On opposition versus obstructionism

A constructive opposition is one thing, obstructing for the sake of obstructing is another.
And, this is what James Fallows writes about that very issue:

A reader writes:

"I have been waiting for someone somewhere to relate the current Congressional impasse to the 'Turnip Day' special session that Truman called in his acceptance speech at the 1948 Democratic Convention. Some Republicans believed they should complete some unobjectionable legislation in the session, but Leader Robert Taft was adamant that they would yield nothing to 'that son of a bitch the President'. Taft succeeded in making the session an utter failure, but Truman succeeded in demonstrating that the Republicans were obstructionist and he won the campaign meme of the 'Do-Nothing Congress'."This experience of the American electorate punishing rabid partisanship seems too poignant to disappear into history, don't you agree?"

Agree! The official US Senate history of Turnip Day is here; the text of Truman's Democratic Convention speech is here, courtesy of the Miller Center's excellent presidential archives. As the Senate history says about the moment:
"At 1:45 in the morning, speaking only from an outline, Truman quickly electrified the soggy delegates. In announcing the special session, he challenged the Republican majority to live up to the pledges of their own recently concluded convention to pass laws to ensure civil rights, extend Social Security coverage, and establish a national health-care program. "They can do this job in 15 days, if they want to do it." he challenged. That two-week session would begin on "what we in Missouri call 'Turnip Day,'" taken from the old Missouri saying, "On the twenty-fifth of July, sow your turnips, wet or dry."

"Republican senators reacted scornfully. To Michigan's Arthur Vandenberg, it sounded like "a last hysterical gasp of an expiring administration." Yet, Vandenberg and other senior Senate Republicans urged action on a few measures to solidify certain vital voting blocs. "No!" exclaimed Republican Policy Committee chairman Robert Taft of Ohio. "We're not going to give that fellow anything." Charging Truman with abuse of a presidential prerogative, Taft blocked all legislative action during the futile session. By doing this, Taft amplified Truman's case against the "Do-nothing Eightieth Congress" and contributed to his astounding November come-from-behind victory."

"Faith-based" economics?

In expressing his frustration with the inability of economists to give a single bottom-line, President Truman asked for a one-handed economist. President Obama sarcastically noted that these days everybody think they are economists.

As I have noted earlier, it is all because while economists pretend that their field of study is as scientific as is physics, the reality is that economics is nothing but a game of intelligent estimates. Best guesses, that come out of critical thinking and evidence. That is all.

So, it was quite fun to read the following in the Economist:

Economics (parts of it, at least) is broken, and mathematicians, sociologists, psychologists, and a bevy of other armchair -ologists are trying to fix it. At the Times, Anatole Kaletsky describes just a few of the ongoing attempts to bring knowledge from other disciplines into the dismal science. He mentions work done by students of aerodynamics and behavioural scientists, among others. But the most intriguing idea in the piece is that while it's possible our ideas are failing to accurately describe the economy, it could also be the case that the economy is failing because it's built on our inaccurate ideas:

[R]ational investors can find it very profitable to act on false premises - for example that credit will always be available without limit - if these false ideas become so widely accepted that they change the way the economy actually functions, at least for a time...

[T]he challenge that existing economic orthodoxy may find most disconcerting is Imperfect Knowledge Economics (IKE), the name of a path-breaking recent book by Roman Frydman and Michael Goldberg, two American economists. Building on ideas of Edmund Phelps, one of the few Nobel Laureate economists who rejected the consensus view on rational expectations, IKE uses similar tools to conventional economics to generate radically different results. It insists that the future is inherently unknowable and therefore that there is always a multitude of plausible models of the way the economy works.

Which model is right may well depend upon which model is the current dominant paradigm. This is quite headache-inducing. It suggests that economics may be plagued by observer effects; by investigating one aspect of a system and solidifying knowledge about it into widely held principles, we reinforce those principles, which proceed to work until they don't.

This is the inherent risk in studying a complex system constructed on the aggregated decisions of billions of creatures who base their actions on the actions of everyone else. The science contributes to feedback, which biases the science. Ideally, some brilliant individual will discover a way around this hurdle. In any case, the first lesson economists may learn in the wake of the crisis is that they actually know much less than they think they do. Or rather, they know what they know, only so long as other people continue to know it.

Non sequitur: president's speech and confidence!

So, our President is scheduled, again, to talk to the country (and the world) about there being no need to panic, and to restore confidence.

I can't see his speech doing anything; in fact, there is a good chance that the market will tank further after his speech. Why?

The latest polling data show that the gap between his disapproval rating and approval rating is the widest ever among all the presidents. Wider than Nixon at his worst. Seriously, you think he can restore any confidence in anybody?

Here is "Countdown to Crawford":

President Bush is nearing what may be a new distinction: an historic 45-point spread between the voters who give his performance a thumbs down and those who are still giving him a thumbs up.
Though this may be an arcane calculation, it's interesting to ponder.
At one moment in his presidency, Richard Nixon registered 66% disapproval rating from voters, against a 24% approval, for a 42-point differential.
Harry Truman, often derided by critics, experienced a range of 43 points between the disapproval and approval numbers.
Santi Tafarella, who blogs at Prometheus Unbound, looked at years of the numbers from the Gallup Poll and concluded that George W. Bush has passed Nixon and Truman to become the president with the widest spread.
As is apparent from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research's chart above, at the moment, the president's disapproval ratings are at 70%, while only 25% gave him positive marks. Which would give him an historic margin of 45 points.