Economists On The Election

I’m sure many of you read last week that the Scott Adams, author of the cartoon strip Dilbert, commissioned his own survey of economists. I decided to check out the results and they’re definitely worth a read.

At considerable personal expense, Adams commissioned a survey of over 500 economists, drawn from a subset of the members of the American Economic Association, a non-political group, some of whose members had agreed in advance to be surveyed on economic questions. The results do not represent the AEA’s position. The survey was managed by The OSR Group, a respected national public opinion and marketing research company.

Nationally, most economists are male and registered as either Democrats or Independents. The survey sample reflects that imbalance.

48% Democrats

17% Republicans

27% Independents

3% Libertarian

5% Other or not registered

86% of the economists surveyed are male, and 65% work in the field of academia or education. The rest are spread across various industries or not working.

When asked which candidate for President would be best for the economy in the long run, not surprisingly, 88% of Democratic economists think Obama would be best, while 80% of Republican economists pick McCain. Independent economists, who in this sample are largely from the academic world, lean toward Obama by 46% compared to 39% for McCain. Overall, 59% of the economists say Obama would be best for the economy long term, with 31% picking McCain, and 8% saying there would be no difference.

The economists were asked to rank the most important economic issues and pick which candidate they thought would do the best job on those issues.
Rank Issues Obama McCain No Diff.

1 Education 59% 14% 27%

2 Health care 65% 20% 15%

3 International trade 26% 51% 23%

4 Energy 61% 22% 17%

5 Encouraging
Technology/innovation 43% 23% 34%

6 Wars and
homeland security 58% 30% 11%

7 Mortgage/housing crisis 41% 18% 41%

8 Social Security 40% 24% 35%

9 Environmental policy 72% 9% 19%

10 Reducing the deficit 37% 29% 33%

11 Immigration 33% 29% 38%

12 Increasing taxes 79% 14% 7%

on wealthy

13 Reducing waste 16% 38% 46%

in government

The economists in the survey favor Obama on 11 of the top 13 issues. But keep in mind that 48% are Democrats and only 17% are Republicans. Among Independents, things are less clear, with 54% thinking that in the long run there would either be no difference between the candidates or McCain would do better.

McCain Failed Vietnam POWs Left Behind

The Nation again raises questions about John McCain’s participation in efforts to keep hidden information regarding American POWs left behind after the Vietnam War. McCain has helped pass legislation that prevents families of Vietnam POWs from obtaining answers as to the fates of their loved ones. Such actions seem subhuman, but are failing to gain any attention in the mainstream media during this most important election of our times.

An early and critical attempt by McCain to conceal evidence involved 1990 legislation called the Truth bill, which started in the House. A brief and simple document, the bill would have compelled complete transparency about prisoners and missing men.

Bitterly opposed by the Pentagon (and thus by McCain), the bill went nowhere. Reintroduced the following year, it again disappeared. But a few months later a new measure, the McCain bill, suddenly appeared. It created a bureaucratic maze from which only a fraction of the documents could emerge–only the records that revealed no POW secrets. The McCain bill became law in 1991 and remains so today.

McCain was also instrumental in amending the Missing Service Personnel Act, which was strengthened in 1995 by POW advocates to include criminal penalties against “any government official who knowingly and willfully withholds from the file of a missing person any information relating to the disappearance or whereabouts and status of a missing person.” A year later, in a closed House-Senate conference on an unrelated military bill, McCain, at the behest of the Pentagon, attached a crippling amendment to the act, stripping out its only enforcement teeth, the criminal penalties, and reducing the obligations of commanders in the field to speedily search for missing men and report the incidents to the Pentagon.

McCain’s lack of character in other areas makes it very plausible the Republican presidential candidate would hinder efforts to find these hundreds of missing POWs. What isn’t plausible is the fact that he’s getting away without answering question 1 on this topic. There is a signicant double standard in the treatment of the presidential candidate. And while the Republicans continue to cry wolf, it is inherently clear that if McCain were held to the same standards as Obama by the media, he wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of being elected.