The Future 2016 Campaigning: What Matters More, the Party or the Candidate?

Still in the process of typing up Jeb Bush's bio for a prediction of his Presidential Character, but while doing so I have to come to terms with where the political parties are this coming 2016 election cycle, and which candidates are actually going to survive the primaries to stand before the electorate on November 2016.

It's particularly troubling that the Republican Party is getting packed with wannabe candidates lining up already for the campaigning and fund-raising.  Jeb Bush has put his name in, but so have other big names like Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie and Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker and a slew of others, with current interest from the last guy Mitt Romney weighing his chances against Jeb!  This is on top of the more fringe names like Ben Carson and Rick Santorum and Carly Fiorina.  There's about thirty-three possible names on the list for the GOP right about now.

Meanwhile for the Democrats, it's pretty much Hillary Clinton and a list of progressive officials that the more liberal party base are praying puts their names in.  Actually there's about twenty-three possible names, but there's not as much eagerness for people to jump in because Hillary's the one big name and few others seem likely challengers (of course, kinda said that back in 2008 too...).

And while I'm struggling over how to classify each possible candidate - the ones who have an honest shot at winning, that is - one stumbling block I'm finding is the power expectations - one of Barber's key points - that the voting party bases will use to judge those candidates.

The sin of the modern primary system is how it's not the party bosses making deals in back rooms that matter: it's how those party bosses motivate their base to show up to vote in the primaries.  The primaries make and break the candidates: whoever can pander best to the base in each state - which doesn't go by population importance, the state order goes by how easy those states are manipulated - gets the early support and the momentum to secure the nom.

Which is why it might not matter if a Republican candidate is Active-Positive or if a Democratic candidate is Passive-Positive or if a Libertarian candidate has a sense of humor.  If the party wants an Active-Negative to represent them, the candidates who don't fit that want won't win.

Here's the problem I'm finding about the Republican Party: the party base - the Tea Partiers, the Second Amendment Fetishers, the small-government-drown-it-in-Grover's-bathtub crowds - seems so eager to want an Active-Negative type serving as their President.  They want someone who will restrict and slash government services, cut taxes on the rich (while raising taxes on the lazy poor), deregulate businesses to run amok in a Free Market free-range, shut down the borders against illegals, and wage war against The Dreaded Other despite the costs.  A lot of behavior that history shows falls to Active-Negatives under what Barber called the "I Must" mindset that drives A-Ns to compulsive, unshakable agendas.

But at the same time, the party base recognizes that such A-N types are difficult to elect to office anymore.  The last official A-N we had in the White House - Richard Nixon - made the personality so toxic that anyone with that overt a trait would be shunned by regular voters (the most recent A-N who wasn't officially in charge - Dick Cheney - reinforced that toxicity).  So the party leadership is trying to manufacture, promote, or encourage the illusion that their "establishment" candidates - the likes of Jeb, or even what they tried with Romney last time - will run "positive" campaigns pursuing "reforms" on topics like education and immigration and job creation.  All the while hiding the facts that their platforms don't have any real solutions for those topics, just decades-old talking points and all pointing towards the same answer (tax cuts and deregulation).

The Republicans have an Active-Negative agenda, yet they need a Passive-Positive - another Reagan with the charm and skill to avoid the issues and project a congenial persona - to sell it.

So I'm watching a Republican Party go schizoid over the possibilities of who they want as their Presidential candidate.  There aren't many Passive-Positives left in the Republican ranks due to the purity purges that left most of the leadership as Active-Negatives.  On that list Wikipedia has, most of the major names lean A-N in terms of adhering to reactionary agendas (hi, Christie!  hi, Scott Walker!  And yes, hi Jeb!).  The more far-out candidates - Bachmann, Santorum, Rick Perry, Ted Cruz - may present themselves as charismatic but they're not impressive with congeniality skills on the level of Reagan.  I'd already tagged Romney as a Passive-Negative, even if he puts back in for another campaign he still fits that trait best.  The only one of the named candidates that could conceivably play Passive-Positive with the populist skill as Saint Ronnie is Mike Huckabee.  And yet even that persona masks a hidden Active-Negative leaning due to Huckabee's religious hardline worldview.  It hadn't helped Huckabee that he's spent years in the echo chamber of the Far Right Noise Machine, which reinforces a negative worldview not only upon its audiences but also on its presenters.

For the Democrats, the madness of the campaigning isn't as severe: the base eagerly wants another Active-Positive, just one that's more active than Bill Clinton and Obama have been.  The only real problem there is that the primary leader - hi, Hillary! - is an unrepentant Active-Negative, which is why a lot of "Draft Elizabeth Warren" efforts are ongoing.  I mean, is Martin O'Malley a bridge too far, or are Democrats wary of having another Irish guy follow right after the Irish Obama?

I keep promising a review of Jeb Bush.  I gave away the Spoiler of how Jeb's an Active-Negative at heart, but I'll try to explain how I got to that as an answer.

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Predicting Presidents for 2016: Ere It Begins

My personal blogging challenge for the year of 2015 is to cope with the pending headaches of 2016 by attempting to predict each potential political candidate's Presidential Character.

This will follow the system established by James David Barber, who used a basic four-grid chart using two baselines: the energy invested in the Presidency (Active-Passive), and the personal perception placed/will place on the role of being President (Positive-Negative).  This gives us Active-Positive, Active-Negative, Passive-Positive, and Passive-Negative.

The terms used can be confusing because there are multiple meanings to each word.  People get confused about the word "Active" for example, thinking that can apply to Presidents who on a personal level bounce off the walls like hyperactive children.  The word "Active" here applies to how much energy that President puts towards being President: does he go to the job with confidence and vigor and conviction, does he view every policy fight as a good reason to wake up in the morning?  George W. Bush is a good example of the confusion: in personal habits he was very active and engaged with others, but when it came to the Presidency he was decidedly disconnected and more reactive to situations than active, which puts him in the Passive category.

Positive and Negatives might lead to confusion as well.  "Positive" here is the mindset that being President is a good thing, that the powers of the Executive office can be effectively used, that the role of the Presidency is flexible enough to do anything necessary to achieve goals that benefits others (Barber calls it the "I Can" mentality).  "Negative" is the mindset that the Presidency is dangerous (even in your own hands), that there are limits to the office and that things should be done in a procedural manner, that the President cannot or will not derive any satisfaction from the performance (Which falls under "I Must" mentality).

Using these definitions, Barber wrote his first book on Presidential Character in 1972 about then-President Richard Nixon who was about to embark on his re-election campaign.  Barber warned that Nixon showed signs of being a self-destructive Active-Negative type, akin to his predecessor Lyndon B. Johnson and to Woodrow Wilson.  Barber noted that Nixon's desire to face crises - even those self-created - would lead to an obsessive fight over a failed agenda that would collapse Nixon's entire administration.

That book was published and in the stores about two weeks before the Watergate break-in was found out.  It cemented Barber's reputation and his four-grid chart.  For the most part since then Barber's predictions about subsequent Presidents - except for Carter who was more Active-Negative, and for Clinton who was Active-Positive (but who did lean towards the Passive-Positive traits on a personal level) - bore true.  (It should be noted that the traits are not absolutes: even Negatives may show Positive leanings, and Passives may be remarkably Active and influential in the Executive office).

So before I go delving into the early list of 2016 candidates - a wave of Republican hopefuls just beginning with Jeb Bush and now Mike Huckabee, sure to be followed by 25-80 more - I need to clarify just what it is we'll need as voters to look at when evaluating the clowns jumping out of the election car.

Above all, the biographies of each candidate needs to be parsed and investigated.  Barber relied on the prime developing years of each President's youth, college years, early professions, marital pursuits.

In terms of professions, Barber examined the private professions as much as the public offices held, campaigns lost or won, and in each office he identified a key crisis or decision that either influenced further actions or confirmed the traits developed in the man's youth.

From such studies, Barber looked for these elements (from his book's first chapter):

• Personality: in Barber's view it "shapes performance".  "...the degree and quality of a President's emotional involvement in an issue are powerful influences on how he defines the issue itself, how much attention he pays to it, which facts and persons he sees as relevant to its resolution, and finally what principles and and purposes he associates with the issue." (4th edition, p.4)
• Pattern: the Personality follows certain patterns based on Character, World View, and Style.  Style (not charisma: nearly every President had his charms) is the easiest to spot: it's his habitual way of offering rhetoric, handling personal relations, and doing homework. (p.5)  The World View is another phrase to describe the person's primary belief structure and how he/she interprets the reality around him/her.  Character is based on what experiences have been "engraved" onto the person by outside persons/forces: it's how you confront conflicts (and Character is What You Are In The Dark).
• Power Situation: That is, the moral and political climate into which the person becomes President.  What are the expectations of the office by the President as well as everyone else: voters, Congressional leaders, foreign powers?  The expectations of the office have changed much since Washington's heyday, and have changed even further after major economic (Great Depression) and political (Watergate and the ongoing scandal climate) and social (Slavery/Civil War/Reconstruction/Jim Crow/Civil Rights, Women's Rights, Gay Rights, etc) events that altered everything.  When we elect someone, we are expecting the elected official - the President - to perform his duties to resolve the crises and conflicts at hand.  Those expectations influence - either by confirming or denying - the President's pre-existing Character and World View.

So what this means for me is three-fold:

• I gotta find published biographies of each of the candidate I'll be looking to profile.  Some will be easy to find, others not so.  And autobiographies will be ignored whenever possible, as those are too self-serving (tigers cannot see their own stripes: Republicans cannot admit to their own flaws...).
• I need to identify any major crisis or conflict in each candidate's track history.  For Jeb it's relatively easy: his governor's performance is a matter of public record.  For the "private" citizens who've never held public office, their private sector performances would have to do, which is trickier to apply to public needs.
• I need to get this all done in a timely fashion.  There's only 50 weeks now until 2016 itself rolls up and there's going to be about, what, 80 of these guys to review? 

As a side note, why should we expect about 80 or so Republican hopefuls running for 2016?  Because Obama.  Obama is finishing up his second term, capped off by the 22nd Amendment, meaning he won't be able to use his national popularity - it's gone up, by the by - to remain in office.

Making 2016 more enticing is the (flawed) cyclical trend of voters generally bouncing from one party to another even after a popular President leaves office: the thinking is that after 8 years of a Democrat in the White House, middling voters will allow a Republican back in.  Never mind the actual history where popular two-termers had a follow-up from his party win again.  SEE Bush the Elder following Reagan, Truman following FDR, Van Buren following Jackson, Taft following Teddy.  And it should include Nixon following Ike if not for Cook County ballots and Gore following Clinton if not for that damned butterfly ballot in Palm Beach county.  The notable exceptions are of course the unpopular two-termers Bush the Lesser and Nixon (whose unpopularity stained Ford's chances in 1976): in that vein, we'd have had Tilden a Democrat after the disaster that was Grant's administration if not for a broken Electoral college that allowed the corrupt Republicans in Congress to shove Hayes into office.  You'd be surprised how few two-termers there have been...

As for my homework assignment, Jeb Bush is the obvious lead-off.  He's local, he's made his moves, he's got easy-to-find resources within my reach for study.  Granted, I already have a bias against the man - mostly for logical performance-based disasters he inflicted on my state, but also for one very personal and admittedly irrational reason - but I will try to be fair.

Happy New Year!

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The Chart That Ought To Scare The Crap Out of Politicians... But Doesn't.

This was actually last week on Sullivan's blog, but there was a distraction or three going on...

This chart points to how long unemployed people are actually staying unemployed.
It shows that recently unemployed people have about double the chances of relocating a new job to get back into the grand economic circle of life.  But the second you get over that 27 weeks or more of unemployed... well, you're screwed.  That, by the by, is where the real problems of our current unemployment crisis is...

There's a couple of reasons for this:

• Those long-term unemployed are from sectors of the economy - construction, public works, finance, manufacturing - that have lost jobs that are NOT coming back any time soon.  The housing and foreclosure crisis has put a crimp on new housing and housing repairs, for example.  Manufacturing jobs are bleeding to overseas markets with cheaper non-union labor.  Public sector jobs - state and county and city - have been hit hard with massive deficits forcing spending cuts.  The quick rehiring of those out of work under 26 weeks involve industries that are fluctuating but not losing job openings that can be refilled.
• The other reason is psychological on the part of HR departments.  They seem reluctant to hire anyone who's been out of service for so long, as though there's a stench of failure all about a candidate who's been out of luck for 27 weeks or more.

The reason the long-term unemployed is a major problem for our government and our economy is that they will sooner rather than later become a burden on society in the worst way.  Sooner or later they drop out of the job-hunting and unemployment benefits system.  Unemployment really isn't at 9.8 percent: that's just the people still reporting for benefits.  REAL Unemployment, including the ones who've given up on benefits or no longer able to garner them (known as the 99ers for the ninty-nine weeks (and counting) they've been out of work), is actually past 10.4 percent (and might even be worse than that).  But what happens when the unemployment benefits end or the unemployed move on?  They move on over to Food Stamps, or some other form of welfare.  The burden merely shifts to another public sector that's facing cutbacks in the wake of statewide and national deficits.  Worse, they become a burden to family members or friends who may be employed (or retired living on benefits themselves) but who are incapable of paying for the needs of their out-of-work relative/friend.

Look.  Having one-tenth of your employable population out of work is NEVER good.  But there's little sign that the federal government is going to do anything about it, which sucks.  And the conservatives' solution - tax cuts that DON'T REALLY go to job creation or wage improvements - isn't going to work (all those tax cuts after 2001... and this is the shape of our job market today.  Buy a clue, Republicans: TAX CUTS DON'T WORK.  Grrrr.)

• We need laws in place to force HR departments to look at hiring the long-term unemployed first.  We're the ones at greater risk.
• We need laws in place to keep international corporations from shipping OUR jobs elsewhere.  You wanna get our tax breaks?  Give some breaks to the people who live here!
• We need a works program similar to the ones that FDR had back in the 1930s that helped us climb out of the Great Depression.  Nothing huge like the CCC, but at least something to get people back to work and stimulating the economy with their efforts and their spending.  I honestly don't get why there's this huge hate on for Keynesian policies of the 1930s that worked (nations like Japan that quickly adopted Keynesian economic models were the ones that survived the global economic meltdown).  I know that Keynesianism was choking on itself by the 1970s, but that was when our government and economy could operate without it... but today, dammit...

So an open call to all unemployed persons across the nation.  To all my fellow 99ers, this is pretty much the only solution left to us.  Run for office.  Run at the county level, state level, federal level, whatever it takes.  Go to your party if you've registered with one and sign up to run for any openings in the coming election cycle.  Trust me, you gotta start looking into the paperwork on that stuff before it gets too late... and the deadlines come up on the calendar faster than you realize.

Run for office, unemployed people.  We need more elected officials who have a damn good idea just how bad the job market is out here in the Real World.

Wartenberg in 2012.  I Need The Work.

(this has been edited for some grammar errors and to highlight additional thoughts)

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