One of my biggest surprises of the 2016 political season was the election of Donald Trump and, relatedly, his winning in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Now my Hoover colleague Peter Robinson, host of “Uncommon Knowledge,” has interviewed one of the main architects of that victory, Kellyanne Conway, here.
I enjoyed the interview a lot. It’s fascinating to read how she and the other Trump insiders thought about the campaign. I thought she had a particularly good insight about Mitt Romney’s failed 2012 campaign for president. More on that anon.
I do think that Peter went a little too easy on her on some of the substantive issues. I don’t like gotcha interviews, but I do want to see the interviewee tested a little when she says things that cry out for a test, such as on trade and immigration. More on that anon also.
My comments imply no disdain for either Peter or Kellyanne. I’ve known and liked Peter for over two decades and he has interviewed me 3 or 4 times on “Uncommon Knowledge.” I met and enjoyed talking to Kellyanne at the annual Club for Growth event in Palm Beach, Florida in early 2009.
Highlights and Comments:
15:00: “He [Romney] was afraid to talk about it. Romney did not embrace his wealth and his business experience.” She continues about what he could have done. I think she nails it. Her point reminded me of a related point I made about Romney during the 2102 campaign.
23:35: Pennsylvania as her “reach” state.
24:03: Trump was able to elevate trade and illegal immigration as fairness and economic issues. DRH comment: The problem is that the economic lens through which he looked at immigration was “folk economics,” not real economics. I had expected Peter, who was around Milton Friedman at Hoover even more than I was, to push back a little. He didn’t.
26:30: Our jobs have been shipped to Mexico and China. DRH comment: They haven’t.
26:40: Potentially good stuff on Obamacare.
27:00: More on illegal immigration.
28:00: Peter asks where Trump’s views on trade and immigration came from. Peter: “He’s not been reading policy journals for the last decade.” Peter says this as if to say that Trump had ideas that policy journals on these issues would support. But when I saw this, I thought, “Duh, he sure as hell hasn’t been reading policy journals; otherwise he wouldn’t be saying what he’s saying.”
29:20: A poll in 2014 showed that American people look at immigration through an economic lens. What does she mean by that? Her exposition seems at odds with the policy of restricting immigration. Peter doesn’t follow up by asking for clarity.
30:45: Good question by Peter and good discussion of infrastructure spending. The difference between $1 trillion in infrastructure spending and $1 trillion in government spending on infrastructure.
33:20: Kellyanne trumpets, so to speak, the deal on Carrier. This is not something to be proud of. It would be if we could believe her reason: The Carrier and United Technology (Carrier’s parent company) execs made their decision because Donald Trump promised to roll back useless regulations. But the much-more-plausible story, which I detail in a forthcoming article in Reason, is that Carrier did it because, as United Technology’s CEO Greg Hayes put it, “I was born at night, but I wasn’t born last night.” In other words, the threat to the parent company’s approximately $5.6 billion annual income on federal government contracts was at risk.
READER COMMENTS
rtd
Dec 22 2016 at 6:05pm
29:20: A poll in 2014 showed that American people look at immigration through an economic lens. What does she mean by that? Her exposition seems at odds with the policy of restricting immigration. Peter doesn’t follow up by asking for clarity.
She means that people correlate immigration with taking their jobs (back to 26:30: Our jobs have been shipped to Mexico and China. DRH comment: They haven’t.)
JK Brown
Dec 22 2016 at 6:52pm
Like it or not, the Carrier deal was long imbued as “Presidential” management of the economy. Like it or not, Trump is not an economics professor, he’s doing politics, quite well.
Look at this from the “ideal” President, as defined by Hollywood and especially revered on the Left.
Yes, that is not what we should want from a President, but elections and presidential popularity are won by appealing to the cultural beliefs.
jon
Dec 22 2016 at 7:06pm
This quote, from a review of Borjas latest book, is I think what she was getting at:
Thaomas
Dec 22 2016 at 8:28pm
Wow! Libertarians can really be scathing. The Carrier Deal was “not something to be proud of.”
Don Boudreaux
Dec 23 2016 at 11:32am
Thoamas: Can you tell us why the Carrier deal is “something to be proud of”? Can you tell us why Mr. Trump should be proud of bribing a particular firm – with special tax favors doled out to that firm – to continue to use resources wastefully?
David R. Henderson
Dec 23 2016 at 11:52am
@Don Boudreaux,
I think you missed Thaomas’s irony, although I’m not sure. I think he was saying that I was understating the case.
BTW, I don’t think the tax credits are the key. The case against tax credits is less strong than you might think. Fortunately, in my Reason article, I didn’t need to address it. The Trump move on Carrier is more stick than carrot.
Don Boudreaux
Dec 23 2016 at 12:09pm
David Henderson:
Thanks. Perhaps you’re correct. If so, I apologize to Thaomas for missing his irony (and for misspelling his name!).
And I take your point about Trump’s move on Carrier being more stick than carrot. I agree with you fully on that point. And although I’m pretty sure I know what you mean when you say that “[t]he case against tax credits is less strong than [I] might think,” I would push back here a bit. It’s a challenging issue, one that remains a bit vague in my mind: when is tax relief justified and when is it, because it is is granted as a special privilege, not justified?
I confess to here having changed my mind somewhat since I read Jim Buchanan’s and Roger Congleton’s 1998 book, Politics by Principle, Not Interest. My instinctive cheering for tax cuts has become a bit tempered when such cuts appear to be grants of special favors to particular interests as opposed to more-general tax reductions. I’m all-too-aware, I concede, that there is no clear line of distinction between ‘good’ tax cuts and ‘bad’ ones.
David R. Henderson
Dec 23 2016 at 12:17pm
Thanks, Don. This discussion, along with previous ones with fellow liberty-loving economists, has convinced me that I need to devote a whole post to the issue of tax credits, special treatment, etc.
LD Bottorff
Dec 23 2016 at 4:40pm
Fascinating interview. She admits that her business is mostly a man’s business, then goes on with the interview as if she had just agreed that the sky is blue. She knows she is breaking barriers as a woman, but she is more concerned with her accomplishments than with her accomplishments as a woman.
She is completely comfortable with herself, her business, and her client.
David R. Henderson
Dec 23 2016 at 5:35pm
@LD Bottorff,
She comes across that way in person too. Completely comfortable in her own skin.
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