Frank Micciche

The Myth of the Values Voter

Articles — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 07:08:00 -0400

If Sen. John McCain pulls out a stunning upset next Tuesday, he'll have the country club, not Sam's Club, to thank for it. Conversely, if Sen. Barack Obama maintains his lead and coasts to victory, it will likely be because he was able to persuade wealthier voters to take a chance on his economic vision. That's because while wealthy states remain firmly in the blue column, wealthy voters run deep red.

In 2000, the poorest voters in Mississippi (50th in nation in per capita income), Ohio (middle of the pack) and Connecticut (first in per capita income) were equally likely to vote for George W. Bush. The richest residents of the… more

Rethinking Red and Blue

Articles — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 18:15:00 -0400

A New America Event
10/27/2008 - 12:15pm

With the 2008 presidential election barely a week away--and visions of swing states dancing in the candidates’ heads--the Next Social Contract Initiative hosted “Rethinking Red and Blue” at the New America Foundation on October 27, 2008. Keynote speaker Dr. Andrew Gelman, professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University, discussed his book, Red State Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do, an analysis of the relationship between income and voting patterns across the 50 states. Frank Micciche, deputy director of the Next Social Contract Initiative, moderated the event, which also featured David Frum, Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former economic speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

Gelman opened his talk by noting that elections are fundamentally a choice between two competing views of the future: America’s geographic polarization is really a polarization of lifestyles and values. He described how the Red America-Blue America divide is typically portrayed by media commentators, referencing David Brooks’ analysis of the disparities between Montgomery County, MD and Franklin County, PA in the wake of the 2000 election. Gelman praised Brooks’ work, but disputed the emergent conventional wisdom that contrasts elite Blue America with hardscrabble Red America. In fact, Gelman’s statistical work demonstrates that, although poor states tend to vote Republican, poor voters lean toward the Democrats. The true divide between rich and poor states exists at the upper end of the income scale. The rich are more Republican in every state, but the gap between rich and poor is widest in poor Red states. The omnipresent culture war is not, therefore, a war between rich and poor states; rather, it is a war among rich voters in Red and Blue states. These political and geographic trends emerged only in the past 20 years, as voters responded to the parties’ ideological “sorting out.”

Frum, who has recently focused his writing on the political effects of income inequality, remarked that Gelman’s book continues to profoundly impact his thinking. Referencing his recent article in the New York Times Magazine, Frum noted that America’s most unequal counties, the urban centers, are also its most Democratic, while the most equal areas, the exurbs, are Republican strongholds. Returning to the theme of partisan “sorting out,” Frum suggested that the period from 1992 to 2004 was one of great political transition, but that the nation may be returning to its traditional partisan stasis. How the Republican Party responds to the new paradigm--whether the party intensifies its outreach to lower-income or upper-income voters--will depend on the leadership style of President Obama.

A lively discussion followed, which touched upon globalization, demographics, the impact of education, and, of course, the pending presidential election.

How to Pull Congress Away From Pork

Articles — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:45:00 -0400

A consensus is emerging to include billions of dollars for transportation projects in an economic stimulus plan to be taken up shortly after the presidential election.

Infrastructure investments may well be the best short-term stimulus available to policymakers. Supporters tout the two-for-one benefits of fixing crumbling highways and bridges while pumping money and jobs into a sagging economy. And there's no outsourcing a road crew.

However, standing between your state highway department and all those federal infrastructure dollars is something far more dysfunctional than the local traffic grid – Congress's earmark-riddled transportation funding process.

This reality raises the question whether, as we navigate the minefield of economic recovery, we… more

Confronting Economic Meltdown

Communications — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:30:00 -0400

A New America Event
09/23/2008 - 8:30am

The New America Foundation's Smart Globalization Initiative and Next Social Contract Initiative cordially invite you and your colleagues to an important national policy forum.

The following are highlights of the event, while video of the full discussion can be viewed at right.

Steve Clemons

“Given the economic meltdown today…we ought to consider the interests of various partners in the global economy.”
“What are the responsible roles and intermingling interests in the world economy?”

Frank Micciche

“There are rights and responsibilities that each sector of society has and must uphold.”
“Senator McCain has talked about a broken social contract between Wall Street, the public, and the federal government.”

Leo Hindery

“The theme that we have to begin to explore is, ‘What now?’”
“These solutions…are the most expensive combined bailout in American history. They will sharply curtail the next president’s objectives, either cutting taxes or increasing spending.”
“In today’s financial markets, the complexity is so great, the products so untested…that no amount of modeling could help us predict what has happened.”
On the one-bailout-at-a-time approach: “You can only stick so many fingers and toes in the dike before you realize that the land you’re trying to save is already underwater.”
“The American people must be informed that the cost of these bailouts will compete with other desired policies.”
“As we negotiate the terms of this bailout…the Congress must find the courage to ensure new infrastructure spending.”

The Hon. Walter Jones

Paraphrasing Pat Buchanan: “Any great nation that has to borrow money from foreign governments to pay its bills will not long be a great nation.”
“The next president must understand that this country must have a period of time to…rebuild itself. We don’t have the luxury to police the world.”
“Those of us elected in 1994, the Contract with America, we forgot the mission we were on.”
“This country cannot come back to being the strong nation it has been unless we regain honesty and integrity.”
“The next president…must start, the day he is sworn in, being totally honest with the American people.”
“I do not believe that we have the luxury of time.”
“We cannot continue the way we’re going if we’re just a service economy.”
“There are those in both parties that are desperately concerned about where this country’s going.”
“Let’s get out of the ditch and get onto the right road.”

Heidi Crebo-Rediker

“While we remain the sole military superpower, we’ve taken our eye off the ball where our other superpower strengths may have been threatened.”
“It’s not a call to abandon free market capitalism…to be protectionist…to limit foreign capital.”
“Should we applaud or should we fear a world where the majority of growth is coming from emerging economies, many of them with very different economic models from our own?”
“What happened over this past week to US capitalism is truly historic.”
“What is the appropriate role of the government in US capitalism? Other countries have been having that conversation for a long time.”

Sherle Schwenninger

“The trillion-dollar rescue plan will not be enough…to produce a sustained economic growth recovery.”
“We’re not going to be able to depend on a robust consumer for some time.”
“[Households] will have to rebuild their balance sheets at a time when wages are stagnant and credit has dried up.”
“We’re going to need a new kind of economic recovery that’s much different than ay that came before.”
“Add a trillion dollars for a public infrastructure-led economic recovery…that will create jobs, increase productivity, and lay the foundations for a reinvigorated economy.”

Tom Gallagher

“De-leveraging is a major headwind for the US economy now.”
“De-leveraging makes this an atypical slowdown, which means we have to have atypical policy solutions.”
"We need to throw out the textbooks and instead break out the history books.”
“One solution is to move private-sector losses to the public-sector balance sheet, as unpalatable as that is.”

Allan Mendelowitz

“The Bush administration, which took office as social conservatives, is now leaving as conservative socialists.”
“Despite the ideological approach to economics that this administration has taken, it never forgot the chief lesson of the Great Depression: that government inaction can turn a financial crisis into an economic meltdown.”
“One of the most dismaying things about the administration’s response to this crisis is the lack of any policy context.”
“What we need is a policy context in which the government will play a large and important role in managing the health of the economy.”

Senator Byron Dorgan

“‘Onward through the fog’ seemed like an apt description to me of where we are now.”
“I don’t believe that we should be stampeded here.”
“We shouldn’t rush to a judgment of something so important, with such profound consequences.”

Ralph Gomory

“The lack of policy direction, the lack of clear purpose…are present in our whole economic structure.”
“If we continue with our current economic policies, I believe that standards of living will soon decline for the American people.”
“From the point of view of a country, profit is a very powerful means, not an end.”
“The last three decades are a testament to our progress in enriching the few, not the many.”
“Unless we address the divergence of corporate and national goals…this country faces a very uncertain future.”
“There is no one free market, and some free markets will produce better outcomes than others.”

Harold Meyerson

“Behind the crisis of subprime mortgages, there has been the crisis of subprime incomes.”

Bruce Stokes

“We are the most optimistic people in the world. We cannot build this new economy on pessimism.”

Douglas Rediker

“This is the single most ideological administration that one could point to, and yet it is presiding over the greatest shift towards state capitalism…in recent memory.”
“There are certain conditions that are above ideology.”
“Scale is important because of one word: ‘trillions.’ In Britain, they don’t even have a word for trillion—they call it a ‘thousand billion.’”

Senator Fritz Hollings

“What did Henry VI say? Kill all the lawyers? Well let’s kill all the economists. They’re just glorified lobbyists.”
“Get out of the Afghanistan and the Iraq wars, and get into the trade war.”

Michael Lind

“Junk the borrow-and-consume model in favor of the invest-and-produce model.”

Pat Choate

“The foundation of a national infrastructure project is a solid, forward-looking, well thought-out capital budget.”
“We should set a goal: if an application goes into the patent office, it should come out within six months.”

A New Social Contract for America

Articles — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:14:00 -0400

Malaise has made a comeback.

How else to describe the results of a recent Rockefeller Foundation/Time magazine poll in which 49 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds surveyed said that America was a better place to live in the 1990s and will continue to decline. Nine in 10 of all respondents agreed that just getting by is as hard as or harder than ever before.

At the root of such pessimism is the failure of the nation's social contract – the policies and institutions that support Americans as they pursue their economic and personal goals – to keep pace with the dizzying changes of the past two decades.… more

Whither the GOP

Communications — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:00:00 -0400

A New America Event
07/17/2008 - 6:00pm

On Thursday, July 17, the New America Foundation’s Next Social Contract Initiative hosted a panel discussion for Grand New Party: How Republican’s Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream by Ross Douthat, Senior Editor of The Atlantic and Reihan Salam, a Fellow at New America and Associate Editor of The Atlantic. On the panel, along with the authors, were Frank Micciche from New America; Ramesh Ponnuru, Senior Editor of the National Review; and Noam Scheiber, Senior Editor of The New Republic. Matthew Continetti, Associate Editor of The Weekly Standard, moderated the event. An MP3 audio recording can be downloaded below, while video will be available at right.

Salam opened the discussion with a terse and pointed introduction, which set the pace for the rest of the discussion. He questioned the salience of the traditional issues of the Republican Party. The Cold War is over, democracy is spreading without government intervention, and marginal tax rates are already at their lowest level in years. The Regan era was largely successful. Now there is a new, young cadre of conservative thinkers who subscribe to the traditional ideological cannon – according to Salam this is Thatcher, Regan, and Hayek – but who think that in the present moment, policy needs to be innovative and bold.

The only self-described liberal in the conversation, Scheiber largely agreed with the policies laid out in Grand New Party. However, he suggested the policy prescriptions would be more apt for the Democratic Party. While a 21st century “silent majority” might exist, he questioned whether the GOP could feasibly adjust to this new base. The GOP, he said, always favors the affluent when its interests conflict with the middle class, as would likely be the case for implementing the Grand New Party agenda. Under President Bush and the GOP Congress, he noted, dividend taxes were eliminated and capital gains rates cut, but an increase in the child tax credit was jettisoned to reduce the package’s overall cost. Scheiber says Democrats have already established institutional mechanisms for promoting working class interests.

Salam said that this book presented ideas for a long-term shift in the party on a 10-15 year horizon. Douthat aptly noted that, by definition, any reform goes against trends. People thought no Democrat could reformed welfare or signed NAFTA, but Clinton did. The Democratic base was with Clinton on these reforms, Ponnuru added, even if the party higher-ups showed resistance. Now Republicans are in the same situation; the elites have retreated to Regan minimalism, forgetting that Reagan was never an ideologue, and instead pragmatically applied radical ideas. Douthat emphasized that his book hoped to change Republican focus, but not ideology. Conservatives have failed to focus on socioeconomic trends, he added, but their principles were still sound.

Salam said that the party needs to find themes that resonate more directly with voters. McCain’s focus on campaign finance reform and cap and trade does not stir people’s hearts. Family values, the panelists agreed, should be the backbone of Republican policy. Douthat claimed that the Republican base has always been open to the idea that there is good spending and bad spending, and spending on family values could have long term payoffs. Ponnuru agreed that Republicans are open to spending that will save in the end, noting that social conservatism is a rational response to economic stress. Douthat said that people want guns when they feel crime threatens their security, are prolife because their ethical values are threatened, and that while gay marriage has primarily a symbolic impact, again people are against it because they feel family values are threatened. Salam agreed that gay marriage is really about values surrounding child rearing. This new policy angle could bridge the gap between Republican economic and social philosophy, which have at times seemed ideologically disparate.

-Tyler Ibbotson-Sindelar, Research Intern for the Next Social Contract Initiative

Presidents, Politics, and Moderation

Communications — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 05:15:00 -0400

A New America Event
06/18/2008 - 12:15pm

On June 18th the New America Foundation’s Next Social Contract Initiative held a book launch for Professor Gil Troy’s latest book, Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents. Professor Troy is a history professor at McGill University and a Visiting Scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. Frank Micciche, Deputy Director of the Next Social Contract, moderated the event. An MP3 audio recording can be downloaded below, while video is available at right.

Professor Troy spoke on the difficulties of pushing a moderate agenda in the current media climate. “Partisanship gets attention,” he said. Bloggers, networks and candidates who take a strong and decisive position get airtime. “It’s easy to get whipped into a partisan frenzy, much harder to take a breath,” Troy said.

But both prospective presidential nominees have offered at least a rhetoric of centrism. According to Troy, this is more important than people realize. Throughout history effective presidents have voiced a “lyrical centrism” which inspires people to get behind a candidate’s vision for the nation, even if they don’t agree with the candidate on all policy. Troy discussed some of the most effective presidents in our nation’s history--arguing that they were in fact “muscular moderates.”

George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan were presidents who took action, but did so by navigating between factions. While many of these figures may seem radical in retrospect, given the climate of their time they were rational men who treaded carefully but steadily in line with their core convictions.

Bill Clinton seemed perfectly cast to be a successful moderate president. However, Troy cites his “spineless centrism” and poll-driven agenda as the reason for an unmemorable administration, at least as far as public policy is concerned. And George W. Bush, who had so ably rallied the country after 9/11, was a man of great conviction and little moderation in Troy’s view. He quotes one of Bush’s top campaign aides as saying that, in seeking reelection, they would not try to find new voters from among the political middle but would “rally the base”—successfully as it happened.

-Tyler Ibottson-Sindelar, Intern for the Next Social Contract Initiative

Averting a Bust for the Boomers

Communications — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:30:00 -0400

A New America Event
06/05/2008 - 9:30am

Most discussion of the impending wave of Baby Boomers entering retirement age focuses on the capacity of entitlement programs to support them. Under-examined is the question of Boomers’ abilities to support themselves and what policy changes might be necessary to help them do so. The ongoing instability in financial markets and its effect on the assets that many Boomers have planned to tap for retirement add to the uncertainty. Macroeconomic developments, workplace norms and existing policy barriers all make the most obvious short-term solution to the problem—working longer and saving more—more difficult than many imagine. An MP3 audio recording can be downloaded below, while video is available at right.

With this as a backdrop, New America’s Next Social Contract Initiative and the McKinsey Global Institute co-hosted, Averting a Bust for the Boomers: The State of Retirement Preparedness and How to Improve It on June 5 at the US Capitol Building. The event featured the official release of, "Talkin' 'Bout My Generation: The Economic Impact of Aging US Baby Boomers."

Chairman Herb Kohl of the Senate Special Committee on aging welcomed attendees with opening remarks that commended the report and its findings and highlighted legislation that he and a bipartisan coalition of Special Committee members have sponsored to remove existing barriers to the continued employment of older workers.

MGI Director Diana Farrell then provided a detailed Power Point summary of the report's methodology and findings. Chief among them is the fact that 69% of older Boomers expected top retire in the next few years are unprepared to maintain their current lifestyle (defined as an inability to spend at 80% of current levels throughout the course of their retirement). The summary also provided an insightful analysis of how the Boomers got to this point and principles for addressing the problem.

Pulitzer Prize-winning business columnist Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post then moderated a panel discussion on the report. Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution, John Rother of AARP and Next Social Contract Research Director, and NAF Senior Fellow, Phil Longman participated in the discussion.

In commenting on the report, all cited the need to address healthcare costs, which will represent a growing portion of expenses for retired Boomers. In addition, there was general agreement that increasing household savings rates, voluntarily or via mandatory measures, was essential to preventing the trends detailed in the report from becoming an insurmountable reality for Boomers and future generations of retirees.

POSTPONED: The Monopolist Assault on Entrepreneurs

Communications — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:15:00 -0400

A New America Event
05/29/2008 - 3:15pm

This event has been postponed until further notice. We apologize for any inconvenience.

The yeoman tradition—in which the small property owner and the entrepreneur represent an American ideal—inspired many of the nation’s founders, Thomas Jefferson most notably. Yet today, deregulation and a lax interpretation of anti-trust law make it increasingly difficult for small businesses to even access local markets. Mega chains may be ruthlessly efficient in driving down prices, but their near-monopoly positions create tremendous barriers to entry and competition for the modern day yeoman. Meanwhile, corporate conglomeration in a range of fields limits career choices, opportunities and wages even among the professional classes.

Senior fellows Phil Longman, author of the recent New America white paper Yeoman’s Return: Small Scale Ownership and the Next Progressive Era, and Barry C. Lynn, author of Breaking the Chain: The Antitrust Case Against Wal-Mart (Harper's, July 2006), will provide an insightful look at the evolving fate of the iconic “self-made man” and discuss how the principles of the Democratic-Republican party, 200 years after it first came to dominate American politics, offer a roadmap for restoration of a true opportunity society.

Frank Micciche

Operations — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:13:00 -0400

Deputy Director, Next Social Contract InitiativeFrank Micciche is Deputy Director of the Next Social Contract Initiative at the New America Foundation. The initiative seeks to bring together the various domestic policy programs at New America, along with outside experts, to discuss the challenges that have badly strained the current social contract and to develop public policy solutions that will provide economic security and economic opportunity for individuals in the rapidly evolving 21st-century economy. Before joining New America, Mr. Micciche worked in various positions in state government. He began his career in the House Minority Leader’s Office in the Massachusetts Legislature, departing after five… more

Frank Micciche

The Myth of the Values Voter

Rethinking Red and Blue

How to Pull Congress Away From Pork

Confronting Economic Meltdown

Steve Clemons

Frank Micciche

Leo Hindery

The Hon. Walter Jones

Heidi Crebo-Rediker

Sherle Schwenninger

Tom Gallagher

Allan Mendelowitz

Senator Byron Dorgan

Ralph Gomory

Harold Meyerson

Bruce Stokes

Douglas Rediker

Senator Fritz Hollings

Michael Lind

Pat Choate

A New Social Contract for America

Whither the GOP

Presidents, Politics, and Moderation

Averting a Bust for the Boomers

POSTPONED: The Monopolist Assault on Entrepreneurs

**This event has been postponed until further notice. We apologize for any inconvenience.**

Frank Micciche

This event has been postponed until further notice. We apologize for any inconvenience.