Charlie Arlinghaus

October 21, 2015

As originally published in the New Hampshire Union Leader

Newly elected Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and the late, great Margaret Thatcher can teach timid modern politicians that polling, especially the way it’s reported, doesn’t matter and in fact only drives the skittish toward inaction. Polls are snapshots that can fall to a winning argument. Making and winning an argument matters and the good salesman triumphs over the illusory truth of an ephemeral poll.

Monday night, Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada destroyed the election narrative written by pollsters months before and rode from third place into a supposedly-impossible majority government. His victory owes much to the admonitions of Margaret Thatcher and stands in stark contrast to the pathetic pseudo-wisdom peddled by American politicians and their media analysts.

Trudeau is no Thatcherite. It’s fair to say that almost anything Margaret wanted, Justin wants the opposite. He is from the left side of the centrist Liberal Party and the ideological heir to his father Pierre who presided over a massive expansion of the state as prime minister for almost sixteen years.

But his path to power followed Thatcher’s advice that “first you win the argument then you win the vote.” Polls can be changed by winning the argument, selling your position to the electorate.

The Liberal Party long governed by being both a little bit left and little right. It occupied a wide, amorphous swath between the Conservative Party and the left-leaning New Democratic Party. In the last election they fell to third place and were thought to be squeezed out on both sides

Trudeau began the election campaign in third and two months ago was still 12 points behind the leading New Democrats, unlikely to be more than a spoiler.  But the other parties campaigned like Americans — believing the media spin that polls are all that matter and just trying to ride out the lead.

Trudeau campaigned. His message was upbeat and optimistic –“sunny days, my friends, sunny days.” He campaigned on ideas — not ideas I agree with, but ideas — while his opponents trimmed their sails.

The Conservatives in particular were stuck. Having run deficits for the last five years they had lost credibility on fiscal sanity. After a decade in power they were reduced to mocking Trudeau for his youth and his parentage — hardly a sign of strength in the battle of ideas.

Mocking your opponents and generally being grumpy old men wasn’t exactly Margaret Thatcher’s vision of  “winning the argument.”

Trudeau actually made the argument which made it easier to win it. On election night he declared “This is what a positive, hopeful vision and a platform and a team can make happen.” A vision and a platform, for my jaded fellow sufferers of modern politics, means talking about ideas and proposals rather than simply poking fun at the other guy.

What’s more, in Canada the Liberal Party is unquestionably the adult in the room on fiscal responsibility in a way that no American congressman seems capable of understanding.

When the Liberals were last in control, they were concerned about 40 years of deficits that had led to debt at a then-scary 67% of the economy — the current American public debt is 75% of GDP but we don’t seem to care.

The Liberals cut spending by an actual 10% with cuts coming in every budget area and balanced the budget in four years.

In our Congress, the deficit isn’t as bad as theirs had been but our nervous politicians maintain that balancing it in even ten years is nigh impossible.

Canadian debt declined from 67% of GDP to 37% today and allowed them to reduce the highest corporate tax rate from 29% down to 15% — ours is 40%.

I hope that Trudeau will spend a bit less than he promises and will balance the budget again in four years after the Conservatives let it go. Whatever happens, Americans can learn a lesson.

Trudeau was 12 points down two months out. A vision and platform — in contrast to opponents insisting he was too young at 43 — brought him twenty points higher than the favored New Democrats and ten points above the Conservatives.

Poll numbers are just random answers given on the day I made the mistake of answering my phone. Ideas have consequences. You can’t win the battle of ideas if you avoid the fight.

Charlie Arlinghaus

August 19, 2015

As originally published in the New Hampshire Union Leader

Much of what you know about the New Hampshire primary is wrong or misleading. Six months before the election seems like a good time to sort out some fact and fiction.

Many Granite Staters like to think that New Hampshire has some inherent right to the primary because we pay more attention, are more involved, and take our job more seriously. The story of the noble activist fighting a grass roots battle is best explored in Dayton Duncan’s wonderful portrait Grass Roots: A Year in the Life of the New Hampshire Primary — sadly out-of-print but available used.

Duncan is now famous for PBS documentaries on subjects like Lewis and Clark but was a sought after Democratic political operative in the 70s and 80s. His portrait, however, is sympathetic to all the citizen activists he follows and, as with the best historians, the reader has no clue to the author’s partisan sympathies.

The motivations of volunteer activists, their joys and their heartbreaks are painted boldly in a story that could be about any election in any state but happens to be about the New Hampshire primary. It is compelling storytelling.

But some of the mythology surrounding the primary is exaggerated. Most activists enjoy the joke in which an old Yankee, when asked about a candidate, says “don’t know, only met him three times.” In New Hampshire, some will boast, we meet and evaluate them all. It simply isn’t true. The vast majority of people never see a candidate in person.

In 2008, in both primaries a total of 519,000 people voted. The activists who attend town halls or bother to leave the house at night to sit through a town hall type event probably amount to only 25-30,000 voters — a scant 5 or 6% of the total. Those people generally see multiple candidates.

Remember how surprised people were that Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama here? Obama had enormous crowds and Clinton less so. Among the most excited and most active political watchers, Barack Obama generated a lot of excitement. But maybe 90% of the 284,000 who voted in the Democratic primary never went to see anyone. They probably read the newspaper — newspaper subscribers are among the most likely voters — listened to the radio or watched television and then voted.

So when a reporter interviews an attendee at a political event, he’s interviewing a jaundiced member of an over-involved minority. That person’s views are unlikely to be representative of the fabled man-on-the-street.

Most voters will decide very late in the process simply because they, like voters in every other state, are paying attention to the important things in their life and politics is well down on their list.

On the Republican side, we are often told that New Hampshire is a very conservative state. That’s never been particularly true and it certainly isn’t today. The GOP electorate here is quite squishy. In the 2012 exit polls, a total of 47% of Republican primary voters chose to describe themselves as moderate or liberal as opposed to somewhat conservative or very conservative.

That was not the result as some claim of liberals, with no Democratic primary to participate in, crossing over to cause mischief. In fact, in 2008, when the Democratic primary attracted 50,000 more voters than the GOP, the moderate-liberal percentage in the GOP primary was still 45%.

It is also interesting to note that the great moderate hope Jon Huntsman was not their first choice in 2012. It was Ron Paul’s best demographic though he was still second to Romney among moderates.

One remarkable consistency in the primary is the number of candidates. Each of the last six GOP primaries without an incumbent has had 5 or 6 candidates with at least 1% of the vote. on the Democratic side, the same has been true of six of the last seven primaries without an incumbent.

Finally, the winner of these multi-candidate fields since 1988 have finished well under 50% of the vote with the exception of John McCain’s 49% in 2000. Six times the winner had between 36 and 39% but this year’s GOP winner is likely to be closer to Pat Buchanan’s low mark of 27% in a field with six significant candidates.

For some hyper-involved activists, the primary will take on the romantic qualities found in Duncan’s Grass Roots and the experience will stay with them for a long time. For most of us though, we won’t go see anyone in person and won’t pay too much attention until the few weeks. It’s easier that way.

Charlie Arlinghaus

August 5, 2015

As originally published in the New Hampshire Union Leader

The political chattering classes would prefer primaries and debates to be run for their own entertainment and are generally annoyed at the patience and caution with which the vast majority of voters approach the process. No one votes for six months yet but they are already tired of the candidates, bored by substance, and itching for juvenile name calling to begin. Their annoyance with the first debate earlier this week highlights why you should be annoyed with them.

Every four years a host of candidates spend numerous months exploring a presidential campaign and begin introducing themselves first to a very few insiders, operatives, and reporters. They then branch out to the few actual voters interested very early in the process and graduate to the electorate at large.

The marathon-like length of the process provides a premium to candidates interested in discipline and showing patience. Unfortunately, it also means boredom can set in for the operatives who pay much too much attention compared to normal people and also the reporters and other information providers we rely on to help us learn enough to make an informed decision.

The debate season is a very early stage in the primary process but it comes after reporters and the chattering classes have sent as much as three years listening to and talking about specific candidates. To that very tiny group that has been paying attention for far too long boredom long ago set in. But normal humans are just now starting to kick the tires and get to know bits and pieces of information in the hope of making a final decision sometime next year.

The unusual size of the Republican field this year has frustrated much of the insider class. There are 17 candidates who might be referred to as serious — former governors, senators, etc.

Normally, a reporter can be expected to have to sift through five or six candidates in a given party. With so many they are at a loss.

Debate organizers are particularly distressed. Ideally they have two or three people who might yell at each other or make dramatic gestures. Seventeen candidates make entertainment more difficult.

But democracy can be sloppy. In the good old days, a few power brokers made sure the right people got nominated and things weren’t open to just anybody. The wrong sorts weren’t allowed to compete openly with the guys who had carried water for us in the past. The primary system ruined all that. Now anyone can run, talk directly to voters, and try to build momentum. Very messy.

The sloppiness of so many candidates had led some broker to create early elimination deadlines — the Republican National Committee through its monopoly debate franchisees had dictated that only those in the top 10 in national polls may participate despite a primary system that used to be based on state primaries rather than national advertising.

Flouting the RNC and its monopoly, a group of early states had a debate — I’m sorry it’s a “forum” lest we anger the monopoly beast into retribution against candidates who dare be so open. Three early states insisted all candidates be invited and introduce themselves to voters.

Many candidates appeared but each received equal time to introduce themselves. Pundits the next morning however fretted the lack of opportunity for candidates to “engage” with each other.  These pundits were sad that candidates talked about themselves and their ideas rather than take potshots against each other. The punditry pouted because there were no fireworks.

The other complaint of the politically obsessed was that they “didn’t learn anything new.” Insiders didn’t want to hear the candidate’s talking points. Instead they need fresh phrases each time out.

These complaints are less about the needs of voters than the boredom of the chattering class.  It is a useful thing for someone learning about his or her choices to see all of the candidates one after another talk about each of their ideas. We learn more from Rick Perry talking about himself, his record, and his ideas than we would if he had been persuaded by the reportorial blob to attack one of the others.

This forum demanded candidates talk about themselves and their ideas. It is less thrilling than a boxing match and there is the horrific danger that some pundit may have heard that idea before. But it is the substance that we all pretend we want.