Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Belated Evidence

In a post last week that generated a fair bit of comments I asked what there wasn't to like about Obama's policy outlines for his second term.  FiveThirtyEight compiles some polls and shows that there is slim majority support for most of the President's proposals.

Polling numbers and the popularity they imply should never be the sole reason for enacting a policy, but in so far as a representative democracy is representative of the people, these polling numbers shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

3 comments:

  1. I don't think the comments ever questioned whether Obama's position on the issues were popular, but rather the wisdom of "completing the Great Society project of progressive forefathers as both Roosevelts and Johnson" in the words of Lexington.

    As for majority support for his proposals, which ones did he make? The speech struck me as an outline of a general vision and goals that did not include any actual proposals for how to achieve this.

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  2. The comments questioned the validity of using the popularity of policies as a complimentary reason for pursuing them.

    As to the some great philosophical debate on the wisdom of completing the Great Society project started by LBJ, I'd suggest we perhaps agree to disagree.

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  3. The comments questioned the validity of using the popularity of policies as a complimentary reason for pursuing them.

    My comments never questioned the popularity of these programs, but rather the wisdom of having them. I still haven't received a clear answer on what popularity has to do with whether a program should exist or not.

    As to the some great philosophical debate on the wisdom of completing the Great Society project started by LBJ, I'd suggest we perhaps agree to disagree.

    My attack on the Great Society and FDR's programs was based on evidence and facts, not philosophy. While I do have a philosophical objection to them as well, that wasn't the focus of my remarks.

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