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Franklin D. Roosevelt broke the two-term precedent set by George Washington by running for and winning a third and fourth term. Pressure for limiting terms followed FDR’s remarkable record. In 1951 the Twenty-Second constitutional amendment was ratified stating: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice…” Accordingly, reelected Presidents must then govern knowing they cannot run again.

The post From Carter to Clinton: Selecting presidential nominees in the modern era appeared first on OUPblog.

By E. Tory Higgins

“Our country is divided.” “Congress is broken.” “Our politics are polarized.” Most Americans believe there is less political co-operation and compromise than there used to be. And we know who is to blame for this situation—it’s our political opponents. Democrats know that Republicans are to blame, and Republicans know that Democrats are to blame. Not only do we know that our political opponents are to blame, but we are suspicious of their motives, of why they take the positions they take. Bottom line: we can’t trust them.

This is a serious problem for our country. One source of the problem is a misperception of what really motivates people’s political opinions, judgments, and actions. People often assume such opinions are all about self-interest or all about “carrots and sticks.” As Romney recently put it, “What the president’s campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote, and that strategy worked.” Plenty of commentators criticized the reference to minorities, the poor, and students as essentially being paid off for their votes, but few if any disputed the overall assumption that the “carrots” candidates offer voters determine the vote. Indeed, the field of ‘public choice’ in economics assumes just this, that voters are guided by their own self-interest and “vote their pocketbooks.”

What does it mean for our political conversation to assume that the opinions, judgments, and actions of our political opponents are motivated by self-interest? It means that their stands on political issues are selfish rather than being in the best interest of our country. We can’t trust them to be concerned about what is best for the rest of us because our interests are different than their interests. We assume that they do not have good will. But what if people are not primarily motivated by self-interest (by “carrots”) in the political domain or in any other domain of life? In fact, there is substantial evidence from research on human motivation that what people want goes well beyond attaining “carrots” (or “gifts”). What they want is to be effective.

Brian Deese, right, Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, and Economic Advisor Gene Sperling confer as President Barack Obama calls regional politicians to inform them of the next day’s announcement about General Motors filing for bankruptcy, Sunday night, May 31, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Yes, one way of being effective is to have desired outcomes, which can include attaining “carrots” (and avoiding “sticks”). But there is much more to being effective. People also want to be effective at establishing what’s real or right or correct (being effective in finding the truth), as when people want to hear the truth about themselves or what is happening in their lives even if “the truth hurts.” Indeed, people want to observe, discover, and learn about all kinds of things in the world that have nothing to do with their attaining “carrots” (or avoiding “sticks”). And people also want to manage what happens, to have an effect on the world (being effective in having control), as when children jump up and down in a puddle just to make a splash. Indeed, people will take on pain and even risk injury to feel in control of a difficult and challenging activity, as illustrated most vividly in extreme sports.

It is establishing what’s real (truth) and managing what happens (control) that often are our primary motivations — rather than self-interest — and this is both good news and bad news if we are to change the political conversation. The bad news is that humans, uniquely among animals, establish truth by sharing reality with others who agree with their beliefs (or with whom they can establish agreed-upon assumptions). And when they do create a shared reality with others, they experience their beliefs as objective — the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This means that when others disagree with these beliefs, as when Democrats and Republicans disagree with each other, each side is so certain that what they believe is reality, that they infer that those on the other side must either be lying about what they truly believe or they are too stupid to recognize the truth or they are simply crazy. These derogations of our political opponents don’t derive from our self-interests being in conflict with them. It is more serious than that. It derives from the establishment of a different shared reality to them, a shared reality that we are highly motivated to maintain because it gives us the truth about the how the world works.

This is bad news indeed. But if we understand that out political opponents just want to be effective in truth, there is a ‘good news’ silver lining. The good news is that we need not characterize our political opponents as being selfish, or liars, or stupid, or crazy. We need not question their good will. Instead, we can recognize that they, like us, want truth and control, and they want truth and control to work together effectively. They want to “go in the right direction.” They, like us, want our country to be strong. They want Americans to live in peace and prosperity. Yes, they have different ideas about what direction is the right one to make this happen, but this is something we can discuss. In order to establish what’s real, manage what happens, and go in the right direction — which are ways of being effective that we all want — we need to listen to one another and and learn from one another. This is a political conversation worth having. Let us have that respectful, serious conversation in the New Year and search for common ground. Good will to all.

E. Tory Higgins is the author of Beyond Pleasure and Pain: How Motivation Works. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He has received the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, the William James Fellow Award for Distinguished Achievements in Psychological Science (from the Association for Psychological Science), and the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions. He is also a recipient of Columbia’s Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching.

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The post Changing the conversation about the motives of our political opponents appeared first on OUPblog.

By Katherine Connor Martin

Back in January we published a short glossary of the jargon of the presidential primaries. Now that the campaign has begun in earnest, here is our brief guide to some of the most perplexing vocabulary of this year’s general election.

Nominating conventions

It may seem like the 2012 US presidential election has stretched on for eons, but it only officially begins with the major parties’ quadrennial nominating conventions, on August 27–30 (Republicans) and September 3–6 (Democrats). How can they be called nominating conventions if we already know who the nominees are? Before the 1970s these conventions were important events at which party leaders actually determined their nominees. In the aftermath of the tumultuous 1968 Democratic convention, however, the parties changed their nominating process so that presidential candidates are now effectively settled far in advance of the convention through a system of primaries andcaucuses, leaving the conventions themselves as largely ceremonial occasions.

Purple states, swing states, and battleground states

These three terms all refer to more or less the same thing: a state which is seen as a potential win for either of the two major parties; in the UK, the same idea is expressed by the use of marginal to describe constituencies at risk. The termbattleground state is oldest, and most transparent in origin: it is a state that the two sides are expected to actively fight over. Swing state refers to the idea that the state could swing in favor of either of the parties on election day; undecided voters are often called swing voters. Purple state is a colorful metaphorical extension of the terms red state and blue state, which are used to refer to a safe state for the Republicans or Democrats, respectively (given that purple is a mixture of red and blue). Since red is the traditional color of socialist and leftist parties, the association with the conservative Republicans may seem somewhat surprising. In fact, it is a very recent development, growing out of the arbitrary color scheme on network maps during the fiercely contested 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

Electoral vote

What really matters on election day isn’t the popular vote, but the electoral vote. The US Constitution stipulates that the president be chosen by a body, theelectoral college, consisting of electors representing each state (who are bound by the results of their state election). The total number of electors is 538, with each state having as many electors as it does senators and representatives in Congress (plus 3 for the District of Columbia).  California has the largest allotment, 55. With the exception of Maine and Nebraska, all of the states give their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in their state on a winner-takes-all basis, and whichever candidate wins the majority of electoral votes (270) wins the election. This means it is technically possible to win the popular vote but lose the election; in fact, this has happened three times, most recently in the 2000 election when Al Gore won the popular vote, but George W. Bush was elected president.

Veepstakes

The choice of a party’s candidate for vice president is completely in the hands of the presidential nominee, making it one of the big surprises of each campaign cycle and a topic of endless media speculation. The perceived jockeying for position among likely VP picks has come to be known colloquially as theveepstakes. The 2012 veepstakes are, of course, already over, with Joe Biden and Paul Ryan the victors.

Super PAC

If there is a single word that most characterizes the 2012 presidential election, it is probably this one. A super PAC is a type of independent political action committee (PAC for short), which is allowed to raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, and individuals but is not permitted to coordinate directly with candidates. Such political action committees rose to prominence in the wake of the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and related lower-court decisions, which lifted restrictions on independent political spending by corporations and unions. Advertising funded by these super PACs is a new feature of this year’s campaign.

501(c)(4)

It isn’t often that an obscure provision of the tax code enters the general lexicon, but discussions of Super PACS often involve references to 501(c)(4)s. These organizations, named by the section of the tax code defining them, are nonprofit advocacy groups which are permitted to participate in political campaigns. 501(c)(4) organizations are not required to disclose their donors. This, combined with the new Super PACs, opens the door to the possibility of political contributions which are not only unlimited but also undisclosed: if a Super PAC receives donations through a 501(c)(4), then the original donor of the funds may remain anonymous.

The horse race

As we’ve discussed above, what really matters in a US presidential election is the outcome of the electoral vote on November 6. But that doesn’t stop commentators and journalists from obsessing about the day-to-day fluctuations in national polls; this is known colloquially as focusing on the horse race.

The online magazine Slate has embraced the metaphor and actually produced an animated chart of poll results in which the candidates are represented as racehorses.

This article originally appeared on the OxfordWords blog.

Katherine Connor Martin is a lexicographer in OUP’s New York office.

Oxford Dictionaries Online is a free site offering a comprehensive current English dictionary, grammar guidance, puzzles and games, and a language blog; as well as up-to-date bilingual dictionaries in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The premium site, Oxford Dictionaries Pro, features smart-linked dictionaries and thesauruses, audio pronunciations, example sentences, advanced search functionality, and specialist language resources for writers and editors.

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In recognition of the US midterm elections, I decided to have a browse through Lend Me Your Ears: The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations and share with you a few entries that have come from the American political world. Enjoy…

“I will seek the presidency with nothing to fall back on but the judgment of the people and with nowhere to go but the White House or home.”
Robert Dole 1923-, American Republican politician, announcing his decision to relinquish his Senate seat and step down as majority leader.

“One of the uses of history is to free us of a falsely imagined past. The less we know of how ideas actually took root and grew, the more apt we are to accept them unquestioningly, as inevitable features of the world in which we move.”
Robert H. Bork 1927-, American judge and educationalist, from The Antitrust Paradox (1978)

“The American people have spoken – but it’s going to take a little while to determine exactly what they said.”
Bill Clinton 1946-, 42nd President of the United States 1993-2001, on the US presidential election of 2000.

“We are a nation of communities, of tens and tens of thousands of ethnic, religious, social, business, labour union, neighbourhood, regional and other organizations, all of them varied, voluntary, and unique… a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.”
George Bush Sr. 1924-, 41st President of the United States, acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, 18 August 1988.

“No sane local official who has hung up an empty stocking over the municipal fireplace, is going to shoot Santa Claus just before a hard Christmas.”
Alfred Emanuel Smith 1873-1944, American politician, comment on the New Deal in New Outlook, Dec 1933

“I suggested [in 1966] that we use the panther as our symbol and call our political vehicle the Black Panther Party. The panther is a fierce animal, but he will not attack until he is backed into a corner; then he will strike out.”
Huey Newton 1942-1989, American political activist, from Revolutionary Suicide (1973)

“Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it has about 18 million cracks in it.”
Hillary Rodham Clinton 1947-, American lawyer and Democratic politician, speech to her supporters, conceding the Democratic party presidential nomination to Barack Obama, 7 June 2008.

“The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a grey wharf-rat at last.”
Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862, American writer, from Journal (1853)

“On my arrival in the United States I was struck by the degree of ability among the governed and the lack of it among the governing.”
Alexis de Tocqueville 1805-1859, French historian and politician, from Democracy in America (1835-40) vol. 1

By Edward Zelinsky

Much discussion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act emphasizes the partisan division from which this health care legislation emerged. At one level, this emphasis on partisan rancor is accurate and understandable: The Act was bitterly contested, narrowly passing both chambers of Congress without a single Republican vote.

At another level, this emphasis on partisan conflict obscures an important truth: There is a strong, albeit unspoken, consensus among the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties on the rhetoric of health care apocalypse, rhetoric which is quite misleading.

Democrats advance this narrative of crisis to convince the public that they have accomplished something of overwhelming magnitude by adopting the Act. In their triumphalist version of the story, the Act is a culmination which finally resolves the nation’s health care problems; an important crossroad has successfully been traversed.

In contrast, Republicans advance the narrative of health care apocalypse to summon support in the upcoming congressional elections to “repeal and replace” the Act. In this telling of the story, it is now-or-never to preserve the strengths of the American health care system. Beyond Obamacare lies the abyss.

Everybody needs to calm down. For three reasons, the bi-partisan rhetoric of apocalypse is overstated and obfuscates the sobering reality that Americans must, into the indefinite future, confront difficult issues of health care and health care costs.

First, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, while significant, is more incremental in nature than either side cares to acknowledge. Second, many provisions of the Act have delayed effective dates. It is questionable whether future Presidents and Congresses will permit these provisions to go into effect as written. Third, the Act merely postpones many tough decisions which must be made about health care and about health care cost control in particular. At its core, the Act’s efforts to control health care costs are tepid and deferred. Indeed, for the long run, the Act is likely to exacerbate the nation’s problem of health care costs and will thus require further confrontation with this intractable problem.

Given the overheated rhetoric of both the Act’s proponents and its critics, it is easy to overlook the incremental nature of much of this new law. The Act continues – indeed reinforces – the existing system of employer-provided health care including the income tax incentives for such care. The Act imposes penalties for certain firms failing to offer satisfactory coverage to their employees and provides tax credits to subsidize smaller businesses offering medical coverage to their workers. In the end, most working Americans will see relatively little change in their employer-provided medical care.

Much of the expanded coverage projected under the Act stems from the extension of Medicaid to people currently not participating in that state-run program for low-income persons. This expansion will be an important development if it occurs, but one which builds quite firmly on the status quo by enlarging the existing Medicaid program.

Private insurance remains central to the American health care system. The Act subjects the insurance industry to new federal regulation on such matters as pre-existing conditions. However, this industry has always been heavily regulated. The insurance industry and its role in the financing of medical care will both grow as the industry acquires millions of new customers as a result of the A

Here's a quick Illustration I did for fun today about the debate over universal health-care in America. My best to the SFG.

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he reflects on Sonia Sotomayer’s confirmation hearings. See his previous OUPblogs here.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court is probably going to be confirmed, but only after Republicans in the Senate put up a fight to appease the base that they tried to block the inevitable. There is value, though, in airing these differences, for they explain the irreconcilably liberal and conservative conceptions of justice that exist in America.

Conservatives have every right to disagree with Judge Sotomayor’s judicial judgments, as they are entitled to contest her understanding of the constitution. Most of their opposition will focus on the New Haven “reverse-discrimination” case (Ricci v Destafano) and this infelicitous remark: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” In short, the gist of the debate will be about the ambit of the Judge’s fellow-feeling. That is why Democrats and President Obama believe in the relevant virtue of “empathy” in a judge, whereas Republicans want a judge “for all of us” rather than “just for some of us.” Let us unpack this significant difference in perspective.

Democrats in general believe that justice is about helping the dispossessed, whereas Republicans in general believe that justice is about equality before the law. Democrats believe that justice is necessarily a distributional value. They believe that the world we are born into is structurally unfair and steeped in institutional biases, and it is the duty of the privileged and powerful to come to the aid of the dispossessed. That is why Democrats project their empathy to the particular few who they feel have been disadvantaged and not to all.

Republicans believe that the state of the world we are born into is morally neutral, and it is up to each individual to make the best of one’s talents in it. Because the ambit of Republican fellow-feeling extends to all, there is no extra virtue in empathy. Hence Democrats always presume an injustice to be righted (hence they are “progressive”), Republicans valorize and want to preserve the status quo (hence they are “conservative.”) These are irreconcilable positions because they are starting premises to much of the debate between liberals and conservatives. Logic can only be deployed to adjudicate the move from premise to conclusion, it can do nothing to discriminate between the choice of argumentative premises.

The pure liberal and pure conservative conceptions of justice are probably irreconcilable. But while the goalposts are not movable, we are. Ironically, empathy - the standard for Supreme Court justices that is under debate - is exactly what the two parties need to possess. If our starting premises are different and irreconciliable, the least (and probably the most) we can do is to try to understand why the other side thinks as it does. I think liberals can start by asking conservatives that if empathy is such a vice, would they teach their children to do onto others only what they would not want others to do unto themselves? And conservatives can return the favor by asking liberal parents this: if empathy is such a virtue, then shouldn’t every wrongdoing be at least partially exonerated?

Emotional and intellectual identification with alternative conceptions of justice is neither the only route to justice nor an insurmountable roadblock to it. Liberals are right in one sense - only empathy about the other party’s understanding of empathy will help resolve the partisan stand-off in Washington - but they should also practice what they preach.

Today we are proud to bring you E.J. Dionne, Jr. (who just published Souled Out) in conversation with Mickey Edwards(frequent OUPblog contributor and author of Reclaiming Conservatism). This is the third and final part of this series.

E.J. Dionne, Jr. is a syndicated columnist with The Washington Post, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor at Georgetown University. He is the author of Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right, which was published in January by Princeton University Press.

Mickey Edwards is a former Republican Congressman, founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation, and national chairman of the American Conservative Union. He is the author of Reclaiming Conservatism: How A Great American Political Movement Got Lost- and How It Can Find It Way Back

Email Three

Dear Mickey,

Once again, many thanks for your thoughtful reply. I do think you provide a model for other conservatives to emulate: You take seriously both the need for markets and the need for rules to govern those market; you take seriously social needs as well as individual needs; and you take seriously the fact that markets all by themselves will not always provide the goods we need (for example, health insurance for the elderly and the chronically sick). Your reply suggests that in the next era – whether we call it liberal or not — our country will have a rendezvous with problem solving, not problem avoidance.

Now I don’t want you to shudder and think, “My gosh, the last thing I need is for liberals to accord me that ‘strange new respect’ they always offer apostate conservatives.” So I want to close this exchange by taking your conservatism seriously, which everybody should.

Let me begin with progressive taxation. The case for higher taxes on the wealthy is straightforward: The wealthy have enjoyed the vast majority of the gains in wealth and income over the last seven years – and inequality has been growing for three decades. We have not had this level of inequality since 1929, a rather ominous fact when you think about it.

Permit me to cite some findings from my friends at the Economic Policy Institute. They noted recently that “median family income — income earned by families in the middle of the income distribution, with half of all families poorer and half richer — in the latest recovery has failed to recover the losses of the previous recession. This marks the first time this has happened since World War II in a business cycle lasting anywhere near as long as the most recent cycle.”

Another finding: “While productivity is up nearly 20% since 2000, the real median hourly wage is up 3% overall and 1% for men, with none of this growth occurring over the three-and-a-half years since 2003. At the top of the wage scale — at the 95th percentile — real wages are up 9%.” Finally, this: “After rising quickly in the second half of the 1990s, most workers real wages have been stagnant in the 2000s, especially since 2003. This result holds for a wide variety of wage and compensation measurements, including those that add the value of fringe benefits.”

The Bush Administration’s tax cuts have showered benefits on the wealthiest Americans at the very moment when their share of the economy is already going up. We need to offset inequalities with different tax policies and different social policies (notably universal health care) not just because that is just, but also because rising purchasing power across the economy is an essential component of growth and prosperity. A rising tide that actually does lift all boats tends to lift everybody’s boat faster and higher – including, by the way, the boats of the wealthy.

That’s also why I mention unionization. It’s clear that unions played an essential role in creating a broad middle class in our country by increasing the bargaining power of average workers. Our current low rates of private sector unionization are one reason for rising inequality.

Of course I agree with you that it’s a mistake to hold people harmless for foolish investments. But it’s striking that the Fed bailed our Bear Stearns even as we have done little to help homeowners caught in a mortgage mess that was in part created by deceptive practices on the part of lenders. I do not fault Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke for preventing a market meltdown. He did what was necessary. Still, it’s odd how even bailouts these days are unfair. And it’s also striking how many wealthy friends of the market and supporters of deregulation welcomed big government in this case. I quoted John Kenneth Galbraith on this phenomenon in a recent column. As the economist John Kenneth Galbraith noted of the era leading up to the Depression, “The threat to men of great dignity, privilege and pretense is not from the radicals they revile; it is from accepting their own myth. Exposure to reality remains the nemesis of the great — a little understood thing.”

I still miss Galbraith. But, for that matter, I also miss his friend Bill Buckley. Buckley provided conservatism with inspiration at a moment when liberals were still on the rise. You have taken on an even more difficult task: to inspire conservatives as a moment of decline. I hope you enjoy success – though, honestly, not too much success. There is a good deal of common sense in what you have to say, a lot of practical wisdom, and a refreshing willingness to think outside the narrow range within which Washington-based conservatism is currently trapped. We need more Edmund Burke and Robert Nisbet, and less of an ideology that has all the thoughtfulness of a direct mail piece. Godspeed in your effort to provide us with a considered, practical contemporary conservatism worthy of a great tradition.

Thanks, E.J

Mickey

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