Politicians, Voters Rely Too Much on Polls

Polls are overwhelming the political process.

Politicians and the public have come to rely heavily on opinion surveys.  Our belief in them has increased just when we should have become more skeptical.

Two stories in the past few days prove the point.

President Obama has reportedly been uncertain about reacting to the civil war in Syria, because he reads the polls as telling him that the American people are opposed to any more involvement in the Middle East.

And, in Maine, the potential entry of Congressman Mike Michaud into next year’s race for governor has led to a spate of reports citing a poll being used by pundits rushing to handicap the contest.

There’s much wrong with reliance on polls in both cases.

Because of his reluctance to act, Obama has seen the situation in Syria deteriorate to the point that it may pose danger to American interests. Iran seems to be gaining a foothold in Syria, and Lebanese terrorists are now fighting in support of the Syrian government.

When Obama’s “red line” against the use of chemical weapons there was crossed, he delayed acting, making the line look like little more than an empty threat.

Reportedly, former President Bill Clinton finally got on his case, telling him that a leader is elected to do what it right for his country not what the polls say a largely uninformed public thinks.

In other words, it is the leader’s job to shape public opinion by defining policy and explaining it to the people.  Could Obama change poll results if he took action with respect to Syria rather than avoiding the leading role much of the world demands of him?

Meanwhile, by taking no action, well short of sending troops, the United States may be strengthening Iran, a country whose nuclear program could be a threat to the U.S., and terrorist groups that could pose an increased danger to the U.S. and its allies.

Under pressure from Clinton and ally Great Britain, Obama may be willing to move out from the shadow of the polls.  Just how far he will go on his own remains to be seen.

In the Maine election picture, some of the worst defects of polling have already appeared.  A recent poll pitted GOP Gov. Paul LePage against independent Eliot Cutler and an unnamed Democrat.

This poll came a year-and-a-half before the election, with no campaign having taken place, and, almost laughably, with one candidate’s identity unknown.

It was hardly a surprise that the phantom Democrat fared poorly, proving that it is tough to beat somebody with nobody.

It proved only that some people are what’s called “yellow dog Democrats” – people so loyal it is said they would even vote for a yellow dog if it were the party’s nominee.

The poor showing by the political nobody should have no influence on Michaud as he makes up his mind about running.  In fact, he almost certainly has already decided to run.

Polls keep playing a prominent role, because the media likes them.  When polls showed the GOP candidate gaining in the upcoming Massachusetts special election for the U.S. Senate, some news reports excitedly hyped the race as a toss-up.  In fact, all signs show Democrat Edward Markey winning next Tuesday.

While polling can be useful, it needs to be handled with care.  Polls today have enough obvious problems to raise question about how much leaders or the public should rely on them.

Many polls have been shown to have built-in biases.  Some, intentionally or not, often produce results favorable to one party or another.  Of course, a few are intentionally meant to produce the false impression of objectivity while favoring a candidate or cause.

Pollsters face a challenge to reach cell phone users on telephone surveys.  To the degree they miss a part of the population, their accuracy becomes questionable.

Many people, selected randomly, refuse to be interviewed. And some people lie to interviewers.  Both the abstainers and the liars undermine the value of surveys.

Even more important is timing.  Public opinion today is obviously not the same as it will be on Election Day 2014.  In 2010, support for the Democratic candidate for governor was much higher in the polls only a few days before the election than it was when people voted.  The false impression may have affected the election outcome.  

Polls have some value, of course, but these concerns suggest we should accord them less importance.  And leaders could try to influence opinion rather than merely trying to follow what the polls show.

Controls on surveillance secret, unsupervised

The news that the federal government has been collecting phone and Internet data on millions of Americans has stirred controversy over the balance between national security and personal privacy.
Despite the revelation of the National Security Agency program called Prism, how it is controlled remains largely secret.

Government officials try to reassure average citizens that they are protected from invasion of their privacy by oversight exercised by both the courts and Congress on Prism and other programs under the Patriot Act.

The government must first seek approval from the so-called FISA court to spy on Americans. FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, first enacted in 1978. Until last week, few people had ever heard of the FISA court.

The FISA court consists of 11 federal district court judges, appointed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. They may be scattered around the country but at least three must be near Washington so decisions may be obtained quickly.

Only one judge deals with each case, which may only be brought by the government. Any other affected party does not even know there is a case under consideration, and gets no chance to oppose the government request.

If the government is turned down, it has no appeal and cannot go to another FISA judge for a second try. Of course, any other unwitting party cannot appeal, because it never knew there was a court proceeding and, when it receives a FISA court order, it must maintain absolute secrecy.

Last year, the government filed 1,789 requests to the FISA court. One was withdrawn, 40 were modified. All the rest were approved.

The public has become aware of the political divide in the courts. Judges appointed by Republican presidents are likely to be more conservative than those appointed by Democratic presidents. That’s why GOP senators are now trying to block some Obama judicial appointments.

Chief Justice John Roberts is a Republican appointee. Perhaps not surprisingly, the 2012 FISA court, selected by him, was composed of nine Republican appointees and only two Democratic appointees. Neither of them sits near Washington, while three of Robert’s partymates sit in the District of Columbia.

The judge who allowed the Verizon data gathering was GOP-appointee Judge Roger Vinson of the district court in Pensacola, Florida, the same judge who hastened to be the first to rule that Obamacare was unconstitutional. His opinion was later overruled by the Supreme Court.

Vinson’s role at least raises the question that the unusually conservative judge may possibly be more likely to give greater weight to government requests for national security access to records than to civil liberties concerns not represented before him.

The Senate must approve all federal court judges and gives nominees careful scrutiny. But it has no role in approving FISA court judges, whose activities on that court are often far more significant than routine district court matters.

The Senate and House Intelligence Committees have oversight on Patriot Act programs and activities. It is unclear just what power the committees can exercise, because they cannot share what they know with other members of Congress.

Committees have no authority to give orders to executive agencies, and Congress as a whole usually has limited information on which to act.

Last week, President Obama tried to reassure the public, saying: “Your duly elected representatives have been consistently informed on exactly what we are doing.”

He implied you are being protected by members of Congress, all 535 of them. But that cannot be true unless your “duly elected” representative happens to sit on an intelligence committee.

Sen. Angus King serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee and has been attending its regular meetings for the past five months. He reported that he “did not know the specifics of the two programs that were revealed [last] week.”

King’s experience shows the committee had not been “consistently informed.” Possibly only the committee members at the time the program was launched were aware of its specifics.

The lack of adequate and verifiable supervision could lead to executive agencies regarding the Patriot Act as almost a blank check to do whatever they deem fit to protect national security.

Without real controls on Prism, the program may lead to an innocent person, for example a student conducting research on al-Qaeda, becoming the target of investigation simply because of phone calls or Internet searches.

Many people agree that some personal sacrifices are required to protect the country, but they could have reasonable concerns that government privacy controls may be insufficient or unenforced.

Two-party government is deadlocked government

Many voters think splitting control of the government between the two major political parties is a good idea.

It seems obvious that the two sides will have to compromise to produce results, and extreme policies can be avoided.

Right now, there is split control in both Washington and Augusta, but the view about divided control turns out to be wrong.

The president and the U.S. Senate are under Democratic control with the Republicans running the House. In Maine, the Governor is a Republican, and the Legislature is controlled by Democrats.

In theory, new laws should be rolling out, reflecting compromises designed to give each side something.

Instead, we are experiencing deadlock. Even worse, the gap between the two sides seems to be widening, and relationships between our leaders have become personally poisoned.

Many factors contribute to this situation. Some of them are institutional;others reflect the dominance of political gain over good government.

The top institutional factor is the veto. If a president or governor rejects a bill passed by a legislative body dominated by the opposing party, it takes a two-thirds vote to override such opposition. In a polarized setting, two-thirds is hard to come by.

If nothing else, party loyalty plays a role. Legislators act increasingly like they were in a parliamentary system, where members virtually always must vote to support their prime minister no matter their own views.

In Maine, we see the curious situation of GOP legislators voting to support the governor’s veto of a bill they had joined with the Democrats to support unanimously.

In Washington, the certainty of a veto, to be sustained by the Senate, drives the House to vote repeatedly on bills with no chance of adoption whose only purpose is to stake out the GOP’s position.

National law making is further hindered by the extensive use of the Senate filibuster. The president cannot even name his own department heads or make judicial appointments because of the GOP’s ability to deny the votes needed to end debate.

Also missing is the sense that the chief executive, elected by all the people, ought to be given the chance to govern.

At the federal level, even though President Obama was reelected by a good majority, the GOP seems to persist in its mission to discredit his presidency and prevent it from being a success. Many Democrats believe the underlying reason for this deep opposition is racism, a belief that does not promote cooperation.

At the state level, where Gov. Paul LePage was elected by a minority in a three-way race, Republicans won’t produce another candidate for next year’s election, so they must defend him. By the same token, the Democrats continually oppose him.

While Obama has perhaps been overly accommodating to the point of fruitless appeasement, LePage has been confrontational. He appears to treat the Legislature as if he still were the head of a private company and legislators as his employees.

Democrats have been confronted in Washington by a highly disciplined GOP that is in no mood to compromise. The Democrats in Augusta have faced a highly opinionated governor who also is in no mood to compromise.

Democrats have responded badly. At the federal level, they have refrained from laying out comprehensive, middle-of-the-road policies. Instead, they mark time and wait for voters to reject the GOP.

In Augusta, Democrats have thrown away political advantage by surprisingly denying a sitting governor the opportunity to address a legislative committee. He was infuriated.

This divisiveness is compounded by the length of our political campaigns. Right after one election, the next campaign begins, giving officials no breathing space to develop policies through compromise.

Voters may have condemned “politics as usual,” but they produced results. Today’s divided governments are producing uncertainty, revulsion and some fear, but little needed legislation.

To be sure, if a voter wants less government, divided control with continued paralysis may be satisfactory. For those with greater expectations from government, it is not working.
In the end, the responsibility falls on voters.

If the political parties choose to act like we have an essentially parliamentary system, perhaps people will vote accordingly.

That means voters may increasingly pay attention to party affiliation and make voting for ideological soulmates the top priority. The coming elections may see straight party voting grow, with voters favoring control of both the executive and legislative branches by a single party.

Health care law needs work, not repeal

Everybody seems to like hybrids. They are often better than the originals that were combined to make them. 
 
Hybrid flowers are among the most prized beauties. Hybrid autos are both better for the environment and practical over long distances.

There is one other thing about hybrids. They usually cost more.

That’s one of the big problems with a huge hybrid that we all own — the Affordable Care Act, increasingly known as the ACA or Obamacare.

Until now, the industrialized world has known only two basic kinds of health insurance. In most developed countries, the government is the single payer, in effect the only insurer, who pays for all costs. The alternative, the traditional American approach, is to leave most health insurance optional and up to private insurers.

The single-payer system guarantees coverage for everybody, while the private system does not. Under the private approach some people go without coverage and get little or no health care.

The ACA is the uniquely American hybrid of the two systems. It is designed to provide coverage to almost everybody while still using an essentially private system.

President Obama and a Democratic Congress decided to develop a program to provide as near to universal coverage as possible. But there was little support to have government as the single payer, in effect extending Medicare to all Americans.

Under the ACA, Americans are required to buy health insurance, and financial help will be provided to those unable to afford it. Private insurance will remain widely available. Nonprofit exchanges are expected to provide a low-cost alternative.

As I mentioned in an earlier column, the ACA was created with known defects. The Democrats chose to enact it, warts and all, to get around a Senate filibuster.

The ACA prescribed a gradual phase-in of the many-faceted plan, due mostly to be completed by next January.

Its design flaws were immediately apparent. It imposes a financial burden on small businesses. Also, some of its rules are costly and complex, making them difficult to put into effect.

The GOP has not accepted the new law and has continually sought to repeal it.

The House of Representatives, under GOP control, has voted 37 times to repeal Obamacare. The Senate, under the Democrats, made sure those votes went nowhere. But the Democrats have not described what changes they would accept.

GOP opposition makes the Democrats reluctant to open the law to change, for fear of creating an opportunity for the Republicans to kill it. Their target is likely to be the exchanges, which could lower costs, putting pressure in the private insurers.

Having failed to eliminate Obamacare, Republicans have found ways to undermine it.

The law allows states to expand Medicaid to ensure that almost all poor people gain access to medical care. The federal government would reimburse all of the added cost for the first three years and 90 percent from then on.

Many states, all under Republican control, have declined this option. It looks like they are willing to sacrifice the health care of some of their poorest citizens in their effort to sink the entire program.

In Maine, Gov. LePage says the state would sign up if the federal government paid 100 percent of the costs for 10 years. To do that, the ACA would have to be modified, impossible because of the congressional deadlock.

If the opponents of the ACA cannot repeal it, they may believe they can make it so unworkable that it will fail on its own. Then, the Democrats might have to accept its repeal.

One problem with the GOP position is that it offers no workable alternative that would produce broad participation.

House Republicans support a federal voucher system under which people would receive financial support to purchase their own private health insurance. To keep government costs under control, the value of the vouchers would be kept low, meaning that many of those without coverage could still not afford it.

Meanwhile, the ACA phase-in continues, providing better benefits to more people. As that happens, stopping it becomes more difficult.

And running against it in 2012 did not seem to help the Republicans.

Developing a hybrid flower requires continuous attention until it is bred to survive. The same is true for the ACA. Like any major new program, it needs follow-up legislation as lessons are learned.

The ACA needs changes, quite a few of them. We would be better served if the GOP accepted Obamacare, the Democrats accepted some changes, and both parties focused on making it work better.

Congress, Supreme Court Actions Cause IRS Affair

The country is now dealing with a tax issue that seems to mix the supposedly neutral Internal Revenue Service and partisan politics.

It’s happening because of an IRS rule and a Supreme Court decision that opened the door to secret political donations being made through tax exempt organizations.

Some Republicans want us believe that President Obama either was behind IRS bungling in applying the rule or turned a blind eye to it.

Whatever our political views, we believe that the IRS collects our taxes in a completely neutral manner and keeps out of politics.  And presidents are supposed to keep hands off.

That’s not true, and I should know.  I was on Richard Nixon’s “enemies list.”

The White House told the IRS to investigate people on the list, all of whom were thought to be opposed to Nixon’s re-election in 1972.

At a minimum, we were supposed to be audited, which would take our attention away from the election campaign.

I never heard from the IRS. The Commissioner probably pigeonholed the Nixon directive.   

But I have no doubt that the President had tried to get me.

Nixon was probably not the only president to try to use the IRS against or in favor of others, though these memories have faded

Then, last week the IRS itself confessed, after repeated denials, that it had targeted conservative organizations allied with the Republican Party for special and intensive scrutiny when they applied for tax exempt status.

Non-profit organizations designed to help others benefit from tax exemption under IRS rule 501(c)(3) and avoid the risk of government using taxation to interfere with their activities.

But the organizations under IRS scrutiny that were the object of its controversial screening are a relatively recent creation. Under rule 501(c)(4), they are far from being charities.

Non-profit organizations that educate people on political issues can qualify for that kind of exemption provided they are “primarily engaged” in educational efforts and not in active campaign participation.  They cannot endorse candidates, but can oppose them.

The “primarily engaged” standard requires the IRS to look closely at an organization’s activities to determine if most of them are involved in education or in plain politics.

To do that, the IRS can legitimately ask for information that goes well beyond what it would ask from a social welfare group.

When it opened tax exemption to groups involved in campaigns and lobbying, Congress did not give the IRS strict guidelines, so the tax agency is forced to deal with applications case by case.

A flood of applications for this status came after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the 2010 Citizens United case.

In that decision, the Court allowed the 501(c)(4) organizations to make contributions to political campaigns and said that these organizations could keep secret the names of those providing the funds.  But the organization could not be “primarily engaged” in doling out political support.

Virtually everybody involved in the political process understood that the IRS rule combined with the Supreme Court case would mainly benefit conservative groups.  Almost immediately, they filed hundreds of applications.

Here is where the IRS made its big mistake.  Seeking an easy way to identify these applications and give them the necessary detailed scrutiny, it flagged certain words like “Tea Party” and “Freedom” in the filings.

This could look like political bias whether or not it was.  When asked, its first reaction was to deny that conservative groups were being targeted.   That smelled of cover-up.

Then the issue became completely politicized.  From being a major bureaucratic error, it became a partisan issue.

Because people want badly to believe that tax administration is neutral and strongly dislike political cover-ups, the issue is fertile ground for the GOP.

Some Republicans immediately linked President Obama to the cover-up, implying the IRS really operates under presidential control. They ignored the fact that the head of the agency when the screening was launched was a Republican appointee.

In response, the Democrats outdid the GOP in denouncing the IRS screening of conservatives.  That way, they could emphasize the agency’s independence from the President.

It appears that no conservative applicants have been turned down, though they have been slowed down.  And nobody has shown that, unlike my “enemies list” experience, the White House ordered the screening procedure.

Public confidence in the IRS is being weakened by the posturing of both parties. 

Even more important, nobody in Washington is seeking repeal of a law allowing a tax-exempt conduit for anonymous political donors.

Eliminate that, and the IRS issue would go away.

Senate still paralyzed by the filibuster

This was the year when the power of the filibuster, the 96-year-old parliamentary maneuver that lets the minority control the Senate, was supposed to be brought under control.

Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic Majority Leader, said he had seen the light and could support the changes to the rule that he had previously rejected.

Maine’s brand new independent Sen. Angus King, who promised to support major revisions to the rule if he got to Washington, was in a key position to trade his lining up with the Democrats for improvements proposed by a few of his colleagues.

A simple majority is 51 votes.  There are now 55 Democrats (including two independents) and 45 Republicans in the Senate, so the majority ought to be able to pass legislation.  It didn’t happen.

The filibuster requires that 60 senators agree to end debate on an issue.  Effectively, that has come to mean that almost nothing important can pass the Senate without that supermajority.  

Instead of fixing the problem, the Senate tinkered with it.  In all the votes taken in the Senate through May 10 this year, 60 votes were required 31 percent of the time.  Last year, during the same period, the supermajority was needed 58 percent of the time.

That may look like progress, but the change was a procedural illusion, the result of a minor revision that is far from blocking the ability of the minority to control.

At the beginning of each new Congress, a simple majority is all that’s required to change the filibuster rule.  So why didn’t the Democrats make the change?

They were afraid.  They preferred to allow the GOP to hamstring their president and their majority, because they worried about what would happen if someday they found themselves in the same position as the Republicans.

And what about King, a man who, as a mature and independent politician, might be less concerned about doing the traditional thing, instead being willing to use the platform that his special status gives him?

If he acted truly independently, he would have probably displeased Sen. Reid, who would then have assigned him to minor committees instead the prime spots he got on the Armed Services, Intelligence and Budget Committees. 

On Armed Services, for example, he may be able to support B.I.W. or the Portsmouth shipyard. That may have seemed more important than real reform.

What Reid and King did shows the way Washington works.

But these days, Washington is not producing results.  And the filibuster has a lot to do with that.

We read how a bipartisan bill to require broader background checks for gun purchasers was “defeated” in the Senate.  That supposed loss came despite the support of 54 senators for the bill. But 60 were needed.

People may argue about some provisions of the Constitution, but it is remarkably clear in defining those few instances when more than a simple majority is required in the Senate. The senators have simply amended the Constitution to suit the minority.

Reliance on the supermajority may be less valuable than it seems.

In plugging her new book, former Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Republican, relates how she might have been able to support the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – if the Democrats had been willing to accommodate some of her concerns.

But the Democrats had 60 senators, enough to pass their bill without compromising. 

Then, two unexpected things happened. The House Democrats narrowly passed another version of the bill that was more complicated and less effective.  And the Senate Democrats lost their 60^th vote when Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy died and was replaced by a Republican.

The only way for the Democrats to pass the final version in the Senate was to accept the House version unchanged.

The result is that Obamacare is under attack from Republicans who can fairly claim that nobody would listen to them when they sought compromise.

How different government would be if the Democrats, without having to do so, had sought compromise with at least some Republicans.  

That’s the way the Senate often worked before the GOP started using the filibuster for almost any major piece of legislation.

If the filibuster were abandoned, any piece of legislation adopted by only one party could easily be repealed after an election that brought the other party to power.  That could mean more effort to pass bipartisan bills in the first place.

In other words, the absence of a filibuster could be more likely to promote durable political compromises than does today’s approach which virtually guarantees unproductive partisanship.