Will Obama Gut Defense?

That's the headline to a grossly misleading column by Bret Stephens, in the Wall Street Journal.

He's taken the old Republican premise that Clinton slashed military spending and therefore left us trembling and vulnerable. But while his rant isn't useful, his chart is.

Note that for the last 30 years, defense spending has been about 5% of GDP. It was up to about 6% under Reagan and down to 4% under Clinton, but there hasn't been a lot of variation since the end of the Vietnam War.

What has changed is the planet. There isn't a Soviet Union anymore, which matters a great deal. Yes, there are still enemies to defeat, but none with two million tanks threatening to overrun Europe. That's how many there were in East Germany alone at the height of the Cold War, not to mention the significant buildup in warheads, tactical field nukes, and ground forces.

We still need planes, and ours should be the best in the world. And we need precision missiles and enough troops to flatten the Taliban. But there's a fundamental difference between today's world and the one of the Cold War, and shouldn't our budget reflect it?

Even if you bought the dubious premise that as an economy grows, it needs to continue spending a proportional percentage on defense (once a country is twice as rich, does it need twice as many warheads to be safe?), you can believe Stephens' own chart: we're still spending quite a bit on defense, and that hasn't changed in 30 years.

Who Benefits from the Electoral College?

Is the Presidential election fair?

In the Electoral College, there are two distortions to the “one-person, one-vote” principle.

The best known is that small states still get 3 votes (one for each congressman and senator).

Less known but also significant is that voter registration varies significantly. The population size of New Jersey is roughly the same as that in North Carolina, but in New Jersey, a lot fewer people can vote. So each voter there has proportionally less weight.

The chart below shows in increasing order the states that benefit most from the Electoral College system, with Florida getting the worst deal and Wyoming getting the best.

Conservatives often reject calls to eliminate the Electoral College with the reasoning that it would increase the importance of California and New York. It would, but not nearly as much as for Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia.

State E.C. votes voters for 1 E.C. vote (‘000’s)

Florida                     27                   480

Pennsylvania            21                   456

Texas                      34                   452

North Carolina          15                   445

Michigan                  17                   438

Georgia                   15                    437

Ohio                         20                   434

Virginia                     13                    433

Illinois                      28                    429

New York                  31                   428

Tennessee                11                    426

Washington              11                   425

Wisconsin                10                    420

Arizona                   10                    419

California                 55                    410

…

Alaska                      3                    180

North Dakota             3                   166

Vermont                   3                    166

D.C.                       3                    148

Wyoming                 3                   134

This means that voters in Florida should be most upset about the Electoral College, as they have the least voice per-voter. While Californian's shouldn't be particularly happy, either, there are fifteen other states ahead of them in line to complain.

It also means that Democrats and Republicans shouldn't see elimination of the Electoral College as a partisan issue. Affected states cover a broad geographic and political range, so that enacting direct elections by popular vote wouldn't favor any candidate... except the one best liked by the voters.

Full Court Shuffle

Concern about federal court appointees has reached a crackling pitch.

In his recent op-ed, Stephen Calabresi warns against an Obama presidency that could, he says, shift federal courts dramatically to the left. But that's not the whole story.

He begins by noting that while Reagan appointed 8 judges to the D.C. Court of Appeals, George W. Bush was able to appoint only four. That's true. But it's no loss of conservative influence, given that Clinton appointed only two.

In the past 30 years, that court has received a dozen Republican appointees and only two Democratic ones, both older judges likely to retire soon. The existing two vacancies, plus replacement of at most four older Republican retirees, is hardly going to swing the conservative tilt of the past 30 years.

Calabresi also overlooks that of the 13 courts of appeal, only one has a majority of Democratic appointed judges. George W. Bush bragged about appointing more than

 a third of federal appeal judges now serving. When he began his time in office, a majority of federal judges were already Republican appointees.

Yes, I know the above the link is to the New York Times, which conservatives like to trash. But I'm citing it for factual reference, not opinion. If you feel the Times is wrong about the above facts - that George W. Bush actually did not speak with pride about his large number of appointments, or that most appellate courts actually have more Democratic appointees - feel free to speak up.

In truth, it's extremely rare for any of the major papers to have their facts wrong, whether the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. What's common is to get only part of the story, and that's what the Calabresi offered in his op-ed.

He even went so far as to imply that Obama could tip the balance of the Supreme Court, noting the advanced age of several justices. But he doesn't cite them by name, a convenient oversight when you realize that by far the oldest justice is the most liberal, John Paul Stevens (age 88). If Obama replaces him with a liberal, the court balance changes not one bit.

The next oldest: liberal Ruth Ginsburg, age 75. The only other Democratic appointee on the court, Stephen Breyer, is 70. (The recent slew of 5-4 decisions include a fourth 'liberal' vote from David Souter, a Reagan appointee. He's 69.) Kennedy and Scalia are 72, though in such health that very few expect either of them to retire soon.

How old are the most recent Republican appointees? Clarence Thomas, 60; Samuel Alito, 58; and Chief Justice John Roberts, 53.

The plain truth is that a McCain win could dramatically alter the balance of the courts by pushing it to the right, while an Obama win can only check the swing, not reverse it.

Calabresi's colleague, David McIntosh, the other co-founder of the Federalist Society, is more complete in his assessment, saying that the nation's appeals courts were more conservative "than certainly any other time in my life."

So call a spade a spade: what an Obama win really risks is bringing the federal appeals courts a little closer to the Reagan era.

Wall Street's Fall Guy

The market isn't the only thing in turmoil this week; so is honesty in politics.

As recently as two months ago, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission was considered a top contender for the Republican vice presidential nomination. Christopher Cox has been long appreciated by conservatives, and he'd done a surprisingly good job of reassuring liberals, who feared he would be too passive in his post. 

Cox reinvigorated the S.E.C. and the conservative American Spectator called him "the best [VP] choice, bar none."

Now John McCain is saying Cox "has betrayed the public trust," and "If I were president today, I'd fire him."

What happened?

Nothing that Cox did, or didn't do. He moved actively to address market problems, and weeks ago, increased criticism of "naked" short sellers seeking to profit from a falling market... the very problem that prompted McCain's comments. Cox's fault here was being in the line of fire.

The McCain criticism is all the more disingenuous because Republicans have been clamoring for less market intervention, not more. It's hard to pick up a newspaper - before today, at least - without reading about conservatives moaning about 'moral hazard' (the presumption firms will assume even more risk if they believe the government will save them. See my next blog entry for more on this canard). 

It's even worse when you consider how Cox arrived at the S.E.C.. The first Bush appointee, Harvey Pitt, resigned under universal criticism of his passive approach (called a "patsy for accounting firms," even the Wall Street Journal called on him to step down.) His replacement, William Webster, wasn't much better. Remember that when President Bush spoke on Wall Street during the first market crisis of his administration, markets fell on news that he wanted to reduce regulation.

Today's Republicans (my apologies to anyone who, like me, believed in the values of Goldwater or the early Reagan years) believe that government action is always bad. But Wall Street does not. When things are going well, firms want the government to keep a safe distance, but in times of crisis, they want America's safety net to be a strong one.

Cox has been the most forward-thinking S.E.C. chairman in several years. He's no Arthur Levitt (Clinton's brilliant appointee), but he's a huge step ahead of his immediate predecessors and a market supervisor who has played a more active role than most Republicans have endorsed.

And now they're attacking him for doing too little?