Hurray For Ranking Presidents

Earlier this week NYT published a study ranking presidents on “Greatness.” Conservative reaction to the study has been close to unanimously negative. See here or here. We would like to dissent. It is not that we accept the rankings as a correct solution. It is not that we like the methodology, the rankers, or the results. Our example would be William Henry Harrison (rank 41) versus Andrew Johnson (rank 43). WHH was president for 31 days. We’re not suggesting that Andrew is anywhere near a great president but the US purchased Alaska from the Russians during his term. It was called Seward’s Folly after Andrew’s Secretary of State but it was anything but that. We understand it is an issue of weighting but we would put Andrew ahead of William Henry but still near the bottom.

We think ranking of presidents is a useful exercise because it causes folks to think about methodology, the rankers, and history. There are at least two levels of methodology here: the method of the survey and the methods of those surveyed. The response rate of less than 30 percent gives us pause as does the demographics on partisanship. Then there is the undefined nature of greatness. Each respondent probably sees greatness differently. Bill Clinton is an excellent example. Our take is he was elected on a leftist platform and tried to implement it. That led to the epic election of 1994:

In what was known as the Republican Revolution, a 54-seat swing in membership from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party resulted in the latter gaining a majority of seats in the House of Representatives for the first time since 1952. It was also the largest seat gain for the party since 1946, and the largest for either party since 1948, and characterized a political realignment in American politics.

Again, our take is that Bill generally acquiesced to the Newt and the GOP revolution from the start of the new Congress in 1995 to his impeachment problems 1998. The question is: was he great or not great because he changed with the wind?

Then there are the games that respondents play. Here is how we would play it. We recongnize that awarding a low score of 40 and a high score of 60 would give us very little influence on the final outcome. Therefore, we would assignWashington, Lincoln, and Reagan a perfect score of 100. FDR gets a zero. Why? We know that despite his disastrous economic policies making the Depression Great, running for a third term, Japanese camps, and disasters with Stalin that lots of progressives love him and we have had extensive experience with how much they despise Reagan. Zero is a bit harsh for the man that created the Manhattan Project but we know it leads toward the right result of Washington, Lincoln, or Reagan in the top spot.

We need to be thinking about methods whenever we want to use research in an argument. The ranking survey is useful because it draws our attention to methodological issues that most understand.

When The Donald is the least great president and Reagan is 16th while The Frontrunner is 14th and his former boss is seventh it tells us much about the partisan nature of university faculty. Surveying university faculty is about as sound as surveying NRO or NPR. We already know because we have collected surveys and been in those conference rooms when issues are discussed. These results remind folks without personal experience of the biases among university faculty members.

Lastly, it gets folks to think about history and presidents and that is an excellent thing. Sure, there are some that are crying or celebrating that The Donald is last, the current president that we call The Frontrunner is 14th, and the 44th president is a mind boggling seventh. We would give the three stooges all the same low score. Both the scores and other writers give us ideas to research. Teddy Roosevelt is, to us, a shocking fourth in the rankings. We want to learn more to see if it is deserved. A couple of writers have mentioned James K. Polk as an efficient president. We need to find out more than the Wikipedia link. It is possible he could vie with Harry Truman for our choice for best Democrat president.

Sure the ranking of presidents generated much nonsense in our social media world but there is always lots of nonsense floating around in our social media mad world. The list adds some useful discussion too and that makes it worthwhile but not definitive.

Wisconsin Diversity Reform

We miss having a local newspaper. Now we get our news about Wisconsin from the National Review. In particular, the battle amongst the GOP, the Democrats, and the University of Wisconsin over restricting the diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE to us and DEI to some others) craze. The Editors at NRO have the story in A Victory Against DEI In Wisconsin. The players are Robin Vos, GOP speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, our governor, The Suit AKA Tony Evers, and the UW Board of Regents. You should read the whole thing and, of course, subscribe to NRO.

We have been hard on the failure of politics on the federal level but here is an example in Wisconsin where nobody is entirely happy but, if it wasn’t the most misused term in politics, we could say that common sense prevailed. The story in brief is that the WI legislature passed DIE restrictions along with funding increases for the university. The Suit line-item vetoed the removal of DIE positions. 

Sidebar: The line-item veto in WI (and perhaps other states) is a weird thing. It seems like a good idea as the governor could line-item veto some pet project. But in reality, there are some restrictions but the governor can also veto words that change the meaning of the document. We don’t pretend to be expert on the line-item veto but it is a perplexing thing as to what is acceptable as in when The Suit line-item vetoed the removal of positions but not the removal of funding. End Sidebar.

But the legislative process requires one more approval from JOCER (pronounced Joker) on pay raises and the GOP “pounced”. The Editors tell us that JOCER:

approved the pay raises for all other state employees, but [Robin] said [JOCER] wouldn’t approve the UW employees’ pay raises until the [DIE] cuts were made.

You should really go to the link on approved to see the reporting by the AP (motto: you can’t spell crap without AP) and the hysterics from the Democrats on this issue.

Robin and the UW System president negotiated an extensive deal, see the editors, that restricted DIE but funded lots of other stuff. The UW System Board of Regents rejected in 9-8. Robin held his ground despite all the howling and a lawsuit from The Suit the Board caved and we now have a deal. We like the conclusion from the editors:

Universities’ job is education. That should be obvious to everyone, and it is obvious to most people. But progressive radicalism has made it into the conservative position. The Left has ceded the reasonable ground on education. [Robin] has just shown [the GOP] how to take it — even in a closely divided state.

Equally important is for the GOP to work with the Board of Regents (yes there are different names in different states) to ensure that the changes will really be implemented. Iowa and North Dakota are much redder but did it the right way. Wisconsin shows a purple solution. We’re often not a fan of Robin but he did well and good this time.

Beclowning America

It is an amazing time. Two allies, Ukraine and Israel are under attack while others like Taiwan are in danger. The federal government budget is under siege from debt, entitlements, and the climate crazies among others. Yet the GOP, the Democrats, the press, and academia insist on their right to beclown themselves and America.

We start with academia. Glenn Harland Reynolds (Instapundit and a professor) has an interesting essay behind a paywall entitled: Higher Education: A Toxic Industry. Here is a taste:

Generations of screeching German professors helped to create the conditions that led to two world wars. America’s academy, with its racist ideas, its anti-American and anti-Western norms, and its overweening sense of entitlement and impunity, is potentially paving the way for something every bit as bad.

It is worth a read but is it worth the paying for the paywall? We’re not quite sure that German professors deserve that much credit or American academia will lead to something as bad as two World Wars but we agree it that the foolishness is bad enough. We need serious academics. We are not getting them.

Is the press equally bad or just bad? Kevin D. Williamson at The Dispatch has The Times Jumps The Gun about the NYT reporting on the phony allegations of Israel bombing a hospital. At the time Kevin wrote (10/19/23) the facts were in dispute. Here is a taste:

The recent controversy about coverage of the explosion at the Gaza hospital—in which the Times and others took a culpably credulous position toward Hamas’ unsubstantiated claims that the blast was the result of an Israeli airstrike and that it killed nearly 500 people—offers only the faintest prefiguration of where the disinformation project is headed. 

You should read it all. We need a serious press. We are not getting it.

The Democrats have lots of problems. The three we will mention are supporting the Hamas terrorists, chaos in the House, and nominating a black lesbian abortion advocate from Maryland to be the next senator from California. We can’t imagine there is a shortage of black lesbian abortion advocates in California. We need at least one serious political party and the Democrats at not applying for the position at the current time.

Then there is the GOP. Here is The Morning Dispatch’s summary of what the chief RINO, The Donald is doing to create chaos in the House, the only part of the federal government the GOP controls (?):

In the House of Representatives, which has been without a speaker for nearly all of October, Republicans initiated their now-weekly cycle of selecting a candidate for the top job. After several rounds of voting, Emmer emerged as the speaker-designate—only to be met almost immediately with blowback from the hard-right wing of his party and a closed-door airing of grievances. His fate was sealed, however, when [The Donald] issued his own veto of the Minnesota Republican, calling him a “Globalist RINO” on Truth Social—though Emmer’s real crime might have been voting to certify the 2020 election. [Emphasis added]

Regular readers will have noticed that we have begun to refer to The Donald as the chief RINO and his minions are RINOs despite their attempts to disparage GOP members with that brand. We also added the bold to the quote above to bring into question classifying the minions (or the chief RINO) as hard-right As we see it, the GOP (and the Democrats) are in the business of trying to win elections. Conservatives, and we are the hard-right, are in the business of trying to influence policy, especially in the direction of freedom. The Donald and his minions are hurting the GOP election prospects so we think that RINO is the right term for them.

The GOP is doing great conservative things in states like Iowa and North Dakota. Too bad Dakota Doug is unlikely to be the GOP nominee for president. On the federal level, the GOP is a sad story for both the GOP and conservatives.

The recent performance of academia, the press, the Democrats, and the GOP shows why Glenn likes the term ruling monoculture. It is really past time for sobriety. We have pressing foreign and domestic issues that need the attention of serious people. Where are they?

Ignoring The Obvious: Energy Policy

The front page story in our paper today was Heating Worries Grow In The US by David Sharp of the Associated Press. Our link is to a different paper. David’s profile is the Associated Press correspondent in the land of the lobster and lists his first professional interests as business and finance so there is no excuse for his post. You should read David’s article in its entirety to see what it misses.

David starts out by noting that US families are dreading the heating season because costs are up and supplies are tight. Absolutely. His second paragraph is:

The Department of Energy [DOE] is projecting sharp price increases for home heating compared with last winter and some worry whether heating assistance programs will be able to make up the difference for struggling families. The situation is even bleaker in Europe, with Russia’s continued curtailment of natural gas pushing prices upward and causing painful shortages.

So, yes, Russia is causing problems for Europe. Why, pray tell, are heat oil and natural gas supplies short in the US and especially in Maine, the home of the lobster? David doesn’t have a single word on the cause of the Maine shortage. Perhaps it is the Jones Act as New England governors suggest:

The New England governors said in the letter that the DOE should explore suspending the Jones Act, a law requiring goods moved between U.S. ports to be carried by U.S. staffed and flagged ships that are built domestically, for part or all of the upcoming winter.

The Jones Act makes it difficult to transport energy (LNG or oil) from one part of the US to another. Puerto Rico and New England bear the brunt of this gift to a few ship owners. Or the lack of natural gas pipelines to New England:

However, because of a lack of natural gas pipelines, New England has difficulty getting sufficient supplies of natural gas from nearby areas, such as the Marcellus Shale formation, especially during the winter months. 

The behavior of New York (check a map as New York makes New England an island from the rest of the US) in stopping pipelines and banning fracking might even lead David to a discussion of the challenges of federalism.

Or perhaps it is the war on fossil fuels being waged by our president, The Frontrunner? Instead of trying to fix any of the regulation problems, the government is going to give money to the people for the hardships the government has caused. The government’s behavior might not disappoint you but David and the AP’s omission of the regulation problems should.

The Pro-Life Movement: A Lesson In Civics

InstaPundit, Glenn Reynolds, uses his post at the Post to properly decry the behavior of the pro-choice movement, almost entirely on the left, before during and after the reversal or Roe v. Wade. Do read it all but we love this paragraph:

Extremist rhetoric — of the sort that’s called “hate” when it comes from the right and “passion for justice” when it comes from the left — raised the temperature to the point where a would-be assassin actually showed up at Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house with a Glock, two magazines and pepper spray. He’s now awaiting trial. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) even threatened Kavanaugh and other conservative justices that they would “pay the price” for overturning Roe.

It encapsulates the nature of media bias in 2022. Folks on the left can make the most vile statements without the media caring. We would like to go the other way in this post. We would like to praise the behavior of the pro-lifers in their fifty year journey to overcome Roe v. Wade and return the question of abortion to democracy. It is not that everyone of the tens of millions of pro-lifers behaved with perfect propriety. They did not. It is that the pro-life movement as a whole behaved properly. They are a study in civics. They worked tirelessly within the system to elect Congress critters and presidents that would lead to a Supreme Court that would make the question of abortion one decided by democracy. When evil was attempted in their name they spoke out about. InstaPundit’s Post post shows several examples of how the pro-choice movement behaves differently. Again, it is not the individual actions of either group but what happens when an individual from that group misbehaves. The pro-choice leaders find excuses while the pro-life leaders take the miscreants to the woodshed.

The democracy part of finding a resolution to abortion is going to be another challenge for the pro-life movement. They should, as they turn to the next step, take a moment to consider the epic struggle they have won over the past half century. We should write it into the civics (is that still a high school course?) curriculum as an example to be followed.

Spinning Inflation Causes

The best spin has an element of truth and comes from an unexpected source. Josh Boak writes for the Associated Press as the White House reporter and economics writer. So Josh is familiar with our president, The Frontrunner, and economics. We were unimpressed for the latter by his post on the front page (above the fold) of our local paper: [The Frontrunner’s] Inflation Crunch: Too Much Shopping. We’ve linked to a different paper as the local daily has paywall restrictions. We think you should read it to see the astonishing lengths that Josh goes to to absolve The Frontrunner. He also uses the expected inflation rate:

Friday’s report on consumer prices is expected to show that annual inflation slowed ever so slightly to 8.2% in May from 8.3% in April. Economists surveyed by FactSet indicate the decline will largely be driven by expenses other than food and energy, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to higher prices in those categories worldwide.

The actual inflation rate came in at 8.6 percent so it was increasing (choose your adjective) rather than slowing ever so slightly. Josh is right that gas and food prices are up substantially. He is wrong to suggest that Putin and the Ukraine are the major cause of gas price increases.

The grain of truth in Josh’s post is that shoppers are involved with inflation because inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. Charles CW Cooke at NRO  is closer to the truth when he says

Since January 2021, everything the Democrats have done, have tried to do, or intended to do has been inflationary. 

We say closer to the truth because Charlie leaves out that Ramesh Ponnuru on the Fed is printing too much money and the Democrats are trying to choke off the supply of fossil fuels. Americans not only think the Democrats are reducing the supply of gas but they think they are doing it on purpose to reduce the use of fossil fuels. The Frontrunner and the Democrats have all the bases covered. Inflationary monetary policy, check. Inflationary spending, check. Inflationary supply side actions, check. It is an impressive performance that Josh is trying to explain away by blaming shoppers. Ramesh is not the first to call shenanigans on the Democrats allegations:

This sort of nonsense, which seeks to explain a variable (the inflation rate) by reference to a constant (the desire for profit), can only distract from what is truly necessary to restore price stability.

But the Democrats could be first in trying to do it twice (profit motive and shoppers) with the same variable (inflation) in such a short time. We don’t think that Josh’s grain of truth will save The Frontrunner or the Democrats but it does harm his viability as a reporter.

Just Some Bias Before I Go

Yes, we were thinking of this in the title. We are heading off on vacation with the Lady deGloves and will be without Internet so this short post will be our last for about a week. We were reading a BBC post and came across this about our president, The Frontrunner:

As Republicans blame [The Frontrunner’s] environmental agenda for the high energy costs and his approval ratings sink, he has signed deals to boost US natural gas exports, released oil from national reserves and approved hundreds of permits for drilling on government land.

It is a self-refuting paragraph. First, Republicans blame and then The Frontrunner’s approval ratings sink. Spoiler altert: The GOP never approved of The Frontrunner. You should be able to figure out the arithmetic. It is a sensible first clause if you leave out “Republicans blame” and replace “for the” with cause. The rest of the stuff is overstatement. Sometimes he was legally compelled to do those things. Of course, he hasn’t done anything about pipelines. And this is the next paragraph:

“We see the Biden administration really wavering on its earlier climate commitments,” says Robert Rozansky research analyst at Global Energy Monitor, which tracks energy projects around the world.

We can understand why people find the media less than trustworthy.

Mind Reader Appears At The White House

We promise we will get to the GOP and media soon but the ongoing spat between Jeff Bezos and the White House is too interesting to stop now. It started with a WH tweet that said:

You want to bring down inflation?

Let’s make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share.

We got this and other tweets from The Best Of The Web Today by James Freeman at the WSJ so we could cut and paste. If you can get past the paywall you should check out James. Jeff responded with a tweet that the two sentences are unrelated:

The newly created Disinformation Board should review this tweet, or maybe they need to form a new Non Sequitur Board instead. Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection. [Emphasis added]

James quotes CNBC showing that the WH finally prepared a response to Jeff. As we said in a recent post, it was astounding that the new press secretary was not prepared for such an obvious question. The WH response shows that they couldn’t come up with much better (from James quoting CNBC):

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates responded in a statement that “it doesn’t require a huge leap to figure out why” Bezos, the world’s second-wealthiest man, would oppose Biden’s proposal to hike taxes on the ultra-wealthy and corporations. [paragraph cut] It’s also unsurprising that this tweet comes after the President met with labor organizers, including Amazon employees,” Bates said in a statement. [Emphasis added]

Where was the mind reading Andrew when the administration needed him? He knows, without any evidence, Jeff’s thinking on corporate tax rates, individual tax rates, and labor unions. Here is where we see media bias trying to favor the Democrats. What Andrew says is more coherent than the press secretary remarks but it is hardly on point. Jeff didn’t oppose raising taxes on corporations (it is fine to discuss). Jeff makes no mention of other taxes on the wealthy. Andrew makes no attempt to rebut Jeff’s point that the two are unrelated. Media bias means CNBC ignores how unrelated Andrew’s comments are to the underlying controversy.

James, however, has a tweet from Larry Summers (economic advisor to the two most recent previous Democrat presidents) that comes closer to addressing the controversy:

I think @JeffBezos is mostly wrong in his recent attack on the @JoeBiden Admin. It is perfectly reasonable to believe, as I do and @POTUS asserts, that we should raise taxes to reduce demand to contain inflation and that the increases should be as progressive as possible. [Emphasis added]

A small point is from the first part of what we have bolded. We don’t see that The Frontrunner has asserted the process of how higher taxes will reduce inflation. We love Larry’s almost honesty. He might not be addressing the controversy because he isn’t explicit on corporate taxes. We have concluded he is including corporate taxes but it just didn’t fit in the tweet. Your milage may vary.

Larry is saying two important things. First, increasing taxes progressively including corporate taxes reduces aggregate demand. That implies that lowering corporate taxes, as the GOP and The Donald did, raises aggregate demand or creates economic growth. Second, reducing aggregate demand, a recession, is the Frontrunner’s only policy for dealing with inflation. Read the tweets from the White House and Larry again to see exactly what their only plan is: a recession. See Kevin D. Williamson at the NY Post for some of the opportunities for increasing supply like pipelines and other economic tools available to The Frontrunner.

The problem the Democrats have with media bias is that they don’t get good feedback. Democrats, like everybody else (and especially on twitter), say foolish things. Many readers, those that can be convinced, will recognize the challenge of mind reading and react accordingly.

Mind Readers Needed At White House

We are really going to get to press bias and the GOP but events keep getting in the way. Karine Jean-Pierre is the new White House press secretary. As Arjun Singh at NRO reports, Karine is the new in her position but has been working as second in command:

The 44-year-old political operative was named the new White House press secretary this afternoon. President Joe Biden announced in a statement that she would succeed Jen Psaki, who has held the role since the beginning of the administration, on May 13. Jean-Pierre has previously been the principal deputy press secretary in the office, serving as Psaki’s top deputy, and has conducted briefings from the White House podium.

So Karine should be up to speed with White House communications. The White House had tweeted (we are using the White House transcript provided by Scott Johnson at PowerLine. We use it because we can cut and paste. Do check out all of Scott’s comments.):

You want to bring down inflation? Let’s make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share.

You don’t need to be a mind reader to see that this will pique folks interest as there is no obvious reason that higher taxes will cause inflation to abate. Then Jeff Bezos, a person of some note, came out with a tweet that basically asked WTF and included this gem:

The newly created disinformation board should review [the White House] tweet.

Scott’s post has the entire word salad that Karine creates in response to a couple of question from Peter Doocy. Do read the whole thing. Our question is: how is it possible that the mind readers in the White House were not prepared for these questions? Karine is new to her position but not new to the White House communications. If the communications shop at the White House hadn’t figured out on its own how foolish the tweet was then surely they would be alerted to the controversy after Jeff’s tweet. Going to the podium and hoping that the press doesn’t ask serious questions isn’t a great strategy.

This is the problem of press bias for Democrats. They get used to puff questions so anything more challenging cause them to sweat. What should have happened is the first question is: “Jeff called a recent White House tweet disinformation? What is your response?” And Karine gives the communications shop’s best prepared response. And most of the media would buy it.

Two Astonishing White House Tweets

Don’t worry we will get to the GOP soon but the White House Tweets follow up on our last post about the media bias and the Democrats. All the commentary is that the Democrats are in big trouble for the midterms in 2022 and the presidential election in 2024. So the Democrats are trying to get traction from somewhere to at least reduce the carnage. Here is the first sentence of the first of two White House tweets about our president, The Frontrunner:

When [The Frontrunner] took office, millions were unemployed and there was no vaccine available.

Obviously, the COVID vaccine was available before The Frontrunner became president as there are pictures of The Frontrunner getting it. This is dated 12/21/20 and has video too. Given the resources available to the White House you would have to classify the tweet as a lie. MWG has no editor and his skills are limited so he had to transcribe the tweets. We were lucky to catch an error on the date. Thus, there are no links. Our errors they tend to honest ones. Here is the second White House tweet on COVID vaccinations:

We previously misstated that vaccinations were unavailable in January 2021 [and December 2020]. We should have said they were not widely available. Vaccines became available shortly before the President came into office. Since then he is responsible for fully vaccinating over 200 million people.

The first sentence has the unbelievable claim that the White House misstated the vaccination lie and tries to suggest it was only available in January 2021. We can argue about shortly since they are not specific. The third sentence is the biggest whopper of all. The Frontrunner has no responsibility for what the private companies developed before his election and little or no responsibility for the jabs the private companies and NGOs delivered after his election or even after he became president. If anything, The Frontrunner slowed down the vaccination process with his doubts about The Donald’s vaccine. Speaking of Democrat domination of media bias, here is PolitiFact trying to cover for The Frontrunner and Triple A on that subject. See if you are convinced.

It looks like 2022 is going to be a memorable year for media bias.