The economy and the vote: It ain't just America

Ezra cites a new Larry Bartels paper on economic growth and support for the incumbent majority party in 31 recent parliamentary elections in developed democracies. Key graph:

Seen in this light, the Democrats here in the U.S. only underperformed very slightly. 

How to teach political science

Ezra Klein was kind enough to call me and chat about his recent blog post on the 2012 election. During our conversation, we discussed his visit to APSA this year and his experiences with political science education (he attended two University of California campuses as an undergrad). As he described it, undergraduate political science education comes across like a high school civics class on steroids, and probably only over-the-counter-strength steroids at that. He moved to DC after college because he wanted to really understand "politics," but after a few years there, he discovered that political scientists were the only ones who were actually studying politics systematically, and that we actually had some pretty good answers.

This actually mirrors my own experiences. I was certainly happy enough with my undergraduate education, but I was very rarely inspired by my poli sci classes. I went to graduate school in poli sci largely in spite of, rather than because of, my undergraduate experiences.

I'd like to think things have changed since I was an undergrad in the late Pleistocene, but I'm not sure they have that much. I think we can do a lot more to engage our students. Not just by using more active learning approaches (although that can surely help), but also by conveying the idea of discovery. Learning a series of facts is not nearly as compelling as learning how we learned those facts. Any student can write down "The President's party tends to lose House seats in midterm elections" and probably regurgitate that on a test. Show them a scatterplot, though, and the visual approach grabs them on a different level. Have them make the scatterplot from raw data, and you've got a budding scientist on your hands.

I'm starting my intro class off this year by having the students read Hans Noel's fabulous essay "Ten Things Political Scientists Know That You Don't," which conveys, more than just about any other undergraduate-appropriate article I've read, the idea that some things are knowable. We haven't figured out everything by a long shot, but we've figured out some things, and the areas we're still working on are really pretty fascinating mysteries. I'd love it if one of my undergraduates some day figures one of them out.

Meanwhile, in Dan Maes' universe...

Remember Dan Maes? The Republican gubernatorial nominee who managed to pull just 11% of the vote last year? Well, he's got a new book out in which he sets the record, um, straight? Among his claims:

• He would have beaten Democrat John Hickenlooper if Tom Tancredo hadn't jumped in for a third-party run.
• Tom Tancredo only ran because he thought Maes was Mexican.
• Maes speaks with "the firm voice, tone, and rhythm of Ronald Reagan."

Look, one can certainly question Tancredo's actions in that race, but it's hard to question his analysis: Maes really was going to lose, badly. Tancredo only jumped in because it looked like Hickenlooper was going to get such a free ride. Indeed, if Maes had dropped out, as many prominent Republicans were urging him to do, Tancredo, despite his years of extremist rhetoric, would have had a fighting chance against Hickenlooper given the 2010 political environment.

Oh, I should particularly praise Denver Post writer Tim Hoover for these two sentences of the book review:

The 222-page book was self-published and appears to have been self-edited. It is in need of judicious proofreading in many places.

I also enjoyed this paragraph about the people who messed with Maes:

He faults a number of people and institutions for his loss, including former Republican Party chairman Dick Wadhams, a variety of Republican funders, some Tea Party activists, a liberal press and even former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who he says did not throw him any support despite his e-mail conversations with her father-in-law.

It's a damned shame when an e-mail conversation with Sarah Palin's father-in-law doesn't translate into actual political support. 

A 9/11 reflection - my $.02

Of the surprisingly few cinematic responses to 9/11, the best for my money is "Munich" (2005), a thoughtful and nuanced examination of the need for a nation to respond to terror and how that response dehumanizes that nation and compromises its ideals. The character Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz) sums it up nicely:

I don't know if we were ever that decent. Suffering thousands of years of hatred doesn't make you decent. But we're supposed to be righteous. That's a beautiful thing. That's Jewish. That's what I knew, that's what I was taught and I'm losing it. I lose that and that's everything. That's my soul.

I don't think we're a better or stronger nation as a result of that horrible day ten years ago. I am not nostalgic for the unity we felt during the following months, as it was based almost entirely on shared terror and was easily exploited into support for some very damaging government policies. I don't think we lost our innocence that day, any more than we lost our innocence when Oklahoma City was bombed or when Nixon was (almost) impeached or Kennedy was killed or Pearl Harbor was hit. We're a major world power with a good deal of personal freedom -- we know that terrible things will sometimes happen despite our best efforts.

I like to think we've grown somewhat as a country in the past ten years, and that we have a more mature understanding of America's place in the world and the vulnerabilities we face just by being alive. But I also find that it just takes a few TV images of burning towers to transport me back to that morning ten years ago when I awoke in horror and began to wonder about the world my unborn son would inherit.

What's at stake in 2012

Saying that an upcoming presidential election is the most important election in a generation is a classic hack trope. That said, the upcoming presidential election is the most important election in a generation.

Why do I say this? Because we are in the middle of (and hopefully on the tail end of) a truly catastrophic recession. The economy will recover, although that may not happen for several years. It seems fair to say that the economy will not be roaring again any time soon, meaning that Obama will at best win by a squeaker. If it dips back into recession, he's toast. Most likely, it will end up just being a really competitive and interesting race on par with 2004.

The party occupying the White House when the economy does finally start booming will get the credit among the public for saving the country. It doesn't matter so much who was in power when the recession hit or whose policies helped or hurt the recovery. To a large extent, it's simply a matter of being in the Oval Office at the right time.

I've quoted Larry Bartels on this point before, but here it is again:

Considering America’s Depression-era politics in comparative perspective reinforces the impression that there may have been a good deal less real policy content to “throwing the bums out” than meets the eye. In the U.S.,voters replaced Republicans with Democrats and the economy improved. In Britain and Australia, voters replaced Labor governments with conservatives and the economy improved. In Sweden, voters replaced Conservatives with Liberals, then with Social Democrats, and the economy improved. In the Canadian agricultural province of Saskatchewan, voters replaced Conservatives with Socialists and the economy improved. In the adjacent agricultural province of Alberta, voters replaced a socialist party with a right-leaning funny-money party created from scratch by a charismatic radio preacher, and the economy improved. In Weimar Germany, where economic distress was deeper and longer-lasting, voters rejected all of the mainstream parties, the Nazis seized power, and the economy improved. In every case, the party that happened to be in power when the Depression eased dominated politics for a decade or more thereafter. It seems farfetched to imagine that all these contradictory shifts represented well-considered ideological conversions. A more parsimonious interpretation is that voters simply—and simple-mindedly—rewarded whoever happened to be in power when things got better.

All this is to say that a handful of states in 2012 will likely determine Democratic or Republican dominance for the next decade or longer. And given the huge ideological gulf between the parties today, that means vastly different policies depending on the outcome.

Tasty morsels

• Just back from APSA and starting classes, so I'm a bit swamped right now. I hope to have a post-APSA post up soon. In the meantime, here's what Kim Yi Dionne had to say.
• Here's an idea I'm trying this quarter: having students conduct a constitutional convention.
• Andrew Sullivan with a thoughtful reflection on the decade since 9/11.
• Do not take tax advice from USA Weekend (via Brendan Nyhan).
• The New York Public Library has an on-line archive of thousands of old menus. Seriously, what was with all the turtle?
• Yes, you can do data analysis on your own children's sleep patterns.
• People on dating sites are more likely to describe themselves as overweight than to admit to an interest in politics.
• Marc Herman is right: Agadez shreds.

APSA 2011

Relatively light blogging for now, as I'm at APSA in Seattle. I'll be posting occasionally to Twitter, and I hope to attend the Monkey Cage reception on Friday night for a chance to meet some real live bloggers and pay for my own drinks.

Meanwhile, yes, I'm tooting my own horn a bit, but this looks to be an interesting panel on party networks. Hope people can make it on Saturday at 8AM!