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Originally published in the Mischiefs of Faction blog. By Jonathan M. Ladd  Political scientists spend a good deal of time studying "motivated reasoning," i.e. people's tendency to interpret new information in ways that are consistent with their prior preferences and/or predispositions. This phenomenon is hugely important to American politics because a large portion of the public has strong partisan loyalties, most of which were formed early in life and persist and even intensify as people get older. Partisans come to most issues already leaning toward one view. Because of motivated reasoning, they are unlikely to be swayed by new information because their prior prejudices on the issue shape how they interpret all new facts and arguments. Tara Haelle from Double X Science provides a nice example of motivated reasoning in the medical field. For almost all American men, their circumcision status was determined before they were autonomous enough to participate in the decision. (It is very rare to be circumcised as an adult, Abraham excepted.) Circumcision is also the subject of a modest amount of medical debate about its benefits and drawbacks. A male doctor's personal circumcision status is surely correlated with his parents' attitudes toward circumcision and his cultural, ethnic and religious background. But all these things are present early in life, before a male doctor can learn for himself about any research on circumcision. In other words, for almost all men (including male doctors), their interpretation of the scientific research does not affect their own circumcision status. Yet Haelle reports that, [A] 2010 study out of Canada asked 572 family doctors, urologists, obstetricians, pediatricians and family medicine residents what they use to make their decisions regarding circumcision. Just over three quarters of them (77%) said they base their circumcision decisions on medical evidence. However, the survey also asked the men about their circumcision status and about their attitude toward circumcision: 68% of the 125 circumcised males supported circumcision, and 69% of the 106 uncircumcised males opposed circumcision. This is a fairly small group (and nearly half of the original 1009 physicians contacted didn’t answer the survey), but clearly, male doctors’ own circumcision status may influence their decisions – and recommendations – even if they believe they are basing those decisions only on the medical evidence. As I said, one can't tell from this whether it is actually walking around with a circumcised or uncircumcised penis or whether it is men's early developed opinions on this topic from their cultural background that causes them to interpret medical evidence differently. But, as with most political topics, predispositions are powerful shapers of opinions even among those (doctors) who are much more informed on the topic than the average person. The same psychological phenomenon explains why, on almost all contentious political topics, more information does not push all people toward one opinion. In many cases more information actually increased preference polarization because we interpret it in light of what we already believe. I leave you with an obligatory Mel Brooks clip:
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6/16/2014 Spoiler Alert! President Obama Is Not Going to Send Combat Troops to Another Overseas WarRead Now Originally published in the Mischiefs of Faction blog.
By Jonathan M. Ladd Lots of pundits with expertise in foreign policy and the presidency have speculated about whether President Obama will send American combat troops back to Iraq in response to the recent military success of the radical Sunni group, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). Last weekend, Obama announced that he will (for now) not send combat troops. Then last night, the administration said it will send "up to" 275 troops to help evacuate personnel from the US Embassy in Baghdad. But if the Iraqi government's position continues to weaken, I suspect there again will be debate about whether Obama will or should send significant numbers of actual American combat troops back into the country. This follows past discussions of whether Obama should or would send troops to the Ukraine and to Syria, especially after the Syrian government crossed Obama's "red line" by using chemical weapons. Here, I take no position on whether it is a good idea for the US to intervene with troops in these or future world hot spots. But I will make a prediction. Short of a new terrorist attack aided of a foreign government killing many US soldiers or civilians, Obama will not commit significant numbers of US combat troops to any new overseas war during his presidency. Not in Iraq. Not in Ukraine. Not in Syria. Not anywhere. The reason is Obama's partisan and ideological coalitions, which in the current era are essentially the same. Stretching back to the end of World War I, but especially after World War II, liberals were more supportive of international institutions like the UN, while conservatives prefered the U.S. to go it alone internationally. However, up though the 1950s and 1960s, liberal thinkers and leading politicians weren't opposed to involving US ground troops in large wars overseas. It was Harry Truman (for his time, an economic and racial liberal) who initiated US involvement in Korea and Lyndon Johnson (again, an economic and racial liberal) who greatly escalated US involvement in Vietnam. But after the Vietnam War, American liberals changed their minds on ground troops in foreign wars. Unless there is a direct attack on the United States, American liberal writers, interest groups and politicians believe that sending substantial numbers of ground troops overseas is risky, ineffective, and often counterproductive. Since the Nixon Administration, no Democratic president has sent substantial numbers of ground troops overseas on a new military mission. Obama did support a temporary surge in the number of troops in Afghanistan, but for the purposes of paving the way for a later full pullout. Liberal Democrats in Congress criticized Ronald Reagan's invasion of Grenada and George H.W. Bush's invasion of Panama. A majority of Democrats voted against authorizing the first Gulf War and a majority in the House and 21 of 50 in the Senate voted against the second Gulf War. The only authorization of ground troops that most Democrats have supported since Vietnam is the 2001 "Authorization for Use of Military Force," which passed Congress almost unanimously just 3 days after the Sept 11 terrorist attacks. There are ideological divisions among liberal Democrats over military matters. There is a more dovish and a less dovish wing of liberalism, but even the less dovish wing is very skeptical of deploying ground troops. And Obama is not from the less dovish wing. As Matt Yglesias pointed out last week, the main ideological division between Obama and Hillary Clinton in the nomination battle in 2008 was over foreign policy. Clinton sided with the less dovish wing of current liberalism. But even the Clintons and the wing of the Party they often represent are deeply skeptical of committing ground combat troops to new missions. Shortly after taking office, Bill Clinton withdrew US troops from Somalia. Clinton used air power in periodic airstrikes against Iraq to enforce a UN inspection regime, and conducted a NATO-approved bombing campaign in Kosovo that was very carefully designed to include no ground troops and result in zero combat deaths. In the early and mid-2000s, there was a debate among liberal Democrats over how to respond to George W. Bush's aggressive foreign policy. But the biggest debate was over whether Senators should be disqualified from the Democratic presidential nomination for taking cover-your-butt votes in favor of Bush's Iraq war before recanting later, as well as (especially in the 2008 primaries) whether the US should directly negotiate with states like Iran and North Korea.[1] Democrats in Congress are divided between the more dovish faction and the less dovish faction. In the 2004 presidential primaries, John Kerry, at the time representing the less dovish faction, prevailed over the more dovish Howard Dean. In 2008, the result was reversed, when the more dovish Obama defeated the less dovish Hillary Clinton. But these factions are not very far apart, as shown by the fact that Obama invited Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State. Both sides are deeply skeptical and cautious when it comes to ground troops. Whatever their votes on congressional war authorization, it seems highly unlikely that, if Hillary Clinton or John Kerry were president in the 2000s, they would have invaded Iraq. We had a test of the viability of the pre-Vietnam liberal perspective on overseas combat troops in Joe Lieberman, who ran for president in 2004 on an unapologetically pro-Iraq War platform. He had essentially no success, coming in fifth in New Hampshire, the only state he seriously campaigned in. There is hardly any public opinion or interest group constituency in the Democratic Party for that older form of liberal foreign policy. In this polarized era, where Republican House members and senators being defeated in primaries is commonplace, Joe Lieberman's is the only major Democratic figure from Capitol Hill to lose a primary. That happened because political novice Ned Lamont ran a successful 2006 primary campaign against him that focused mainly on Lieberman's support for President Bush's invasion of Iraq. Obama has (perhaps surprisingly) continued some of George W. Bush's military policies. Despite his campaign pledge to do so, he has failed to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. He has also aggressively pursued overseas drone strikes, even against American citizens. And NSA domestic surveillance has continued with no apparent interruption. However, his opposition to overseas troop deployments is probably the biggest difference between Obama's military policy and his predecessor's. He withdrew all troops from Iraq by 2011, ensuring that it was completed before the 2012 election. And he is reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan with a goal of having all troops out by the beginning of 2016, before the next presidential election. Obama is part if an ideological and partisan coalition that is very skeptical of sending US troops to fight overseas wars. He has repeatedly affiliated himself with the more dovish wing of this coalition, especially its views on combat troops overseas. Any new commitment of troops is highly unlikely because Obama's ideology and past efforts all point in the opposite direction. [1] By "cover-your-butt votes," I refer to the phenomenon that John Zaller observed in his chapter, "Strategic Politicians, Public Opinion, and the Gulf Crisis," here (although I deserve all the blame for the label). He observes that members of the opposition party in Congress will often vote for authorizing a president to use force because it maximizes their flexibility later. They still benefit politically if the president's military operation fails, but are much less vulnerable to criticism if it succeeds. But if they vote no, they politically benefit if the operation fails, but are politically hurt if it succeeds. So, in other words, "cover-your-butt votes" is a very technical political science term. Don't try this at home. 6/10/2014 Why the Republican Establishment Doesn't Care Much about Centrism in Primary ContestsRead Now Originally published in the Mischiefs of Faction blog.
By Jonathan M. Ladd We are nearing the end of primary season in this congressional election year. As in 2010 and 2012, many Republican primaries were contests between candidates backed by party establishment and insurgents associated with the Tea Party movement. The response of many commentators has been to point out that the policy differences between these two types of candidates is minimal because both types take very similar public policy positions. I really hate to pick on Jon Stewart, but his coverage of the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's Kentucky primary win was an example of this. Stewart poked fun at the fact that while McConnell, whom he described as "the ultimate mainstream establishment Republican," defeated his Tea Party-affiliated primary opponent, Matt Bevin, McConnell didn't seem to disagree with Bevin on any significant issue. Stewart concluded, "It doesn't seem like the Tea Party lost, so much as found a new host." Discussing the Republican Senate primary in Mississippi, which is headed for a runoff, Jonathan Chait notes that incumbent Thad Cochran and Tea Party-backed challenger Chris McDaniel seem to agree on everything. Chait describes the race as a... "...Senate primary between incumbent Thad Cochran, a hard-line conservative who votes with his party on everything, and challenger Chris McDaniel, a hard-line conservative who will also vote with his party on everything but will say a bunch of crazy stuff as well." In Georgia, Saxby Chambliss decided not to run for reelection at least partially because he worried that he was perceived as insufficiently radical to survive a primary challenge. Yet in the May 20 Senate Republican primary, businessman David Perdue as well as House Appropriations Committee member and vice-chair of the Republican Conference Jack Kingston came in first and second to qualify for the July runoff. They defeated multiple Tea Party challengers, including former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, who was endorsed by national conservative pundits like Sarah Palin and Erick Erickson. The candidate with the most establishment connections is Kingston. Yet he has shown no hesitation making sure no other candidate can get to his right ideologically. Ed Kilgore has been following the race and reports that Kingston "has dealt with the RINO label by running an aggressively right-wing campaign." Kilgore goes on: "If ]Kingston's] not attacking The Welfare, he’s holding an imaginary conversation with Obama in which he refuses to 'back off on Obamacare.' He’s lately been emphasizing his long-time support for that ancient wingnut boob-bait panacea, the Fair Tax (a highly regressive national sales tax scheme), and his every communication is emblazoned with the spurious National Journal rating that gives him 'the most conservative voting record in the race'...As I keep insisting, if the Establishment 'wins' simply by preempting the Tea Party’s issue positions and chest-thumping radicalism, then who is really winning?" It does seem that the party establishment cares little about centrist policy positions. Should this be surprising? If they don't care about relative moderation, what do party insiders care about in nomination battles? I have a few thoughts on what might be going on here. A simple version of the Downsian or One reason is that parties care about more than winning. Party coalitions want to get control of government in order to enact certain policies, not as an end in itself. Party insiders are almost always not completely soulless hacks who care only about winning. Candidates who find themselves in the position of establishment figures would not have gotten into politics if they did not care about the issues their party stands for. Most party politicians, whether currently in the establishment or relative outsiders, got started in politics through connections to some of the policy demanding groups that make up the party's coalition. That's why, when politicians change positions, it is usually not to cater to the median voter but to respond to changes in their party's interest group coalition. Second, leaders in the party (politicians and donors) may prefer experienced candidates not because they are more moderate but because political experience gives you a much better chance to win. Incumbents have an electoral advantage at pretty much all levels of government. Short of being an incumbent, candidates who have won a lower elected office in the past do better in elections than those who haven't. In addition to being better at raising money and the logistics of running a general election campaign, experienced politicians are less likely to make the embarrassing gaffes that plagued some Republican Senate candidates in 2012. Third and finally, party leaders may be concerned that, even though they take the same policy positions, insurgent congressional candidates will be unwilling to follow their party's legislative strategies for achieving those goals. Parties in Congress operate as legislative teams or cartels in order to achieve their policy goals. Leaders may legitimately worry that an outsider may take showy actions (like symbolic filibusters with no legislative effects) that make news but are either no help or counterproductive to achieving those shared goals. In summary, primary contests between those backed by the party establishment and the Tea Party are important, even when the candidates end up taking the same positions on the campaign trail. There are important differences between these candidates and the Party has good reasons to prefer the former. [Update (6/11/14): This post was written the day before Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (VA-12) surprise primary loss to economics professor David Brat. Yet I think its main points hold up pretty well even in that example. There are far bigger differences between Cantor and Brat on tactics and style than on positions over active legislative controversies. And Brat's lack of campaign skills is already evident, even though that won't necessarily prevent him from winning the district's general election.] |
AuthorJonathan M, Ladd is an associate professor in the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. Click on the "Bio" tab above for more information. Archives
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