Gregg Easterbrook

By Gregg Easterbrook
The opinions expressed are his own.

Conventional wisdom says the Republican presidential nomination will go to Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich. This could change – don’t be surprised if it changes more than once. But suppose conventional wisdom proves correct. If you were Barack Obama, which would you rather run against?

A follower of polls might say, “Of course Obama wants to run against Gingrich.” An Obama-Gingrich race could end with a walkover for the incumbent, as happened in LBJ-Goldwater of 1964 and Nixon-McGovern of 1972.

Gingrich, some thinking goes, has a borderline personality. His past is full of strange diatribes on a weird range of subjects. As Ronald Reagan sometimes confused movies with reality, Gingrich confuses science fiction novels with reality. He threw a temper tantrum about his seat on Air Force One. Hardly anyone likes him personally. He was a transparent opportunist with Fannie and Freddie, organizations that voters hate. Gingrich is proficient at bloviating, and the one time in his life he held actual responsibility as Speaker of the House he did a terrible job. Would you trust the nation’s budget to a man who ran a $1 million tab at Tiffany?

Gingrich hectors others about their personal lives, while presenting himself as a champion of traditional values. Yet he admits betraying not one but two wives. Some kind of new low in politics was achieved when Gingrich formally pledged to stop committing adultery. Gingrich wears the letter H — for hypocrite — around his neck as Hester Prynne wore an A around hers in The Scarlet Letter.

These are sound reasons why Obama might prefer to face Newt. They are reasons the Republican National Committee is said to be feeling panicky about a Gingrich candidacy. Newt has the potential to lose by a spectacular margin, dragging Republican Senate and House candidates down with him. The Republican establishment has not forgotten how much damage he did to the GOP during his administration of the House. Run against a guy even your opponents despise? Sounds promising.

But, as you’ve probably guessed by now, there is a but.

Gingrich is a wild card. He probably would end up a flaming wreckage in electoral terms, but there’s a chance he could become seen as the man unafraid to bring sweeping change to an ossified Washington, D.C. There’s perhaps a 90 percent likelihood Obama would wipe the floor with Gingrich, versus a 10 percent likelihood Gingrich would stage an historic upset. In game theory terms, this invokes the minimax problem – should Obama maximize his chance of a huge victory or minimize his chance of a stinging defeat?

We must take into consideration that Gingrich can be vicious. He viciously denounced Bill Clinton and demanded his impeachment for having an affair, all the while, as we now know, Newt was busy cheating on his own wife. This shows Gingrich will say anything in order to serve himself. Of all GOP contenders, Gingrich seems the only one who might stoop to appealing to the very worst aspects of the American character — if he thought he would personally benefit.

Now consider Mitt Romney. He is perceived as being more appealing to independents than Gingrich. Romney possesses an air of maturity and reasonableness, qualities Gingrich sorely lacks. Also unlike Gingrich, Romney has been a success as an executive — running private businesses, the Olympics and the state of Massachusetts. There seems little chance Romney will stage a campaign that melts down and simply hands a reelection to Obama, which Gingrich might do. Because he is perceived as admirable, Mitt could help Republicans pick up House and Senate seats, even if they miss the White House.

Overall, in most respects, Romney is a significantly more formidable opponent than Gingrich. Yet there are reasons the president might prefer to run against Mitt.

His Latter-Day Saints faith could be a negative — one Obama need not even mention. Evangelicals normally turn out for Republican candidates, but they may be put off by the longstanding question of whether Mormons are Christians. As a churchgoer myself, I think Mormons have the same claim to be followers of Christ as anyone else does. But then I belong to an eccentric joint Christian-Jewish congregation that takes a broad view of spirituality. Many traditional Christians, however, are suspicious of the Mormon denomination. This could knock a couple of points off a Romney vote without the president having to do or say anything.

Romney’s other powerful negative is his background in private equity. Right now “Wall Street” is an expletive, and Romney is Wall Street up one side and down the other. His years running Bain Capital will be described in campaign advertising as vulture capitalism – corporate raiding, followed by layoffs and outsourcing with huge profits for wealthy insiders and average people out of work.

That may not be a fair charge, but it is a powerful one, with which Obama could pillory Romney. There is a clear political playbook to use against Romney.

This especially matters to the youth-vote/youth-volunteer equation. The young voters who enthusiastically supported Obama in 2008 now seem more turned off by him. But if 2012 pits Obama versus Mr. One Percent, young voters might get excited again. Obama would be offering them a chance to defeat Wall Street, at least symbolically.

Whatever other failings he may have, Romney has always comported himself with dignity. An Obama-Romney contest would be the kind of decorous, high-minded campaign at which the president excels. In an Obama-Gingrich race, practically anything could happen.

So forget the polls. If I am Barack Obama, I want to run against Mitt Romney.

Photo: Republican presidential candidate former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) looks on as fellow candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (L) makes a point during the Republican Party presidential candidates debate at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, December 10, 2011. REUTERS/Jeff Haynes

Action by the debt-reduction ‘super committee’ is due in less than a week. You will not be surprised to learn the super committee may only announce grandiose goals, while “deferring” specifics to some unspecified future point.

If, after months of hype, the super committee turns out to be a Potemkin committee, taking no action against the tide of government red ink, here is what will happen: Absolutely nothing.

That’s why falling dangerously arrears on national fiscal policy is so seductive – in the short term, nothing happens. Greece, Italy, Portugal – their governments made irresponsible decision after irresponsible decision, and nothing happened. So the irresponsible decisions continued.

America’s political leadership can continue to act irresponsibly about money for years to come, and absolutely nothing will happen … until it’s too late.

Consider an analogy to household finances. My wife and I are squares about money. We borrow conservatively, repay early, plan cautious budgets and won’t buy anything unless we know we can cover the cost within a short time. The result is a nice house that’s mostly our own equity, plus retirement savings and a strong credit rating. In fiscal terms, we are pretty much where the United States was a quarter century ago.

Suppose I ran out and bought a high-end sports car for me and a diamond brooch for her. This would be irresponsible, especially from the standpoint of our three children. What would happen the next day?

Absolutely nothing. I could break years of rigorous self-discipline about debt and short-term outlook, but pay no penalty at all.

Observing that nothing happened, suppose I then take my wife on a luxury world tour – first-class flights, presidential suites, Bollinger ’75. I could just sign for it, no questions would be asked. What would happen? Absolutely nothing.

I could go on like this for quite a while, overspending without restraint. The sun would continue to rise. It would seem nothing was going wrong — until my family’s finances were ruined. By the time that point had been reached, it would be too late.

In most of its history, the United States government has been conservative about debt. The nation had to borrow significantly during the early 1940s, but responded with a strict focus on repaying that debt quickly during the late 1940s and early 1950s. As recently as the Reagan deficit years of the early 1980s, there was bipartisan consensus that significant borrowing should be a temporary policy only. In the late 1990s and first two years of the 2000s, the national debt declined as the budget went into surplus and Congress resisted the impulse to overspend.

Then, beginning in fiscal 2003, discipline went out the window. The FY 2003 deficit of $378 billion was considered shocking at the time — the worst, in current dollars, since World War II. Every year since then, save fiscal 2007, has seen a federal deficit that would have been shocking in any previous decade. Yet nothing happened! The sun still rises, and other nations still lend the United States money.

When Congress and the White House discovered they could borrow recklessly and nothing bad seemed to happen, forbidden fruit had been tasted. Since then, neither Republicans nor Democrats in Washington have shown restraint. Republicans want lower taxes and more corporate welfare, Democrats want more spending for their party’s interest groups. Both sides keep ordering cases of champagne – and nothing happens … in the short-term, that is.

Currently the plan is for trillion-plus annual deficits as far as the eye can see. Even if the super committee achieves its mandate of reducing the deficit by $120 billion a year – a “draconian” reduction equivalent to 3 percent of annual federal spending — the national debt still would be projected to bloat from $14 trillion today to $19.6 trillion in a decade.

But the White House and Congressional leaders of both parties know that if the super committee fails, nothing will happen right away. Supposedly automatic budget cuts would be triggered. But they would not take effect until 2013, ensuring that for now, no program is cut and no tax is increased. Waiter, more Bollinger!

Then, in 2013, waivers for the “automatic” cuts could begin. Timothy Noah noted recently in the New Republic that the Gramm-Rudman balanced-budget act, passed to considerable theatrics in 1985, on paper imposed automatic cuts if Congress overspent or under-taxed. The rules proved toothless when lawmakers “realized they did not need to take the law seriously,” and started passing waivers. Same with the Pay-Go legislation enacted to great theatrics again in 2007. On paper it requires disciplined spending – but nearly every appropriations bill since 2007 has included a Pay-Go waiver.

The supposedly mandatory, automatic cuts might later be quietly repealed. Among the most important public policy books of the last decade is Reform at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted, by Eric Patashnik of the University of Virginia. This 2006 book details how Congress enacts what appear to be super-dramatic reforms, but as soon as the media spotlight shifts elsewhere, lobbyists and committee chairs quietly undo the reforms by repealing sentences or paragraphs of the legislation. Often the repeals are hidden in seemingly innocuous “technical corrections” bills deliberately worded so as to be incomprehensible. The supposedly mandatory super committee spending cuts may disappear in this fashion.

A core reason why Washington keeps borrowing too much, and taxing too little, is that national leaders know that if they behave irresponsibly, in the short term nothing will happen.

In the long term, though, the United States will become Greece. At that point, it will be too obvious for Washington to deny what has happened, and it will also be too late to do anything about it.

Photo: An aide peeks in the committee room door as Democratic members of the ‘super committee’ wrap up a meeting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington November 16, 2011. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Increasingly, Mitt Romney seems the Republican candidate who has given serious thought to governing – to what specific policy actions he would take if he became president. The other Republican candidates seem mainly concerned with self-promotion and applause lines, while Newt Gingrich’s “Day 1 Project” seems more like a dress rehearsal than a real concept for governing.

If Romney is the serious challenger to President Barack Obama, then his fiscal policy speech a few days ago bears inspection. It was notably better than most campaign speeches, and contained both gold and dross. Here are some highlights:

Gold: “We cannot with moral conscience borrow trillions of dollars that can only be repaid by our children.” Reckless borrowing, with the invoice passed to our children – nobody in power in Washington right now will be asked to repay the national debt – is not just numbers, it is a moral issue. Romney recognizes this.

Dross: Obama is to blame for “massive defense cuts.” Democrats always accuse Republicans of wanting to despoil the environment; Republicans always accuse Democrats of wanting a weak defense. Neither claim is true. Converted to today’s dollars, the 2000 defense budget was $390 billion. Check Table 32-1 for the key Pentagon numbers under Obama. The 2010 defense budget, the first Obama fully controlled, was $690 billion, and this year’s defense budget is $708 billion. “Massive defense cuts” is not true. Although the White House does project a decline in defense spending to $620 billion in 2013, almost all the projected reduction stems from the expected ends of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Doesn’t everyone want those wars to end?

Gold: “I will make government simpler, smaller, and smarter.” In Romney’s case this is not just rhetoric, since he helped make Massachusetts government simpler, smaller and smarter. Compared to most other states, Massachusetts has a strong economy, good health care coverage for average people and a relatively small debt. If Romney could do for the nation what he did for Massachusetts, we’d all be happy.

Dross: Seniors should be angry at the White House because “it was President Obama who cut $500 billion from Medicare.” The essence of doubletalk is to say that federal spending must be reduced, and then denounce spending cuts. Equally important, Obama has not reduced Medicare spending, and Romney must know this.

The “$500 billion Medicare cuts” figure being batted around by Republican candidates is an estimate for 10 years of projected future reductions from unspecified future savings to be identified by the new Independent Payment Advisory Board, whose advice does not even start until 2014. Obama’s own actuaries have warned there is an “extremely low likelihood” many projected Medicare cuts will occur.

Twenty-four karat gold: Romney placed his hand on the third rail of American politics, by proposing Social Security cutbacks. He said, “I believe we can save Social Security with a few commonsense reforms. First, there will be no change for retirees or those near retirement. No change. Second, for the next generation of retirees, we should slowly raise the retirement age. And finally, for the next generation of retirees, we should slow the growth in benefits for those with higher incomes.”

The test of leadership is saying what your audience does not want to hear. John Kennedy proved he was a leader by telling the East Coast liberal establishment that the old Soviet Union was a dire threat, something it did not want to hear. Lyndon Johnson proved he was a leader by telling Southern states the Civil Rights Act must pass. Ronald Reagan proved he was a leader by telling conservatives the time had come for arms control.

Is Romney the one to tell America what it does not want to hear about Social Security? There simply is no escape route from the red-ink mess that does not include raising the Social Security retirement age (lifespans are significantly increased from when the system was created), slowing the growth in benefits and reducing benefits to the well-off.

The Social Security trustees report that the system can currently pay only about three-quarters of scheduled benefits. In 2010, the report notes, that system wasn’t even self-sustaining, having to draw on the federal debt. If benefits aren’t trimmed, either taxes must rise or the federal deficit must accelerate anew. Neither would be good for the country, and that’s assuming China would keep loaning us additional money, which may not be an accurate assumption.

Beyond that, Social Security is not and has never been an investment program: it is an income transfer program, taking from working-age people and giving to retirees. Many seniors need their Social Security checks, but those who don’t should no longer receive them. That average working-age people are being taxed to fund income transfers to well-off seniors is bad policy, and not moral. National leaders including President Obama strenuously avoid speaking the truth about Social Security, because that truth is so unpopular.

Should Romney reach the White House, a measure of his presidency will be whether he keeps the promises made in this speech.

Photo: Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney listens as former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu speaks at a campaign stop in Exeter, New Hampshire November 3, 2011. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

When Al Gore was in the White House, global warming was a disaster of the first order. Republican presidential candidates are now saying it is anything from a fraud to trivial.

Both sides claim sound science, and both are wrong. In politics, “sound science” means whatever supports your preconceived positions.

For American voters, climate change is an issue offering lessons in how to reject political nonsense on the extremes, and find the middle. If we can’t find the middle of a generation-long concern like climate change, one where modest steps are sufficient for the moment, how will we ever tackle immediate issues such as jobs, debt and the looming retirement of the Baby Boomers?

First, here are the positions of Republican presidential contenders Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. (Herman Cain has not taken a position on climate change.)

Last June, Romney said in New Hampshire: “I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer” and that “humans contribute to that.” In New England, voters of both parties tend to support environmental protection. Romney’s June statement is similar to what George W. Bush said when he was president.

Speaking last month in Pennsylvania, a coal-producing state, Romney switched gears, saying, “My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course.” Watch what he says here beginning at 2:17.

Perry, both speaking and in his campaign book “Fed Up”, has said climate change claims are based on “doctored data” and that “we are seeing almost weekly or even daily scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing our climate to change.”

My guess is that the “doctored data” to which Perry refers is probably Climate-Gate – a real but trivial scandal which has assumed conspiracy-theory status on the right. The researchers who sent the Climate-Gate emails may have been nutty as fruitcakes, but do not represent the academic mainstream.

The “scientists… coming forward” to which Perry refers probably are in this petition, which Rush Limbaugh has talked up. Organized under the name of Frederick Seitz, a distinguished past president of the National Academy of Sciences, the petition, supposedly signed by 31,487 scientists, claims claims “there is no convincing scientific evidence” of imminent danger from artificial greenhouse gases. Seitz, who died in 2008, was 87 years of age when he endorsed the petition. The sample card appears to bear the signature of the late Hungarian-American scientist Edward Teller, who was 90 yards of age when the petition began.

To be listed as a “scientist” signer, you only check a box attesting that you are. No credentials or affiliations for the signatories are given. I pulled three names from the signature list at random — Robert Simpson Hahn, Cathryn E. Hahn and Gregory A. Hahn. None appear on any science organization membership list or academic directory that I could locate; a Robert Simpson Hahn published a chemistry dissertation in 1944. Whether the petition actually has been signed by 31,487 working scientists is anyone’s guess.

What does the science mainstream think? In May, the National Research Council warned the “risk of dangerous climate change impacts is growing.” Last month the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study, led by Richard Muller, a prominent physicist and previously a climate change skeptic, concluded that “global warming is real”.

In 2005, the National Academy of Sciences joined the science academies of Britain, Germany, Japan and other nations in a joint statement saying, “There is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring.” And, in 2006, the federal Climate Change Science Program, under the direction of the George W. Bush White House, found “clear evidence of human influences on the climate system.”

Mainstream researchers could be wrong, of course. But it’s unlikely Rick Perry knows more about climate change than the National Academy of Sciences. Just as Gore’s Hollywood exaggerations about global warming made you wince, the right’s current fad for global-warming denial is also wince-inducing.

One aspect of that denial in the Republican campaigns may be a desire to create a bogeyman for the false notion that carbon dioxide regulations are to blame for unemployment rates. Michele Bachmann has called the Environmental Protection Agency the “jobs-killing organization of America”, for example. Since the United States currently has no carbon dioxide regulations, this seems fantastical.

A defensible fear is that the United States ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, or its successor treaty now under discussion, would give United Nations’ bureaucrats input into U.S. domestic energy policy. That would be bad for the American economy, while surely the United Nations would accomplish nothing at a great expense. Last year, I argued that the United States should drop out of international carbon negotiations and start its own greenhouse-gas reform program.

Republican candidates are well-advised to be wary of the Kyoto concept. But they’re wrong to pretend climate change is not a danger. Slowly rising global temperatures, and the accompanying climate impacts, are supported by a strong body of research. They won’t cause the doomsday that Gore so fervently expresses, but greenhouse gas levels could plague our descendants — and will be a lot cheaper to deal with now than later.

Plus, the initial steps that would be taken to moderate greenhouse gases – improved energy efficiency, more use of natural gas and uranium, less use of coal and oil – are in the interest of the United States, regardless of climate trends. And they may be a lot more practical than supposed. See that argument here.

Photos, top to bottom: People balance as they walk on a flooded railway in Bangkok November 2, 2011. Thai authorities tried to stem growing anger among flood victims on Tuesday as water swamped new neighbourhoods and the government began mapping out a plan costing billions of dollars to prevent a repeat disaster and secure investor confidence. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj; A boy swims in the murky waters of Manila Bay, in this file picture taken March 21, 2010. REUTERS/Cheryl Ravelo/Files

The Senate just rejected President Barack Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on millionaires in order to “create or protect 400,000 jobs for teachers, firefighters, police officers and other first responders.” Whether the country needs more teachers and police is a fair question for debate. But firefighters? Firefighting is already featherbedded.

With stricter building codes, built-in sprinkler systems and the near-universal use of smoke detectors, incidence of structure fire in the United States has declined dramatically in the past generation. In 1985, there were about 2.5 million reported fires in the U.S. Since then, fires have declined steadily, down to 1.3 million last year. The report also shows that fire deaths are down from 6,000 in 1986 to 3,100 in 2010. That’s a 48 percent decline in both fires and deaths caused by fires.

Over that same period, the number of career (not volunteer) firefighters has risen from 238,000 in 1986 to 336,000 in 2010. That’s a 41 percent increase in publicly paid firefighters during the same period that safety technology has been able to decrease the occurrence of fire.

Yet national politicians keep advocating for more firefighters. During the 2004 presidential campaign, a standard aspect of John Kerry’s stump speech was a call for federal funding for 75,000 more firefighters. Now Obama has joined this fray despite the fact that pay and retirement benefits for firefighters are high on the list of what’s causing local-government financial trouble.

What’s going on here: where’s the fire?

We all fear fire, as we should. Having more firefighters sounds like a good precaution. One factor at work is that the public does not know about the decline in fire incidence. National leaders may not know it, either. That many fire departments are overstaffed is rarely mentioned, especially by firefighters’ unions. Local politicians who bring this up — most firefighting employment is by city or county government — may be perceived as attacking motherhood and apple pie.

There’s no doubt that firefighters are heroic – this was true long before the noble sacrifice of New York City firefighters on September 11. Firefighters risk life and limb to serve the public. There is the lore of firefighting — shiny trucks and impressive uniforms — which is, in some ways, a similar calling to the military. At campaign appearances in 2004, Kerry often stood with uniformed firefighters behind him. After Osama bin-Laden was killed, Obama went to New York City to visit a firehouse and be photographed with those who lost comrades at Ground Zero. In politics, it is good to associate yourself with firefighters.

Career firefighters are mainly public-sector union members who may lend their support to whichever candidates advocate more money for them. In media symbolism, firefighters are said to represent the travails of government. A New York Times front-page article headlined “Struggling Cities Shut Firehouses in Budget Crisis,” presented the notion that fewer firefighters will mean a calamity. The 23-paragraph article never mentions that incidences of fires are declining. Nor does the article mention that the number of firefighters is up significantly, even post-recession.

Many cities have begun to use fire crews as all-around responders: taking medical calls and filling other roles. Recently there was a scandal in my county when it was revealed that union firefighters were collecting for charity while on duty – that is, billing taxpayers for wages while holding out boots to ask taxpayers for more. Firefighters were able to collect money while on the clock because they had nothing else to do.

Firefighters command the respect of the public, so there may be occasions when it makes sense to send them on smaller emergency calls. But is an enormous fire engine with a three- or four-person crew really needed to evaluate a sick senior citizen.

Beyond the fact that the number of firefighters has risen even as fires have declined, the economics of career firefighting have changed. A generation or two ago, firefighting was very dangerous and physically draining: the offer of a comfortable early retirement seemed a fair bargain for a firefighters’ peril. But deaths of firefighters have declined along with the numbers of fires. Seventy-two firefighters died on duty in 2010 — “the lowest annual total” since record keeping began, according to the National Fire Protection Association. With about 1.1 million total career and volunteer firefighters in the nation, a firefighter’s risk of death on duty last year was about one in 15,000.

Yet pay and pension structures continue to reflect the old assumption that firefighting is extremely dangerous and taxing. In New York City and Boston, firefighting jobs are keenly sought-after. California firefighters can retire at age 50 with up to 90 percent of their final year’s pay. In the November Vanity Fair, Michael Lewis details how pay and pensions for police and firefighters are a leading reason for the insolvency of many California cities. In San Jose’s budget, he writes, “the police and firefighters now eat 75 percent of all discretionary spending.”

There’s no doubt government budgets must shrink. A necessary first step is a forthright assessment of what the government really needs – and it does not need more firefighters.

Photo: U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden speaks at a rally for police officers, firefighters and teachers at the U.S. Capitol in Washington October 19, 2011. Biden called on Congress to pass a proposal awaiting Senate action that would provide funding to prevent teacher layoffs and keep police officers and firefighters on the job. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Tired of cookie-cutter political contests between hauntingly similar candidates? Then you’re going to like the upcoming race for one of the Senate seats in the late Ted Kennedy’s haunting grounds. Elizabeth Warren, best known for creating and fighting for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is hoping to challenge Republican incumbent Scott Brown. They’re both qualified, but they couldn’t be more different — personally or politically.

Brown, a former member of the Massachusetts state legislature, won a 2010 special election to complete the remaining term of the Senator Edward Kennedy. He is well-known for having been named “America’s Sexiest Man” by Cosmopolitan magazine, this distinction coming in 1982, when he was 22-year-old law student at Boston College. Brown spent many years in the Massachusetts legislature, and before that was the New England equivalent of a town councilman. He is well-qualified to represent Massachusetts in the Senate. Brown is conservative on most issues, calling himself a “Reagan Republican.”

Warren, a former Obama administration official, has declared for the Democratic nomination and is the favorite. She has been a law professor at Harvard and at the University of Pennsylvania, and is the author of a highly regarded book about middle-class living standards, The Two Income Trap. Warren is also well-qualified to represent Massachusetts in the Senate. She is left-wing on most major issues, to the left perhaps even of much bright-blue Massachusetts.

In recent decades, U.S. Senate races have tended to produce similar candidates with similar platforms. Rare is the race that pits two qualified contenders with dramatically different worldviews. The 1994 Pennsylvania Senate race between Harris Wofford and Rick Santorum comes to mind (strong left-wing versus strong right-wing positions); as does the 1992 New York race between Robert Abrams and Alfonse D’Amato (insider versus man-in-the-street); or the 2006 Maryland race between Ben Cardin and Michael Steele (bland-to-the-point-of-invisible career pol versus loose-cannon movement conservative). But many recent Senate contests have offered a selection between me-too candidates.

That won’t be the case if Brown faces Warren.

When Brown became the first Republican in a generation to win a Senate seat from Massachusetts, pundits labored to interpret this as a repudiation of Barack Obama. More important was that Brown was the better candidate in the 2010 race. He squared off against a Democratic loyalist named Martha Coakley who, rightly or wrongly, could not shed the perception of being a party-controlled hack. Brown came across as self-assured and unafraid to advance views that are unpopular in his state (opposition to gay marriage, for example).

Though Brown has moderated some of his positions in hopes of continuing his appeal to a commonwealth that’s just 11 percent registered Republican, there is no reason a GOP candidate cannot win again in Massachusetts. Massachusetts voters have a Yankee independence streak, choosing Republican governors in 1990, 1998 and 2002. The 2002 Republican winner was Mitt Romney, who appealed to New England tradition as a competent conservative willing to speak his mind. Brown offers the same attributes.

For a state that admires those who speak their minds, Warren is eminently qualified to hold office. Beginning about a decade ago, Warren forcefully warned that too much wealth is being shifted from average people to Wall Street and the gated-community cohort. Warren’s 2003 book (mentioned above) cautioned that inflated-adjusted household incomes were declining — this was a minority view during that boom period, but turned out to be right. She also warned that a liars-loans housing bubble was in progress. The 2008 banking meltdown might have been headed off if Warren’s warnings had been heeded.

As an Obama official, Warren proved a polarizing figure, so much so that the president did not nominate her to be the head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau she championed. Considering Massachusetts is in better economic shape than much of the nation, her populist rhetoric may not match the state’s demographics. But with Warren, what you see is what you get. The fact that she says exactly what she thinks regardless of the political cost may prove appealing to Massachusetts voters.

Warren is very smart, and thinks on her feet. For those who are tired of politicians who stumble on softball questions, or are addicted to the teleprompter, Warren will be a breath of fresh air.

A Brown-Warren race, if it happens, won’t kick off till next year. But if you’re like me, you’re already sick of 2011 politics. The prospect of two skillful candidates with dramatically different views going at each other in one of the country’s most important states has a can’t-wait allure.

If you’re thinking the jumbled Republican presidential field does not matter because whomever gets the nomination can’t win – think again. A Republican could well take the White House in 2012.

At this point in the 1992 election cycle, the elder George Bush held an 89 a 66 percent approval rating (update: on October 13, 1991, according to Gallup data on the Roper Center website). Back then, Democratic figures including Mario Cuomo did not enter the 1992 race because they thought the elder Bush was “unbeatable” – just as today many Republicans are not entering the race, thinking Obama is unbeatable.

But Bush was defeated by Bill Clinton, who, a year before his victory, was a low-name-recognition outsider with personal baggage.

Clinton beat a popular incumbent with a fantastic approval rating. For the 2012 election, Barack Obama is just as vulnerable as the elder Bush, if not even more so. Obama currently has an approval rating of 23 percent. 40 percent (update: as of October 13-15, 2011, according to Gallup).

Upsets aren’t unusual. At this point in the 2008 election cycle, Hillary Clinton was viewed as having an insurmountable lead for the Democratic nomination. At this stage in 2004, John Kerry was thought to be running a vanity candidacy. By Election Day, a small swing in the Ohio count would have put Kerry into the White House. As for Ronald Reagan, at this point in the 1980 election cycle, he was the favorite to win the Republican nomination, but incumbent Jimmy Carter was expected to retain his post in the general election. Reagan ended up taking 44 states.

Carter had a rocky presidency, but the power of incumbency was thought to be too great for Reagan to overcome. Obama, despite having a rocky presidency, is expected by many to be reelected on the basis of incumbency. Yet two of the last five incumbents to stand for reelection were defeated. Obama could make it three of the last six.

Of the Republican field, those who have the best chance to unseat Obama are Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman, for a simple reason – governorship.

Four of the last six presidents were governors before ascending to the White House: Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. (The elder George Bush had been vice-president, while Obama had been a senator.)

Of the most recent six presidents, party doesn’t tell much, since three were Democrats and three Republicans. Other major distinctions don’t tell much either. Two were former members of Congress (Obama and the elder Bush). Two were former active-duty military (Carter and the elder Bush). One had held high federal government posts (the elder Bush had been CIA director and United Nations ambassador). Two had run a small business (Carter and the elder Bush). One had run a large business (the younger Bush). There’s no other factor among the most recent six presidents that leaps out like governor status.

Right now Romney seems to be the frontrunner, which, of course, is a mixed blessing. His aura of experience and reasonableness could prove quite appealing to voters.

Perry continues to have the potential to light a populist fire. But don’t sell Huntsman short because he is low in the polls – Obama had been at that point, too. But Obama took the White House in part on the strength of being Not Just Another Politician. Of all the 2012 candidates, Huntsman is the one who is Not Just Another Politician.

So why are governors so appealing as presidential contenders? Running a statehouse is the closest thing to running the White House. It’s a real job with executive authority, unlike being in Congress, where windbag behavior dominates. Americans seem to think more fondly of state governments than of the federal government, rightly or wrongly viewing states as better-run. Governors benefit from state finances containing a hefty share of bookkeeping illusion, while the fiscal recklessness of the Washington establishment cannot be disguised. And many widely admired former presidents – Reagan, FDR, Woodrow Wilson – were governors first.

Ideally, a presidential candidate is a former, not current, governor. That conveys the prestige of governorship, while leaving the candidate not responsible for whatever’s going wrong in his state right now. Romney and Huntsman can argue that they left Massachusetts and Utah in fine shape. Perry, still in office, must shoulder some blame for current defects of Texas public schools and health care.

So don’t assume Obama is a shoe-in for reelection. And of the Republican field, keep your eyes on Romney and Huntsman. They are the former governors who seek the White House, and a former governor is a fine thing to be.

Photo: Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney greets people in the crowd as he arrives for the third debate between US Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) and US Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain (R-AZ) at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, October 15, 2008. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton; Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman during a break in a debate with other Republican presidential hopefuls at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, October 11, 2011. REUTERS/Scott Eells/POOL

“President Obama announced plans Monday to fund his $447 billion jobs bill largely by raising taxes on wealthier families.”

– Washington Post lead article on 9/13/2011

Bravo! It’s about time a national leader had the courage to use the T word. There is no solution to the federal debt fiasco that does not involve raising taxes on the well-off. Washington’s decade-long allergy to the word tax – or its reliance on silly euphemisms like “surcharge” or “revenue enhancement” – must end. Barack Obama did the country a service by putting this on the table.

Here’s the part the left will not like. Assume the president’s jobs bill is enacted, and is funded not by yet more borrowing but by raising taxes on the well-off. That will pretty much tap out “tax the rich” as a political strategy and rally cry. Unless the economy really takes off, further progress against the debt will need to come from entitlement cuts and raising taxes on the middle class.

Internal Revenue Service data show that in 1992, the effective federal income tax rate on the well-off was 26 percent. Today, after two tax cuts under George W. Bush, the effective rate is about 17 percent.

Obama’s latest proposal would raise the effective income rate on the affluent by about 2 percent. Bear in mind the ObamaCare legislation, most of which does not take effect until 2013 – just after Obama stands for reelection – already is scheduled to raise the effective tax rate on the well-off by about 4 percent. (I’m simplifying rates and policies that are designed to be incomprehensible.)

So suppose ObamaCare goes into law as planned, and the president gets his wish on the jobs bill. The effective federal tax rate on the well-off will rise 6 percent, from the current 17 percent to 23 percent. That’s almost what it was under Bill Clinton, before Bush the Younger began cutting taxes. Not much room left for “tax the rich” as the solution to ever-worsening government red ink.

And this would be before the new supercommittee acts, assuming it ever does. Raising taxes on the affluent to pay for the latest stimulus plan would nearly preclude the supercommittee from using this tactic as a main aspect of deficit reduction. The supercommittee would be forced to concentrate on entitlement cuts and middle-class taxes.

Currently, according to IRS data, about $2 trillion is earned by those with incomes greater than $100,000. The current effective top-end tax rate of 17 percent yields about $340 billion. If that effective rate raises to 23 percent as Obama proposes, then the well-off would pay another $120 billion annually in federal taxes. That helps – and because everything helps, such tax increases must be done. But adding $120 billion a year to federal revenue is not going to solve a deficit projected to run above $1 trillion per annum indefinitely.

Suppose additional tax increases, such as the higher federal top rates President Obama has proposed, were enacted. Obama’s top-rate proposals would raise the effective rate on the affluent to around the 26 percent that Barack and Michelle Obama paid in 2010. That would add about $220 billion per year to federal revenue. Again a big help, but again not alone the solution to trillion-plus deficits.

Even a confiscatory Soak the Rich approach – raising the effect federal tax rate on the well-off to 50 percent – would max out at adding another $660 billion per year to federal revenue, against trillion-plus annual deficits projected out as far as anyone dares to think about this mess. And that’s assuming a Soak the Rich approach would not dampen the economy.

Requiring the well-off to pay more is a step that must be taken, and sooner the better. But unless the economy really booms, there is no scenario in which increased taxation on the affluent can, alone, fix the national debt. (This Tax Policy Center paper has details.) Entitlement cuts simply must happen, and higher taxes on the middle class may have to happen, too.

Bear in mind that while Bush the Younger’s two tax cuts were kind to millionaires, they also reduced income tax rates on the working class and middle class. Today, some 49 percent of Americans pay no federal income taxes at all. They benefit from the system, but pay in nothing. Small wonder that debt keeps getting worse.

Last December, the Deficit Commission found that higher taxes, entitlement cuts and economic growth are all required to deal with the national debt. There’s just no other way out.

So bravo for President Obama being honest about the need to raise taxes on the well-off. Let’s do this right away. And then let’s accept that entitlement cuts and other painful measures still will be needed. The politically palatable, relatively easy step of going after the affluent just doesn’t solve the problem.

On Labor Day, President Barack Obama vowed to put “our construction workers back to work rebuilding America ,” a theme he is expected to repeat in his address to Congress tonight.

There’s plenty of rebuilding to be done. But a combination of top-heavy bureaucracy, union rules, cost-plus profits and graft have made recent federally funded construction projects insanely expensive and slow. The result is more national debt without much contribution to economic growth. Consider:

*Boston’s Big Dig, mostly funded by the federal taxpayer though benefits went exclusively to Massachusetts, was supposed to take 10 years at a cost of $6.2 billion in today’s dollars. Instead it took 21 years and cost $22 billion.

*Seattle wants a 1.7 mile highway tunnel, a kind of Little Dig, that would mainly be paid for by federal taxpayers though the benefits would go exclusively to Washington State. The tunnel is priced at $2 billion, more than a billion dollars per mile. A billion dollars per mile is $16,000 per inch.

*San Francisco wants a new 1.7 mile subway line that would mainly be paid for by federal taxpayers, though the benefits would go exclusively to California. The line is priced at $1.6 billion, just shy of a billion dollars a mile.

*The Washington, D.C. metro is building a mainly federally funded extension from its current Virginia terminus to Dulles Airport. The next leg of the project was just priced at $3.1 billion for 11.5 miles – that’s $270 million per mile, not for subway but for above-ground rail on the median of a highway the public already owns. The price is so extreme that even Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, representing an administration that loves to spend borrowed money, says the price must be cut.

*My home county, Montgomery County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C., wants $1.9 billion for a 16-mile trolley line which would be mainly funded by federal taxpayers though the benefits would go exclusively to Maryland. That’s $121 million per mile for simple above-ground construction of trolley line.

*The federal government just gave contracts to renovate the Reflecting Pool that fronts the Lincoln Monument. The renovation is expected to take 18 months — longer than it took to build the pool in the first place, 90 years ago when machinery was much less efficient.

*Baltimore wants the federal government to fund a new light-rail line for the city. Set aside why taxpayers in Nebraska or Wisconsin should pay for a system solely for the convenience of Marylanders. In line is projected to cost $2.2 billion for 14.5 miles, about $2,400 per inch, entirely for above-ground work. Construction is projected to require nine years. That’s a pace of 1.6 miles per year. At that pace the First Transcontinental Railroad, completed in 1869 using far less machinery than available today, would have taken more than a thousand years to build.

*On the George Washington Parkway that runs along the Potomac River in the nation’s capital, there is a Depression-era humpback bridge that needed replacement. In January 2008, federally funded contractors began work on this small, low, four-lane, short bridge (80 yards) that crosses a shallow channel. Almost four years later, the job still is not finished. In the 1950s, the three-mile long, 140-foot high, seven-lane Tappan Zee Bridge, spanning the Hudson River at a deep point, took less time to construct. At the pace of the humpback bridge project, the Tappan Zee Bridge would have taken two centuries to build.

There are more examples in this vein. There are pots full of federal funny money – what Nancy Pelosi and others in Congress want Obama to back. Okay, she calls the idea an “infrastructure bank,” not a “pot of funny money,” but the principle is the same. When the funding comes from borrowing by Washington: then businesses, unions and local petty officials have a self-interest in running up the cost while dragging their feet on completion.

Another reason such wasteful and time laborious projects can occur is because of the Project Labor Agreements – what once were called Davis-Bacon regulations – which essentially mandate union wages and work rules on most federal construction projects. Studies show that PLAs add at least 20 percent to construction costs. And it’s work rules, not wages, that are the killers. If you’ve ever driven past a highway rebuilding area where there are large numbers of laborers but no one doing anything, chances are you observed a work rule that required most tradesmen to stop until some trivial task was performed by a specialist.

Congress has gone back and forth on Davis-Bacon/PLA regs for a generation, usually requiring them under Democratic but not Republican administrations. Shortly after taking office, Obama imposed PLAs on most federal construction jobs. This is a reason the infrastructure funding of $830 billion in the 2009 stimulus bill didn’t buy much infrastructure: though it did pay lots of workers to stand around, and lots of construction company executives to sit in air-conditioned offices browsing the Internet.

The taxpayer-be-damned aspect of inflated, slow federal construction work is only one problem. Because projects take so long and cost so much, only a few projects can be afforded and their contribution to economic growth is small. Unless there is fundamental reform in federal construction contracting, having Washington throw more borrowed money down this hole will not benefit the economy much.

The horror stories in this column do not mean government agencies cannot do good work. Have a look at the sparkling new Patriot High School in Nokesville, Virginia, a magnificent 94-acre state-of-the-art facility for 2,300 students, with energy-conservation features, a turf stadium, a large pond for science classes and on-site driver-education range. The school cost $84 million and was completed in two years, which means taxpayers got their money’s worth. Prince William County, Virginia, had to fund the school itself from local taxes so drove a hard bargain. When federal construction contracting is involved, the perverse incentive is to drive the worst bargain possible.

Oh, and the 55-year-old Tappan Zee Bridge? It needs replacement. New York state officials recently asked the federal government to pay most of the projected $16 billion for a new bridge. Converted to today’s dollars, the existing Tappan Zee Bridge cost $655 million.

Photo: The U.S. flag is seen near a work crew demolishing a destroyed apartment building in Joplin, Missouri August 15, 2011. REUTERS/Eric Thayer

If an election is coming, that means each side needs a bogeyman. The Republicans have chosen first, and theirs is the Environmental Protection Agency. Michele Bachman calls the EPA “the job-killing organization of America,” promising to “padlock” its doors. Tea Party leader Eric Cantor says environmental rules are “job-destroying”. Texas Gov. Rick Perry says he “prays daily” for the EPA to be restricted.

Soon Democrats will choose their bogeyman – The Rich are the current frontrunner.

Elections often are dominated by bogeymen – Republicans claim Democrats don’t care about national defense, Democrats claim Republicans want to eliminate Social Security, that sort of nonsense. Environmental bogeymen are appealing to some factions because the issue involves regulatory arcana that hardly anyone understands, and because environmental subjects are poorly reported in the mainstream media.

What’s maddening about the politics of the environment is that both sides consistently assert things that aren’t even close to true. The right claims that environmental regulations hurt the economy – data show the reverse. The left claims the environment is dying – data show the reverse.

Consider environmental rules and the economy. From 1980 to the beginning of the 2008 recession, the very period in which environmental regulations went from few to many, the U.S. GDP rose 124 percent in inflation-adjusted terms. Most of that period was gangbusters for growth and employment. If environmental regulations are “job destroying,” the economy has a funny way of showing it.

Besides coexisting with economic growth, environmental regulation has had other positive impacts. The dramatic decline in air pollution (down 57 percent from 1980 to 2009), coupled to dramatic decline in releases of toxic compounds (down 74 percent since 1980) are central factors in the rebound of American cities.

New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Pittsburgh – economic activity in these places has soared, population rebounded, and real estate values have risen (even taking into account the post-2008 slump) in part because big cities are far cleaner and more desirable than a generation ago. In the 1970s, Los Angeles averaged more than 100 “stage one” smog alerts per year: recently Los Angeles went seven consecutive years without any stage one alert. If smog and toxic emissions had continued rising at the pre-EPA pace, major U.S. cities might have become nearly uninhabitable. Instead big cities have replaced smokestack industry as the engines of 21st century economic growth – see the book The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida.

Yet Republicans claim environmental regulations are bad for the economy because many voters believe it. Same goes for when Democrats claim Republicans want to end Social Security — it’s because many voters actually believe it.

Lowest-common-denominator politics aside, what’s maddening about Republicans making the EPA a bogeyman is that it denies a great American success story. Using innovation and ingenuity, U.S. businesses found ways to cut pollution without harming economic expansion — and not by offshoring either: petrochemical production inside the United States has increased during the period of toxic-emission decline.

America has every right to boast of leading the world in environmental protection. Some of the credit belongs with Republicans – Richard Nixon for founding the EPA, the elder president George Bush for backing a push against acid rain. But in order to say that environmental protection worked, candidates such as Bachmann and Perry would need to admit that federal rules can bring benefits to society. Many on the contemporary right just can’t bring themselves to say this. So Bachmann, Perry and others on the right talk down the United States, ignoring success while crying wolf about problems that don’t even exist.

On the left, the mental blinders are just as bad. All forms of air pollution except greenhouse gases have been in decline for a generation, even as prosperity rises; toxic emissions are in deep decline; water quality is rising almost everywhere; the forested acreage of the United States has been increasing for two decades; many U.S. species are threatened, but extinctions are rare.

Rather than note these things, Democrats and leftists cry doomsday or Republican conspiracy. In a June speech Bruce Babbitt, who was secretary of the Interior under Bill Clinton, decried a supposed Republican “assault on our public lands and water.” The left strongly backs a current EPA proposal to drop the urban ozone standard from 75 parts per billion of air to 60 parts per billion. Previous anti-smog rules have been highly cost-effective; the latest proposal may be an exercise in chasing diminishing returns. But if the proposal passes, Democrats will be able to claim that 85 percent of American cities don’t meet the EPA anti-smog standard. That can be used to make it seem like the industry is despoiling the environment. Though smog itself is declining, making the rule more strict would create a politically pleasing illusion that smog is getting worse.

Many Democrats can’t bring themselves to cite environmental progress because this spoils the script in which Republicans play bogeyman trying to ruin nature. Also, citing the success of American environmental regulations prevents use of the blame-America-first strategy that is dear to the hearts of all too many Democrats.

Lots of EPA regulations are excessively complex, and their transaction costs high: streamlining would be welcome. But that’s a complicated thought. Besides, it’s election season — so bring on the bogeymen.

Here is a past column on the nuttiness of environmental regulation politics.

Photo: The Sierra Nevada Mountains are seen from Air Force One flying north towards Seattle from Los Angeles while carrying U.S. President Barack Obama, August 17, 2010. REUTERS/Larry Downing