Game Theory for Congress, Work and the Devil

Now that the government is back in working order, if we can generously call it that, and we’ve dodged the debt ceiling limit bullet for several more months, I thought I might comment on a Tuesday NY Times Op-Ed piece by David McAdams, a professor of economics at Duke University and an apparent expert and author on game theory (for those who might not have read his essay, here’s a link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/opinion/changing-the-debt-ceiling-game.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1382049282-ZI8/HsNh+AWsWrOtB2vVLw).

Essentially, McAdams opined that the political parties could avoid another stalemate on the budget and debt ceiling by “limiting (their) own options.” Such a strategy “can be essential to getting others to do what you want.” It’s an interesting theory, but one I believe fails to appreciate the extreme thinking of Tea Party members. McAdams put forward a solution for practical politicians. Zealots are rarely practical. 

In the course of the reporting on the brinksmanship of the last two weeks, and the months before, it was consistently reported that “Congress,” meaning the House of Representatives, could not agree on a bi-partisan plan. It was an ingenuous characterization of reality. Reporters and TV anchors did back flips in their attempt to stay neutral, when all the world knew the hang-up came from three dozen or so Tea Party congressmen, a House leadership that did not have the backbone to keep them in check and dozens of GOP representatives who feared primaries from the Tea Party if they voted for the good of the country and not for the hysterical positions of the Yahoos of their party. 

Let’s be clear—the Tea Party minority wanted to overturn a duly enacted law. What they couldn’t win at the ballot box—not in the general election, the presidential election, or votes in Congress—they sought to negate by placing the economic vitality of the country and the world at risk. Moreover, they are not ashamed of their actions, so the threat of future disruptions is a clear and present danger which cannot be obviated by David McAdams’ game theory stratagem. 

I’m reminded of an exercise in behavior modification my former employer tried to infuse in its top editors. We gathered for an off-site workshop to learn how we could manage our time better, particularly when we had more pressing deadlines than to respond to a call from our respective publishers. It sounded good in theory, but each editor agreed that when the boss called it would be imprudent (read that, job-threatening) to resist his demand for immediate satisfaction. Real world vs. theory: real world won. Similarly, the Tea Party is not playing by the old rules. The Tea Party wants to play by its rules alone.

Old School vs. New:  It’s not just in politics that the old ways are giving way to the new. The other day sports radio discussions centered on the behavior of athletes who celebrate in-game success, be it for hitting a home run, striking out a batter, viciously dunking a ball, sacking the quarterback or scoring a goal. The Old School idea, as epitomized by Mariano Rivera, was to act as if you’ve been there before. Don’t show up your opponent. Act with decorum and respect. New School has no such restraints. If you’re excited, show it, to the fans, to your teammates, to your competition. 

As you might have surmised, I favor Old School. Could be a generational thing. I never once saw Rivera, a deeply religious man, point to the sky as if thanking God for helping him record a save. God has more important things to ponder than the outcome of a sporting event, especially when you consider each side has players invoking his assistance. So, enough with the godly appeals and heavenly thank-yous.

A Devilish Justice: As long as we’re on the subject of religion, did you hear or read about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s belief in the Devil? In a recent New York magazine interview Scalia said he believes the Devil exists, a belief shared by many religious folks. 

Other than as a punch line (“The Devil made me do it,” as Flip Wilson used to say), I prefer the Jewish expression of Satan. The Devil is “a metaphor for the evil inclination – the yetzer hara – that exists in every person and tempts us to do wrong.” The Devil is not a real being.  

Scalia might very well be in concert with a majority of Americans, but as one of nine supreme deciders of the law of the land, he should, I would hope, be more rational than the rest of us. 

Stepping Back from the Precipice, A Recipe for the Tea Party

Anyone who was surprised by the shakiness of the deal to end the government shutdown/slimdown as well as an extension of the debt ceiling is the sort of person who would be a good mark to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. As we stood on the edge of a precipice of unknown depth and impact on the national and global economies, more rational heads seem poised to prevail over the petulant, petty, mean-spirited Tea Party members and a House leadership that is a leadership in name only by refusing to stand up to the obstructionist, ill-conceived ideology of the Tea Party.

As I write this, the Senate and House are yet to vote on a proposal worked out earlier today by the Senate majority and minority leaders. There’s still an opportunity for mischief and mayhem to re-enter the arena.  Let’s assume the best, however.

Let’s also assume, and this assumption might be too hard for some to swallow, that Tea Partyers truly believe they were acting in the best interest of the country. It’s hard to argue with the concept that government has grown too large, that cuts should be made. The real argument is over which appropriations are cut-worthy.

Here’s an idea I’d like to float—Tea Party members, in Congress and those who elected them to office, should be required to live without many of the discretionary services the federal government provides. For example, since they claim Obamacare will destroy our country, they should not be eligible for health coverage under the Affordable Care Act. And while I don’t question their patriotism, I’d cut off their access to Veterans Affairs hospitals and other VA programs.

They’re also interested in cutting back on Medicare and Medicaid. I say they shouldn’t be permitted to enroll in either program. Don’t provide them Social Security, either. Nor unemployment or disability insurance payments. Those entitlement programs are just part of the “taker” society Mitt Romney and the Tea Party bemoan. 

I wouldn’t let them drive on federal interstate highways, unless they paid a use tax. We could issue them special license plates so we could monitor their time on the road.

Based on the intelligence they’ve shown so far, I guess there’s no interest by them in Pell Grants for their children’s education. They shouldn’t be able to enroll their pre-schoolers in Head Start programs, nor should their children be eligible for any federally funded school meals (it pains me to hurt children, but it might be the only way their parents have any empathy for the less fortunate in our society). They also should have to pay special use fees to enter national parks and the Smithsonian. 

They don’t think their stunt to shutter the government and stymie extension of the debt ceiling had any negative effect on the economy, so I’d take away FDIC insurance coverage on their bank accounts. And since they seem to be a self-reliant bunch, I’d deny them any FEMA relief from natural disasters. 

I’m sure there are other discretionary parts of the federal budget I could suggest withholding from them. But you get the idea. Let’s impose these restrictions immediately and see how they work through the time of the compromise worked out by the Senate, that is, either the January 15 funding of the government or the February 7 deadline for the  next vote on raising the debt ceiling limit. Maybe by then the Tea Party will realize there are lots of good programs worth funding.

Do Nothing Congress II

The parallels to events of our time are eerily similar.

In the third and fourth years of a Democrat’s initial term as president of the United States, a Republican-controlled Congress repeatedly and stubbornly undermined his agenda. The GOP favored pro-business bills. The president advocated for civil rights, more unemployment compensation, universal health care. As the election campaign heated up, the president wound up maligning the Congress for thwarting his proposals as much as he ran against his opponent.

That 1948 campaign is perhaps best known for the infamous “Dewey Defeats Truman” Chicago Daily Tribune headline mockingly raised up for the cameras by the real winner, President Harry S. Truman. But to election buffs, Truman’s labeling of the legislature as the “Do Nothing Congress” is perhaps a more telling perspective on how events will unfold in the 15 months before the 2012 elections.

To secure a second term, to secure the type of support required for his progressive plans, Barack Obama will have to champion not only his credentials but he also will have to convince voters of their need for a Democratic majority in the House and Senate. One without the other will result in continued stalemate at the federal level. Truman’s Do Nothing Congress attack worked. It can work again, but only if Obama vigorously stumps for Democrats across the land.

Unless he’s a very good actor, Obama does not have the same feistiness Truman possessed. He does have a temper, but he’s cool, too cool, in public. After nearly three years in office, after three years of trying to portray a presidential-above-the-fray demeanor, Obama has left too many of his supporters wondering about his commitment to Democratic, progressive principles. Plus, they wonder how good a poker player he is (Truman, fyi, loved playing poker), considering his failed attempts to roll back the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy and the lack of any revenue enhancement provisions in the recent debt ceiling deal. When your opponent (John Boehner) boasts he got 98% of what he wanted, it’s hard to find backers for a stake in the game.

Yet that is what Obama must do. He must re-invigorate the coalition of voters who elected him in 2008. He must campaign in lock-step with congressional candidates. He must convince the disenchanted that sitting out the election, abstaining, is not really an opt-out choice. Not voting for the lesser of two evils, or as a protest against his performance, is, in fact, support for the worst candidate. People in opposition usually are more passionate than those content with the status quo, so they’ll turn out to the polls in droves.

Obama and the Democrats also have to contend with the misguided suggestion by Starbucks founder and CEO Howard Schultz for a boycott of campaign contributions to all incumbents until they act more responsibly and compromise their rigid positions. Was he not listening to Boehner’s remarks? Did he not hear or read how Democrats caved so a debt ceiling deal could be reached? Withholding funds from Democratic incumbents would only exacerbate Washington’s problems, unless Schultz seeks a Republican/Tea Party mandate, a result seemingly incompatible to his previous socially progressive positions.

Obama must define for those on the fence what a Republican/Tea Party win would mean: a more conservative-leaning Supreme Court; an anti-labor, anti-working class White House and Congress; less enforcement of civil rights; attacks on the separation of church and state; tax policies more favorable to the wealthy; fewer consumer protections; less environmental regulation; weakened food and product safety laws; less emphasis on education and the introduction of questionable science; restrictions on medical research; elimination of universal health care. The list could go on and on, but I’m sure you get the point.

Economic Futures

Twice in the last week friends asked me if I were optimistic about the economy. Do they think my degree in economics and a career as a business journalist qualifies me to know more than, say, the pinheads at Standard & Poors who made a $2 trillion mistake when calculating their assessment of the credit worthiness of the United States? Do they think I know more than the complicit bean counters at S&P who valued Lehman Bros. AAA worthy even as it imploded and who gave favorable reviews to toxic mortgage-backed securities at the heart of the financial freefall of the last few years?

I’d like to say I responded with a positive take on the economy. But I would be as guilty as those fabricators at S&P who have done more to ruin our economy than a dozen Bernie Madoffs could. Yet even in their obfuscations there is a kernel of truth—there is little to be confident about the will or power of our elected officials to bring a sane, rational approach to a resolution of our financial crisis.

I’m perplexed about several parts of this unfolding story.

First, does S&P believe we need a balanced approach to setting a national budget? Does it believe only more program cuts are required, or are higher taxes on the rich and closing corporate and personal loopholes necessary as well?

Second, several interviews portrayed ordinary citizens understandably lamenting the debt ceiling deal. But in the same breadth they said they wouldn’t favor higher taxes, as desired by President Obama and the Democratic leadership. Do they not understand taxes would have gone up just for those households making more than $250,000? Have Republicans so brainwashed the common folk they believe their taxes would go up?

Third, given we live in a global economy where it is generally cheaper to manufacture in Third World countries than here in America, how long will it take for our citizenry to comprehend we are not going back to the time when the United States was the foundry of the universe. Think of most consumer products, from iPhones to digital cameras, from Christian Louboutin shoes to Nike cross trainers—they’re not made in America. During the last century we shifted from an agricultural to a manufacturing economy. Now we’re a service and information economy. Yes, there are remnants of our production prowess. But most new jobs will require the ability to say “would you like fries with that” or will rely on one’s skill to create platforms that aggregate consumers into marketable segments (at least those who retain enough money to spend on discretionary items). Or you will need to be part of the financial community that doesn’t produce an ounce of goods but earns dollars by the pound based on an ability to jimmy-up trades and market fluctuations (case in point: oil speculators with no tangible assets in the energy business who have driven up the price of gasoline and home heating oil).

Fourth, if Republicans are interested in putting Americans back to work, why don’t they push for legislation to benefit companies that hire more U.S. workers and tax those that outsource jobs?

Fifth, how can anyone see value in a bifurcated society? It wasn’t good when we discriminated based on color, or ethnicity, or sex. Yet our leaders are letting us devolve into a nation of haves and have-nots. Riots like in London, as well as the Arab Spring revolts, are demonstrations of the hopeless and destitute seeking relief against the accumulation of wealth in an elite. Verizon land-line workers are on strike. Even if you believe the company that the average Verizon workers makes $150,000 in salary and benefits, it is 120 times less than the $18.1 million compensation of the company’s CEO last year. It’s an obscene differential. Ivan Seidenberg makes $50,000 a day, every day of the year. Is his three-day compensation equal to an average worker’s full year? It’s not as if he invented a new form of communication, or discovered the cure for cancer, or helped solve world hunger. His job is to run a profitable company, even if it means squeezing his employees to pay more for health care coverage and their retirement plans. I’m not advocating wealth redistribution, but there really should be a limit on corporate compensation.

Pay-As-You-Go-Government

With the debt ceiling crisis behind us, at least for now, perhaps it is time to consider a really radical idea to set the nation’s budget—pay-as-you-go government. You’d be taxed (sorry, I couldn’t avoid the word) only for those programs you want or use.

For sure there would have to be some universally subsidized programs. Everyone would have to pay for national defense. But only so far as our national borders go. Any troops sent overseas would be paid for just by those willing to shell out for shells on the front lines of our war on terror.

You might think the Federal Highway System is another universal program, but you’d be only partially right. Since so much of our food is trucked on our interstate highways, you’d have to pay your fair share for their upkeep. Perhaps those in the Government Accounting Office can come up with a more equitable plan, but for now I would assess people based on their weight. For those hefty souls who would pay more than us skinny folks there’s added incentive to lose those pounds.

The rest of the cost of building and maintaining roads would come from fees based on usage. All vehicles would be equipped with E-Z Pass-type tags to monitor road use and charge accordingly. Since not everyone has a vehicle, small chips would be implanted under our skins to process passengers—even babies— who otherwise would be freeloading rides (to prevent scofflaws from purposely and knowingly covering their chips as they pass through sensors, chips would be randomly implanted in our bodies. You’d pay a premium to have this done while under anesthesia. Right-to-lifers would agree to have chips implanted in their fetuses).

If you haven’t been mugged lately, not had a fire in your home, or didn’t need emergency medical care, perhaps you’d be willing to cut back on these essential services. No problem. Your ID would be on record so police, fire and EMT personnel would know there’s no rush should you ever call.

If you’re a couch potato with no intention of ever visiting a national park, maybe you’d prefer to skip a tax to upkeep Yosemite, Yellowstone, Acadia, the Everglades, and the Statue of Liberty, et al. Of course, you couldn’t deduct the full cost of the Parks Department as you do derive some benefit from trees that regenerate the air we all breathe. I’m sure scientists can compute how much new oxygen is placed back in the atmosphere by public trees. From there it’s simple arithmetic to figure out each person’s share.

Maybe you’d like to stop funding stem cell research? Okay, but be prepared to forgo any benefits or treatments for yourself and three generations of your immediate family that may result from scientific breakthroughs.

Not happy with Medicare? Opt out. Just be sure you’ve socked away enough money to pay for medical bills in your old age.

Perhaps you think social security is a socialist scheme? Drop out, but don’t expect the government to support you in retirement.

Government is just too involved in people’s lives, in telling business how to run companies, some believe. Who needs OSHA if you don’t work in a mine or a chemical treatment or meat processing plant, or a data processing center where repetitive motions result in carpal tunnel syndrome? Big Business wouldn’t hurt its workers, would it?

Do we really need a Product Safety Commission looking over every manufacturer’s shoulders? What’s a few baby heads stuck between slats of a crib in a nation of 300-million, anyway? Do we really believe suppliers would harm their customers, just to earn a few more dollars of profit?

With some old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity we can devise a federalist system that goes beyond returning power to the states. It will give power back to the people, just as the Framers of the Constitution envisioned. Have faith in the people. They are, after all, the ones who elected our current Congress. And see what a good job it already has done.

Another Day, Another Rant

One more thing I’d do if I were in charge...

I’d stop salary payments to all senators and congressmen, the president and all political appointees confirmed by the senate if the government fails to reach agreement on an extension of the debt ceiling and the country defaults on its financial obligations. Pay would be withheld until a deal is finalized and signed by the president. Withheld pay would not be reimbursed once a deal is done. It would be gone with the wind.


Lost Legacy?: Consistency can be a virtue, but it can highlight hypocrisy if not followed.

Tea Party congressmen express outrage that big deficits would strap future generations with backbreaking debt. It’s an honest reason to advocate a balanced budget. Hard to find fault with the warm and fuzzy feeling Tea Partyers have for our children and grandchildren.

Only thing is, they don’t seem to care what type of world they’ll be leaving our offspring. By demanding cuts to, even the dismantling of, the Environmental Protection Agency, the “budget do-gooders” want to bequeath a world with dirtier air, less clean water, fewer national parks and forests, thus removing legacies of that great Republican president, Teddy Roosevelt.

Is the Tea Party so stuck on an anti-government platform it is willing to sacrifice our national heritage and societal advances of the last 120 years? Are regular Republicans so cowed by the Tea Party they are willing to repudiate their own history? Even Ronald Reagan raised taxes. Grover Norquist’s no new taxes pledge would disqualify Reagan from his exalted position.


Follow Me?: Do you take advice from a sibling? Many don’t. Number Track Palin among them. Apparently the 22-year-old didn’t subscribe to little sister Bristol’s abstinence-is-the-best-policy mantra. Instead, he bought into the monkey see-monkey do approach.

After watching Bristol conceive a child out of wedlock (and get rich and famous for it), Track seemingly took the same track, impregnating his high school sweetheart Britta, 21, before they got hitched last May. Recent pictures from a baby shower reveal Britta’s baby bump to be more advanced than normal for two months after nuptials and sanctioned relations.

Ah, well, as I said earlier, consistency can be a virtue, though in this case virtue might not be the right word for a clan that espouses family values but puts more emphasis on creating families than upholding values. Perhaps more appropriate for Palinistas would be the idiom, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

Jobs and Shifting Allegiances

Did you catch the CBS Evening News report last Thursday on the Dawsonville, GA, company that produces customized steel plates using a laser controlled machine? (http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7374087n&tag=mncol;lst;1)

The gist of the story was technology has become vital to economic success and a main reason why massive job creation may prove elusive. Impulse Mfg. is enjoying 60% profit increases, but it plans no additional hires because technology has negated the need. A laser-guided machine, for example, can turn out one steel plate in 30 seconds, a task 18 workers previously accomplished in 30 minutes.

There you have it. Manufacturing, formerly a foundation of the middle class, no longer can be relied on to provide a stable economic underpinning in the Rust Belt and other regions of the country. Job losses no longer just result from companies shipping work overseas. Even those companies committed to domestic production have limited opportunities for American workers.

When I studied economics in college, 4% unemployment was considered full employment. It’s not beyond the pale to suggest today’s definition probably is in the 7%-8% range, especially when one considers all the aging baby boomers who lost their jobs in the recession and are finding it nearly impossible to secure comparable work and pay. National unemployment was reported in June at 9.2%.

The subtext of this job dislocation is the impact on national and local elections. The party in power, regardless of fault, often bears the brunt of voter disillusionment. That partly explains Republican gains in the 2010 elections. As we enter the 2012 election cycle, embroiled as we are in the pseudo give-and-take of the debt ceiling extension debate, it’s a toss-up which party will be viewed as the more sympathetic.

Old allegiances are fraying.

As inconceivable as it might have been just a few years ago, poor, young, uneducated white folks are more inclined to support the Republican party in 2011 than they were in 2008. The Pew Research Center’s latest poll, released last Friday, shows these core constituencies of non Hispanic whites have deserted the Democratic party.

“A seven-point Democratic advantage among whites under age 30 three years ago has turned into an 11-point GOP advantage today,” according to Pew. “And a 15-point Democratic advantage among whites earning less than $30,000 annually has swung to a slim four-point Republican edge today.”

Furthermore, “Republicans have made gains among whites with a high school education or less. The GOP’s advantage over Democrats has grown from one point in 2008 to 17 points in 2011 among less educated whites. Republicans have made smaller gains among whites voters who have college degrees (http://people-press.org/2011/07/22/gop-makes-big-gains-among-white-voters/).”

Can the shift be explained away merely as frustration with the nation’s economic woes? Is it a racist response to a black president? Is it proof the GOP attracts voters who vote with their emotions, not their brains?

Probably a little, or a lot, of all those reasons.

What cannot be denied, even by the most ardent Republican booster, is the policies of the GOP are weighted toward the wealthy, its support for social welfare and higher education programs is squishy, to say the least, and its job-creation programs so far are non-existent save for calls for lower taxes for the rich, or as Republicans calls them, “job creators.” Of course, even with the Bush tax cuts for the upper crust new jobs have not been plentifully created. (Okay, they can deny it all but they’d be kidding themselves; regrettably, they’re already doing a good job fooling many of the young, poor and under-educated.)

How absolutely discouraging. How absolutely unfathomable. How absolutely implausible. But it’s true.

The safety net will be pulled from under them if the poor, the young and the least educated elect conservative, Republican politicians. But getting them to see that is like trying to prove a negative. Until they suffer and can be brought back into the Democratic fold, many will vote against their best economic interests. We have only to look at the eight years of George W. Bush to see the damage that can be wrought—failure to acknowledge warnings of an imminent attack on U.S. soil, 9/11, two wars seemingly without end, lower purchasing power for the middle class and working class, no job growth, federal budgets that went from surplus to deficit, and a loss of respect throughout most of the world.

Unemployment Blues

Unemployment figures came out today, a sober reminder our country has deep economic problems made all the more intractable by the inability of both major parties to get along to reach bi-partisan remedies. Democrats generally believe more government spending is needed to stimulate the economy; Republicans believe business will invest more and create more jobs once the federal government reins in spending.

Thursday’s “economic memo” in the NY Times by Binyamin Appelbaum starkly described Barack Obama’s challenge as he faces re-election. The lead paragraph summed up his problem: “No American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/business/economy/02jobs.html?_r=1&ref=politics)

Unemployment today is 9.1% nationally. It is not expected to drop sharply in the next 18 months.

Which means the election will turn on whether Americans vote with their brains or their emotions. They’ll have to remember under whose presidential watch we tumbled into the worst recession since the Depression. They’ll have to decide if it’s better to place the nation’s future back into the hands of the party that put us into deep water in the first place with two wars, a Medicare prescription reimbursement program that was not sustainable and a tax cut for the wealthy, or if it’s more satisfying to blame the current occupant of the White House for failing to reverse eight years of destructive policies in four years. Our widening national debt is an emotionally charged issue, yet, as Stephen Colbert noted last night, Republicans pushed through a higher debt ceiling during the Bush presidency in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007 and twice in 2008.

Let’s be honest. Obama’s policies have not been sufficient to turn the economic tide. He should have demanded more government money to stimulate the economy. Without the stimulus plan and TARP that Bush and Obama implemented, we’d be in worse shape. GM and Chrysler might be history, and with them many suppliers to the auto industry. Unemployment would be significantly higher. We’d have negative economic output, according to many economists.

Yet many Republicans, including their presidential hopefuls, say the stimulus program was a disaster. Obama needs to forcefully defend the program.

It will be up to the electorate to make sense of these countervailing claims.

If Applebaum is correct, Obama has little chance of staying in the White House beyond noon, January 20, 2012. But using the national unemployment rate of 9.1% could be misleading. As past Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill used to say, “All politics is local.” So let’s examine unemployment layered onto the electoral map of 2008.

Obama won 27 states and the District of Columbia in 2008. Of those blue states, only seven—Maryland, Minnesota, Hawaii, Iowa, Virginia, Vermont and New Hampshire—currently enjoy an unemployment rate below the 7.2% threshold. Another six—New York, Massachusetts, Maine, New Mexico Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—are close.

Of those 13 states, Minnesota, Virginia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania can be said to be “in play” because Obama’s margin of victory over John McCain was less than, or barely above, 10% and there have been rightward shifts in voter sentiment since the 2008 election.

Moreover, Obama’s fortunes are more precarious in the following states he barely won last time: Florida (by 2.5%), North Carolina (0.4%), Colorado (8.6%), Ohio (4%) and Indiana (0.9%).

All in all, it suggests the potential for a vastly different Electoral College map than when Obama won 365 votes to McCain’s 173 (270 are required).

It’s still a long way off until November 2012. The Republican field of candidates is far from stellar. The GOP might overplay its hand, as it appears to have done with a plan to overhaul Medicare. Its plan was widely considered the reason Republicans lost an upstate New York special congressional election last week. The lesson Democrats need to take from that election is they must draw strong distinctions between what they stand for and the impact Republican programs would place on the American family.

Obama’s task is much harder than four years ago. Harder, but not impossible.

(Editor’s note: I’m not the only one to react to Applebaum’s premise. Here’s Nate Silver of the NY Times with his thoughts: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/on-the-maddeningly-inexact-relationship-between-unemployment-and-re-election/?scp=2&sq=nate%20silver&st=cse.)