Feeds: 
symbol identifies content for paid subscribers only.
REPUTATIONS ARE FOREVER.
First of all, no. Obama will not, and should not, tap John McCain's chief economic adviser as his OMB director. A crazier set of incentives one cannot imagine. But the bigger question is why Howard Gleckman thinks this a good idea. I'm a big fan of Gleckman's writing for the careful and merciless analysis he brings to both the Obama and McCain campaigns. And I get that Gleckman isn't a progressive and would like someone to tamp down on Obama's more liberal instincts. But Gleckman's primary theme on the McCain campaign's economic policy has been its extraordinary vagueness, internal incoherence, and frequent hackishness. Just going through my RSS reader, we get recent examples here and here and here and here and here and here. And those are just the recent posts in my RSS reader.
Doug Holtz-Eakin is the chief economic adviser on the McCain campaign. He is one of the campaign's primary economic surrogates. I've watched him defend these policies at forums moderated by Gleckman, and watched the incredulity pass over Gleckman's face as Holtz-Eakin went on and on with baseline gimmickry and depreciation analyses the everyone knew were wrong -- that Holtz-Eakin has, in past lives, called wrong. You can argue that this is a campaign and Holtz-Eakin is just doing his job, but it's a job he's chosen to do: The guy doesn't lack for alternate employment opportunities. So here's my question: How much political hackishness is required before its incorporated into someone's broader reputation? You see the same effect with Holtz-Eakin's boss, McCain. The common defense is that this is a campaign and hackishness is required, but these guys aren't looking for corporate jobs that will take them far from Washington. We're talking about the presidency, which is a political position that spends about half its time in campaign mode. I had sort of assumed that this race would have done real damage to Holtz-Eakin's reputation, and I guess I'm wrong, but I really can't figure out why.
COMMENTS (4)
ezra, this matter has come up for discussion at prof delong's place, and what appears to be the answer is: members of the economist guild stick up for each other.
when even prof delong, for example, can't bring himself to call out holtz-eakin (and mankiw) as paid propagandists who have sold out their birthright as economists for a mass of potage, then you can understand how no reputational damage is done to the liars....
Posted by: howard | August 8, 2008 11:18 AM
Holtz-Eakin was honorable and honest during his stint at the CBO, and his appearances before congressional committees were always a C-SPAN highlight (granted that that's a low bar). I don't know why he's turned into such a, um, *Republican* since joining the McCain campaign, but he was himself pretty mavericky at one point and no longer is. It may be the case that Gleckman is hoping that Holtz-Eakin will magically morph back into his former honest self, which strikes me as an incredibly bad idea but for all I know Gleckman is a starry-eyed optimist.
Posted by: Melinda | August 8, 2008 11:34 AM
You can argue that this is a campaign and Holtz-Eakin is just doing his job, but it's a job he's chosen to do
This is a pet peeve of mine -- the idea that we aren't responsible for things we get paid to do. You see this both as an excuse for bad behavior, and as a form of (usually false) modesty -- "I was only doing my job." As if your job is preordained at birth and you have no control over it.
Posted by: someBrad | August 8, 2008 12:56 PM
the idea that we aren't responsible for things we get paid to do.
It's interesting that you didn't see the candidates or surrogates running against or promoting smear campaigns against Karl Rove or Lee Atwater. Politicians aren't allowed to make a procedural vote on an obscure bill which contained a controversial amendment 20 years ago without having it turn into a media hoopla. By contrast, the fact that Karl Rove's early work involved starting a whisper-campaign that his candidate's opponent was a pedophile never attracted any negative attacks from the Kerry or Gore campaigns when it came to accusing Bush for keeping bad company. Plenty of individuals thought it was disgusting when Karl Rove said that the liberal response to Sept. 11th was to want to give therapy to the terrorists, but his job was never at risk, nor did he face any organized "bourgeois riots" created by the DNC to harrass him for those statements. It's like people like Rove and Holtz-Eakin are given a "pass" because they're just "doing what they need to do."
Posted by: Tyro | August 8, 2008 1:38 PM