Brendan Nyhan notes that if you use the Keith-Poole methodology for congressional ideology you get the conclusion that John McCain has the most inconsistent record of anyone in the Senate. They write in Congress and Ideology that their model has the least predictive power when it comes to McCain…
Here is the link, here is the Brendan Nyhan post, and here is Virginia Postrel on McCain.
Shocker.
This is why he appeals to moderates and independents- people who value open-mindedness far more than constraints such as common sense, economics, psychology, and reality.
Which is why this supposed ‘maverick’ doesn’t have any conservative street cred with us, apparently now political dinosaurs, the Reagan Conservatives.
What is the baseline? How is inconsistency defined? He has his own opinion and does not care too much about what is supposed to be conservative or what do “the others† expect him to vote for. His votes might be volatile with respect to average conservative voting. That does not necessarily mean that he has no consistent opinion.
If I got it correctly, the authors try to measure ideology in some scheme. Is it possible that McCain’s very individual (and consistent?!) ideology simply does not fit the author’s scheme?
My ideology is probably inconsistent by that methodology as well. I filled out an online questionnaire to find out which candidates I’m most compatible with. Top 5 included Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and John McCain.
One example of where I don’t fit into the usual categories is on taxation. I favor lower, simpler income taxes (if not none at all), but I don’t favor flatter taxes (removing progressiveness is not a particularly significant simplification), and I don’t favor the FairTax (a well-designed consumption tax would probably be somewhat better for the country than a well-designed income tax, but I’ve read the FairTax plan and it either wouldn’t really simplify things or it would be riddled with loopholes and unintended consequences).
“Inconsistency is a good thing. Better pragmatic than dogmatic.”
Well, whatever. That’s an opinion.
Inconsistency can signal pragmatism, or it can signal randomness fueled by cluelessness. With McCain, to this observer, I say it’s randomness and cluelessness. To the typical independent, they think it signals pragmatism.
“He has his own opinion and does not care too much about what is supposed to be conservative or what do “the others† expect him to vote for.”
That’s his spiel (and how he dupes “independent moderates” who want to believe it). But this analysis:
“it’s hard to predict his future votes from his past votes.”
Shows that it is NOT that he is not consistent with traditional liberal/conservative labels and has his own principles. It indicates he is not consistent with himself and has no political principles (at least as commonly understood) at all.
A previous article linked from this site to Reason Mag about McCain described his “principle” as basically honoring his commitments to the government and his pals and his commitments to what he has said he stands for. This is, in the words of Charlie Munger, “overcommitment tendency” or “bias from consistency and commitment tendency,” and certainly not a willingness to turn on a dime for pragmatism sake. Quite the opposite. So, not only are the moderates duped by McCain’s act. They get exactly the opposite of what they think they want.
They get a guy who chooses positions randomly, then has to dogmatically hold his views once chosen and expressed.
From Charlie Munger’s description.
4. Fourth, and this is a superpower in error-causing psychological tendency:
bias from consistency and commitment tendency, including the tendency to
avoid or promptly resolve cognitive dissonance. Includes the
self-confirmation tendency of all conclusions, particularly expressed
conclusions, and with a special persistence for conclusions that are
hard-won.
If anyone actually wants to look at how the NOMINATE scores are created before trashing the measure see: http://www.voteview.com/
If you are more of a Bayesian then there is the Jackman-Rivers MCMC technique. Not sure what their method would say about McCain.
The problem with McCain is that he was unexpectedly liberal in the aftermath of the Bush-McCain primary bloodbash. So any claims of principled reconsideration are hogwash. McCain is a stallwart conservative… except when he decided to throw a sissy fit after getting smeared by Bush.
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It is enlightening!
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