the Congressman’s staff. Milo Public Affairs LLC will continue to exist, and I hope to return to it this fall, but starting Monday morning my attention will be focused on Representative Kagen and the people of Wisconsin’s Eighth Congressional District. In the meantime I can still be reached at ploge@milopublicaffairs.com or (202) 297-5294.

Ten years ago I was interviewed to become the first director ofThe Justice Project, an organization whose initial goal was to redefine and reform the death penalty debate in America. At the time capital punishment was a politically toxic subject, and the notion of restricting or abolishing it seemed absurd. During the interview I was asked “what do you think this will do for your career?” At the time I was the Chief of Staff to U.S. Representative Brad Sherman, and the idea that I would leave the Hill for such a quixotic quest seemed puzzling. I said something like, “this is my career, paying my rent by fighting for things I believe in.”

Ten years later the first question Congressman Kagen asked me was “what do you want to do?” My reply was much the same – I said that I wanted to fight for things I believed in, to get paid for working for the good guys.

Over the course of my career I have been tremendously lucky. Since I started doing politics full-time in 1993, working as the Director of Constituent Services for former U.S. Representative Sam Coppersmith, I have been able to pay my rent (now my mortgage) by working for people and things I believe in – a U.S. Senator and three U.S. Representatives, for a balanced budget with The Concord Coalition, for criminal justice and death penalty reform with The Justice Project, and as an advisor to groups including The Save Darfur Coalition, the the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and even America’s Funniest Home Videos.

Over the next several months, thanks to ongoing dumb luck, I have the opportunity to work on health care reform, one of the most important issues facing our country at a time when a solution finally seems to be at hand.

Thank you to all of the supporters of Milo Public Affairs, the adventure will continue.

The Sunday, May 24th Washington Post featured a local opinion piece against recent proposals to fight game crime by preventing gang members from congregating in some public spaces. The piece makes a strong case for the first several hundred words – but then takes a turn that mixes the message in a way that undermines the piece.

The author, Tracy Velazquez, the Executive Director of The Justice Policy Institute, makes two points: such injunctions don’t work and they are racist. These are two different arguments that appeal to two different views of the world: what works and what’s fair, head versus heart.

The head versus heart debate is a familiar one – “just the facts ma’am”, a reliance on statistics and studies on one hand, and do gooder social workers showing those poor kids some love on the other hand.

A corollary of the heart debate is that we believe people who break the law should be punished (“don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time”). Non-data driven decisions about justice work both ways – for redemption, but also for retribution.

We embrace both the data and emotional approaches, in spite of the fact that they seem to contradict each other. We carry around a limited number of stories about how the world works, and apply those stories to the world we encounter. We don’t compare the stories to each other, checking for intellectual consistency – we find an explanatory framework and then operate as if the framework were true, regardless of the contents. The stories are more important than the facts the populate them; as such, arguing about data within a storyline is usually futile.

In the face of gang violence in Washington, DC the mayor and several councilmen have proposed new laws discussed in the opinion piece. Arguments for the proposals rely on the retribution story – “get those kids off the street.” As someone who lives in one of those areas, my gut reaction was favorable; when cops get shot on the corner, criticism that such rules were unfair didn’t hold water, “actions have consequences” is more compelling than “I’m depraved on account of I’m deprived”

Velazquez introduces a different story – data – into the mix. If I want gangs gone, and data demonstrates how to do it, then I think about gangs differently. It’s a story that ignores questions of “fairness” entirely. The new story, “it’s time to stop posturing and do what works” is a compelling one. Velazquez could have built on that, using data from the Pew Public Safety Performance Project and elsewhere, telling a good tale about data-driven solutions. Instead starts the data story and switches to the justice story – which gets me thinking about thugs on corners, bad kids up to no good. Her admonition that breaking up groups of kids has racist implications loses to getting those thugs off my corner. A more successful piece would have focused entirely on data, telling a story about doing what works and ignoring the justice story altogether.

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine “Questions For…” column features Republican messagist Frank Luntz. The proximate cause of the column is a memo on how Republicans should talk about health care. Titled “10 Rules for talking about the ‘Washington Takeover’ of health care” the piece is worth reading – and reformers would do well to head its advice rather than dismissing it as vapid and ignoring its insights.

Luntz’s first point is especially instructive: “Abandon and exile ALL references to the ”health care system”. From now on, health care is about people.” (all the emphasis are his). In addition to shifting the debate to ground on which Republicans can win, Luntz is reminding people of a familiar story: Democrats promote systems and Republicans promote people. Democrats talk about the public school system, the criminal justice system and the health care system; Republicans give students the chance to succeed, protect victims and let families choose their doctors.

Unfortunately, much of the response on the left has not been to learn from or embrace Luntz’s insights, but rather to attack him calling the memo ”vapid” and a “misdirection.” Other suggest it’s just about ”obstruction” and suggests Democrats ignore the advice in the memo and plow ahead. A wiser response from liberals would be to embrace Luntz’s advice and use it to their advantage – make health care about people, about individual power, and about choices.

The best persuasion doesn’t tell the audience something new, it reminds them of something they already believe to be true. Anyone with bad neighbors will respond well to a an argument that starts “you know how bad neighbors can be…” and anyone with miscreant children will support an argument that talks about good kids gone bad. (Before growling about that damn Luntz, these examples come from Aristotle in The Rhetoric).

Persuasion is not about the speaker, it’s about the listener. Or, as Luntz puts it, “it’s not about what you say, it’s about what they hear.”

According to a piece in the May 18th CQ Weekly (“The Tax Man Studies Human Nature”) an application of behavioral economics is going to save American taxpayers about $900 million over the next decade through the elimination of the “advanced earned income tax credit.”

The advanced earned income tax credit allows to those who qualify for the EITC to get a little bit of the credit in every paycheck rather than get one large check once a year. Strict rationality would dictate that workers would choose the advanced option because they get the money sooner and can save or invest it as they choose. But only about 3% of those eligible for the EITC have signed up for this option. People prefer one big check once rather than a series of little checks during the year.

Why the apparently irrational choice? As the article puts it, “Jennifer Romich, an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Social Work, interviewed workers who claimed the EITC and found that most of them prefer waiting for a lump-sum payment that can be devoted to big-ticket items such as a new piece of furniture or a security deposit on an apartment. These people expressed doubt they’d have the self-control to just set aside the money if they got a bit week after week.” In this light, the choice is entirely rational – people are choosing what makes the most sense given the realities in which they operate.

A mistake often made by advocates and policy analysts is the assumption of rational behavior. Those who are trained to carefully weigh risks (such as scientists and doctors) treat it as obviously true that people will – or should – weigh the scientific and medical risks using the same criteria as scientists and doctors do. Similarly, economists and experts on specific policy areas think that everyone else will – or should – weigh the same information and come to the same conclusions the experts do. Such assumptions of strict rationality is unwarranted (given the scientific research on behavior, such an assumption is actually irrational).

People behave in ways that make sense to them – we behave in ways that make sense to us. That behavior is based on predispositions, irrelevant anecdotes, quirks, our own knowledge of our own bad habits, and who knows how many other little things. The behavior is rational in that it makes sense (“intendedly rational” is the term of art) even if it is not strictly rational in the classic sense.

Policymakers and advocates would do well to keep behavior economics and the advanced EITC lesson in mind as Congress works its way through health care reform, trying to set up series of incentives for doctors, insurance companies, and the public to behave in ways that save us all money and make us all healthier.

The early and aggressive campaigning against potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees by the political right offers important lessons and holds risks for both the left and right.

According to the Sunday New York Times, conservative political organizations have memoranda ready on the 10 most likely picks to replace Justice Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. According to the piece, the left has a similar operation in support of the nominees, but one suspects it isn’t as developed or aggressive, and it seems likely that liberal groups will split over the eventual nominee.

The campaign efforts as describe in the Times are notable for several reasons.

First is that it’s happening. Conservative groups are pooling limited resources to start nine campaigns they will never run (possibly 10 campaigns if the President’s pick is someone unexpected). This level of preparation ensures that whoever is picked is attacked from the start.

Second, the attacks have started and are framing the debate. In describing the memos, the Times has defined the debate over the nominees in the conservative’s groups terms. In reporting: “If he nominates Judge Sonia Sotomayor, they plan to accuse her of being ‘willing to expand constitutional rights beyond the text of the Constitution’” the Times has told those covering the Court, Republican elites, and other observers that Judge Sotomayor is an activist judge.

Third, the attacks have little to do with the Supreme Court. The focus is fundraising and base-building. The Court vote is a rare rallying point for the Republican Party, it’s a chance for the beleaguered Right to come together and agree on something. As the Times put it, conservatives “say they hope to mount a fight that could help refill depleted coffers and galvanize a movement demoralized by Republican electoral defeats.”

The efforts hold risks for both the right and the left.

For the right, the risk is that it will work. In rallying their base, conservatives pit that base against everyone else. “Everyone else” are most Americans – including an increasing number of conservatives (see Judge Posner’s recent essay for example) – which could have the effect of further isolating and/or fracturing the Republican Party.

The risk for the left is that they will engage the right. The left’s best response is not a vigorous defense of marriage equality or late-term abortion – those defenses are important, but surrender the vast majority of Americans in the political center in a rush to rally the left. This is the same mistake the right is making. The left’s best response is to talk about the need to de-politicize the judges, to call for a return to traditional American values of independence and integrity. (Such an approach would have the added benefit of allowing the left to talk about Bush Justice Department efforts to establish political fealty within its ranks). Rather than engage the right on the ground on which it wants to fight, the left should treat the arguments as so much political rope, and keep handing it to conservatives.

The President’s New Foundation phrasing should emphasize a return to, or a strengthening of, old foundations rather than creating new ones.

In Washington we parse words for sport. And when that gets dull, we parse the parsing. Such will be the nature of this post.

President Obama has apparently adopted a New Foundation as his touchstone phrase. The New York Times frets that it might not catch on because there are too many syllables, or because it’s too vague. I share those concerns, but my primary parsing concern is not with “foundation,” but rather with “new.”

Scholars of all stripes have long recognized the power of “returning.” After facing years of tribulations at sea, Homer went home. Many American revolutionaries complained that the King had abandoned English ideals and that the colonies needed to declare independence to return to those ideals. George Carlin talked about baseball focusing on “being safe at home” and Ronald Reagan said it was morning again in America.

Some of the most powerful American political rhetoric calls for a returning – to roots, to values, to strengths, to ideals, and so forth. (It is an easy step from here to notions of civil religion, the “shining city on the hill” and the search for Eden).

As such, rather than call for a new foundation, President Obama would do well to call for a return to our foundation. A new economy built on a foundation of trust, honor and hard work – the foundations on which America was built – would have more rhetorical force than a call for a new foundation for a new economy.

A call for the new implies the old is flawed. A bad foundation is a dire thing, it means that the house we built and in which we live is at risk, it’s almost an assertion of a national existential crisis. But Americans like the old, especially the mythologized, idealized old of Main Street Disneyland (and President Reagan’s commercials). Don’t tell us the old is bad and needs to be discarded for the new, tell us the last new thing we got was a mistake because it veered from the old. The problem isn’t the old, it’s the most recent new – unregulated financial markets, complex speculative deals that rewarded cleverness and trickery rather than work and honesty.

For Americans, the old is good (that’s why marketers sell “Olde Fashioned Lemon Aide” and singers croon old fashioned love songs). President Obama should remind us that our old foundation is strong and good, and that we need to build on it anew.

A local gas station is a reminder of the power of prospect theory and offers a lesson for health care reformers. The station offers a 5% discount for paying in cash. This could, of course, have been a 5% markup for paying with a credit card. The gas costs the same either way, only the description changes.

A key element of prospect theory (the basis for behavioral economics) is that people treat gains and losses differently – as the folks who wrote the description at the link above put it, “Under prospect theory, value is assigned to gains and losses rather than to final assets…” I would rather gain 5% than lose 5%, even if the gain and loss wind up at the same number.

Many of the decisions we make everyday are rooted in these calculations – how and when we use grocery store coupons, how we deal with things like insurance, if and when we buy lottery tickets, and so forth.

One area in which we weigh the probabilities of gains and losses is health care. If we were strictly rational actors we would carefully weigh all of our options, examine the probabilities, and act based on that analysis. But we’re not strictly rational actors, we’re bears of little brains who act sort of rationally (we’re “boundedly rational” in the hipster jargon of these things).

If health care reform is seen as giving us things for behaving well, rather than punishing us for behaving poorly (a discount rather than a markup) we are likely to be more supportive of the plan. For example imagine there is a baseline health care plan to which everyone is entitled, and adjustments to fees are made based on personal habits such as smoking and drinking. One way to present the plan would be to say: “Everyone pays $100. If you smoke, you pay an extra $10, if you drink you pay an extra $10, if you don’t exercise you pay an extra $10.” Another way to put it would be “Everyone pays $130. If you exercise, you get a $10 discount. If you don’t drink you get a $10 discount. If you don’t smoke you get a $10 discount.” Either way, the base is $100 and extra risk factors increase the cost by $10 each. But one talks about gains (discounts) and the other losses (fees) and thus are different.

This example is obviously oversimplified, and getting consensus on health care isn’t just a matter of playing tricks with words. But as policymakers and advocates make their case in the coming months, they would do well to remember that the gas station you get a discount for cash, but aren’t charged extra for credit.

The Federal Trade Commission may weigh into the network neutrality debate. This change of venue from the Federal Communications Commission may have significant implications for the outcome of the debate.

In Agendas and Instability in American Politics, Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones argue that where a debate takes place helps define what that debate is about, and thus helps determine the outcome of that debate. For example, if school vouchers are debated in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, the debate is about the constitutionality of tax dollars going to church schools and the outcome will likely be that such funding is inappropriate because it violates the principal of the separation of church and state. If on the other hand the issue is debated in the Children and Families Subcommittee in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee the debate will be about equal access to education and the result will likely be increased funding for vouchers (for more on this example see “Win the Debate, Not Just the Case”, by Linda Greenhouse in the July 14, 2002 New York Times; Greenhouse looks at the Supreme Court case permitting vouchers and focuses on the definition of the issue as one of Brown v the Board of Education rather than the First Amendment as the key to the ruling).

A similar shift may be afoot in the debate over whether or not internet service providers can favor some content over others thus violating the principal of network neutrality (Wikipedia has a fairly robust description of the issue).

According to CongressDaily AM, “The agency charged with consumer protection and preventing unfair business practices may take a more active role in the next wave of debate over whether new rules are required to ensure access to Internet content, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said Wednesday”

To this point the debate over net neutrality has taken place primarily in the Federal Communications Commission, thus defining it as a technical issue within the purview of people who manage content. FCC issues are heard in the Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which is chaired by Rick Boucher (D-VA), someone very familiar with telecomm issues. Any solution will necessarily be rooted in technology.

Shifting the venue to the Federal Trade Commission means that the issue will one of consumer rights (rather than the rights of producers or distributors). The House Subcommittee with the most interest is Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection which is Chaired by Bobbie Rush (D-IL) who has a very different approach to issues than Congressman Boucher does.

This new venue means different witnesses and experts are listened to, different reasons are considered and different assumptions are made. An FTC-rooted debate about consumer protection tilts the eventual outcome toward a guarantee of network neutrality rather than an FCC-rooted debate that tilts toward those who move content around.

This simple shift of where the debate starts may make where the debate ends a forgone conclusion.

Some political observers express dismay that in the face of electoral losses and increasing political isolation the Republican Party continues to act in ways that may cost it electorally and further isolate the Party. That the Republican Party is acting in apparently self-destructive ways should not be surprising – and there is a strong argument that it will get worse for the Party before it gets better. At the same time, the Democrats are doomed to the same eventual fate.

Rhetorical scholar Ernest Bormann (1925 – 2008) identified a four-step process for explanatory frameworks, or as he labeled them, rhetorical visions. For Bormann, a rhetorical vision “is a unified putting-together of the various scripts which gives the participants a broader view of things…When a rhetorical vision emerges, the participants in the vision…come to form a rhetorical community.” (The Force of Fantasy: Restoring the American Dream, 1985, see also “An Expansion of the rhetorical vision component of the symbolic convergence theory: The cold war paradigm case”, Ernest Bormann, John Cragan and Donald Shields, Communication Monographs, 1996, Vol. 63 No. 1, pg.1).

For Bormann (and others) language helps us make sense of our world. Words, symbols, metaphors and such help tell who we are, who they are, why some things happen and others don’t. They explain the mundane and the apparently inexplicable.

In his Symbolic Convergence Theory, Bormann posits that rhetorical communities, shared explanations (or “fantasies” to use his language) pass through four stages: Consciousness Creating Communication; Consciousness Raising Communication; Consciousness Sustaining Communication; and decline.

Consciousness creation “involves the sharing of fantasies to generate new symbolic ground for a community of people.” (Bormann et al 1996). One could argue that this was the Republican Party from 1965 – 1980. It was a world view of smaller government, lower taxes and decentralized power.

Consciousness raising “is the proselytizing that leads inquirers and newcomers to share the fantasies of a rhetorical vision in such a way that they become converts and members of the rhetorical community.” (ibid). Here one can look to the rise of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan was able to get Democrats to vote Republican by offering a more compelling world view based on strength, success and individualism.

The next phase, consciousness sustaining, “is aimed at keeping those who have shared the rhetorical vision committed.” (ibid). One would be hard-pressed to find a Republican candidate from 1980 – 2008 who did not claim to carry Reagan’s mantle. He was the touchstone.

But at some point the vision loses its explanatory power, the community begins to fray. As Bormann puts it, “inflexible visions tend to fall out of step with experience.” When this happens some in the community may leave (a number of Republicans voted Democratic in 2006 and 2008, and of course Senator Specter is now D-PA rather than R-PA). One response is to be even more zealous and pure to the original vision. As those at the center of the community increase their grip more and more members of the community slip away.

This offers a moment for an alternative vision – a new community – to emerge. The Democrats are now in the ascent, attracting converts to an explanation that resonates with more people in the moment.

If history is a guide, the Republican Party will close ranks further, thus driving out more members, providing the Democrats and opportunity to create the dominant rhetorical community. The challenge for Democrats is to keep the community open and continue to offer a reasonable explanation. Even if the Democrats do this, and have a run of electoral success to match the Republicans from 1980 – 2004, they will themselves again falter.

The current Swine/H1N1 Flu Epi/Pandemic has raised a number of interesting issues around language – such as what it should be called and how bad it should be labeled as being.

The first issue is around the name. A lot of people have raised a lot of concerns about the official branding of the current outbreak. The Mexican government didn’t want it to be called the Mexican flu or Mexican swine flu. After seeing how the Egyptian government responded to the “swine” part of the name – calling for the slaughter of all of the nation’s pigs – one can’t blame the Mexicans. American pork producers are similarly upset with calling it the swine flu; their concern is that consumers would shy away from pork and bacon for fear of catching the flu.

In response, health officials have attempted to brand it “H1N1 flu.” The effort is, of course, failing.

“Mexican swine flu” and “swine flu” caught on because they anchored something we know and understand (flu) with a different word with which we are also familiar so that we know it’s a variant on that which we know. The new word is one we use and it modifies something else we use, so they are easy to use together. The phrase makes the new, familiar. The problem with H1N1 flu is that it takes something with which are familiar (flu) and attaches it to something for which we have no reference point (what’s an H1N1?). That leaves us either having to explain what H1N1 flu is (“the official name for swine flu”) or simply ignoring it. Neither solution accomplishes what the re-namers intended. To succeed the new name has to be descriptive (the flu did start with pigs in Mexico) and intellectually accessible (words and concepts that make sense).

One solution would be to name the flu after the doctor who first identified it, or following the example of U.S. Weather Service have a list of names that get assigned to flu outbreaks in the order in which they appear (no one negatively associates Rita’s Water Ice with 2005’s Hurricane Rita).

But it’s too late for such solutions now, at this point the name “swine flu” will be harder to contain than the flu itself. It’s called swine flu, and will be associated with Mexico, there’s not a lot anyone can do about it.