Nader's 2008 presidential bid

My sense is that, although Nader quite likes Obama, the reason he nonetheless chose to run in 2008 is because Obama's political rhetoric is lacking the details that Nader would like. (I get this sense from a Nader interview I saw on YouTube. I'm pretty sure it was an interview on the David Letterman show, but not fully sure. If anyone cares to know the exact interview for sure, let me know by adding a comment to this entry, and I'll track it down.) Now, on the whole I'm actually a big Nader fan (in fact, I voted for Nader in 2000, with John Hagelin being my close second choice), but I think this is ridiculous.

The ordinary US citizen is not remotely competent in the various intricacies relevant to, e.g., the health care issue WHEN IT COMES TO DETAILED POLICY. The ordinary US citizen knows little about the various costs of ALL the various kinds of health care, which sectors of the population tend to use which kinds of health care, what kinds of preventative healthcare can plausibly reduce the need for other kinds of palliative health care later, the proportion of health care costs that are ultimately due to administration, liability coverage, and the like rather than ultimately due to the actual provision of health care services and health care products (broadly construed, thus including pharmaceuticals, hospital gowns, MRI machines, etc.), what are the current legal rules governing HMOs, let alone what an HMO actually is. And these are just some of the very many things one has to have deep knowledge of in order to reasonably have a view on what the best HIGHLY DETAILED governmental healthcare policy would be. (I myself have deep knowledge of none of these things, and so make no pretense of knowing what the best highly detailed governmental health care policy would be.)

Apparently Nader thinks that US citizens should choose their political leaders by attempting to think about things about which they aren't even remotely competent. I myself think that's ridiculous.

In contrast, I think that US citizens should choose their political leaders on the basis of something that they can more plausibly be said to reasonably have some opinions on, namely, high-level goals. For example, here is a statement of a possible high-level goal: "the US should have a national health care system which provides basic health care to every US citizen, no matter their wealth, whether or not they are responsible (and so at fault) for failing to procure independent healthcare, etc."

So, in fact, I applaud Obama in avoiding such details and sticking to statements of his chosen high-level goals in his campaign and political rhetoric. (Though, note, this does not involve me in saying that this is WHY he has chosen to campaign in this way. Most likely this choice involves, at least IN PART, attention to sheer strategical factors. Not that I think this is a bad thing. Hopefully more on this sometime before Election Day either in "issues" or "commentaries".)


ADDED 9/16/08:

I need to add one point to the previous. For the reasons explained, I don't think the model where US citizens vote for their political leaders based upon the detailed policies they (the candidates) endorse is a good model. However, in voting for their political leaders, US citizens should at least aim for ones who have demonstrated an ability to understand and evaluate detailed policies - since, after all, as elected officials (if they win), they will have to choose among detailed policies. And, of course, this is done by taking some time, in speeches and the like, to talk about detailed policy, explain why they prefer the one that they do, etc.


ADDED 9/17/08:

So I just watched Jon Stewart's discussion of the "Generic Off" on the 9/16/08 episode of The Daily Show. Now, going by the video clips he showed (after all, it is in principle possible that the clips he showed were extracted from "less generic" context), then what the Big Four candidates (Obama, Biden, McCain, and Palin) had to say about very recent financial troubles, was, even by my own tastes, way under-detailed. Basically, all any of them said was "we need to fix the financial markets".

But I do NOT take issue with such lack of detail on the grounds that they failed to endorse fully detailed financial policies.

For one example, my complaint is NOT that any of them said something like: "As president/VP, I will do what I can to institute a lending policy where what a lender is allowed to lend (the amount and at what interest rate or interest rate plan) in any given case is such-and-such complex function of six factors: three general economic indicators (inflation, average performance of the NASDAQ over the last year and a half, and the value of dollars in comparison to pounds, euros, yen and rubles), and three other factors (the proportion of money the lender has already lent overall to their actual monetary holdings, the nature of the other loans the lender has already made, and the lender's own five-year history in getting back money loaned) - all of this additional, of course, to standard individual criteria (such as income and credit history)".

For another example, my complaint is also NOT that none of them said anything like: "As president/VP I will do what I can to institute a lender bailout policy where the proportion (if any) of debt (suffered by a lender facing bankruptcy) that will be paid off by the federal government is such-and-such complicated function of four general economic factors (the three from above PLUS average unemployment over the last three years), together with four other factors (the federal government's own budget and treasury deficits, the financial health of the top seven lenders aside from the one in question, the degree to which US citizens on the whole are putting income into savings rather than consumption, and the demand on the part of US citizens for loans [with demand for home mortgages in particular receiving such-and-such extra weight])".

The ordinary US citizen is not even remotely close to being competent to evaluate such detail policies. (I myself am so ignorant that this schematic characterization was just my best guess at some of the things that might be relevant to such fully detailed lending policies.)

Instead, what bugs me is that none of the Big Four even said ANYTHING about anything financial, e.g., lending policy.

First, as a result, viewers/listeners are given absolutely no sense of whether the candidate knows anything about financial markets, and so could be someone who can competently make decisions as to fully detailed financial policies on behalf of the US citizenry. (This connects with my first addition above from 9/16/08.)

Second, also as a result, viewers/listeners don't learn anything about the candidate's high-level goals, such as to what vague-and-general degree he/she is willing to have financial markets, institutions and the like regulated by the federal government, and to what vague-and-general degree he/she thinks it is appropriate for the federal government to spend taxpayer money bailing out failing large corporations (financial or otherwise). (This connects with what I originally said above, about high-level goals.)

So don't make the mistake of thinking that, given what I've said, I can't consistently join Jon Stewart in finding what the Big Four had to say about very recent financial woes as pathetically under-detailed.