Pat McCrory's Cuban Model

From the Cuban government:

Manso highlighted that the ETP's main objective is to train a qualified labor force and to guarantee work to students immediately after graduating. 

He said the ministry is working on a study plan that includes reducing curriculum to only the relevant subjects in each specialty.

From NC Governor Pat McCrory:

On the show, McCrory said “educational elite” had taken over, offering courses that have no path to jobs. He said he instructed his staff Monday to draft legislation that could alter the state money that universities and community colleges receive “not based upon how many butts in seats but how many of those butts can get jobs.”

The de-emphasis of non-technical disciplines (McCrory even made fun of languages) has long been a hallmark of Cuban education. One problem the Cuban government has with social sciences and humanities is that they create people who challenge conventional wisdom and authority.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/01/29/3820186/mccrory-wants-to-revamp-higher.html#storylink=cpy

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Unbeholden to immigration

This Michael Gerson op-ed on immigration may well be a sign of things to come. It blames Barack Obama for being inflexible on immigration. Even more bizarrely, he claims that Democrats are "beholden to Latino voters."

Huh? Causality works the other direction. In recent years Latino voters have gone to the Democratic Party in droves because of the Republican Party's sharply nativist tones. Over and over, Obama has said he wants to pursue immigration reform. Being "beholden" in this case simply means fulfilling promises you made about policy.

But I would expect to hear more of this. Opposing immigration reform can be framed as standing independent: unbeholden if you will. Reform can then be seen as political catering rather than doing what you believe in or doing what's right.

To be fair, Gerson doesn't make that argument. Strangely enough, he actually says that Republicans should try to get beholden too.

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Obamagration?

Ezra Klein notes Barack Obama's political dilemma on immigration.

Leaning too far in either direction carries risks. If the White House hangs too far back from the process, the bill could evolve in a direction they don’t like. Details of the Senate compromise are already causing some heartburn among immigration reformers, not to mention among White House policy experts. If it gets further watered-down in the House, it could become unacceptable, and the White House will be faced with the unpalatable choice of vetoing the only immigration-reform proposal that can pass or signing a bill they don’t like. 

But stepping too far into the process carries its own problems. Republicans are wavering on whether to support immigration reform, but they’re firmly decided on whether they support Obama. If immigration reform becomes associated with Obama, it could mean Republicans abandon it. As hard as it is for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to make the case for a path to citizenship to Rush Limbaugh, it’s even harder for him to make a case for Obama’s path to citizenship for Rush Limbaugh.

So maybe look for immigration reform to get a label intended to personalize it to Obama and thereby make it less palatable to conservatives. Obamagration, anyone?

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Immigration and border security

The big immigration proposal outline is here. It's a big deal to have this much out there with key senators on both sides. It contains what you would reasonable expect--flexible acceptance of needed workers, enforcement and verification, path to citizenship for those in the country illegally, acknowledgment of people who came here as minors, etc.

One sticky point I see is the idea that a commission of border elected officials will rule about when border security measures are "completed." This is fine as long as you view only whether the measures are in place, rather than waiting for some impossibly perfect achievement of security. The latter has been the hammer with which opponents of reforms have hit proposals, claiming that reform cannot proceed until the border is sealed. Since it will never be sealed, then reform is postponed indefinitely.

There will be plenty of sticky points.

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Down the Rabbit Hole with Maduro

I recommend this interview of Nicolás Maduro by Eva Golinger. It's pure messianic politics.

Just compare this:

Everybody knows how President Chavez has invested all his efforts and energy into his country, into fighting for the independence of Latin America, how he has persevered in his anti-imperialist struggle for social justice worldwide. It was President Chavez who went vocal about global warming, so that everyone could find out the truth. It was he who championed the struggle against global plunder and the neoliberal policies that are killing Europe.

To this from the most recent release of the North Korea News Agency:

The next four chapters cover the period from August 1945 to December 1960. They deal with the feats the President performed by successfully implementing the historic tasks for carrying out social revolution at two stages, waging the Fatherland Liberation War, conducting the postwar rehabilitation and construction and laying foundations of socialism, and establishing the Korean-style socialist system centered on the popular masses in the DPRK.

The last four chapters cover the period from January 1961 to July 1994. They deal with the immortal feats the President performed by successfully leading socialist construction of various phases and thereby building a socialist power, independent in politics, self-supporting in the economy and self-reliant in national defence and fully demonstrating its dignity and might.

It's pretty gaggy stuff, and does not provide much confidence that he's telling the truth.

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Immigrants Being More American

Here is an American Enterprise Institute blog post about Jeb Bush's stance on immigration (it seems he is publishing a book on the topic). The AEI is a good place to get the economic conservative (meaning pro) take on immigration.

But there is something funny that I know will never be mentioned in the immigration debate yet is really critical. The argument is that "being American" needs to be more central for citizenship, and that means understanding the foundation of the country, how our institutions were created and how they work now, along with key speeches, I guess beyond the current test. Yet this would not mean these new citizens would be like other Americans, it would mean they are more American, because most native-born Americans do not understand these things.

As a test, please go now and ask the closest person who is chosen to be an elector. If they think you mean dementor, then just go ask someone else.

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Doing "Something" in Latin America

So many op-eds about how the Obama administration needs to do more in Latin America. Here's another in the Financial Times. The main problem is that the suggestions given in all of these articles are actually minimal. In this case, the key policy prescription is to take the FTAs we have, gather them together into a mini FTAA, and then say Brazil can join if it wants. OK, great.

The fact is that despite all the hype, the U.S. trades a lot with Latin America, interacts a lot on a number of issues, but now is increasingly one player among many. And that's good.

I've written about this before, but I keep wondering how much "doing more" reflects a nostalgia for a more hegemonic era. It was our self-proclaimed job to set the political agenda, dictate economic terms to the degree we could, and identify enemies. With more players, that is now much harder to do. And that's good.

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Shortages Are Good!

I am trying to keep an open mind. I really am. But this sort of article, touted by the Venezuelan embassy on Twitter, is tough to swallow (no pun intended). You see, there are food shortages in Venezuela, but that's only because people are eating better. (And this is a switch from denying there are any shortages, or saying shortages exist but blaming the opposition).

Mentioning health improvement is a non sequitur. A healthier population is wonderful, but it strains credulity to suggest Venezuela is eating itself into scarcity. What about the supply side?

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Immigration in Inauguration

For what it's worth, Barack Obama did mention immigration in

Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity -- until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country.

That's not much, but especially in short remarks it matters. With immigration reform there's not much more to say. It's all about Republican electoral incentives.

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The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil

George Saunders' The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil is a really strange and very funny political satire. There are two countries, Outer Horner, and Inner Horner, inhabited by creatures so strange you can barely picture them but with very ordinary names like Phil, Larry, Cal and the like. Inner Horner is so small that only of its citizens can be in there at one time, which then prompts a power hungry Outer Hornerite named Phil to create a crisis for his own violent political benefit.

Nationalist abuses abound, with natural resources becoming the source of conflict. For example, Outer Hornerites have a national drinking song, "Large, Large, Large, Beloved Land (If Not the Best, Why So Very Dominant?)" Phil creates border problems and then blames the Inner Hornerites for being lazy, dirty, and aggressive.

Meanwhile, the media hovers around him, shouting out headlines intended to reflect well on whoever is in power, then dump on those out of power. The political messages are blunt but still entertaining.

Apparently he wrote it on a dare.

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Economic Growth and Presidential Approval

Thanks to Mike Allison for pointing out this story in IPS about the relationship between economic growth and presidential approval in Chile. As I've written about in the past, growth doesn't help you. For Sebastián Piñera low approval has been ascribed to lack of mobilization, inability to handle his image, or problems he inherited from Michelle Bachelet. The IPS story has another explanation:

Mauricio Morales, a political scientist at the Diego Portales University, explained, “The percentage of approval is determined not only by economic indicators but also by a president’s personal traits.”

“Piñera is not perceived as an honest or approachable president,” in contrast to his predecessor, the socialist Michelle Bachelet, who governed from 2006 to 2010 with an approval rate of over 50 percent.

I am uncomfortable with analyses focusing on personal traits, but this is a really unusual situation. Piñera is not terribly different from Bachelet, yet her numbers ended very high after a trough, and his have remained stagnant. If we blame inequality, then we would expect Bachelet to have suffered as well. They are both establishment and moderate, fighting off the extreme wings of their coalition. The core direction of the economy has not changed. This leaves us with largely ad hoc reasoning about the differing outcomes.

We also need to explain why Bachelet was so low in the first part of her term. Personal traits had not changed, nor had inequality or discontent with the economic system.

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Contradictions of Michelle Bachelet

Silvia Borzutzky and I have an article in Journal of Politics in Latin America: "Michelle Bachelet's Government: The Paradoxes of a Chilean President." It follows up on our edited volume and examines the contradiction of seeking to pursue inclusive policies while maintaining elite political consensus.

She is the odds-on favorite to be the next president of Chile, without saying anything about it. Indeed, her failure to say anything says a lot. I think there is a lot of interesting research to be done on presidents who return to office after skipping at least one term. And who could resist doing work that would include mention of Grover Cleveland?

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Raul and Hugo

According to Nicolas Maduro, Hugo Chavez gave orders about relations with the United States:

“President Chavez has given us precise orders, he gave them also to the new foreign minister, our dear comrade Elias Jaua, that we are always disposed to have the best relations with the United States government on the basis of mutual respect and in conditions of relations of equality,” Maduro told Efe.

This sounds very familiar because Raul Castro has used this type of statement almost verbatim many times in the past. In other words, Maduro came back from Cuba to tell the Venezuelan people that the Venezuelan president just wants to do what the Cuban president does.

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In Charge in Venezuela

Both Diosdado Cabello and Nicolas Maduro insist that the latter is not taking any authority himself. Instead, Maduro is simply acting on the orders of the president.

Maduro cited a clause in the constitution that says the vice president may present reports to the legislature if asked to do so by the president.

‘‘Nicolas didn’t come to take the place of the president. He came to bring the documents ... under instructions from the president,’’ Cabello told reporters.

So now we have to consider what constitutes "instructions." Indeed, what does it mean to be in charge? As yet, there is no evidence that Hugo Chavez is conscious. His brother said he was conscious and communicating, yet for some strange reason he does not communicate with the Venezuelan people, and does not sign documents either.

What a strange political limbo. The government goes on as if Chavez were just on vacation, railing on the opposition for even suggesting this is out of the ordinary. But if Chavez is not conscious, who is in charge?

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Cuban migration

Anya Landau French has a very interesting post at The Havana Note about loosening of travel restrictions in Cuba. In particular, if the U.S. continues preferential treatment of Cuban migrants while Cuba allows more visiting, then suddenly the embargo is even less defensible:

Even hard-line Cuban American politicians now have mixed feelings about keeping the door open to Cubans. On the one hand, they need the policy to remain in place because it supports their narrative for continuing the embargo. On the other, they now realize that continuing to leave the door open will be the undoing of the embargo itself. Senator Marco Rubio spelled out this fear more than five years ago when he was still serving in the Florida legislature:

“What makes Cubans different from Haitians who come here or anyone else . . . if they go back and forth, that is to say, if they’re not exiles at all? In that case, why should Cubans be any different? The whole structure would have unraveled had something not been done.”

He is referring to travel restrictions. Part of the embargo's logic is that we can punish the Castros indirectly by hurting Cubans. Yet Cuban Americans' desire to help their own family members immediately makes that problematic. So we have a push to allow people to come to the U.S., with a contradictory push to isolate Cuba economically.

I keep waiting for a reasonable argument to keep the embargo in place, but there are just crickets.

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Kevin Guilfoile's A Drive into the Gap

I am an absolute sucker for good baseball stories. Kevin Guilfoile's A Drive into the Gap is a great one. It's a short non-fiction piece that connects a mystery about which bat Roberto Clemente used for his 3,000th (and last) hit and Guilfoile's father, who worked for the Pirates but now has Alzheimer's. There is some beautiful writing about baseball mingled with the difficulty of watching a father in decline. A father who no longer always recognizes his son, and even sometimes thinks he is a baseball player.

If you like baseball, it's hard to imagine you wouldn't like this.

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Latin American Left Leadership

I think we'll see more articles like this that ponder the leadership of the Latin American left once Hugo Chávez is gone. There's just one problem--Chávez doesn't really lead very much. He doesn't act as a model for Dilma Rousseff, or Michelle Bachelet. When Antanas Mockus made his presidential run, he went out of his way to say he didn't see Chávez as a model. As far as I can tell, he is largely irrelevant in Mexico, where Comandante Marcos is not a big fan.

Chávez is very influential in some countries, but referring to him as "the" leader of a diverse left is inaccurate and misleading. Don't even get me started on whether a "Latin American left" exists.

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Intelligence guesswork in Cuba and Venezuela

Given the speculation about Venezuela, this is remarkable. Read this National Intelligence Estimate of Cuban politics, dated June 14, 1960.

2. Fidel Castro will almost certainly remain in power through 1960, unless he becomes incapacitated to such an extent as to be unable to exercise personal leadership. The opposition to his regime, though growing, is weak and divided and lacks a dynamic leader. Should Fidel Castro depart the scene, a crisis probably would develop in a short time. Raúl Castro and “Che” Guevara would probably seek to carry on, but disaffected elements would almost certainly make a bid for power and there is a better than even chance that the country would be thrown into a period of widespread disorders and bloodshed.

Sound familiar? It is a very useful reminder that all the guesswork is exactly that. And it goes right back to my discussion of "charisma."

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Venezuelan opposition

This piece in the Huffington Post is a really good example of why the Venezuelan opposition will find it hard to impossible to win a snap presidential election if Hugo Chávez dies. The essential argument mirrors U.S. views of Cuba, especially in the 1960s. Back then, U.S. analysts believed that support for the revolution was shallow and that once Fidel Castro was defeated/killed a moderate opposition could establish a popular government that was neither Batista nor Castro (which was really the foundation of the Bay of Pigs invasion).

To that add hagiography of Henrique Capriles.

His formidable discipline, determination and preparedness serve as critical unifying factors. Should snap presidential elections be called, Capriles can effectively seize the initiative and build upon the momentum of his recent campaigns.

If "preparedness" is the best you can offer, you're in trouble. How about actual policy ideas? The article goes on to explain how all the gubernatorial defeats last year don't matter. Plus, all you need to do is "de-Chavezation" and go back to...whatever.

Fortunately for the opposition, not even Capriles makes arguments that stupid. But there will be no presidential victory until the opposition convinces Venezuelans that it does not want to destroy institutions they like. If the electoral system is polarized between left and right, left will win.

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Charisma in Latin America

I had an interesting Twitter discussion with J.F. String (@jf_string) and Roque Planas (@RoqPlanas) with others joining in. It centered on the punditry about Venezuela, and excessive use of "charisma" as an explanatory variable.

The question about "charisma" is interesting. Hugo Chávez is clearly charismatic, but in and of itself that doesn't tell us anything. How do we measure charisma?  It gets tossed around all the time to explain half of what Chávez does, and what his successors can't do (and I am plenty guilty of this). The same was true with countless debates about Fidel and Raúl Castro.

From a social science perspective, however, this gets tricky. There are lots of current Latin American presidents who could be deemed charismatic, but how do we measure that? Is Chávez a 10 on a scale of 10, while Rafael Correa is a 7? How do we determine that, and what does it tell us about what they can or cannot accomplish politically?

The prevailing hypothesis is that the more charisma you have, the more unified you can keep your political movement. Fair enough, but it actually tell us almost nothing even if we can define the term. Charisma is not the only factor involved, so we don't know how much charisma itself matters. Further, it tells us nothing about degree. How much more unified do you become with x charisma?

So, I have lots of questions but not so many answers. It is fine to argue that Hugo Chavez is more charismatic than Nicolas Maduro, and therefore Maduro will have a more difficult time holding the diverse coalition together, as long as we recognize that this is imprecise and tells us very little about specific political outcomes.

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