vox--2020-11-13--The best way to improve schools? Invest in teachers.

How do we improve schools so that kids learn more ?
It ’ s a straightforward question — deceptively so , because improving schools , measuring whether you have improved schools , and writing down a recipe for school improvements that can be successfully used elsewhere is an astonishingly hard problem .
Philanthropists in the US have spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting massive overhauls of the education system , often without improving test scores even a bit .
Investing in “ small schools ” didn ’ t produce the hoped-for gains ; neither did pushes to video and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Educators , meanwhile , have protested that test scores don ’ t even measure the thing we really care about , which is whether students are successfully learning .
Internationally , the situation is even worse .
In many parts of the world , lots of kids don ’ t even get the chance to attend school — and the ones who do often attend profoundly inadequate schools .
By age 10 , 90 percent of children in low-income countries still can not read with comprehension .
Some schools combat extraordinary rates of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ barely learning anything because of an inadequate educational environment .
Lots of things have been tried to improve education in the developing world .
Nonprofits , governments , and researchers have bought students uniforms , paid their scholarships , bought them menstrual products , built more schools , purchased textbooks and technology for schools , paid to reduce class sizes , trained and mentored teachers , and much more .
Research suggests that many of these interventions make a difference .
But figuring out which makes the biggest difference — and which are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — is extraordinarily hard .
That ’ s the subject tackled by a new working paper from the World Bank Group , “ How to Improve Education Outcomes Most Efficiently ?
A Comparison of 150 Interventions Using the New Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling Metric.
” The paper lays out a simple problem : We have an enormous wealth of research studying the effects of school interventions , but not much chance to compare the programs and figure out which one works best .
When researchers compared more than 150 interventions in developing countries @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in teachers is strikingly cost-effective .
It ’ s popular to help students in poor countries by building schools , buying them school uniforms or textbooks , or paying for scholarships .
But , the researchers find , popular interventions like these do not compare favorably to ones that focus on teaching .
If we want to improve schools , the most cost-effective approach is getting teachers professional development and training .
One paper finds that paying for scholarships enables girls to stay in school three years longer .
Another finds that building @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent .
Another finds that students offered a new curriculum are more fluent readers .
Policymakers trying to improve schools in their country can afford to make one of these changes , but not all of them .
Which should they make ?
The current research literature , the World Bank paper argues , is ill-equipped to answer this question for us .
That ’ s because research papers all measure their outcomes in different ways .
Often , research papers describe the impact of their program in terms of an improvement of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in school or improved performance on local test scores .
But we care about how many years students spend in school primarily as a proxy for how they learn .
It ’ s not easy to compare interventions even when they report how much students have learned .
Many papers report how much students improved on a local test , one that isn ’ t necessarily comparable across subjects , age groups , or countries .
“ When we compare studies using standard deviations as our metric , ” the World Bank paper @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the difference in learning levels between the median and 66th-percentile student in a fourth-grade math class in Kenya is equivalent to the difference in learning levels between the median and 66th-percentile student in a twelfth-grade history class in Peru.
” That assumption is obviously mistaken — some countries will have far more variance in student test scores than others — and relying on it will make it harder to figure out which educational interventions work best .
So should we just declare that these outcomes can not be compared to each other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policymakers with finite resources have no way to decide which interventions are best .
Enter the quality-adjusted year of learning .
The idea is to look at how much a student learns in a year of education at a high-quality educational program ( such as Singapore ’ s schools ) .
Then , other interventions can be benchmarked by how many months or years a student would need to spend in a high-quality educational environment to learn the same amount .
“ Learning-adjusted years of schooling translates gains into a format that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Evans , one of the co-authors of the paper , told me .
This simple concept hides a lot of complications , of course .
In applying the quality-adjusted learning framework to the 150 interventions the paper reviewed , the authors had to make lots of assumptions about how more conventional reported results translate to quality-adjusted years of schooling .
But if the framework is widely adopted , then papers will more directly report the information needed to calculate quality-adjusted years of schooling , making it easier for papers to compare results and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it solve all the problems with education intervention research , which will likely continue to be plagued by difficulty in getting similar results from interventions in different contexts .
But if widely adopted , a metric like learning-adjusted years of schooling solves one of the major barriers to researchers learning from each other ’ s results — and it identifies some particularly promising areas where education interventions should get a closer look .
Some educational interventions really stand out in the World Bank team ’ s analysis .
“ Some of the most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ three years of high-quality education ( i.e.
, three years of education in a high-performing country such as Singapore ) for as little as $ 100 per child , ” the paper finds .
Others achieve effectively nothing , with no measurable gains in learning-adjusted years of schooling .
The list of the most cost-effective is a bit surprising .
The paper finds that the interventions that get the most done per dollar are “ information campaigns ” to inform families about reasons their kids should go to school , “ interventions to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that is , teaching kids based on what skills they have already mastered and which skills they ’ re working on — and “ structured lesson plans with linked student materials , teacher professional development , and monitoring.
” To unpack all that a bit more : If students are in a class where they are being taught material that is too easy or too hard , they will not learn .
Encouraging schools to place students based on what skills they have , then , is a highly cost-effective way to improve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how to teach , students won ’ t learn .
So lesson plans , training for teachers , and monitoring to determine which teachers are doing a good job is highly cost-effective .
Finally , explaining to parents and communities why education is important shows promise as a highly cost-effective way to increase the benefits of education ( at least sometimes ) .
“ Highly cost-effective ” can mean that an intervention works exceptionally well and is moderately expensive , or that it only works a little bit but is very cheap .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ but they are very inexpensive compared to lesson plans , teacher training and monitoring , and curriculum development work ; as a result , they end up highly cost-effective .
“ Light touch ” campaigns to tell people about the benefits of educating their kids “ actually can deliver pretty sizable gains , ” Evans told me , though “ there ’ s more variation across those interventions than across some of the pedagogical interventions.
” Information campaigns seem to only work sometimes , and we don ’ t know why they sometimes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ improving teaching quality , by contrast , seems to always work .
Why is investing in teachers so effective ?
The World Bank paper largely doesn ’ t speculate on this , but the papers it cites on curriculum development interventions explain .
In Kenya , for example , one educational intervention that looks fairly cost-effective is the Tusome national literacy program .
It includes national expectations for student performance , classroom visits , and feedback to teachers .
That might all sound very basic .
But in many cases , it reflects @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ For years , if not decades , schools and teachers have operated in virtual isolation from the education system ... accepting the prevailing norm that they are not actually expected to perform their job up to any reasonable standard ( such as , most fundamentally , showing up regularly to teach ) , ” a 2018 paper on Tusome ’ s effects argues .
With no one checking whether teachers showed up or did their jobs , many of them didn ’ t .
A nationwide system for observing teachers and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by making teachers aware that they are in a professional role where they are expected to get results .
Education interventions that are ineffective might not always stay that way Notably , some of the high-profile educational interventions the general public knows the most about don ’ t make the list .
Providing textbooks , for example , is not found in their analysis to have any benefits .
Building schools is not a very cost-effective way to improve education , and scholarships for students to attend aren ’ t , either .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ school uniforms , or give schools technology ( without additional reforms ) have no effect at all .
It is dispiriting to see such poor results for interventions that seem , intuitively , like they ought to make a big difference .
Many nonprofits advertise to donors their work on building schools and getting them needed school supplies .
But rather than discouraging , these reports should mostly be humbling .
Trying to understand how to educate students halfway around the world is hard .
Just because something sounds like a good idea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make a difference .
Of course , the ineffectiveness of those other interventions is contingent on the conditions surrounding them .
Keeping kids in school for more years may do a great deal for them if they have good instruction but might be worthless if quality instruction is not available .
In poor countries , many students attend school for years while still not mastering basic concepts .
Giving textbooks to students who can ’ t read won ’ t do anything , but once we ’ ve increased the share of children @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the impact of giving out textbooks .
Keeping kids in school for longer will likely be much more effective once those schools are effective at teaching , so implementing the most promising reforms identified might open the door for other reforms , making them cost-effective when they aren ’ t right now .
At the same time , we should keep in mind that many education interventions , even ones that seem like a good idea and have preliminary evidence in their favor , likely won ’ t work out .
In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ again to reform education — and they ’ ve often made things worse .
Education is complicated , requiring buy-in from teachers , parents , students , and local communities .
Lots of interventions that seem promising won ’ t work — and that ’ s okay .
The important thing is that we measure results and report them consistently , so researchers can learn from research elsewhere and we can focus our efforts where they ’ ll matter most for kids .
Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter .
Twice a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling our biggest challenges : improving public health , decreasing human and animal suffering , easing catastrophic risks , and — to put it simply — getting better at doing good .

How do we improve schools so that kids learn more?
It’s a straightforward question — deceptively so, because improving schools, measuring whether you have improved schools, and writing down a recipe for school improvements that can be successfully used elsewhere is an astonishingly hard problem.
Philanthropists in the US have spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting massive overhauls of the education system, often without improving test scores even a bit. Investing in “small schools” didn’t produce the hoped-for gains; neither did pushes to video and evaluating teachers or personalized learning programs. Educators, meanwhile, have protested that test scores don’t even measure the thing we really care about, which is whether students are successfully learning.
Internationally, the situation is even worse. In many parts of the world, lots of kids don’t even get the chance to attend school — and the ones who do often attend profoundly inadequate schools. By age 10, 90 percent of children in low-income countries still cannot read with comprehension. Some schools combat extraordinary rates of teacher absenteeism. Kids can go years barely learning anything because of an inadequate educational environment.
Lots of things have been tried to improve education in the developing world. Nonprofits, governments, and researchers have bought students uniforms, paid their scholarships, bought them menstrual products, built more schools, purchased textbooks and technology for schools, paid to reduce class sizes, trained and mentored teachers, and much more. Research suggests that many of these interventions make a difference. But figuring out which makes the biggest difference — and which are cost-effective enough to be worth investing in — is extraordinarily hard.
That’s the subject tackled by a new working paper from the World Bank Group, “How to Improve Education Outcomes Most Efficiently? A Comparison of 150 Interventions Using the New Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling Metric.” The paper lays out a simple problem: We have an enormous wealth of research studying the effects of school interventions, but not much chance to compare the programs and figure out which one works best.
When researchers compared more than 150 interventions in developing countries, one trend stands out: Investing in teachers is strikingly cost-effective. It’s popular to help students in poor countries by building schools, buying them school uniforms or textbooks, or paying for scholarships. But, the researchers find, popular interventions like these do not compare favorably to ones that focus on teaching. If we want to improve schools, the most cost-effective approach is getting teachers professional development and training.
Why it’s hard to compare educational programs
One paper finds that paying for scholarships enables girls to stay in school three years longer. Another finds that building a new school improves attendance by 20 percent. Another finds that students offered a new curriculum are more fluent readers.
Policymakers trying to improve schools in their country can afford to make one of these changes, but not all of them. Which should they make?
The current research literature, the World Bank paper argues, is ill-equipped to answer this question for us. That’s because research papers all measure their outcomes in different ways.
Often, research papers describe the impact of their program in terms of an improvement of either the increase in years students spend in school or improved performance on local test scores. But we care about how many years students spend in school primarily as a proxy for how they learn.
It’s not easy to compare interventions even when they report how much students have learned. Many papers report how much students improved on a local test, one that isn’t necessarily comparable across subjects, age groups, or countries. “When we compare studies using standard deviations as our metric,” the World Bank paper argues, “we impose the assumption that the difference in learning levels between the median and 66th-percentile student in a fourth-grade math class in Kenya is equivalent to the difference in learning levels between the median and 66th-percentile student in a twelfth-grade history class in Peru.”
That assumption is obviously mistaken — some countries will have far more variance in student test scores than others — and relying on it will make it harder to figure out which educational interventions work best.
So should we just declare that these outcomes cannot be compared to each other at all? Doing that means that policymakers with finite resources have no way to decide which interventions are best.
Enter the quality-adjusted year of learning. The idea is to look at how much a student learns in a year of education at a high-quality educational program (such as Singapore’s schools). Then, other interventions can be benchmarked by how many months or years a student would need to spend in a high-quality educational environment to learn the same amount.
“Learning-adjusted years of schooling translates gains into a format that is more accessible to policymakers,” David Evans, one of the co-authors of the paper, told me.
This simple concept hides a lot of complications, of course. In applying the quality-adjusted learning framework to the 150 interventions the paper reviewed, the authors had to make lots of assumptions about how more conventional reported results translate to quality-adjusted years of schooling. But if the framework is widely adopted, then papers will more directly report the information needed to calculate quality-adjusted years of schooling, making it easier for papers to compare results and learn from each other.
Nor does it solve all the problems with education intervention research, which will likely continue to be plagued by difficulty in getting similar results from interventions in different contexts.
But if widely adopted, a metric like learning-adjusted years of schooling solves one of the major barriers to researchers learning from each other’s results — and it identifies some particularly promising areas where education interventions should get a closer look.
Which education interventions work best?
Some educational interventions really stand out in the World Bank team’s analysis. “Some of the most cost-effective interventions can deliver the equivalent of three years of high-quality education (i.e., three years of education in a high-performing country such as Singapore) for as little as $100 per child,” the paper finds. Others achieve effectively nothing, with no measurable gains in learning-adjusted years of schooling.
The list of the most cost-effective is a bit surprising. The paper finds that the interventions that get the most done per dollar are “information campaigns” to inform families about reasons their kids should go to school, “interventions to target teaching instruction by level” — that is, teaching kids based on what skills they have already mastered and which skills they’re working on — and “structured lesson plans with linked student materials, teacher professional development, and monitoring.”
To unpack all that a bit more: If students are in a class where they are being taught material that is too easy or too hard, they will not learn. Encouraging schools to place students based on what skills they have, then, is a highly cost-effective way to improve performance.
If teachers do not know how to teach, students won’t learn. So lesson plans, training for teachers, and monitoring to determine which teachers are doing a good job is highly cost-effective.
Finally, explaining to parents and communities why education is important shows promise as a highly cost-effective way to increase the benefits of education (at least sometimes).
“Highly cost-effective” can mean that an intervention works exceptionally well and is moderately expensive, or that it only works a little bit but is very cheap. Information campaigns are only moderately effective, but they are very inexpensive compared to lesson plans, teacher training and monitoring, and curriculum development work; as a result, they end up highly cost-effective.
“Light touch” campaigns to tell people about the benefits of educating their kids “actually can deliver pretty sizable gains,” Evans told me, though “there’s more variation across those interventions than across some of the pedagogical interventions.” Information campaigns seem to only work sometimes, and we don’t know why they sometimes work and sometimes don’t; improving teaching quality, by contrast, seems to always work.
Why is investing in teachers so effective? The World Bank paper largely doesn’t speculate on this, but the papers it cites on curriculum development interventions explain. In Kenya, for example, one educational intervention that looks fairly cost-effective is the Tusome national literacy program. It includes national expectations for student performance, classroom visits, and feedback to teachers.
That might all sound very basic. But in many cases, it reflects a significant change in how schools operated. “For years, if not decades, schools and teachers have operated in virtual isolation from the education system ... accepting the prevailing norm that they are not actually expected to perform their job up to any reasonable standard (such as, most fundamentally, showing up regularly to teach),” a 2018 paper on Tusome’s effects argues. With no one checking whether teachers showed up or did their jobs, many of them didn’t. A nationwide system for observing teachers and tracking results could be highly effective just by making teachers aware that they are in a professional role where they are expected to get results.
Education interventions that are ineffective might not always stay that way
Notably, some of the high-profile educational interventions the general public knows the most about don’t make the list. Providing textbooks, for example, is not found in their analysis to have any benefits. Building schools is not a very cost-effective way to improve education, and scholarships for students to attend aren’t, either. Efforts to reduce class sizes, provide school uniforms, or give schools technology (without additional reforms) have no effect at all.
It is dispiriting to see such poor results for interventions that seem, intuitively, like they ought to make a big difference. Many nonprofits advertise to donors their work on building schools and getting them needed school supplies. But rather than discouraging, these reports should mostly be humbling. Trying to understand how to educate students halfway around the world is hard. Just because something sounds like a good idea doesn’t mean it will actually make a difference.
Of course, the ineffectiveness of those other interventions is contingent on the conditions surrounding them. Keeping kids in school for more years may do a great deal for them if they have good instruction but might be worthless if quality instruction is not available.
In poor countries, many students attend school for years while still not mastering basic concepts. Giving textbooks to students who can’t read won’t do anything, but once we’ve increased the share of children who can read, that will change the impact of giving out textbooks.
Keeping kids in school for longer will likely be much more effective once those schools are effective at teaching, so implementing the most promising reforms identified might open the door for other reforms, making them cost-effective when they aren’t right now.
At the same time, we should keep in mind that many education interventions, even ones that seem like a good idea and have preliminary evidence in their favor, likely won’t work out. In the US, philanthropists have tried again and again to reform education — and they’ve often made things worse.
Education is complicated, requiring buy-in from teachers, parents, students, and local communities. Lots of interventions that seem promising won’t work — and that’s okay. The important thing is that we measure results and report them consistently, so researchers can learn from research elsewhere and we can focus our efforts where they’ll matter most for kids.
Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter. Twice a week, you’ll get a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling our biggest challenges: improving public health, decreasing human and animal suffering, easing catastrophic risks, and — to put it simply — getting better at doing good.


vox--2020-11-13--Joe Biden needs to avoid a return to “eat your peas” budgeting

A bipartisan deal is President-elect Joe Biden ’ s only hope to get the kind of enormous Covid-19 relief bill and the dream of an “ FDR-size presidency ” that he wants .
But bipartisanship doesn ’ t mean Democrats should return to the deficit-slashing , grand-bargaining approach that failed under President Barack Obama .
There ’ s a better option .
The election results are on course to set up a divided government , with a Democratic president , a thin Democratic majority in the House , and a thin Republican majority in the Senate , or , best @ @ @ @ @ @ @ majority .
Republicans would prefer a small relief bill if they provide any at all , with principled skepticism about government spending now aligning with a cynical lack of interest in seeing Biden preside over an economic boom .
And even if something gets done on relief , the bitter fiscal policy fights won ’ t end there .
As one veteran of Obama-era battles tells me , it ’ ll be “ trench warfare on appropriations and debt limit ” starting with the expiration of government funding this December and continuing to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Under the circumstances , Democrats could understandably be tempted to turn to the hoary Obama-era trope of deficit-reduction negotiating .
After all , when Donald Trump became president , one of the Republican Party ’ s key policy objectives was to cut long-term Medicare spending .
With Trump in office , that priority went away , but the desire didn ’ t .
Mitch McConnell simply pivoted to the theory that once Republicans were done cutting taxes , entitlement reform would have to be done on a bipartisan basis , seemingly concluding from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to these issues is less viable than he and Paul Ryan thought in the Obama era .
Biden , meanwhile , was a serious deficit hawk for most of his Senate career , and several of his current top advisers , including Bruce Reed and Jeff Zients , were deeply involved in Obama-era deficit reduction drives .
These could add up to a scenario where Republicans insist on spending cuts in government funding deals while Democrats argue that deficit reduction should feature tax increases too in order to be balanced and fair .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democratic side , make it essentially impossible for a Biden administration to solve any big problems , and very likely founder on the basic reality that Republicans are fanatically opposed to taxing the rich .
There is an alternative to “ eat your peas ” politics — a push for a different kind of bipartisan deal in which , rather than giving up on progressive spending priorities , Biden tries to secure support for them by giving in to big , GOP-friendly tax cuts .
The Democratic economic policy wonks I ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mostly because they insist Republicans would never go for it .
The Republicans are more optimistic — though they concede it ’ s dicey .
Call it an ice cream party , the opposite of eating your peas .
Certainly it might fail .
But given the economic fundamentals , it ’ s worth a shot .
The country can afford ice cream for everyone Democrats , with good reason , generally do not believe that large tax cuts for rich people are a good idea .
They ’ ve also struggled for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ why they ’ re a bad idea .
But left-wing Democrats hate inequality while more moderate ones are suspicious of deficits .
Way back in a 2006 speech , for example , then-Sen. Barack Obama complained about George W. Bush ’ s policies that “ over the past five years , our federal debt has increased by $ 3.5 trillion to $ 8.6 trillion .
That is ‘ trillion ’ with a ‘ T , ’ ” he reminded us , saying “ that is money that we have borrowed from the Social @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Japan , borrowed from American taxpayers.
” In retrospect , it ’ s truly remarkable how much money was spent during Bush ’ s first term with so little to show for it .
Two rounds of tax cuts plus two wars — one with few successes and high human costs and the other a catastrophic failure — did not deliver much of a return on the $ 5 trillion invested .
But the deficits themselves were fine — finding people to lend the American government money was easy , and did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ else power over us .
The interest rate investors charged on the federal debt was not especially high at the time Obama complained , and it ’ s only fallen since then across the financial crisis , stimulus , failed efforts at grant bargain , Trump tax cuts , pandemic , and more stimulus .
In particular , debt service payments as a share of GDP have plummeted since the 1980s and 1990s and are currently falling rather than rising .
The upshot is that the practical limit on the government ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , not economic .
Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats initially proposed the $ 3.4 trillion HEROES Act , which was much more than Republicans were willing to spend ( some Democratic economists also quietly tell me it was legitimately more than needed ) .
They then lowered their bid to a $ 2.2 trillion package , while Mnuchin countered with a $ 1.8 trillion proposal .
McConnell ’ s last offer was at $ 650 billion , and his position will probably become stingier given the election .
Realistically , even the smallest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country .
And even the largest of them is affordable .
But while Republicans obviously aren ’ t going to agree to a giant spending increase just to be nice , they might do it in exchange for a giant tax cut .
Back in 2001 and 2003 , George W. Bush wanted to enact tax cuts , and he wanted to do it using the budget reconciliation process to avoid a Democratic filibuster .
But to qualify for reconciliation treatment , a law can ’ t raise the long-term budget deficit .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ taxes for nine years and then have them go back to Clinton-era levels in 2011 .
Their thinking was that they could then campaign on extending the tax cuts later .
And so they did , but that didn ’ t stop Barack Obama from winning in 2008 and threatening to block their extension .
Then in the lame-duck session after the 2010 midterms , Obama agreed to extend the tax cuts for two more years in exchange for Republicans doing a bit more fiscal stimulus .
After Obama won again in 2012 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ another deal — extending most of the Bush tax cuts but raising taxes on families earning over $ 450,000 and again getting a bit more stimulus .
Then in 2017 , Republicans pulled another version of the same move — pairing an unpopular permanent cut in corporate taxes with temporary cuts in individual income taxes , figuring they could run on extending them during the 2024 campaign .
But now Biden will be president , Democrats still control the House , incumbent presidents usually get reelected , and the odds of these cuts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , such as the increased generosity of the child tax credit , have bipartisan support ) are decent .
In an “ ice cream for everyone ” scenario , instead of offsetting his spending ideas by rolling back the Trump tax cuts , Biden could consider doing the opposite : swapping his spending ideas for the GOP ’ s tax ideas .
Now , make no mistake , permanently extending these tax cuts is an expensive proposition — costing over $ 1 trillion , according to the Tax Policy Center — and it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ larger benefits to people in the top 20 percent of the income spectrum than to those in need .
But while this is not by any means a good idea , it ’ s also far from clear that it would be harmful .
Current interest rates are very low , and they are likely to stay low for some time .
The Federal Reserve recently adopted a new framework it calls Average Inflation Targeting ( AIT ) , which critics , like David Reifschneider and David Wilcox of the Peterson Institute for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a “ weak tool to deal with recession.
” Under the old framework , the Fed ’ s promise when inflation slipped below the 2 percent target rate was to restore it to 2 percent as quickly as possible .
Under the new framework , the Fed promises to make up for past undershooting by allowing inflation to overshoot 2 percent before it raises rates .
That ’ s a weak tool because it only very indirectly inspires anyone in the private sector to go spend more money .
But what AIT does @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Congress in the form of a guarantee that a strongly stimulated economy won ’ t be offset by immediate interest rate hikes .
An even more expensive idea , at least in the short term , would be permanent extension of a Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provision allowing businesses to immediately write off the full cost of their capital investments .
The short-term cost of this is very high because you ’ re losing a big chunk of corporate tax revenue .
But the longer-term cost is considerably lower because , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tax Foundation point out , those investments do get written off over time under the current tax code anyway .
Over an infinite time horizon , the revenue is essentially the same , though in any finite span of time you raise less with immediate expensing .
The combination of high short-term costs and modest long-term ones could make something like this an ideal component of an ice cream party .
Can Democrats get over their love of targeting ?
I floated the ice cream party concept past three Democratic economists who were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the White House or congressional side , and they all said Republicans wouldn ’ t go for it ( given the résumé-swapping going around the transition period , nobody wants to be quoted on the record about anything controversial ) .
These are not austerity fans or entitlement reform enthusiasts ; they just think bargaining is much more likely to be small-ball stuff like the 2015 tax extender deal rather than a huge multitrillion-dollar package .
On the other hand , two Republicans involved in tax policy said they were intrigued personally , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the politics .
One issue is simply that Democrats have traditionally been leery of this kind of thing .
In 2008 , Democratic experts adopted the slogan that fiscal stimulus should be “ timely , targeted , and temporary ” — i.e.
, focused on quick transfers of cash into the hands of the people most likely to spend it .
The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was based on those principles , and the $ 600-a-week bonus unemployment insurance program in the CARES Act was perhaps their ultimate expression .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It went to people who had urgent financial needs ( targeted ) .
And then it went away ( temporary ) .
Normally the Democratic wonks need to synthesize this view with Democratic Party elected officials ’ desire to recreate their understanding of an FDR-style public works drive .
But both the wonks and the hacks are united in their opposition to the conservative view that long-term investment tax cuts are a good idea .
As Samantha Jacoby and Kathleen Bryant wrote of full expensing proposals for the Center on Budget and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resources would be far better spent on more effective fiscal stimulus tools.
” The implicit model is that there is some fixed sum of stimulus , and it ’ s important for the stimulus to be well targeted so you get the most bang for your buck .
The ice cream party way of thinking : The amount of stimulus available is limited by what congressional Republicans are willing to do , so it doesn ’ t matter if their ideas are bad — it only matters if they are willing to pair @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are they ?
Can Congress do more than electioneering ?
The fundamental issue is that electoral politics is zero-sum in a way that policymaking is not .
Currently , the United States is enjoying very low interest rates , which makes it extremely affordable to enact costly measures .
Under the circumstances , the opportunity is clearly available for a win-win deal in which everyone gets to do something big that they are excited about .
The parties don ’ t need to agree about what flavor of ice cream to eat ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gets some ice cream .
Reasonable people can disagree about which flavor would be helping the economy , but it ’ s pretty clear that one would in fact help the economy .
But that gets us to electoral politics , which is zero-sum .
Only one person can win any given election .
And it ’ s not obvious that Republicans would want to see a lot of successful policymaking happen in the Biden years .
Consider that early in Trump ’ s term , it was common for Democrats to worry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ completely reasonable infrastructure proposal .
If that happened , they ’ d have no choice but to agree and then Trump could become a popular and successful leader .
Instinctively , Democrats will completely reject any analogy between the threat of a popular and successful Trump ( an authoritarian proto-fascist in their view ) and a popular and successful Biden ( a kindly old moderate in their view ) .
But Republicans may take a different view of things .
This , however , is why putting permanent tax cuts on the table @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
That would be a really big policy win for Republicans .
Big enough that Democrats will find it genuinely painful , but by the same token big enough that Republicans could find it genuinely tempting .
Maybe they won ’ t go for it .
But more likely , Democrats won ’ t even attempt to broach the subject — preferring to stick to targeted measures , settle for less if necessary , and potentially fall back to “ eat your peas ” efforts to reduce rather than increase the long-term deficit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ successful Biden administration is the ice cream party , and if there ’ s one thing we know about Joe Biden , it ’ s that he likes ice cream .

A bipartisan deal is President-elect Joe Biden’s only hope to get the kind of enormous Covid-19 relief bill and the dream of an “FDR-size presidency” that he wants. But bipartisanship doesn’t mean Democrats should return to the deficit-slashing, grand-bargaining approach that failed under President Barack Obama. There’s a better option.
The election results are on course to set up a divided government, with a Democratic president, a thin Democratic majority in the House, and a thin Republican majority in the Senate, or, best case for Democrats, a single-vote Senate majority.
Republicans would prefer a small relief bill if they provide any at all, with principled skepticism about government spending now aligning with a cynical lack of interest in seeing Biden preside over an economic boom.
And even if something gets done on relief, the bitter fiscal policy fights won’t end there. As one veteran of Obama-era battles tells me, it’ll be “trench warfare on appropriations and debt limit” starting with the expiration of government funding this December and continuing to August’s statutory debt ceiling.
Under the circumstances, Democrats could understandably be tempted to turn to the hoary Obama-era trope of deficit-reduction negotiating. After all, when Donald Trump became president, one of the Republican Party’s key policy objectives was to cut long-term Medicare spending. With Trump in office, that priority went away, but the desire didn’t.
Mitch McConnell simply pivoted to the theory that once Republicans were done cutting taxes, entitlement reform would have to be done on a bipartisan basis, seemingly concluding from the Trump experience that a one-party approach to these issues is less viable than he and Paul Ryan thought in the Obama era.
Biden, meanwhile, was a serious deficit hawk for most of his Senate career, and several of his current top advisers, including Bruce Reed and Jeff Zients, were deeply involved in Obama-era deficit reduction drives.
These could add up to a scenario where Republicans insist on spending cuts in government funding deals while Democrats argue that deficit reduction should feature tax increases too in order to be balanced and fair. This would exacerbate party tensions on the Democratic side, make it essentially impossible for a Biden administration to solve any big problems, and very likely founder on the basic reality that Republicans are fanatically opposed to taxing the rich.
There is an alternative to “eat your peas” politics — a push for a different kind of bipartisan deal in which, rather than giving up on progressive spending priorities, Biden tries to secure support for them by giving in to big, GOP-friendly tax cuts.
The Democratic economic policy wonks I’ve floated this by are skeptical, but mostly because they insist Republicans would never go for it. The Republicans are more optimistic — though they concede it’s dicey. Call it an ice cream party, the opposite of eating your peas. Certainly it might fail. But given the economic fundamentals, it’s worth a shot.
The country can afford ice cream for everyone
Democrats, with good reason, generally do not believe that large tax cuts for rich people are a good idea. They’ve also struggled for the past two decades to explain exactly why they’re a bad idea. But left-wing Democrats hate inequality while more moderate ones are suspicious of deficits.
Way back in a 2006 speech, for example, then-Sen. Barack Obama complained about George W. Bush’s policies that “over the past five years, our federal debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to $8.6 trillion. That is ‘trillion’ with a ‘T,’” he reminded us, saying “that is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American taxpayers.”
In retrospect, it’s truly remarkable how much money was spent during Bush’s first term with so little to show for it. Two rounds of tax cuts plus two wars — one with few successes and high human costs and the other a catastrophic failure — did not deliver much of a return on the $5 trillion invested.
But the deficits themselves were fine — finding people to lend the American government money was easy, and did not give China or Japan or anyone else power over us.
The interest rate investors charged on the federal debt was not especially high at the time Obama complained, and it’s only fallen since then across the financial crisis, stimulus, failed efforts at grant bargain, Trump tax cuts, pandemic, and more stimulus.
In particular, debt service payments as a share of GDP have plummeted since the 1980s and 1990s and are currently falling rather than rising.
The upshot is that the practical limit on the government’s ability to deliver fiscal stimulus is political, not economic. Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats initially proposed the $3.4 trillion HEROES Act, which was much more than Republicans were willing to spend (some Democratic economists also quietly tell me it was legitimately more than needed). They then lowered their bid to a $2.2 trillion package, while Mnuchin countered with a $1.8 trillion proposal. McConnell’s last offer was at $650 billion, and his position will probably become stingier given the election.
Realistically, even the smallest of these relief packages would help the country. And even the largest of them is affordable. But while Republicans obviously aren’t going to agree to a giant spending increase just to be nice, they might do it in exchange for a giant tax cut.
Republicans never finished their tax cut ice cream
Back in 2001 and 2003, George W. Bush wanted to enact tax cuts, and he wanted to do it using the budget reconciliation process to avoid a Democratic filibuster. But to qualify for reconciliation treatment, a law can’t raise the long-term budget deficit. So Republicans wrote a bill to cut taxes for nine years and then have them go back to Clinton-era levels in 2011.
Their thinking was that they could then campaign on extending the tax cuts later.
And so they did, but that didn’t stop Barack Obama from winning in 2008 and threatening to block their extension. Then in the lame-duck session after the 2010 midterms, Obama agreed to extend the tax cuts for two more years in exchange for Republicans doing a bit more fiscal stimulus. After Obama won again in 2012, there was another standoff, and another deal — extending most of the Bush tax cuts but raising taxes on families earning over $450,000 and again getting a bit more stimulus.
Then in 2017, Republicans pulled another version of the same move — pairing an unpopular permanent cut in corporate taxes with temporary cuts in individual income taxes, figuring they could run on extending them during the 2024 campaign.
But now Biden will be president, Democrats still control the House, incumbent presidents usually get reelected, and the odds of these cuts mostly being reversed (a few provisions, such as the increased generosity of the child tax credit, have bipartisan support) are decent. In an “ice cream for everyone” scenario, instead of offsetting his spending ideas by rolling back the Trump tax cuts, Biden could consider doing the opposite: swapping his spending ideas for the GOP’s tax ideas.
Now, make no mistake, permanently extending these tax cuts is an expensive proposition — costing over $1 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center — and it’s very regressive, delivering much larger benefits to people in the top 20 percent of the income spectrum than to those in need.
But while this is not by any means a good idea, it’s also far from clear that it would be harmful. Current interest rates are very low, and they are likely to stay low for some time. The Federal Reserve recently adopted a new framework it calls Average Inflation Targeting (AIT), which critics, like David Reifschneider and David Wilcox of the Peterson Institute for International Finance, warned pre-Covid would be a “weak tool to deal with recession.”
Under the old framework, the Fed’s promise when inflation slipped below the 2 percent target rate was to restore it to 2 percent as quickly as possible. Under the new framework, the Fed promises to make up for past undershooting by allowing inflation to overshoot 2 percent before it raises rates. That’s a weak tool because it only very indirectly inspires anyone in the private sector to go spend more money. But what AIT does is hand a very powerful tool to Congress in the form of a guarantee that a strongly stimulated economy won’t be offset by immediate interest rate hikes.
An even more expensive idea, at least in the short term, would be permanent extension of a Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provision allowing businesses to immediately write off the full cost of their capital investments.
The short-term cost of this is very high because you’re losing a big chunk of corporate tax revenue. But the longer-term cost is considerably lower because, as Kyle Pomerleau and Scott Greenberg of the Tax Foundation point out, those investments do get written off over time under the current tax code anyway. Over an infinite time horizon, the revenue is essentially the same, though in any finite span of time you raise less with immediate expensing. The combination of high short-term costs and modest long-term ones could make something like this an ideal component of an ice cream party.
Can Democrats get over their love of targeting?
I floated the ice cream party concept past three Democratic economists who were involved in Obama-era budget negotiations on either the White House or congressional side, and they all said Republicans wouldn’t go for it (given the résumé-swapping going around the transition period, nobody wants to be quoted on the record about anything controversial).
These are not austerity fans or entitlement reform enthusiasts; they just think bargaining is much more likely to be small-ball stuff like the 2015 tax extender deal rather than a huge multitrillion-dollar package.
On the other hand, two Republicans involved in tax policy said they were intrigued personally, though they were also fairly skeptical of the politics.
One issue is simply that Democrats have traditionally been leery of this kind of thing. In 2008, Democratic experts adopted the slogan that fiscal stimulus should be “timely, targeted, and temporary” — i.e., focused on quick transfers of cash into the hands of the people most likely to spend it.
The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was based on those principles, and the $600-a-week bonus unemployment insurance program in the CARES Act was perhaps their ultimate expression. The money started flowing fast (timely). It went to people who had urgent financial needs (targeted). And then it went away (temporary). Normally the Democratic wonks need to synthesize this view with Democratic Party elected officials’ desire to recreate their understanding of an FDR-style public works drive. But both the wonks and the hacks are united in their opposition to the conservative view that long-term investment tax cuts are a good idea.
As Samantha Jacoby and Kathleen Bryant wrote of full expensing proposals for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in June, “Those resources would be far better spent on more effective fiscal stimulus tools.” The implicit model is that there is some fixed sum of stimulus, and it’s important for the stimulus to be well targeted so you get the most bang for your buck.
The ice cream party way of thinking: The amount of stimulus available is limited by what congressional Republicans are willing to do, so it doesn’t matter if their ideas are bad — it only matters if they are willing to pair their ideas with your ideas.
But are they?
Can Congress do more than electioneering?
The fundamental issue is that electoral politics is zero-sum in a way that policymaking is not.
Currently, the United States is enjoying very low interest rates, which makes it extremely affordable to enact costly measures. Under the circumstances, the opportunity is clearly available for a win-win deal in which everyone gets to do something big that they are excited about. The parties don’t need to agree about what flavor of ice cream to eat; they just need to agree that everyone gets some ice cream. Reasonable people can disagree about which flavor would be helping the economy, but it’s pretty clear that one would in fact help the economy.
But that gets us to electoral politics, which is zero-sum. Only one person can win any given election. And it’s not obvious that Republicans would want to see a lot of successful policymaking happen in the Biden years.
Consider that early in Trump’s term, it was common for Democrats to worry that the White House might unveil a completely reasonable infrastructure proposal. If that happened, they’d have no choice but to agree and then Trump could become a popular and successful leader.
Instinctively, Democrats will completely reject any analogy between the threat of a popular and successful Trump (an authoritarian proto-fascist in their view) and a popular and successful Biden (a kindly old moderate in their view).
But Republicans may take a different view of things. This, however, is why putting permanent tax cuts on the table in a deal could be so potent. That would be a really big policy win for Republicans. Big enough that Democrats will find it genuinely painful, but by the same token big enough that Republicans could find it genuinely tempting.
Maybe they won’t go for it. But more likely, Democrats won’t even attempt to broach the subject — preferring to stick to targeted measures, settle for less if necessary, and potentially fall back to “eat your peas” efforts to reduce rather than increase the long-term deficit. But the best route to a successful Biden administration is the ice cream party, and if there’s one thing we know about Joe Biden, it’s that he likes ice cream.


vox--2020-11-13--The crisis isn’t Trump. It’s the Republican Party.

The most alarming aspect of the past week is not Donald Trump ’ s anti-democratic efforts .
He is doing exactly what he has always done , exactly what he said he would do .
It ’ s the speed at which Republican elites have consolidated support around him .
Without the Republican Party ’ s support , Trump is just the loser of an election , ranting ineffectually about theft as a way to rationalize defeat .
With the Republican Party ’ s support , he ’ s a danger to the country .
Some Republicans , like Lindsey @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s claims .
On Monday , the South Carolina senator said that Trump should not concede the election and that “ Republicans win because of our ideas and we lose elections because [ Democrats ] cheat.
” Others — including Vice President Mike Pence and Sens .
Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley — have signaled solidarity with the president , while not quite endorsing his conspiracy theories .
The message is clear : When faced with the choice of loyalty to Trump and the legitimacy of the democratic process , Republicans are more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bus .
Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for the Atlantic , a senior fellow of international affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies , and most recently the author of Twilight of Democracy : The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism .
In it , Applebaum , once comfortable in center-right elite circles , grapples with why so many of her contemporaries across the globe — including right here in America — have abandoned liberal democracy in favor of strongman cults and autocratic regimes .
We discuss why most politicians under @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the regime , how Graham went from outspoken Trump critic to one of Trump ’ s most vocal supporters in the US Senate , why the Republican Party ultimately took the path of Sarah Palin , what we can expect to happen if and when a much more capable demagogue emerges , and much more .
A lightly edited excerpt from our conversation follows .
The full conversation can be heard on The Ezra Klein Show .
Subscribe to The Ezra Klein Show wherever you listen to podcasts , including Apple Podcasts , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
How do you think we would cover what Trump and the Republican Party are doing and saying right now if it were happening in another country ?
If this were happening in another country , we would be talking about a populist authoritarian seeking to create disillusion with democracy in his country in order to have a base of supporters who will help him return to power .
But I don ’ t think we have to talk about it as if it were another country .
I ’ m very happy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would use if this were happening in Brazil or Argentina or anywhere else .
I think that Americans — and I would include myself in this — have had an implicit exceptionalism in the way we understood our country ’ s immunity to some of the political trends and dangers that afflict other countries .
As if authoritarianism can ’ t happen here , as if our parties can ’ t turn against democracy here .
That just no longer seems true .
Is it time for Americans to be disabused of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to our system , our political culture ?
This is a conclusion that I came to several years ago through the agonizing personal experience of living in Poland and watching one of the political parties here become a populist authoritarian party .
Watching it try to undermine democracy , undermine the courts , undermine the media once it came to power .
And then , glancing over at the United States and realizing that I was seeing many of the same things .
I think you ’ re absolutely right .
I think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s also partly our incredible luck over the past six or seven decades .
We had a stable democracy , we had an expansion of prosperity , we were the leading country in the world , and others were following us .
And we somehow came to assume that it was always going to be like that — just because it had been like that for 60 or 70 years , it would go on indefinitely .
We forget that even in our own history , we had previous moments when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a civil war .
And even if you look at our own Constitution , it was written by people who also had doubts about democracy and also wondered whether it would succeed .
One of the reasons we have some of the odd institutions that we do is that the Founding Fathers were people who had doubts about human nature , who wanted checks and balances , who wanted some control over the president , who were reading Greek and Roman history where there were lots of stories of democracy going wrong .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ system from the very beginning .
I think that the last several decades have blinded us to our own history and our own origins .
I want to put my cards on the table for a moment : I don ’ t find Donald Trump very interesting in this story .
I think what he is is known .
He ’ s a very familiar type historically .
What I am interested in is how quickly the Republican Party has fallen to somebody like Trump .
The architecture of your book is about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people who fought alongside you against tyrannies and strongmen for liberal democracy — become functionaries in populist-right , authoritarian parties , and often authoritarians themselves .
Why do you think that happens ?
What separates the people who end up as dissidents in those moments from those who become functionaries in them or accommodate themselves to them ?
I ’ ve tried to stay away from sweeping vast generalizations .
But there is one sentiment , I think , that links the people who were once part of the center-right — the anti-communist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — and who began to change in a different direction over the past decade or so : disappointment .
These are very often people who are disappointed , and they are almost always disappointed with their society .
Whether it ’ s the superficiality of modern democracy , the demographic change that they don ’ t want or like , the decline in morals and values that they see all around them , or , in the case of Britain , England ’ s loss of its voice in the world .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disappointment , and sometimes it ’ s quite an extreme form of disappointment — a kind of despair .
“ My society has ended.
” I think anybody who has that view of the contemporary world — that it ’ s over , it ’ s finished , my civilization is dead and gone , my society is decayed — leads you almost inevitably into a kind of radicalism .
If you have that feeling that it ’ s over , then why wouldn ’ t you try to smash everything ?
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Party , I think you could cut people into three groups .
There are the people who liked Donald Trump from the beginning , or bought into an apocalyptic understanding of America that Donald Trump seemed to share .
A good example is Patrick Buchanan .
Then there are people who don ’ t have unbelievably strong feelings about Donald Trump , but they really hate the left .
They ’ re the anti-anti-Trumpers .
And their dislike for the left is enough to make them make peace with him .
I would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But the people I ’ m most interested in are the people who saw exactly what Donald Trump is and loathed it and then also accommodated it .
Somebody I want to use here as a case study , because you ’ ve written about him and I ’ ve spent some time reporting about him , is Lindsey Graham .
He ran against Donald Trump in 2016 and called him “ a race-baiting , xenophobic , religious bigot.
” And he said , “ if we nominate Trump , we ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ll deserve it.
” Now , he ’ s out there telling Trump not to concede the election .
He ’ s saying that if Republicans concede , they ’ ll never win again .
He ’ s telling Sean Hannity that Democrats only win elections when they cheat .
What do you think happened to Lindsey Graham ?
Lindsey Graham is particularly difficult to explain when you look at his background .
If you were to look at him as a type , you would imagine him to be the most loyal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He has a very strong affiliation to the military .
He got through college on a military scholarship .
His parents died when he was young , so he had a hard-knock story and was saved by the American military .
And he ’ s said that many times .
If you were to imagine a type of person who would never betray American ideals , it would be Lindsey Graham .
But this is where you have to get into questions of personality and personal weakness .
Graham is clearly someone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
For many , many years , he was John McCain ’ s sidekick .
And in those years , he was a McCain Republican .
I saw him at conferences in Europe where he talked about America ’ s role in the world , America promoting democracy .
And then when McCain died , he seemed to need another role and he attached himself to Trump .
He appears to like the role of a power broker .
When he runs into journalists in Washington , he likes recounting how he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
So the feeling of being close to power , of being next to someone important , this seems like a role that he is psychologically attached to playing .
It ’ s a recognizable personality type .
If you look at the story of other nations that have been occupied by others or where people are part of political systems that they don ’ t admire , you will always find people like Lindsey Graham who give up their ideas , who move close to power , and who then seek to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new system benefiting them .
My understanding of Graham — and I spent a bit of time with him over the years — is that in the middle of the Trump era , as he began to make this transition , his explanation was if he flattered Trump enough , he could direct Trump in important ways on things that are important to him , particularly foreign policy .
This ends up failing .
The abandonment of the Kurds , for instance , was a huge blow to Graham .
But he does @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and from what I understand , there was a certain level of realpolitik about that .
And then slowly it became something other than that .
He began to look at things through new eyes .
He was very radicalized by the Kavanaugh [ Supreme Court ] hearings .
He ’ s out there telling people that the thing about the left is they hate us .
All the smart people out there , they hate us .
Something that you emphasize in the book is the way that cooperating with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not of one big decision to change sides , but of a series of small decisions , a series of small accommodations .
And eventually you wake up and you ’ re on the other side .
Can you talk a little bit about that process ?
There ’ s actually social science studies of this and usually it ’ s done in the form of examining corruption inside companies .
How do people end up going along with corruption if their company is carrying out some kind of scam ?
The studies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ step-by-step process .
You accept one aspect of it : “ Well , everybody else is keeping double books , so I can , too .
That ’ s just what people do in this company , and it ’ s normal.
” And then the next step is : “ I ’ ll do this transaction in cash and I ’ ll keep it in the drawer .
And I ’ m still a good person ; I ’ m still a good worker .
I ’ m doing this to help @ @ @ @ @ @ @ keep its head above water.
” As each step becomes normalized , as people get used to the situation , then they can take the next step .
This is very similar to what happens in occupied countries .
I ’ m not saying that the United States is Vichy France or occupied East Germany .
But these are useful parallels to look at because they show you what human psychology is like when someone is working inside a system whose ideology they previously disagreed with or disliked .
You see the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also happened inside the Republican Party : People who thought of themselves as patriots , as good people — as politicians working in the interest of the United States — made small decisions over time , each time reminding themselves of why what they were doing was for the good of the country .
For Lindsey Graham , it was : I ’ m here to guide Donald Trump in the right direction .
And then , at each stage , the situation becomes normalized .
Eventually Lindsey Graham came to see his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he had to fight against .
He still probably thinks he ’ s playing the same role — that he ’ s a good person fighting for American values — even though what he ’ s doing is almost precisely the opposite of what he said he would do or the kind of person that he was four years ago .
I want to talk about one of those decision trees that I think is happening right now , which has to do with the stolen election narrative that is taking hold among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ simply saying outright , in all caps , that he won the election and that the election has been stolen .
There are some Republicans , like Graham , who are siding with him explicitly on that .
But many of the others are doing something that I would describe as signaling emotional solidarity with Trump ’ s claims while not quite buying into them but not disputing them either .
On Saturday , Marco Rubio tweeted , “ The media can project an election winner , but they don ’ t get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ laws & irregularities are true .
That is decided by the courts and on the basis of clear evidence and the law.
” I agree with everything in that tweet .
But the point of that tweet is to signal solidarity with a president saying something quite different .
I think there is a belief among many elected Republicans right now that their base needs to grieve the election , that Donald Trump needs to grieve the election , and so it ’ s best to indulge the idea that it might have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ law slowly , let the courts shut that down , and then you can move on in a less emotionally traumatic way for your base .
I just don ’ t think they ’ re going to be able to control it in that way .
I think this is going to overtake them just like all the other conspiracies have overtaken them .
But I ’ m curious , do you have sympathy for that view ?
Is there something to be said for that strategy ?
I ’ m afraid that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bit more sinister than that .
I think that — certainly on Trump ’ s part , and other Republicans are probably coming to see this the same way as well — this is an attempt to create a new kind of base : an enraged receiving base , which will always think that the election was stolen and which will always assume that something went wrong and will always feel that they were deprived of something .
And this base will then have uses in the future .
I don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican Party .
I can ’ t tell you right now how many of them it will be .
But it will be a significant number of people .
And in some congressional districts and some states , it could even be a majority .
And this will be a base that is usable .
This will be a base that not only dislikes the Democratic Party or disagrees with them , it will think that the Democratic Party is evil and anti-democratic — that they have stolen the election .
Think about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they aren ’ t even a legitimate political party .
It means that there is a base of people who will be not just skeptical of mainstream media — whatever you think mainstream media is , which may even include Fox now .
They will be not just skeptical of Fox , CNN , MSNBC , the New York Times , and the Philadelphia Inquirer .
They will think all of those institutions are part of a deliberately constructed conspiracy to steal the presidency .
And that kind of feeling — that conviction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just wrong , it ’ s evil and traitorous — that ’ s then a useful group of people who can be motivated politically and maybe in other ways in the future .

The most alarming aspect of the past week is not Donald Trump’s anti-democratic efforts. He is doing exactly what he has always done, exactly what he said he would do. It’s the speed at which Republican elites have consolidated support around him. Without the Republican Party’s support, Trump is just the loser of an election, ranting ineffectually about theft as a way to rationalize defeat. With the Republican Party’s support, he’s a danger to the country.
Some Republicans, like Lindsey Graham, have wholeheartedly endorsed Trump’s claims. On Monday, the South Carolina senator said that Trump should not concede the election and that “Republicans win because of our ideas and we lose elections because [Democrats] cheat.” Others — including Vice President Mike Pence and Sens. Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley — have signaled solidarity with the president, while not quite endorsing his conspiracy theories. The message is clear: When faced with the choice of loyalty to Trump and the legitimacy of the democratic process, Republicans are more than willing to throw democracy under the bus.
Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for the Atlantic, a senior fellow of international affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and most recently the author of Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. In it, Applebaum, once comfortable in center-right elite circles, grapples with why so many of her contemporaries across the globe — including right here in America — have abandoned liberal democracy in favor of strongman cults and autocratic regimes.
We discuss why most politicians under increasingly autocratic regimes choose to collaborate with the regime, how Graham went from outspoken Trump critic to one of Trump’s most vocal supporters in the US Senate, why the Republican Party ultimately took the path of Sarah Palin, what we can expect to happen if and when a much more capable demagogue emerges, and much more.
A lightly edited excerpt from our conversation follows. The full conversation can be heard on The Ezra Klein Show.
Subscribe to The Ezra Klein Show wherever you listen to podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.
Ezra Klein
How do you think we would cover what Trump and the Republican Party are doing and saying right now if it were happening in another country?
Anne Applebaum
If this were happening in another country, we would be talking about a populist authoritarian seeking to create disillusion with democracy in his country in order to have a base of supporters who will help him return to power. But I don’t think we have to talk about it as if it were another country. I’m very happy to use the same language that I would use if this were happening in Brazil or Argentina or anywhere else.
Ezra Klein
I think that Americans — and I would include myself in this — have had an implicit exceptionalism in the way we understood our country’s immunity to some of the political trends and dangers that afflict other countries. As if authoritarianism can’t happen here, as if our parties can’t turn against democracy here. That just no longer seems true.
Is it time for Americans to be disabused of the idea that there is any special protection to our system, our political culture?
Anne Applebaum
This is a conclusion that I came to several years ago through the agonizing personal experience of living in Poland and watching one of the political parties here become a populist authoritarian party. Watching it try to undermine democracy, undermine the courts, undermine the media once it came to power. And then, glancing over at the United States and realizing that I was seeing many of the same things.
I think you’re absolutely right. I think it’s partly American exceptionalism. It’s also partly our incredible luck over the past six or seven decades. We had a stable democracy, we had an expansion of prosperity, we were the leading country in the world, and others were following us. And we somehow came to assume that it was always going to be like that — just because it had been like that for 60 or 70 years, it would go on indefinitely.
We forget that even in our own history, we had previous moments when democracy was in doubt. We had a civil war. And even if you look at our own Constitution, it was written by people who also had doubts about democracy and also wondered whether it would succeed. One of the reasons we have some of the odd institutions that we do is that the Founding Fathers were people who had doubts about human nature, who wanted checks and balances, who wanted some control over the president, who were reading Greek and Roman history where there were lots of stories of democracy going wrong. All of that was coded into the system from the very beginning.
I think that the last several decades have blinded us to our own history and our own origins.
Related Trump is attempting a coup in plain sight
Ezra Klein
I want to put my cards on the table for a moment: I don’t find Donald Trump very interesting in this story. I think what he is is known. He’s a very familiar type historically.
What I am interested in is how quickly the Republican Party has fallen to somebody like Trump. The architecture of your book is about watching people you admired and respected — people who fought alongside you against tyrannies and strongmen for liberal democracy — become functionaries in populist-right, authoritarian parties, and often authoritarians themselves.
Why do you think that happens? What separates the people who end up as dissidents in those moments from those who become functionaries in them or accommodate themselves to them?
Anne Applebaum
I’ve tried to stay away from sweeping vast generalizations. But there is one sentiment, I think, that links the people who were once part of the center-right — the anti-communist movement in Poland or Reaganism or Thatcherism — and who began to change in a different direction over the past decade or so: disappointment.
These are very often people who are disappointed, and they are almost always disappointed with their society. Whether it’s the superficiality of modern democracy, the demographic change that they don’t want or like, the decline in morals and values that they see all around them, or, in the case of Britain, England’s loss of its voice in the world. It’s a feeling of loss or disappointment, and sometimes it’s quite an extreme form of disappointment — a kind of despair. “My society has ended.”
I think anybody who has that view of the contemporary world — that it’s over, it’s finished, my civilization is dead and gone, my society is decayed — leads you almost inevitably into a kind of radicalism. If you have that feeling that it’s over, then why wouldn’t you try to smash everything?
Ezra Klein
As a very quick typology of the Republican Party, I think you could cut people into three groups. There are the people who liked Donald Trump from the beginning, or bought into an apocalyptic understanding of America that Donald Trump seemed to share. A good example is Patrick Buchanan. Then there are people who don’t have unbelievably strong feelings about Donald Trump, but they really hate the left. They’re the anti-anti-Trumpers. And their dislike for the left is enough to make them make peace with him. I would probably put Mitch McConnell in this category.
But the people I’m most interested in are the people who saw exactly what Donald Trump is and loathed it and then also accommodated it. Somebody I want to use here as a case study, because you’ve written about him and I’ve spent some time reporting about him, is Lindsey Graham. He ran against Donald Trump in 2016 and called him “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” And he said, “if we nominate Trump, we’ll get destroyed, and we’ll deserve it.”
Now, he’s out there telling Trump not to concede the election. He’s saying that if Republicans concede, they’ll never win again. He’s telling Sean Hannity that Democrats only win elections when they cheat. What do you think happened to Lindsey Graham?
Anne Applebaum
Lindsey Graham is particularly difficult to explain when you look at his background. If you were to look at him as a type, you would imagine him to be the most loyal American patriot and admirer of the Constitution. He has a very strong affiliation to the military. He got through college on a military scholarship. His parents died when he was young, so he had a hard-knock story and was saved by the American military. And he’s said that many times. If you were to imagine a type of person who would never betray American ideals, it would be Lindsey Graham.
But this is where you have to get into questions of personality and personal weakness. Graham is clearly someone who needs to be around a leader. For many, many years, he was John McCain’s sidekick. And in those years, he was a McCain Republican. I saw him at conferences in Europe where he talked about America’s role in the world, America promoting democracy. And then when McCain died, he seemed to need another role and he attached himself to Trump.
He appears to like the role of a power broker. When he runs into journalists in Washington, he likes recounting how he was just on the phone with the president. So the feeling of being close to power, of being next to someone important, this seems like a role that he is psychologically attached to playing. It’s a recognizable personality type.
If you look at the story of other nations that have been occupied by others or where people are part of political systems that they don’t admire, you will always find people like Lindsey Graham who give up their ideas, who move close to power, and who then seek to play some kind of role in the new system benefiting them.
Ezra Klein
My understanding of Graham — and I spent a bit of time with him over the years — is that in the middle of the Trump era, as he began to make this transition, his explanation was if he flattered Trump enough, he could direct Trump in important ways on things that are important to him, particularly foreign policy. This ends up failing. The abandonment of the Kurds, for instance, was a huge blow to Graham. But he does try to become this adviser to Trump, and from what I understand, there was a certain level of realpolitik about that.
And then slowly it became something other than that. He began to look at things through new eyes. He was very radicalized by the Kavanaugh [Supreme Court] hearings. He’s out there telling people that the thing about the left is they hate us. All the smart people out there, they hate us.
Something that you emphasize in the book is the way that cooperating with a regime like this often is a product not of one big decision to change sides, but of a series of small decisions, a series of small accommodations. And eventually you wake up and you’re on the other side. Can you talk a little bit about that process?
Anne Applebaum
There’s actually social science studies of this and usually it’s done in the form of examining corruption inside companies. How do people end up going along with corruption if their company is carrying out some kind of scam?
The studies show that it’s always a step-by-step process. You accept one aspect of it: “Well, everybody else is keeping double books, so I can, too. That’s just what people do in this company, and it’s normal.” And then the next step is: “I’ll do this transaction in cash and I’ll keep it in the drawer. And I’m still a good person; I’m still a good worker. I’m doing this to help my company stay out of trouble or keep its head above water.” As each step becomes normalized, as people get used to the situation, then they can take the next step.
This is very similar to what happens in occupied countries. I’m not saying that the United States is Vichy France or occupied East Germany. But these are useful parallels to look at because they show you what human psychology is like when someone is working inside a system whose ideology they previously disagreed with or disliked. You see the same kinds of patterns.
Something like that also happened inside the Republican Party: People who thought of themselves as patriots, as good people — as politicians working in the interest of the United States — made small decisions over time, each time reminding themselves of why what they were doing was for the good of the country.
For Lindsey Graham, it was: I’m here to guide Donald Trump in the right direction. And then, at each stage, the situation becomes normalized. Eventually Lindsey Graham came to see his opponents as anti-American radical leftist socialists who he had to fight against. He still probably thinks he’s playing the same role — that he’s a good person fighting for American values — even though what he’s doing is almost precisely the opposite of what he said he would do or the kind of person that he was four years ago.
Ezra Klein
I want to talk about one of those decision trees that I think is happening right now, which has to do with the stolen election narrative that is taking hold among the Republican base.
Donald Trump is simply saying outright, in all caps, that he won the election and that the election has been stolen. There are some Republicans, like Graham, who are siding with him explicitly on that. But many of the others are doing something that I would describe as signaling emotional solidarity with Trump’s claims while not quite buying into them but not disputing them either. On Saturday, Marco Rubio tweeted, “The media can project an election winner, but they don’t get to decide if claims of broken election laws & irregularities are true. That is decided by the courts and on the basis of clear evidence and the law.”
The media can project an election winner, but they don’t get to decide if claims of broken election laws & irregularities are true
That’s decided by the courts, and on the basis of clear evidence and the law — Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 8, 2020
I agree with everything in that tweet. But the point of that tweet is to signal solidarity with a president saying something quite different. I think there is a belief among many elected Republicans right now that their base needs to grieve the election, that Donald Trump needs to grieve the election, and so it’s best to indulge the idea that it might have been stolen. Let them process the law slowly, let the courts shut that down, and then you can move on in a less emotionally traumatic way for your base. I just don’t think they’re going to be able to control it in that way. I think this is going to overtake them just like all the other conspiracies have overtaken them.
But I’m curious, do you have sympathy for that view? Is there something to be said for that strategy?
Anne Applebaum
I’m afraid that I think it’s a little bit more sinister than that. I think that — certainly on Trump’s part, and other Republicans are probably coming to see this the same way as well — this is an attempt to create a new kind of base: an enraged receiving base, which will always think that the election was stolen and which will always assume that something went wrong and will always feel that they were deprived of something. And this base will then have uses in the future.
I don’t believe it will be all of the Republican Party. I can’t tell you right now how many of them it will be. But it will be a significant number of people. And in some congressional districts and some states, it could even be a majority. And this will be a base that is usable. This will be a base that not only dislikes the Democratic Party or disagrees with them, it will think that the Democratic Party is evil and anti-democratic — that they have stolen the election.
Think about what that means. That means that they aren’t even a legitimate political party. It means that there is a base of people who will be not just skeptical of mainstream media — whatever you think mainstream media is, which may even include Fox now. They will be not just skeptical of Fox, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. They will think all of those institutions are part of a deliberately constructed conspiracy to steal the presidency. And that kind of feeling — that conviction that the other side isn’t just wrong, it’s evil and traitorous — that’s then a useful group of people who can be motivated politically and maybe in other ways in the future.