Gregg Easterbrook

In 2000, the Electoral College put the wrong person in the White House. Al Gore won the popular vote, but George W. Bush took the presidency. In 2004, this came amazingly close to happening again. Bush had a clear edge in the popular vote, but a slight difference in the Ohio outcome would have made John Kerry president.

Ah, the Electoral College. Because a Constitutional amendment would be required to abolish it, and the low-population states would never agree, we are stuck with this anachronism, right?

No. The next president might be chosen solely on the basis of the popular vote, without Constitutional contretemps. This is closer to happening than you – and politicians – might guess.

A nonpartisan organization, National Popular Vote,  has devised a clever end-run of the Electoral College. The Constitution specifies that each state controls the allocation of its electors. Suppose, the founders of National Popular Vote realized, states enacted laws promising to give their entire slates to the winner of the overall national popular vote.

Then whomever gets the most votes becomes president. A straight-up direct popular choice, the way governors, senators and representatives are chosen. No more putting the wrong person in the White House. No more national absurdities like the 2000 Florida recount-of-a-recount.

Just democracy.

Pie in the sky? The model legislation backed by National Popular Vote has already been passed by California, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts and other states representing 132 electoral votes. That’s half what a candidate needs to become president. The new laws contain a clause saying that if states representing 270 electoral votes (the victory number) commit to this plan, then the laws becoming binding – and the next president would be chosen solely by popular vote.

Momentum is building. The people’s-voice appeal of the idea is very strong. As 2012 arrives and the public learns that a true popular vote for the president is within reach, there should be grass-roots support. Any state legislators, or national party officials, who come out opposed to a national popular vote  obviously will be trying to perverse a crony system controlled by insiders.

Consider how a true popular vote for the presidency would change the presidential campaign landscape. California, Texas and New York are America’s most populous states – yet in recent presidential elections, neither candidate spent much time in any of them. The “battleground states” got all the attention, because the quirks of the Electoral College downgrade some states while magnifying others.

In 2008, John McCain spent almost no time in California or New York, Barack Obama spent almost no time in Texas – both hit the battleground states of Florida, Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina over and over again. The Electoral College aspects of California, Texas, New York, New England, the Old South,  the upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest states were already in the bag to one party or the other, so popular vote totals in those places – two-thirds of the country! – didn’t matter. Only Florida, Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina existed. On a good day, Missouri existed.

The battleground-state nonsense focuses way too much attention on a few places, while depriving much of the country of its due. Campaigning is distorted. Republican candidates don’t need to learn the concerns of liberals in California and New York; Democratic candidates don’t need to learn the concerns of conservatives in Texas and Arizona. Candidates stoke their party “base” for funds, then pander away in a few battleground states.

It’s a satire of campaigning — and gets worse every presidential election cycles as tools such as ZIP code voting analysis are refined. The unintended, pernicious impacts of the Electoral College just lead to more cynicism about politics.

This was not what the Framers had in mind when they designed the Electoral College. The Framers were nervous about direct election of presidents and of senators, believing many voters lacked access to information about current events. That was a big concern once, but not today. Direct election of senators did not come until 1913, via the 17^th Amendment to the Constitution.

Popular vote for the Senate has been the rule for a century – but the antiquated Electoral College still chooses the president. The National Popular Vote idea ends this anachronism without a minimum of travail.

Check the states that have enacted National Popular Vote bills and you’ll see they were all carried by Obama in 2008. This is not because the organization backing the idea is Democratic. Far from it: the deep pocket of National Popular Vote is populist conservative Tom Golisano, billionaire founder of a payroll-processing company. Golisano thinks politics is corrupt, and that unfiltered popular sentiment is the solution.

If the 2012 election were held today, a popular-vote regime would favor Obama, since two of the three largest states are Democratic. But party affiliations swing in cycles: just a generation ago, California was a Republican stronghold. Think about 2004 – in that election, a national popular vote standard would strongly have favored George W. Bush.

In the current presidential system, many votes don’t matter, and the leading candidate may not win. In a National Popular Vote system, every vote counts and political insiders cannot manipulate outcomes. What’s not to like?

Photo: Ballots from the Electoral College are carried into the House Chamber for a joint session of congress to count the ballots on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, January 8, 2009. Barack Obama was confirmed as president-elect and Joseph Biden was confirmed as vice president-elect. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts.

New presidential-nomination candidate Rick Perry wears his religion on his sleeve, and as a churchgoing Christian, that’s fine with me. But if you’re going to boast of your faith, brace for being seen through that lens. Jesus often denounced “scribes, Pharisees and hypocrites,” a group he called “blind fools.” That is not good news for Perry — who seems a capital-H Hypocrite.

Consider the large prayer rally Perry led this month at Houston’s Reliant Stadium. The Texas governor took considerable bashing from the media elite over this event, pundits wringing their hands about separation of church and state. There was no Constitutional problem. The First Amendment bars government from mandating religion, but does not require that government officials shun faith. A recent federal court decision, sanctioning presidential statements that encourage voluntary prayer, makes that clear. As a Christian, I hope the Houston rally brought sinners to grace.

Though fine in Constitutional terms, Perry’s ostentatious public prayer was hypocritical in terms of scripture. Jesus taught, at Matthew 6:5: “Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in synagogues and at the street corners, so they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

Standing in front of his own image on a gigantic Big Brother video screen in a football stadium, Perry surely was praying for the purpose of being seen by others, a behavior Jesus condemned.  “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them,” Christ also taught. Jesus was disgusted by self-flattering public displays of being holier-than-thou – exactly what Perry, hypocritically, did to help launch his campaign.

To top it off, Perry told the Houston rally, “God is wise enough not to be affiliated with any political party.” Boasting of his obedience to God, Perry said this just before declaring for leadership of a political party.

Perry is further hypocritical by spending taxpayers’ money lavishly on himself, while cutting school budgets, health care appropriations and other spending essential to the average people whom Jesus loved.

For several years, Perry has been traveling around Texas, and sometimes overseas, surrounded by a phalanx of Texas state troopers. The bodyguards are not present for security — a local police officer could handle that role. They’re present to make Perry seem more important, as if a visiting head of state. When Perry attended the Indianapolis 500 in 2010, for example, he brought eight state troopers with him at Texas taxpayer expense — to make him seem important, plus allow him to double-park and cut to the front of lines. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a humble man, had no bodyguards at the Indianapolis 500. Perry, a man who thinks “government waste” is spending on other people, strutted around surrounded by guards.

Texas newspapers have been filing the state’s equivalent of Freedom of Information requests, asking how much Perry spends on self-glorification. Two months ago, Perry snuck through the state legislature a rider that prohibits the Texas Department of Public Safety from revealing how much it spends on bodyguards for Perry and his wife on their personal trips. The prohibition lasts until 2013 — that is, till after the 2012 presidential election — and is transparently intended to prevent voters from knowing how much money Perry is hypocritically spending on himself. Not long after enacting a government-secrecy rule to protect his own appropriations, Perry called for “substantial cuts in government spending.”

More Perry hypocrisy involves him taking pay for no work. He’s gallivanting around the nation campaigning for the Republican nomination. Yet he has not taken an unpaid leave of absence from the governorship. Perry continues to draw his $150,000 taxpayer-funded salary, even as he spends his time outside Texas, promoting himself.

If you told your employer, “I won’t do my job for months as I travel to promote myself, but expect full pay the entire time,” you’d be laughed at. As chief executive of the state, Perry can take advantage of his position by paying himself to be absent. Government employees taking advantage of the taxpayer is exactly the sort of thing Perry fulminates against — unless he’s the one doing it

A public official spending his or her time campaigning for a higher office can’t possibly be giving taxpayers their money’s worth regarding present duties. The Texas public-school and public-university systems both are seriously messed up, for example. Yet Perry is shirking his duty to try to fix them, as he gallivants across the country engaged in personal self-promotion.

Some have advocated “resign-to-run” laws, which would require a public official who declares for a higher office to resign his or her present office. One former supporter of resign-to-run laws is Rick Perry. In 1989, he introduced an amendment to the Texas constitution that would have imposed “automatic resignation” on a Texas governor who declares for any national office.

Now Perry is doing what he said others should not do. The word for this sort of thing begins with the letter H. So far, hypocrisy is the defining element of the Perry campaign.

Photo: Texas Governor Rick Perry speaks during “The Response,” an event billed as a call to prayer for the nation in crisis, at Reliant Stadium in Houston August 6, 2011. REUTERS/Richard Carson

In April 2010, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said there was “no chance” Treasury bills could lose their AAA rating. The fact that top government officials thought there was “no chance” something could happen surely is one reason it happened.

U.S. government bond ratings are falling — the S&P downgraded the US credit rating yesterday from AAA to AA-plus, the stock market is plummeting — such movements don’t necessarily have story lines like Hollywood movies. Herd instinct and randomness are factors. Even top economists can’t agree on exactly why the Dow headed south.

But the bond rating drop unequivocally is a direct result of the Barack Obama-John Boehner national-debt deal being as phony as a three-dollar-bill.

Stocks for their part began to fall two weeks ago, on rumors the Obama-Boehner deal would contain nothing but pandering. The drop accelerated – 6.1 percent of the 10.5 percent decline – pretty much to the hour, on Monday, when the deal became final and it was clear that reports were correct. Monday, markets learned that people at the top of the government of the United States were going to do nothing at all about the national debt, beyond acting like windbags.

America had been elaborately warned that endless borrowing to appease interest groups doesn’t work – the warnings have come from Greece, Ireland, Portugal and most of all from Japan. President Obama and congressional leaders of both parties ignored those warnings and ordered another round of champagne, agreeing to a deal that includes $2.4 trillion of fresh borrowing by 2012, paired with only $21 billion in specific cuts in the same period — about $115 spent for each $1 saved.

That Super Committee to which the debt can has been kicked? The core problem of U.S. fiscal policy is that federal taxes are too low and entitlement spending too high. Yet the Super Committee is all but forbidden to discuss Social Security reductions or tax increases. Good luck finding trillions of dollars of savings in the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Of course leading indicators are an aspect of the market drop. Growth is slow. European debt may be in worse shape than European Union leaders are letting on. On Monday, the Institute of Supply Management reported the lowest figure in a year for its influential Purchasing Managers Index. Though, the ISM also reported, “Economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded in July for the 24th consecutive month.”

So factory orders aren’t great but aren’t awful either. Yesterday’s news of mildly positive jobs numbers cautions against pushing the panic button.

Even if indicators could be a lot better, the main piece of new information added to markets in the last two weeks has been that Washington is leaderless.

Both parties, and both the White House and Congress, are more interested in blowing smoke than in firm action. Both parties are terrified of offending any special-interest group. That’s a formula for turning the United States into Japan, as The Economist’s spooky cover suggested. And if you think the United States is in peril of turning into Japan economically, then stock prices should drop.

Some commentators believe Washington should be diving even deeper into debt, for Keynesian reasons. Since the recession began in early 2008, the United States has borrowed $5.6 trillion – nearly the entire national debt not in the dim past, but the year 2000. American is now on track to borrow another $2.4 trillion by the end of 2012.

That will mean $8 trillion of debt-based spending merely from 2008 to 2012. Stated in today’s money, the United States borrowed $3.9 trillion during World War II. If $8 trillion of debt-based spending in a short period doesn’t have the desired Keynesian impact on growth and jobs — then either Keynesianism doesn’t work,  or something else is happening.

The vote here is that something else is happening. The something else is that every time the United States borrows more against the future, the future becomes less valuable. If you think the nation’s leaders are squabbling children, you save rather than spend (if a consumer) and horde cash rather than invest (if a corporation). Both behaviors are being observed.

This won’t change until clear, specific action – not windbag grandstanding – is taken against debt trends. That action must include entitlement cuts and tax increases. The political parties must stop living in a dreamworld on these topics.

Democrats have taken to calling Social Security “a program for the poor.” This is pure dreamworld. Most Social Security benefits flow to the middle class, and must be trimmed; some flow to the rich, and must be eliminated.

Republicans who live in a tax-cuts dreamworld should ask, “What would Reagan do?” The answer is that Ronald Reagan would raise taxes. Faced with ballooning deficits, Reagan backed an income tax increase in 1982 and a corporate tax increase in 1986. The nation’s books righted themselves, and 20 years of boom growth and high employment followed.

There is no path out of the current problem that does not include tax increases and entitlement cuts. On Monday, Washington’s leaders showed they are terrified of that fact. When will they find resolve?

Maybe Washington can start paying invoices with $3 bills — because the “dramatic” agreement to “reduce the national debt” is as phony as a three dollar bill.

Weeks of nearly round-the-clock negotiations among the White House, House and Senate have led to an “historic” debt deal that consists almost entirely of fluff, doublespeak and empty promises.

The politicians involved get to claim victory, and presumably will be rewarded with votes and campaign donations from the special-interest groups that, pretty much across the board, were spared any pain. Young people of the United States once again are hammered. If the deal becomes law, the national debt will rise again dramatically, while there’s no guarantee any cut will materialize — and the bill for this recklessness will be passed along to those under age 30.

Consider:

* The closest thing to a tangible “saving” in the agreement is $1 trillion in caps on discretionary programs, spread over 10 years. The new national-debt ceiling allows borrowing to rise by $2.4 trillion, with a plan to pay back less than half that amount over 10 years.

Get it? A huge surge in spending now is called a “spending cut,” while actual cuts don’t take effect for up to a decade. And that’s setting aside that inflation means the present value of money spent today sharply exceeds the value of smaller cuts many years in the future.

* In December 2010, the White House and Congress agreed to $930 billion in fresh deficit spending, as the fourth stimulus plan enacted since the 2008 recession. When special-interest groups say they want a “second stimulus,” remember, we’ve already had four. So $930 billion in extra borrowing right away is followed by a plan for about the same amount in savings years in the future. This is what Democrats and Republicans alike today are calling “fiscal discipline” or “draconian cuts.” If you emptied your bank account today but declared you would become careful about money 10 years in the future, people would laugh at you.

* By projecting the only tangible savings — which aren’t even specified, but are merely caps — into the future, the plan allows Congress to cancel them. In 2012 or any future year, Congress will say, “We can’t have caps this year because of the [INSERT ANY WORD CHOSEN AT RANDOM] crisis. We are postponing action till next year.” Rinse and repeat.

* The deal raises the federal borrowing ceiling by $2.4 trillion. This means Congress will immediately spend another $2.4 trillion. That basic point is being overlooked.

You’ve got a debt ceiling on your credit card. The ceiling is there for emergencies, and all responsible borrowers work to stay below their credit ceilings. Experience with the national debt ceiling, by contrast, shows that every dollar of available debt is always spent. Announced in doublespeak as a “savings” plan, this deal guarantees the national debt will rise another $2.4 trillion. The moment the deal becomes law, members of Congress from both parties will see an added $2.4 trillion in the cookie jar and begin raiding.

* A new “joint bipartisan committee” will be charged with identifying another $1.5 trillion in cuts. Doing nothing today, while appointing a committee that will make the tough decisions later, is one of Washington’s worst traditions of pure phoniness.

The president, Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader just negotiated nearly round-the-clock for weeks and they couldn’t even agree to cut programs that are transparent boondoggles. So bring in the special committee! This is total abdication of leadership by the president and both political parties.

* Will the bipartisan committee have the stones to impose cuts? Since January 2007, Congress has already been operating under Paygo rules, which specify no more deficit spending — unless waivers are issued. Waivers are always issued! The national debt has increased by $6.6 trillion since Paygo “discipline” was “imposed.” Likely outcome: the bipartisan committee holds somber meetings and recommends cuts, then Congress issues waivers, citing the [INSERT ANY WORD CHOSEN AT RANDOM] crisis.

It’s been a mere nine months since the last bipartisan deficit commission issued its recommendation, and those findings have been totally ignored by the White House and Congress. In a postmodern touch of humor, the last bipartisan deficit commission titled its findings “The Moment of Truth.”

* Won’t the proposed balanced-budget amendment fix the problem? Assuming such an amendment passed Congress, it must be ratified by three-fourths of the states. There’s no chance of this — because the states love deficit spending! Nearly 40 percent of state and local government spending is financed by the federal government — Washington borrows, then ships money to the states. If a federal balanced budget amendment went into effect, the states would have to fund themselves, rather than rely on Washington for free cash (all the while denouncing “the big spenders” in D.C.).

Calling for a balanced-budget amendment is classic political delaying tactics, since even a successful amendment would require many years to ratify. Nothing stops Congress from balancing the budget right now.

* Congress continues to drive the nation deeper into debt when there are many problems but no national emergency, and before the Baby Boomer retire. Extra borrowing sure hasn’t fixed the economy. Japan’s example shows that undisciplined borrowing slows economic recovery by causing business to think the nation is going downhill, and thus to hoard cash rather than invest. That’s precisely what is being observed in the United States right now.

* The worst aspect of the phony-as-a-$3-bill national debt deal is that the middle-aged men and women who run Washington are acting irresponsibly, then passing the problem along to their children. What kind of adult harms the future of his or her own offspring?