Timothy Egan is a columnist for The New York Times and he is usually pretty good. But today, he wrote one of the stupidest or most disingenuous columns I’ve read in a long time, Declaration of Independents. It is about the growing number of so called independents. And it bemoans that fact that they have no one to vote for. The partisans have their parties, but who speaks for the independents? I have such a desire to slap Timothy Egan, you cannot even imagine.

As we all know, voters who refuse to claim a political party are almost all partisans. And they are not, as is usually claimed, people in between the parties. In my experience, when someone claims to be “independent,” chances are that it means that they think the Republican Party is too liberal. And it works the other way too: some liberals claim to be independent because they find the Democratic Party too conservative. But they are more likely to call themselves “socialist” or something similar. Conservatives really don’t have anything to call themselves other than “fascist,” and while that term may apply, few people want to associate with the word.

Egan’s biggest problem is that he treats “independents” as though they are some monolithic group. They aren’t. He even notes that the recent trend has been for self identified independents to come from the Republican Party. Based upon the recent news that is reported in his own paper, does he really think these are people leaving the party because it is too conservative and that it doesn’t get anything done? Sure: there are some. But my perception of this group is not that they are open to voting for more moderate politicians. Rather, it is that they are simply embarrassed to associate with the Republican Party. In the privacy of the ballot box, they vote as they wouldn’t in public.

To make matters worse, Egan then sums up what his mythical independent voters believe in:

Oh, I see: so the independents believe in exactly what the Democrats believe in. The real question is, if you asked these independents which party they would pick if they had to, you’d see that, yes, the independents skew slightly Democratic. The problem with them as a group, is that exactly the ones who are in the center of the political spectrum are the ones who are least likely to vote.

I don’t really know what Egan thinks he is doing in his article. It would be nice to have more choices in terms of people to vote for. But the truth is that the Democratic Party is a big tent. The only two “independents” in Congress both caucus with the Democrats. Perhaps Egan has forgotten his Shakespeare:

If what the “independents” want is what the Democrats have to offer, why would calling them independents matter? Bernie Sanders is an independent, but calls himself a socialist. I just think of him a good solid liberal Democrat. I don’t care what he calls himself or how he shows up on the Senate roll call. And I can’t for the life of me figure out why an otherwise smart guy like Egan would care.

See Also:

South Will Fall Again (with Obamacare)
Potato Famine

As regular readers know, I am not an optimist. Most probably think me cynical and pessimistic. I don’t see myself that way. I just react to reality as I find it. And sometimes, I’m really optimistic. After the first presidential debate in 2012, all my liberal friends were bummed out. So was I. But then the October Jobs Report came out and it was great! So I became downright cheery because, “It’s the economy, stupid!” But most of my friends did not see it that way. But they were wrong and I was right. I don’t mean to gloat. I just mean to point out that when I’m optimistic, you should probably pay attention.

Like most liberals, I am concerned about the Democrats losing the Senate in November. For a long time, I’ve estimated that that this has about a 50% chance of happening. Indeed, that is more or less where The Upshot has been predicting for months. But the one thing that will really improve the Democrats’ chances is if the economy continues to improve. And I’ve been pretty bullish on this. It’s really very simple. The economy is under-performing. There is a lot of unused capacity and I just don’t see a reason why things would reverse now.

But in case you didn’t know it, it is not the first Friday of the month. But tomorrow is a federal holiday, so the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has come out with its June Jobs Report. And it is a humdinger! The economy added 288,000 new jobs. And the BLS revised the last two months’ employment figures up by a total of 29,000. That actually puts April creating 304,000 jobs. You can always find things in the jobs report to complain about, but overall, it is a really good report.

If you want to get into the details and even find some things to feel bad about, Matt Yglesias at Vox, put together an excellent run down of what various people are saying about various parts of the report, Economy Adds 288,000 New Jobs, Unemployment Rate Falls. You might have noticed that I didn’t mention the unemployment rate. That’s because it is meaningless. In particular, the economy still hasn’t turned the corner in the eyes of Americans. More people are leaving the job market than are finding jobs. But it looks like this will not be true for much longer.

The reason this makes me feel better about the Senate is that as the economy improves, so will people’s opinion of President Obama. And so when they go to the polls, they will be more likely to think, “You know, the Democrats are doing a good job; now is not the time to switch horses.” Even more important, feeling good about Obama will make more Democrats decide to actually go to the trouble of voting. And it won’t take much for the Democrats to hold onto the Senate.

It is still too soon to tell. But if July adds 300,000 jobs and August does the same, people are going to notice. That alone will probably reverse the dominance of people leaving the job market. And that means people will be feeling better about the state of things. Of course, even if the Republicans do retake the Senate, it won’t mean much. They are almost certain to lose it again in 2016. But having a Democratic Senate would generally be helpful to Obama in his last two years—especially regarding the appointment of judges. If the Republicans take the Senate, they will probably not allow anyone to be confirmed. That would be bad, but not catastrophic.

So it would be best if the Democrats held onto the Senate. And today’s Jobs Report bodes well for that.

In a short blog post, The Great Disinvestment, Paul Krugman noted, “[I]t’s absurd that the federal gasoline tax has been flat in nominal terms since 1993, which means that in real terms it has fallen 40 percent.” That really struck me because it so highlights the results of the Republican Party’s absolute insistence on never raising taxes. There is nothing principled about this stance; it is just irresponsible.

In The Wrecking Crew, Thomas Frank argued that conservatives are not just naturally bad at governing. He claimed that they intentionally ruin the effectiveness of government and rack up large debts so that when the Democratic Party is in power, it will have to spend most of its time and resources fixing the damage. I do not accept this thesis. It is too Machiavellian, and frankly, I don’t think that they are cunning enough for such a project.

But I wrote about the book before, Why Are Republicans the Wrecking Crew? In it, I discussed how it doesn’t actually matter. The result is the same. The Republicans rule both incompetently and recklessly. When the Democrats come into office, they do feel that they must clean up the mess. That’s a fundamental problem because Democrats do want the government to work. But it isn’t as though the Republicans don’t want the government to work. It is just that they get carried away by their rhetoric.

Let’s look at the federal budget from 2011, but it always looks about like this:

Most of that is stuff that Republicans want to keep, or at very least, know that they would cease to be a viable political party is they touched. So all their posturing is nothing more than their attempts to harm Democratic constituencies while rewarding their own. This was clearly on display with the most recent farm bill. The Republicans actually wanted to give farmers—who are mostly large corporations—more money while they gutted the food stamp program. One of the reasons that we even have a food stamp program is because price supports (welfare for farmers) makes food more expensive (a tax on people who eat). So it was seen as only fair that the government help out the poor since they were paying more for food than they should.

As for the gas tax, well, Republicans don’t care about paying for things. Actually, the obsession with “pay fors” is one of the maladies of the Democratic Party. Republicans only think we should pay for things when the Democrats are in power. Meanwhile, over the last two decades, the gas tax is roughly half what it was two decades ago. This is while we should (1) be encouraging people to drive less with higher taxes, and (2) have more money to repair our crumbling infrastructure.

This is why we can’t have nice things bridges that don’t fall down.

Afterword

The gas tax is not the only way we pay for bridges and roads. But the fact that we can’t raise taxes—even to keep up with inflation—is indicative of why the United States is literally falling apart.

I always thought that Cosmopolitan was just a silly fashion magazine. But I’ll admit, I have never so much as looked inside an issue. Then today, Digby linked to an article by Jill Filipovic, Hobby Lobby Supporters Insist Decision Isn’t Sexist, Tell Women to Close Their Legs. It’s one of the best things I’ve read yet in the aftermath of Burwell v Hobby Lobby. (See my discussion: SCOTUS Says Not All Religions Are Equal.)

Primarily, the article is about the reaction of people on the right to women who had the audacity to be angry or disappointed with the decision in the case. It includes some real gems from Twitter. Filipovic made the infinitely reasonable observation, “Really glad the same #prolife folks who oppose abortion rights are making it harder for women to prevent unintended pregnancy.” AmericaWoman responded, “@JillFilipovic be accountable for your own blood I’ll keep your legs closed.” (I know, it doesn’t exactly make sense, but you get the idea.) There was a whole lot of discussion about keeping legs closed and using aspirin tablets. In fact, #CloseYourLegs was very big for a while.

Of course, when it was a man writing, the tweets normally used the word “whore.” The unalterably vile and stupid Patrick Dollard tweeted, “MSNBC Whore Irin Carmon: Hobby Lobby Ruling Is Nothing But An ‘All-Out Assault’ On Contraceptives.” Ssgt. Richard Davis tweeted, “IF YOU WANT TO BE A WHORE & SLEEP W/ EVERY MAN YOU FIND PAY FOR YOUR OWN BIRTH CONTROL. 10 BUCKS AT WALGREENS. SO GO BE WHORE’S.” And Tim Gradous was a total winner, seemingly believing that God is dead or has changed his mind, “Two Aspirin between knees is 100% effective, God knew. If you can’t pay don’t Play…” Note also how Mr Gradous seems to think that pregnancy is solely the concern of the woman.

What’s especially terrible about all of this is that I figure that these are just conservatives without enough control of the ids. The five men on the Court who made up the majority probably think these same things. They just know better than to communicate their thoughts in such a raw form. I don’t say this lightly. We know that the brain works that way. With all due respect to Stephen Colbert’s satire, we do pretty much decide with our “guts” and then use our higher brain functions to justify those primal “thoughts.” As smart as he may be, I think the fact that 24 was once Antonin Scalia’s favorite television show demonstrates that there is more gut than brain on the court. If the five conservatives on the court had been women, at least some of them would have dissented and the case would have been struck down. There is no doubt of that.

Jill Filipovic also noted what I think is going to be the lasting legacy of this decision:

In the long run, I think that Burwell v Hobby Lobby will turn into one of those historical embarrassments for the Supreme Court like Dred Scott v Sandford and Plessy v Ferguson. It’s like the Court has opened a wound in the law that conservatives will claw away at. And I would go further than Ginsburg. At least there is a Biblical case to be made for segregation. There is no biblical case to be made against birth control. And, in fact, until the mid-1970s, protestants didn’t have a problem with abortion, much less birth control.

The only really important thing I learned from the racist Ayn Rand was how totalitarian regimes oppress their people. They don’t rigorously enforce all kinds of laws. They just have all kinds of laws laying around that they apply to anyone who becomes a problem. Well, going forward, the Supreme Court has set up a similar situation. Companies (I’m sure the “closely held” part will go away soon enough—especially if we get any more conservatives on the court.) will have all kinds of religious rights—as long as those religious rights go along with what the conservatives on the court believe.

The point that Filpovic makes is that this case isn’t about religious freedom at all. It is about conservatives who have never made peace with the slipping power of patriarchy. Of course, it’s interesting that the same conservatives who want women to stay at home with a Duggar-style family are not so interested as to allow union rights and minimum wage laws that might make a single-earner household possible. The overall conservative agenda isn’t just to keep women down. The whole thing is about keeping everyone but the power elites down. One thing that many people seem to forget is that birth control doesn’t just free women; if anything, it frees men more. And the power elite don’t like the poorer classes to have freedom. Corporations are people because they are owned by the rich. A zygote’s rights trump those of the host mother because she’s poor.

This is modern America.

Earlier today, Paul Krugman wrote a very interesting article, Trick or Tweak. It’s basically about the new Republican policy book Room to Grow, although it isn’t mentioned by name. As he noted, “More specifically, the ‘reform conservatives’ seem mainly to be offering supposedly new ideas for the sake of being seen to offer new ideas.” To me, this gets to the fundamental problem with the current Republican Party. It isn’t that they don’t have “new ideas.” In general, the issue is not new ideas. It is rare to have new ideas in politics. The problem with the Republican Party is that in terms of its politics, it has ossified. They have become the party of “all or nothing.” They are unwilling to compromise.

Krugman rightly notes that the two parties are pretty much the same as they ever were, “Liberals want a strong social safety net, financed with relatively high taxes, especially on high incomes.” Meanwhile, “Conservatives want much less of a safety net, and much lower taxes on the affluent.” The problem is that conservatives have become delusional. When Reagan came into power, he offered up the belief that by shoveling money to the rich, it would make everyone better off. And to people not paying attention, that seemed to work. The economy did well under him. But we know that this had nothing to do with these policies and everything to do with the Federal Reserve.

But even if you gave the Reagan tax cut credit for the economic recovery of the 1980s, the recovery was not terribly robust, especially after the deep recession the country was coming out of. The economy did not grow as fast as it did under Johnson before him. And it did not grow as fast as it did under Clinton after him. And then there is the issue that I discussed in, Reagan’s Legacy: Tax Cuts for Rich, Tax Hikes for the Rest. So not only did we get only a modest economic boom under Reagan, the middle class actually ended up paying more in taxes. Krugman was right when he noted specifically that conservatives want lower taxes on the affluent. That’s all they care about; note that they had no problem with the payroll tax holiday ending.

What really drives the Republicans, however, is not any false lessons they learned from Reagan. What drives them is the false lesson they learned from Bush the Elder. The lesson is that you can never raise taxes. Actually, if there is a lesson that should have been learned from Bush, it is this: don’t make ostentatious political promises you don’t know you can keep. (In fact, at the time, some of Bush’s economic advisers tried to get the “read my lips” promise removed from his speech.) But what Republicans have learned is not about winning general elections; it’s about winning primaries.

I think where we are today is the natural result of that false lesson about never raising taxes. Because being committed to never raising taxes means that the government will never have enough money. During good economic times, the Republicans insist upon lowering taxes because it is wrong for the government to take more money than it needs (eg 2001 tax cut). And then they insist upon lowering taxes when the economy is bad because we need stimulus (eg 2003 tax cut). This ultimately leads to Grover Norquist’s idea to “shrink [the government] down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

Of course, the truth is that Republicans don’t want to drown the government in the bathtub. Neither does Norquist. The Republicans firmly believe in taking money away from the poorer classes and using it to enrich the already rich. Bush’s prescription drug benefit was partly about giving a benefit to older people who tend to vote Republican. But mostly, it was a huge giveaway to the drug companies. His War on Terror was as much about giving money to military contractors as anything else. And his attempt to privatize Social Security was about rewarding Wall Street.

What I’m saying is that the Republican Party itself is not an honest broker. The Democrats really do want to do what they say. That’s not to say they are perfect or anything. But they wanted healthcare reform and they were even willing to use the Republicans’ own plan to get it. Not only would the opposite not be true. When the Democrats did that, the Republicans abandoned their own plan. Remember: not a single congressional Republican voted for the ACA. So the only time you can get any idea of what the Republicans really want to do is when they are in power. And for that, you have to look at the years 2003-2007

So let’s go back to how Krugman described them, “Conservatives want much less of a safety net, and much lower taxes on the affluent.” They don’t want to destroy the government; they just want to destroy the parts of it that help the poorer classes. The Tea Party makes bold stands and sounds downright libertarian. But once Republicans are back in power, they will do what they always do: run up deficits that the Democrats will later sacrifice their own agenda to manage; and funnel money to their key constituents. And once out of power, Republicans will go back to the same hysterics about out of control spending.

Leave aside the fact that the ideas in Room to Grow are extremely weak tea. The fact remains that the book and the entire conservative “reform” movement does nothing but provide political cover for the Republican Party. It allows David Brooks to say, “[T]he most coherent and compelling policy agenda the American right has produced this century.” It is just apologia. Regardless, we don’t need “new” ideas; we need good ideas, and we already have a lot of those. It’s just that they don’t come from the Republicans.

More and more, I find myself feeling like Louise on Bob’s Burgers, “Am I going crazy?!” You may remember back in the lead up to the Iraq War, the McClatchy newspapers were providing excellent coverage of the case for war. And they were finding that most of what the Bush administration was saying was rubbish. But all the big papers—The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post—were publishing what would eventually be shown to be nothing more than White House propaganda. At the time, this made the editors for McClatchy very nervous and eventually, they too fell in line and reported what everyone else was.

I felt that way today after reading Jonathan Chait’s article, Boehner Decides Helping Hillary Win Is Better Than Passing Immigration Reform. We got a whole bunch of this kind of stuff after Obama won re-election in 2012. And even Chait started the article, “At the start of 2013, I really thought immigration reform was going to happen.” Yes he did! Like so many liberal writers, he though and still thinks that Republicans must pass some kind of immigration reform or Latinos will never vote for them.

There is a fundamental problem with this idea that people have about how the Republicans must pass immigration reform to mend their relationship with the Latino community. First, Latinos care about a lot more than immigration. As a group, they are poorer and so they would vote for the Democrats regardless. Second, it is clear that if the Republicans did pass immigration reform, they would do it kicking and screaming. I don’t feel like looking it up, but the failed House bill contained a path to citizenship that was almost two decades long! Now Republicans are even against a bill that would normalize the status of undocumented people with no path to citizenship at all.

The biggest problem, however, is that the Republican Party clearly hates immigrants. They clearly hate Latinos most of all. Even if they did do immigration reform, it would be the only thing they were willing to do. It would be like a husband who beats up his wife. The next day, he brings her flowers and says, “Now that’s over. I never want to hear about it again!” In fact, that’s kind of how the Republicans are to the African American community, “We ended slavery: what more do you want?!”

Chait does note that a bad economy could still get a Republican elected, “Some Republicans have taken seriously the need to reposition the Party so that it can win a presidential election without the benefit of a recession or some other extraordinary circumstance.” The problem is that this is pretty much the case no matter what. If there is an economic downturn in 2016, the Republicans will win the White House. And if there isn’t, they won’t. It really is as simple as that.

The only valid point that Chait makes is that by leaving immigration reform on the table, it remains an issue that freaks like Ted Cruz can use to cudgel more reasonable candidates during the Republican primary. That’s true. But I’m not at all convinced that Ted Cruz is unelectable. People said that Ronald Reagan was unelectable. A lot of liberals were happy when the Republicans nominated him. They thought it would be Barry Goldwater all over again. It wasn’t.

Going forward, the Republican Party will have to do something to appeal to a more diverse country. But that time has not yet come. Mitt “Self Deportation” Romney still got almost half the votes in 2012. The Republican Party will court Latinos exactly when you would think they would: when there is absolutely no choice but to do so. And at that point, they are going to have to do a hell of a lot more than dangle a pathway to citizenship that would make Rube Goldberg proud and requires more years than most working class people have left.

So yes: the Republican Party is vile and stupid. But doing one thing is not going to change that fact. I really don’t see why people like Jonathan Chait keep claiming that it will.

See Also

It’s the Poor, Stupid
Why Should Republicans Support Immigration Reform?

Unlike most liberals, I “get” Ann Coulter. She is fairly smart, actually has a good sense of humor, and knows what she is: a provocateur. She’s also vile and politically pretty much a fascist. She’s nationalistic, anti-diversity, and she fetishizes “strength” and “power.” But like me, last week she decided to go after America’s recent interest in soccer. Of course, although we were equally snarky, I at least made sense, You Don’t Care about World Football. My article was complaining about how Americans get all excited whenever “their team” (how ever that might be defined) is doing well. Americans are now more interested in soccer because our national team is reasonably good at it. But soccer like all professional sports is popular simply because it is popular. People watch it because other people watch it. Sheep, that’s what we are.

Last week, Coulter wrote, America’s Favorite National Pastime: Hating Soccer. Much of it is quite funny, but she actually shows a great ignorance not just of soccer but of games that True Americans™ care about. Let’s look at her description of Soccer:

That doesn’t really sound like soccer to me. I think she’s describing her sex life.

Anyway, she goes out of her way to label soccer as French, “They [African Americans] remain distinctly unimpressed by the fact that the French like it.” The truth is that soccer is not a particularly loved game in France. It is not more popular there than it is in Germany, Ireland, or the United Kingdom. This line actually is disappointing. Meaningless complaints about the French are so 2003. She really should get up with the times. That’s just lazy.

She also complains that what sets humans apart from other animals is that we have opposable thumbs. Well, actually, there are a lot of animals with opposable thumbs. (She also mentions that humans have souls unlike the “lesser beasts,” but she would hardly know, would she?) But her point is that soccer is stupid because you can’t use your hands. She wrote, “Here’s a great idea: Let’s create a game where you’re not allowed to use them!”

There’s a major problem with this idea. All sports have limitations. Baseball would be a lot easier to play if the bat were thicker, for example. But more important, the game she seems to think screams “America!” is football. But in that game, offensive linemen are not allowed to use their hands. Here’s a great idea: let’s create a game where the guys who protect the quarterback aren’t allowed to use their hands! Brilliant!

The truth is that Ann Coulter doesn’t know any more about the traditional American games than she knows about soccer. She just knows that soccer used to be unpopular in America and now it is getting more popular. Of course American football was not popular at all back in Coulter’s good ol’ days before the income tax. And it is just a variation on a real man’s game: rugby. It was altered for the pussy Americans who can’t stand a tap on the shoulder without six inches of high tech padding.

Oh, did I just write, “six inches”?! That’s another thing that upsets Coulter: the metric system. She spends three brainless paragraphs complaining about the metric system. No one is requiring Coulter to use the metric system. If she wants to measure her cadaverous body in inches, no one will complain. Or care! My guess: she’s a perfect 22-22-22. But it is interesting that she is embracing measurement units from an imperial system that we fought a war 238 years ago to escape.

The truth is that Ann Coulter is the ultimate conservative. She’s totally in favor of how ever things are. Football is great because it has been popular in the United States for her whole life. She doesn’t care about it enough to actually know anything about it. Similarly, she’s a “Christian,” but one doesn’t get the impression she takes that any more seriously than she does football. William Buckley famously said, “A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling ‘Stop!'” But in his case, you get the impression that he knew something about what he was yelling about. With Coulter is just the robotic belief that whatever Americans have done must be great, whatever they are starting to do is terrible, and powerful fascistic leaders are sexy.

Well, if Ann Coulter is really lucky, one of Chris Christie’s balls might accidentally go in.

Since 1991, Gallup has been polling people on their opinions about the three branches of government: the Supreme Court, Congress, and the presidency. Today, it published data showing that the number of people who have confidence in the Supreme Court is at its lowest level ever: just 30%. This is still the highest of the three branches. The presidency gets 29% and Congress, of course, gets 7%. These data mean something, but they don’t mean what people think they mean.

It most definitely doesn’t mean that the people are unhappy with the Congress or the Supreme Court or even the presidency. Going back 25 years, reported confidence in the Supreme Court and the presidency have always been pretty much exactly the same. And the reported confidence in Congress has always been about half whatever the presidency was. The only exception to this is the last couple of years when Congress has gotten even less popular. But even last year, although Congress was less than its usual one-half level, it was still more than one-third. This year, it is less than one-fourth, but I suspect this is just a statistical blip. In the coming years, it will come back up a bit.

What I find interesting is that from 2000 to 2001, the confidence in the Supreme Court actually went up a bit. This is after Bush v Gore, when most people were appalled by the clearly partisan decision where all the justices who voted Bush into the presidency were appointed by Republicans. I suspect that confidence went up because confidence went up in the presidency. And that has always amazed me: after allowing the most devastating attack on American soil, the “presidency” (not to mention the president himself) was rewarded with an increase in “confidence.” What’s with that?

Along the same lines, the people hated it when the House of Representatives impeached President Clinton. But confidence in Congress went up during that period. And it went up quite a lot: six percentage points, or roughly 30%. And why did it go up? Well, the economy was doing well. Confidence went up for the president and so it went up for Congress. It didn’t matter that Congress was doing stuff that the people thought was wrong.

Also, people may have no confidence in Congress, but term after term, they re-elect the same people. So as a practical matter, they aren’t too unhappy. If anything, they are unhappy that the rest of Congress does not do what their Representatives do. Regardless, what does the current 7% “confidence” number mean anyway. It means that conservatives are angry that Congress isn’t doing the incredibly damaging things they think are necessary to preserve freedom in America. And it means that liberals are angry that Congress isn’t doing anything good. So what?

Regardless, what the graph shows is that confidence in the presidency goes way up when the president starts a war. And then that confidence goes down whether the war continues or not. As Glenn Greenwald said, “Americans are quite good at regretting their past wars but quite poor at applying the lessons to newly proposed ones.” Other than that, we’ve seen pretty steady confidence in the presidency, except that Bush 43 was so bad that he created a new (lower) normal.

That’s the most you could say about these poll numbers. It isn’t that people do or don’t have confidence in these institutions. The numbers indicate how people feel about life in general. During the Clinton years as the economy improved, so did confidence. Then Bush came in and confidence went down until 9/11 and the Iraq War which pushed confidence really high because there’s nothing like incompetence and dishonesty to increase confidence. Then it went steadily down until Obama came in. Then confidence spiked—not because Obama was president, but because Bush wasn’t. And after the shine rubbed off, the presidency went down to a fairly constantly number. So it looks like Before Bush, confidence in the presidency was in the high 40s and after Bush, it was in the high 30s. I think we have bottomed out because this economic downturn has gone on so long. But a couple more years of growth and I think we will be back up to a confidence level of about 40%. If there is another Democratic presidency, it might get back to its old high 40s level.

Another aspect is that the coolness of cynicism changes over time. In the past, optimism and idealism were thought to be good things. Now, grousing about how terrible things are is the default for people. I see this all the time. Last week, I wrote, The Daily Show Fails on IRS—Again. I wrote, “I don’t like it when people claim that there is some big problem with the government bureaucracy.” It’s this generalized idea that the government is just crummy at everything it does. Actually, it was Reagan who really pushed that meme. If we had polling data going back further, I’m sure it would show a big decrease in the confidence level after him than before him.

But the truth is, when it comes to most government functions, things have gotten much better. But if you ask someone for a government bureaucracy that is bad, they always mention the DMV. Well, for one thing, the DMV is a state bureaucracy. But I always imagine that these people haven’t gone to the DMV since 1969. Because I’ve dealt with the DMV in three different states, and they’ve all done a great job.

So over time, confidence in the three branches of the federal government have gone down. It is also true that Americans’ confidence in just about every other institution has gone down. We’ve either become a more cynical people, or we’ve become the kind of people who think it is cool to be cynical. Regardless, it doesn’t say anything about our government institutions. And it only says a relatively small amount about the people who run those institutions.