Romney's Next Campaign

The election results came more as a relief than reason for jubilation. For those living in New Jersey, the long campaign had registered as a distant rumble in battleground states, and yet there was no question that the stakes were high. After the first eight years of this century, followed by even further rightward drift by the Republican Party, few could entertain Nader's 2000 illusion that the two political parties are indistinguishable.

As election day approached, and Romney drew enthusiastic crowds in Pennsylvania, his voice sounding strong and confident on newscasts, I wondered if his campaign for freedom--freedom of the economy from the yoke of regulation, freedom of belief from fact, freedom of candidates from the tyranny of conviction--could prevail after all. Having seen some football games where the fates, or maybe the hand of God, had seemed to steer the outcome, I wondered if whoever is truly in charge--perhaps in this case the people--might have given Romney the nod, along with a giant wink for his well-documented veerings from truth.

Climate Change, running as an independent candidate rudely excluded from the debates, and without the financial wherewithal to buy media time, finally made landfall as a real contender for attention, riding on the coattails of Hurricane Sandy.

My greatest hope for Romney was that he had achieved his place at the top of the Republican ticket in the guise of a Trojan Horse, spouting views sufficiently rightward to gain access. Then, his presidential victory achieved, he would climb out of his wooden, ideological encasement, and move his party back towards the more moderate views that Romney had once claimed as his own. The doors of the heavily defended barricade would finally be opened to such realities as climate change, the role of regulation in preventing market meltdowns, and the lack of evidence that tax cuts raise revenue. It would have been a brilliant coup, but I had little confidence that he could escape from the wooden horse he had built around himself.

There's been some speculation about what Romney will do now. Mondale, trounced by Reagan in 1984, sought seclusion in a log cabin in the north woods. In Romney's case, however, his greatest campaign may still lie ahead. Having successfully staked out, over the course of his political career, dramatically contrasting positions, extending from center to far right, he is now well-positioned to launch a campaign against himself. As clearly demonstrated in his first debate with Obama, he has enough energy and mental agility to argue both sides. His Mormon background could inform the complex task of embracing two points of view simultaneously, in contrast to his past habit of divorcing one point of view in favor of another. And when the campaign inevitably gets nasty, he'll have enough wealth to sustain attack ads against his dueling selves indefinitely.

This solo campaign could go beyond filling the needs of political junkies in off years. Might his campaign function as a surrogate for irresolvable polarization the way sports can safely channel impulses that might otherwise lead nations to war? Romney will serve as a sort of medicine man or sin eater, absorbing and internalizing a nation's debilitating disease so that Congress can become functional once again. And if at some point he ran out of money and had to declare a winner, he would not have to suffer the humiliation of writing a last minute concession speech. Victory will have been pre-ordained.

Notes from a Talk by Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin

Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin gave a presentation at Princeton University this week on the politics of climate and energy. In 2007, she published a book on the increasing partisanship in the U.S. Congress called Fight Club Politics, and a subsequent book on sharks called Demon Fish. She found sharks to be more sympathetic creatures than many of the players in Congress.

Here are some notes from the talk, which was sponsored by the Program in Science, Techology and Environmental Policy:

• She began by describing the shift in the Republican position on climate change. In 2008, Fred Thompson was the only Republican primary candidate for the presidency who denied human-caused climate change. By 2012, however, climate change had become a wedge issue for Republicans, Romney came under intense pressure to abandon his previous, more moderate views on the issue, and the EPA became the most attacked agency in Washington. 
• The public is broadly supportive of action on climate change. A Washington Post poll showed 90% of Democrats and 60% of Republicans in favor of limits on greenhouse gases. There is, unfortunately, a lack of voter intensity on the issue. The number of voters who consider it a top concern (not sure if this is among all issues or among environmental issues) has dropped from 33% in 2007 to 18% now. She believes this drop is in part a response to the fact that politicians have stopped talking about climate. 
• Democratic politicians feel they can take environmentalists for granted, given environmentalists have nowhere else to go for representation. The youth vote, however, requires more cultivation, and may be one reason Obama responded to 350.org's Bill McKibbon's demonstrations in Washington and delayed building the Keystone pipeline from Canada.
• Eilperin listed a number of 2012 races for Congress in which environmentalists had a clear impact on getting Democrats elected, in Montana, New Mexico and elsewhere. The League of Conservation Voters in particular showed that it had learned how to be effective in campaigns. Her article on the subject can be found here.
• She mentioned Bob Inglis, the former Republican congressman from South Carolina whose concern about climate change was used against him by the Tea Party to defeat him in a Republican primary a few years back. Since then, he's been spending time trying to get Republicans more concerned about climate. 

During Q and A, when asked about whether the mainstream media has adequately covered climate change in the past five years, Eilperin vigorously defended the Washington Post, NY Times and other publications and their coverage of the issue. 

The Importance of Repetition

What I believe is missing here is an understanding of how important repetition is for conveying the importance of an issue. Eilperin and other top reporters may publish well-researched articles, but it's the day to day reporting that determines what registers with readers. Since climate change doesn't generate as much news as, for instance, the stock exchange, then people will believe that the intensely reported daily swings of the market matter more than the largely unnoticed, relentless accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. 

       Ms. Eilperin herself referred to the importance of repetition when saying people became less concerned about climate change when politicians stopped talking about it. 

Fire Ecology's Parallels with Climate Change

Afterwards, I asked her about an issue with parallels to climate change: fire ecology. Typical news coverage of wildfires will not mention that much of the destruction is human caused (more on this in another post, here), through mismanagement of forests and the building of homes in fire-prone areas. She responded by encouraging me to read several articles on fire ecology written by one of her colleagues. I'm sure if I can find those articles, they'll be excellent. But a few articles offering context will not compensate for the misleading template for day to day coverage of fires, which portrays humans as victims and blames the stray match or cigarette that may have started the fire, rather than the unnatural accumulations of fuel and the folly of building homes in harm's way. 

      This sort of day to day reporting reinforces the impression that people are victims of a "natural" disaster, while the truth is that human activity fuels the intensity and destructiveness of nature's fury. This oft-repeated misrepresentation--extending back many years before climate change became an issue and still embedded in the conventions of reporting today--makes people less receptive to believing that human activity could also affect climate. 

Bob Inglis

His transformation from Clinton-hating conservative firebrand to moderate, open-minded Republican deeply concerned about climate change is an inspiring story. There are many good articles on the web. This Wall Street Journal article is a good place to start, and if you can find the video of the congressional hearing in fall 2008, co-led by Inglis, you can see him in action in his last days as a Republican congressman.

Government's Legitimate Role--A Sports Analogy

One seemingly bottomless source of national pessimism today is the notion that government can't do anything right and that regulators are by nature the enemy of freedom and commerce. It's enough to make one head to the sports section, where a much healthier relationship with governance is on display.

Sports in general provides a fine analogy for what government's role should ideally be. The athletes and their teams, motivated to beat the competition, bring to their game the same energy and creativity that entrepreneurs and businesses bring to the marketplace. But though the players and coaches may dispute a call now and then, they don't make the mistake of perceiving regulation as the enemy. Rather, a good game requires clear rules and regulations that are fairly applied.

Boundaries in sports do not constrict action so much as channel it, challenging the players to refine their skills to make the most of the freedom and opportunities the game's framework provides. Without a net and clear boundaries, tennis would never have produced the likes of a Roger Federer. Similarly, manufacturers have responded to the combination of a competitive marketplace and rigorous government standards by greatly increasing the efficiency of appliances like refrigerators, while also lowering costs. Environmental regulations, then, are falsely maligned when in fact they can motivate manufacturers to dramatically improve their products and save consumers money.

There must be many football fans who believe that the nation's economy would thrive if only government regulations were slashed, and yet the game itself is a celebration of rules and regulations. All the while underregulated financial institutions were precipitating a financial meltdown in the fall of 2007, football fans were scrutinizing instant replays for the slightest infraction.

Earlier this fall, professional football provided a definitive demonstration of what happens when governance is given short shrift. When the NFL replaced its union referees with high school and college refs used to slower-paced play, their incompetence damaged the game. The NFL essentially replicated an experiment conducted by George W. Bush. By putting incompetent appointees in charge of FEMA, President Bush set the stage for the botched government response to the devastation in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

Sports, too, clearly demonstrates the flaw in the assertion that regulations would better be determined by states rather than by the federal government. Imagine if teams in different states could make up their own rules and field dimensions. The result would be chaos, which is why industry so often lobbies for uniform standards at the federal level.

Ideologies that equate regulation with tyranny, common in political discourse, sound bizarre when applied to the realm of sports. You don't hear athletes quoting Ayn Rand and calling for the elimination of referees and boundaries in the name of freedom. Nor is there any illusion that professional athletes will nobly police their own behavior. As football has increased in speed and complexity, the NFL has increased the number of referees from 3 to 7. Contrast this with calls by many politicians to get government out of the way of financial markets, even as the financial sector has exploded in size, complexity and speed.

But the importance of regulation and its consistent enforcement goes beyond insuring an exciting, fair, well-paced competition, whether in sports or the marketplace. Particularly in football, good regulation also protects players from mutual destruction. It is understood that each player is potentially a lethal weapon, capable of harming self and others.

In some ways, chronic traumatic encephalopathy--the longterm consequence of repeated concussion--is to football what climate change is to a fossil fuel-based economy. Both maladies are slow to manifest, eventually making normal life impossible. How does one save football, when the violence it is based on puts players' brains at risk? And how to save our economy, when the fuels it is based on put the nation at ever-increasing risk of catastrophic changes in weather patterns? Here, again, the sports world has proven more mature and reality-based than the political realm. As scientific evidence of the long-term impact of concussions has accumulated, denial has given way to regulatory efforts to grapple with the problem.

As in the marketplace, the goal in football is not to rid the game of regulations, but to find the right balance. Too much regulation stifles creativity and slows the action. Too little breeds chaos and puts the players and the game itself at risk. When well-targeted regulations are consistently applied, governance disappears into the background and all attention can be focused on the game.

It is this aspect of the anti-government movement in our national political discourse that is most corrosive of the nation's functioning and spirit. The constant questioning of government's legitimate role in regulating society has the paradoxical effect of keeping government in the foreground, a bleeding sore that will not heal. We need to get past this constant berating of government, acknowledge its vital role, and work to refine its implementation so that it can hum along smoothly in the background.

Referees and regulators will never be loved. But there can be no doubt they are vital to the game. It's time such an understanding spreads to our political discourse.

A version of this piece appeared in the NJ Star-Ledger, coincidentally published the morning before Hurricane Sandy devastated the eastern U.S. It was later reposted at ClimateProgress.org.