Teenage Driving Policy

Having lived in an era and state where getting your license the day you turn sixteen, then getting lost on your way home, was a rite of passage, I'm a little heartened by the news that recent efforts to curb teen driving have merely shifted fatalities from 16- & 17- to 18- and 19- year olds. So let the 16-year old's drive!

If the real cause of teen traffic fatalities isn't age so much as experience, perhaps the thing to do is begin the learning process earlier, perhaps in some sort of driving simulator. Forza Motorsports and Need for Speed probably won't teach the best driving habits, so maybe the DOT should make it's own not-racing driving game.

A Thousand Words That I Never Spoke

Scientific proof: facts are better with graphs!

For a time, the non-philosophy portion of Donkeylicious made a concerted effort to present data with visual aids. It looks like returning to those roots would be a valuable service to provide...

Not An Onion Headline

"Controversial Anti-Gay Preacher Writes Letter To Obama, For Some Reason"

It may be the lack of sleep, but "for some reason" cracked me up. But props to the guy for exercising his right to petition the government!

Bush Looked Moderate To Moderates, Perry Won't

Today (and I guess that can mean literally on this date) it's hard to remember the time when "compassionate conservative" was the buzzword associated with George W. Bush. But that was his branding in 2000 when he ran for president, and it points to a difference between him and Rick Perry.

Calling yourself a compassionate conservative was a pretty good move in 2000, and something like that would probably work today. Even if lots of people on the left didn't trust it, people on the center found it relatively easy to regard Bush as a moderate. But nothing like it is going to be available to Rick Perry if he wins the GOP nomination. The kind of things he'll have to say to get there, and that he's already said in his book and on the stage, don't leave him much of a chance to look like a moderate.

I agree with the general idea that economic factors determine election outcomes, but there are times when political positioning makes a difference. If Harry Reid could beat Sharron Angle by 7 points in a state with 14% unemployment, this kind of thing has to matter at least a little.

Rick Perry and the Banality of the Electorate

The post-debate commentary seems to think that Rick Perry screwed up by pushing the "Social Security sucks" meme. However all of the arguments seem to focus electability questions. Either, the argument goes, Perry may have erred in such a way that endears him to the primary electorate, but hurts him in the general; or he actually hurt himself in the primary because primary voters care about electability.

Both these arguments ignore the possibility that saying bad things about Social Security may be unpopular with Republican primary voters. Raising the payroll tax cap has something close to 70% support, while the idea of cutting benefits is actually less popular than Barack Obama. What's more, Tea Partiers, who skew way older than the primary or general electorate, are largely supportive of Social Security. It's perfectly possible for Romney to leverage this attack into a genuine, policy-based critique of Perry, rather than focus on electability arguments. "You, Mr. GOP voter, you like Social Security. So do I! Perry doesn't. Sure, you may think it's awesome how he doesn't feel bad about executing people, and he has a Southern accent and I don't, but, you want that social security check, right? Then vote for me!"

Why no one is mentioning this is a mystery, in the same way that the fact that the major policy attack in the 2010 campaign—attacking ObamaCare's attempts to reign in health care costs as "$500 billion in Medicare cuts"—received very little news coverage. The people who show up to GOP debates in the fall may dig Rick Perry, but the people showing up to GOP priamries in the spring will probably be less enthusiastic.