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game theory and the fiscal cliff (ii)

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In January, I wrote a post diagramming the negotiations between President Obama and the House Republicans in game-theory terms. I thought the result that actually occurred was highly predictable if one assumed that the situation was a one-off Prisoner’s Dilemma with two players (Obama and Boehner). But I raised two complications: the game might be “Chicken” rather than a Prisoner’s Dilemma; and it would be repeated, which changes the strategic calculations.

Now it is being repeated. The President sees it as “Chicken” this time and has made the recommended play. To win Chicken, you should throw your steering wheel out of the window to show that you are not going to swerve. Then the other player has the choice of dying in a draw or living by losing. Obama tried to create that situation for John Boehner by calling the Speaker privately to say that he will not negotiate over the debt limit. I say Obama “tried” to create that situation because, in fact, the president still holds the steering wheel, and Republicans know he can negotiate if he wants to. That is why they are still driving straight.

In the Economist, “M.S.” suggests a play for Obama: promise to veto any debt-ceiling increase unless Congress passes immigration reform. This would be symmetrical to the Republicans’ threat to undermine or repeal Obamacare in return for a debt-ceiling increase. M.S. thinks this gambit would reveal the reckless behavior of the House Republicans. Maybe, but I think the public would draw the conclusion that both sides are maniacs. The president should simply point out that he is not making that kind of play.

In any case, the situation is a lot more complicated than a two-player Chicken Game. For one thing, the Republicans get to choose whether to play the “shut-the-government” game or the “default-on-the-debt” game, and in which order. Besides, there are many players. To name just the obvious ones: Tea Party House Republicans (who are showing that they understand the situation, they don’t care about Boehner, and they do not want to lose); Senate Republicans of various stripes; Wall Street and other big donors; Congressional Democrats; reporters; and the American people, most of whom have not paid much attention yet–but they will.

If the government shuts down or defaults (or both), then clearly the next stage in the “game” will be an effort to pin the blame on the other side. Game theory is not especially helpful for understanding this stage, which will be a struggle for rhetorical framing rather than a negotiation. Probably the best guess is that the Republicans will take the blame– which I think they deserve–but that is uncertain because the country and media are polarized and the Republicans have their talking points ready and honed. Pew finds that Republicans will start the blame-allocation phase about on par with the President, and that may embolden them to take us into default.

The Democrats will win the finger-pointing phase if people blame Republicans and decide to vote against them in 2014, but not if people blame Congress, which you cannot vote against. This is a sticky reality for the President, because attacking Republicans makes him look partisan (when people see partisanship as the problem). But I think he has to do it anyway. He will have two free cards to play: 1) Congress may not even succeed in sending him a bill to veto, in which case it will be much easier to pin the full responsibility on the House leadership, and 2) the House has taken about 124 recess days in 2013, by my unofficial calculation.

Congressional procedure is always a confusing and boring topic, but if I were the president, I would say: “The government has shut down because the House Republicans could not even send me a budget bill to consider, even though it is their constitutional responsibility to pass a budget by the end of every fiscal year. They took 124 days off this year. They can reopen the government in fifteen minutes by sending me a clean budget bill that preserves the status quo.” (Of course, the status quo is a unacceptable, but it beats a disaster.)

will the creepy anti-Obamacare ads work?

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(Morven Park, VA) Generation Opportunity is running ads in which an evil clown-like figure dressed as Uncle Sam pops up in the gynecologist’s office and other intimate places. This is part of their campaign to persuade young people not to sign up for Obamacare. NPR’s Don Gonyea asked me whether these  ads would be persuasive. My response found its way into his All Things Considered segment: “One analyst says humorous ads, creepy or not, tend to work only on people who already agree with the message.” I was anonymous on the air, but Gonyea’s blog post names me and provides a bit more detail. I answered on the basis of our randomized experiment using Flackcheck’s humorous videos and other research summarized here. Humor captures attention and provokes strong emotions, but political polarization limits its persuasiveness. In this case, people who hate Obamacare will find the Generation Opportunity ads funny. People who like Obamacare will be deeply offended. And people who are not following the debate will be mystified–not amused and not moved toward any particular conclusion.

public speaking engagements this fall

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Please join me if you can:

  • Sept. 20, DC: National Conference on Citizenship, panel on “Civic Education and the Civic Mission of Schools” (Also webcast.)
  • Sept. 25, Morven Park in Northern VA, “Distinguished Voices in Civics”
  • Oct. 2, Elon University, Greensboro, NC Oct. 2: public lecture on We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For.
  • Oct. 10, MIT Center for Civic Media, Civic Media Lunch, “The Promise of Civic Renewal”
  • Oct. 9, DC, National Press Club newsmakers’ forum
  • Oct 11-12, Austin, TX, American Board of Trial Advocates’ Open Forum for Civic Education for Our Youth
  • October 21, Gutman Library, Harvard University, Distinguished [sic] Author’s Talk about We are the Ones. … With confirmed panelist Jane Mansbridge (and others to be named).
  • Nov. 9, Austin TX, Texas Conference on Civic Life
  • Nov 22, St. Louis, MO, National Council for the Social Studies

for reform of testing

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Over at the National Journal, Fawn Johnson reports that the Common Core standards for English and math have become controversial because of testing. “Now that it’s time for states to actually measure how their students are doing, it’s a lot harder to gloss over the problems with feel-good talking points.”

In an invited response, I argue that the existing standardized tests are bad–19th century tools–and the Common Core offers the opportunity to improve them. Progress may be halting, controversial, and painful, but I still favor innovation. In my comment, I argue that the existing tests are bad because they are separated from learning; overly standardized; completely private (so that they don’t assess how children communicate and collaborate with each other, even though that’s actually the purpose of English/Language Arts); and secret in ways that reduce legitimacy.

threats, negotiations, and deliberation: the case of the Syria crisis

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It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. — Hamilton, The Federalist #1 (first paragraph)

Here are three modes of interaction that apply to the Current Emergency:

1. Making credible threats to deter bad behavior. The Geneva Protocol to the Hague Convention bans the use of chemical weapons. President Obama called that a “red line.” There is a case for drawing red lines and credibly threatening to punish people who cross them. Mark Kleinman lays out an argument for Congressional authorization based on this idea of credible threats. Kleinman doesn’t consider his argument determinative, but Ross Douthat does. Douthat writes that a “no”vote in Congress would “basically finish off the current American president as a credible actor on the world stage” because he could no longer make credible threats.

[Footnote: I wish that no one would say “bombing Syria” or–in Kleinman’s phrase–“an attack on Syria,” because that is a euphemism for “killing human beings resident in Syria.” Syria is an abstraction that cannot die or suffer. As Hannah Arendt and George Orwell taught us, euphemisms are deadly in politics. Maybe we should kill people in Syria, but let’s call that what it is.]

2. Zero-sum political struggle between the President and Congress. That is the implicit model that people imagine when they think that by asking Congress to vote, Obama already weakened himself, and a “no” vote would be a humiliation that would embolden the Republicans to oppose him on all other fronts. “Negotiation” is an appropriate word for nonviolent zero-sum interactions. In this case, the president wants a yes. He and his people are busy negotiating with Members of Congress and will either succeed or fail.

3. An open-ended discussion about what to do. This is the model that people invoke when they say that the President prompted an important national conversation about military intervention by asking Congress to debate a resolution on Syria. If that model applies, the administration must honor the results of the vote, but any result could be called a victory for the process.

My origins are in deliberative democracy, but I try not to be naive about it. Deliberative moments are rare and fragile and depend on cultural norms and formal structures. You can’t deliberate with Assad (which doesn’t mean that you are required to bomb his army). You can’t necessarily deliberate with Congress if they are in a mood to wreck your administration or if the constitutional structure is dysfunctional. It is harder to deliberate if pundits are standing by with political scorecards, ready to call a “no” vote a humiliating defeat that ends your presidency.

On the other hand, the deliberative model has value. We ought to prize what Madison called “the mild voice of reason” whenever it has a chance. If Congress rejects the president’s proposal, that is not actually a defeat for him. We could commend his decision to go to Congress as a courageous and enlightened form of leadership. Certainly, in a family, a neighborhood, or a workplace, admirable leaders often delegate tough decisions to groups and agree to accept the results. We do not call that weakness; it can be wisdom. But it won’t be seen as wise unless someone says it is.

Politics cannot be pure deliberation. However, if we fail to recognize the deliberative moments, they have no chance at all. Regardless of the results, I am preemptively celebrating the president’s decision to go to Congress and I am preemptively denouncing all the reporters and talking heads who will score it as a win or a loss for the White House. Let’s pay attention to whether the bombing would be good for Syria and whether the debate is good for our democracy.