The Obama administration is "bewitched by language."

The New Republic's John Judis says:

The Obama administration continues to have trouble filling positions because of the ironclad rules it has installed to keep lobbyists from holding positions where they have authority over issues on which they once lobbied. According to the New York Times, the latest casualty is Tom Malinowski, the advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. Malinowski is barred from holding a human rights post in the administration because he lobbied for human rights.

In defending these stances, administration officials insist they are not going to make “value judgments” or that if they allow one lobbyist in the door, they’ll have to let them all in. But appointing officials is precisely a matter of making value judgments, and in this case, the administration’s judgments are being hampered by a self-imposed orthodoxy based on the uncritical use of the term “lobbyist.” The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein would say they are being “bewitched by language.”

Click the link for a brief history of lobbying in America, and how the Obama administration is failing to learn the lessons of that history.

PREVIOUSLY: "How Obama's lofty campaign promises are crippling his own administration."

Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler's libertarian paternalism needs a better name.

I'm glad to see someone pointing out Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler's abysmal branding of their potentially powerful theory. A Chicago Tribune article says:

[Thaler and Sunstein] co-wrote a book last year called "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness." In it, they put forth the idea that by shrewdly shaping the context in which individuals make decisions—something they call "choice architecture"—the government can help individuals eat better, plan wisely for their retirements and avoid polarizing arguments on issues as diverse as gay marriage and motorcycle helmet laws. The book and its ideas were quickly embraced by Britain's Conservative Party as a possible successor doctrine to Thatcherism. ... Thaler and Sunstein call their approach "libertarian paternalism," which may explain why the book has attracted less notice here [in America]. But that may change. Many of its Chicago School ideas were echoed by Obama during the presidential campaign and could soon become the playbook for his administration's economic policy. And Obama recently tapped Sunstein to be his regulatory czar, an obscure but potentially influential job.

Sunstein elaborates on the theory:

If a private company, or the government, offers something as the default, a lot of people will stick with it, even if a change is ridiculously simple to make. People often use what we call the "yeah, whatever" heuristic.

Why do defaults have such power? One reason involves inertia. People have a lot of things to think about, and especially when the choice is complicated, they're might well decide not to decide or to procrastinate. Another reason involves suggestion. When an option is described as a default, people often think, someone sensible thought that this is the way to go, and I might as well go along with what they thought.

For instance, Tulsa changed the default setting of its city printers to double-sided; the city estimates it will save over $40,000 a year.

As Sunstein admits, their theory obviously raises serious questions, like, "Who sets the defaults?" See this post if you're interested in answers to some common objections.

Sunstein also admits in that post that one of the main objections is to the name:

Objection: Libertarian paternalism is an ugly and confusing term. Ugh!

Answer: Maybe. Probably. Originally we wanted to call the book Libertarian Paternalism, and no one wanted to publish that book. So we called it Nudge.

The book title is obviously a moot point since the book has been published. But the theory is a dynamic thing that could either thrive or die out. The name could seriously affect the fate of the theory (which could in turn affect public policy).

So what should it be called?

"Libertarian paternalism" is too much of a mouthful. It's just too many syllables. And it's so Orwellian that it's practically begging to be made fun of. "Paternalism," even aside from being blatantly sexist, does not have positive connotations for most people, at least most Americans. (Considering that Sunstein and Thaler's premise is that they're attuned to subtle psychological reactions, I'm surprised they missed this.)

Sunstein explains that people shouldn't take the term to be an oxymoron:

The approach is libertarian in the sense that it preserves freedom of choice. It is paternalistic in the sense that it tries to produce good outcomes for choosers.

Note that I'm not critical of the theory itself. I like the theory, which is why I want it to have a better name.

"Nudge" (which is what Sunstein and Thaler seem to call it on their blog, Nudge) is too breezy. Since it's already a familiar verb, you'd always need to explain what you mean, which would seem to defeat the purpose of a snappy buzzword. And it conjures up a negative image: someone pushing you around (albeit gently).

"Choice architecture"? That's not as bad as "libertarian paternalism," but it's still a mouthful. (The word "architecture" itself is a mouthful -- try saying it 3 times fast.) More importantly, it's too authoritarian. If you take the metaphor seriously, it sounds like there's an "architect" putting everything in exactly the right place, which would seem to contradict the idea of individual freedom.

How about "structured choice"? Or "choice framing"?

You want to suggest that there's this big framework -- not one that's pushing (nudging) you around, but one that's actually inviting, because whether you stick with the default or switch to something else, you'll be able to do what you want.

Or we could just take a cue from Sunstein and call it the "yeah, whatever" theory.

Hmm ... "the avuncular state"?

Amid "the outrage over the AIG bonuses," don't forget the other 99.9%.

And I'm not using "99.9%" loosely to mean "the vast majority." That's the actual figure: the total of the bonuses paid to AIG employees are about one one-thousandth of the AIG bailout. (The bonuses are just under $200 million; the bailout is just under $200 billion.)

Noam Scheiber, at his financial-crisis blog on The New Republic called The Stash, says:

I'm starting to find the obsessive "what did Geithner/Obama know and when did he know it" line of questioning a little tedious. Yes, it's worth establishing a rough chronology so we know if public officials are telling us the truth. But the endless preoccupation by my colleagues in the media--when did the Fed tell Treasury, when did Treasury tell [Tim] Geithner, when did Geithner tell Obama--is getting a little ridiculous. This just wasn't a huge substantive mistake. It was a small substantive mistake--we're talking about a tiny fraction of the $200 billion we're floating AIG here....

He then quotes a passage from a recent Washington Post article that "gets at the absurdity of it all" (boldface added by Scheiber):

During this period, Geithner's primary concern was keeping the financial system from collapsing, a source said. The compensation packages for AIG employees were hardly, if ever, brought up, another source said. Other staff members at the Fed and Treasury were in charge of the compensation issues and only briefed Geithner, sources familiar with the matter said. Once nominated for the Treasury post in December, Geithner recused himself from affairs related to specific firms.

Scheiber adds:

[H]ow much would we even want a Treasury secretary to focus on $165 million in bonus money while there were hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout money flowing to AIG and other companies? Doesn't seem like that would be a particularly good use of his time beyond a certain point.

The problem, of course, is that if you don't mind the politics of a situation like this, it can quickly cripple your efforts to do anything else. But, again, that's a reason for the press to treat it like a political fiasco ("please tell the American people what you're doing to make this right") not a substantive fiasco (Watergate-style badgering). The coverage seems to me a lot more in line with the latter than the former.

I don't have much to add since I think Scheiber is pretty clearly correct about all this.

Just one more point. I remember partaking in the outrage over the big investment banks' CEOs "taking private jets to hold out a tin cup to Congress" last year. For a moment there, it felt really important. Then I saw some story about CEOs making a point of not taking their private jets. Now, you can say that's too little too late. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that you actually admire the CEOs' abnegation. It occurred to me: does that really change anything important? I mean, I think it's good to avoid taking private jets because of the monstrous financial and environmental costs. But it's not as if I was going to be any less outraged about the need to bail them out no matter how ascetic their lifestyle choices were. Unfortunately, there's such an enormous amount of money at stake that a few million dollars swishing around here and there just doesn't change very much. I care very little about these people's moral purity; I care a lot more about what's going to happen to everyone else.

How Obama's lofty campaign promises are crippling his own administration

The editors of The New Republic say:

Large blocks of government offices sit unfilled and critical jobs--those involved in managing the global economy, for example--go unperformed. Talk to those administration recruiters, and they'll complain about the difficulty of finding bodies to fill the posts. ... [T]hey have been deterred by one of the most rigorous human-resources operations in history. ...

As the [Washington] Post reported last week, the "intensified vetting process has left dozens of President Obama's picks to run the government mired in a seemingly endless confirmation limbo, frustrated and cut off from the departments they are waiting to serve and unable to perform their new duties."

Why the confirmation constipation? For one, there are more than a thousand presidential appointees that require Senate approval. Each has to pass a rigorous security check by the FBI, which conducts copious interviews not only with the nominee, but also with myriad acquaintances and colleagues. (One college president who was vetted for a part-time advisory-board position during the Clinton administration recalls FBI agents knocking on the doors of his fraternity-house neighbors to verify his character.)

Obama's insistence on having the most transparent administration in U.S. history has slowed the process even further, and his high-minded ethics standards have limited his ability to consider the full scope of talent. While the revolving door should be closed to lobbyists, there's something absurd about a process that treats human rights activists and consumer advocates as the ethical equivalent of K Street sharks, shutting them out of government. ...

President Obama needs to streamline this process before he erodes not only the willingness to serve, but his own ability to govern.

UPDATE: Matthew Yglesias (who, like me, has supported Obama since the early days of the presidential race) says this about Obama's anti-lobbyist pledge:

Way back in August 2007 I criticized Obama’s lobbyist pledge as “meaningless grandstanding.” That turns out to have been too optimistic....

[D]umb as the pledge was, it’s dumber still to stick with it. Flip-flopping will look bad, but nobody will care in 2012 about an old flip-flop. By contrast, lots of people will care by 2012 if we’re in the midst of a prolonged depression. The premium has to be on getting smart, effective people in place in order to frame and implement smart, effective policy. At the moment, Obama is still floating on a positive image and the fact that people rightly blame his predecessor for the current situation being so bad. But that brand isn’t going to be worth anything in a couple of years unless he brings back growth. He should admit that the initial pledge was ill-considered and a bit cynical and that it would be even more cynical to stick with a mistaken promise merely in order to avoid the need to admit a mistake.

Could we please get another "I screwed up" from Obama ...

... for his disastrous un-nomination of General Anthony Zinni? 

Read the cringe-worthy story here. (Via TNR.)

Mickey Kaus says:

There aren't many respected foreign policy machers who were right on the Iraq war (no) and on the surge (yes). This is no way to treat one of them.

Of course, my heading is an allusion to President Obama's admission on Tuesday about Tom Daschle's withdrawn nomination:

I'm here on television saying I screwed up, and that's part of the era of responsibility. It's not never making mistakes; it's owning up to them and trying to make sure you never repeat them, and that's what we intend to do.*

That bluntness is a refreshing change from President Bush, who had barely admitted any mistakes by the end of eight years in office.

But can you imagine having to hear this kind of thing on a regular basis? And what do you think are the odds he's going to make a similar statement about how he mistreated General Zinni?

As everyone knows, one of the most damning labels that was (justly) pinned on the Bush administration was "incompetent." If he really is screwing up as much as he seems to be since he became President, Obama had better ramp up the competence level quickly.


* I've corrected this quote from USA Today's garbled version.