My Values

I make common cause with fiscal conservatives, foreign policy hawks, free-market liberals on social matters, and the belligerent Bill of Rights crowd. I have a healthy respect for unintended consequences (thus Jam Side Down) and a mild libertarian streak. I am not religious but I care a lot about values. Professionalism, democracy, markets, freedom, government, and growth mean a lot to me.

PROFESSIONALISM

Integrity. Leaders serve the less powerful; they do not exploit them. No sex with interns, no torturing prisoners, and no lying about either one.

Competence. Marge Piercy: “The thing worth doing, well done, has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident”. Whether you are waging a complex war, cleaning up after a natural disaster, or stacking peaches, it’s hard to achieve results worthy of the cost without competent organization and management. Which means that smoothly replacing those who can’t get it done is very important.

Fact-based problem solving. Facts matter. If you want good solutions they need to matter a lot. A solution is no worse if it comes from the person in the room that you or I like the least.

DEMOCRACY

The rule of law. Paraphrasing Churchill, a system of laws passed by elected legislators, approved by an elected executive, and subject to the review of an independent judiciary is the worst imaginable form of government with the possible exception of all the others. Accordingly, I’d rather legislate sensible abortion and civil rights than try to uphold them with administrative rules or court decisions.

Secular government. I respect traditional religious values of love, honesty, charity, and grace but want religion nowhere near government. I regard religious fundamentalism as pernicious, medieval, and potentially totalitarian, whether it is Christian, Islamic, Jewish, or Hindu. The separation of church and state is the most important innovation in our Constitution and is the underpinning of both political and religious freedom.

Limits on national sovereignty. Genocide, state-sponsored terrorism, invasion, and deception concerning weapons of mass destruction can cost a nation its sovereignty, which strikes me as a fine thing. The statement has no meaning however, unless America remains a powerful force for political freedom. We should proudly help Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Cubans, Burmese, and North Koreans to topple their dictators. We should lead the creation of a muscular multilateral military capability. We are much more likely to win friends through our example, our ideas, and our generosity than through military intervention, but for the bad guys who don’t respond well to soft power, the 101st Airborne is a valuable asset.

MARKETS

Economic competition. Competition between organizations, regions, and countries rewards innovation and efficiency without a lot of overhead. Markets often fail however, either for structural reasons (they do not self-regulate or self-correct) or due to government policies. There is a fine line between public policies that restrict competition or the results of competition, usually not smart and policies that shape competition and keep it on the field — always necessary. Governments create markets and smart ones create them where natural markets have failed as with tradable pollution credits or school vouchers. Market failures are nearly always opportunities for economically informed debate and innovation.

Political competition. (see Democracy) Voters select leaders — leaders should not select voters. Asking politicians to draw their own districts is like asking me to set my own salary. I’d be delighted – but nobody except me will benefit from this arrangement. Likewise instead of having 80 percent of reported campaign contributions come from less than one percent of the voting population, I’d give every registered voter a campaign coupon for fifty bucks and allow politicians, parties, and PACs to accept money from no other source. Fair districts and fair financing would result in fair fights (and incumbents would still enjoy a huge advantage). Likewise instead of limiting legislative terms, I’d use Texas-style Sunset Commissions to limit the terms of programs legislators create.

Innovation. Most new technologies, new ideas, or new ways of doing things flop – but some turn out to make a big difference. Encouraging public and private sector innovation is one of the essential jobs of government. When I despair at the corruption and jaw-dropping incompetence of the national leadership of our political parties, I take comfort at the innovations that come from state governors. Brandeis was right to call states the laboratories of our democracy. Today, he might have added that states of 5-10 million people are more interesting laboratories than small nations like California or Texas.

FREEDOM

Freedom to succeed. I value meritocracy and social mobility. I support anti-discrimination laws, even if the playing field isn’t level and never was. I am not a fan of affirmative action, but I acknowledge that an economy that places such a high premium on talent and education ends up being less mobile because families that reinforce learning from an early age have a massive advantage. So I continually look for public or private initiatives that successfully broaden access to high quality education and employment. I’m open to ideas that work – and to learning from those that don’t.

Freedom to fail. Freedom means the right of consenting adults to make mistakes that don’t hurt others. Legislating against every bad idea is the opposite of freedom and results in some goofy laws besides. Blasphemy is a bad idea, but restricting a blasphemous press is a worse one. Using heroin or cocaine is a terrible idea, but making them illegal doesn’t work and has produced social and economic pathologies that are arguably far worse. Most marriages fail, but even with the odds against me, government gets nothing to say about whom I marry or whether I divorce. Government may wish to record my marriage or divorce for administrative reasons – but it has no right to approve my choice of mate, even a palpably stupid choice, unless it can show harm to someone else. Gays and lesbians wish to marry? Bring it on. Like they haven’t suffered enough.

Sacrifice. Freedom is a high cost good and Americans should gladly pay the price. We should reduce the power of oil despots by reducing demand for oil. This requires that we all pay more for gasoline. Eighteen year-olds should give their country two years of military or other public service – and we should reward them with a GI Bill style voucher to help pay college tuition. Great causes require sacrifice. We will genuinely wage a war on terrorists the day that our leaders ask us all to give up something that we care about – and I mean cheap gas, not civil liberties.

GOVERNMENT

Public services. Government should do what business does not do on its own: ensure universal access to a basic level of work, food, housing, health care, and education. Vouchers and negative income taxes can help supply these services efficiently, especially if we use them to increase competition and to provide more help to those who need more help.

Public investment. The tendency to declare all manner of pork to be “investment” obscures the important public role for financing basic transportation, research, education, and utility infrastructure. The failure of many governments to account for long term investment separately from current expenses makes rational discussion of public spending harder than it needs to be. Governments, like companies or families, should pay current expenses with current income and borrow only to finance long-lived assets. A bolder idea? Give every citizen two votes: one for their local Congressman or Senator and one for anybody else’s Congressman or Senator. This would force a legislator who wants a bridge to nowhere to consider the broader costs as well as the local benefits.

Loyalty. I frequently criticize my government and its leaders and consider myself no less a patriot for doing so. I regard the decline in patriotism during since World War II as a generally a bad thing and have no truck with Americans or others who have concluded that our country is fundamentally evil. If I sound like a former Boy Scout, well mea culpa.

GROWTH

Work. In my world, everybody works. If you are age 5 to 75 and the private sector cannot offer you work, taxpayers should enable you to work within your capabilities. If you are raising small children, you are doing valuable work and as taxpayers, we are right to compensate you (to judge from birth rates, we may not be compensating you enough). If you are in school, you work at learning. We all need vacations, we need challenges, and we need the opportunity to learn new skills — but what we need more than anything else is the dignity of work that is real. It is far better if markets create the necessary jobs, but taxpayers spend less creating economic incentives for companies to employ those who will otherwise be idle than we spend for the full cost of idleness.

Humor. I like people who find humor in daily interactions – especially self deprecating humor. My former boss, Labor Secretary Bob Reich, sets the gold standard. It is especially important to be able to laugh at your most deeply held beliefs. Many Jews and Buddhists tell jokes about their religion without denigrating it; Christian, Islamic, and Jewish fundamentalists could learn a lot from them. If you are a passionate Democrat or Republican and haven’t had a good laugh at your party’s leadership lately, give it a break.