Now that the election is over, I’ve been seeing a lot of crazy talk in the news. At least its not all coming from the McCain campaign.

Bush's Brain

Some is though. At least a few of McCain’s team are ripping on Governor Sarah Palin, calling her essentially an ignorant hillbilly. Now, I was not a Palin fan, but didn’t these guys select her as their candidate without really knowing anything about her? And now they are surprised and angry? This scorched-earth style is just so reminiscent of Schmidt and Wallace’s mentor, Karl Rove. If you don’t believe me, read Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential.

Then there are people who are criticizing whatever name is floated for the Obama administration. Critics want him to get moving immediately and produce results. But, they also want him to do that without using anybody who has been in government before, especially from the Clinton or Bush administrations. (Those people are not change, they are “more of the same.”) Further, the critics also don’t want him to use the people who helped him get elected.

Now, let’s take a step back. How do you move fast? To move fast, you have to quickly find and bring in qualified and experienced people. Otherwise, there is going to be a long learning curve. But, since there has been a Bush or a Clinton in the White House for the last 20 years, the pickings are kind of small. And Obama has already said seances are out.

On top of that, how do you find people fast if you ignore the people you know well and trust? Searching for and vetting people is a time consuming process. This would take months even for a handful of people. Picking people without that kind of a process can be disaster, as the McCain apparently found out the hard way.

Why Great Leaders Don't Take Yes for an Answer

So realistically speaking, there are going to be a lot of Democrats and people who helped him get elected or who know people who helped him get elected in his administration. This is not cronyism, its just the way it has to be done. What he needs to do to create change though is bring together a mix of experienced people who have different perspectives and orientations, as well as a deep knowledge of government and world affairs. A great book recommendation for him is Why Great Leaders Don’t Take Yes for an Answer: Managing for Conflict and Consensus. In the book, Professor Roberto discusses how leaders should organize the decision-making process for best results. While the book is geared toward corporate leaders, the principles still make sense for political leaders. In fact, the author recounts in detail how President Kennedy revamped the decision making in the White House after the Bay of Pigs disaster. So the debate here is not whether President-elect Obama will be tapping Democrats and people he knows, but whether he will tap ones that bring a diversity of perspectives and a wealth of current and profound knowledge.

Before the near meltdown of the financial system, the big talk was the escalating price of oil. High gas prices have been putting the crunch on all of our wallets and purses, not only when we fill up the family vehicle, but also, well, for the price of everything. We can be sure that while the price of oil has subsided a little, the problem has not gone away.

As a remedy, Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain has started advocating more domestic drilling, particularly in the form of offshore drilling. Also, although McCain has traditionally been against it, his new running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, has been also for drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

To be sure, there are many arguments for and against opening up offshoring drilling (~18.7 billion barrels) or ANWR (~10.4 billion barrels). One of the arguments put forward by protagonists is that it will help reduce the price of gas at the pump. And that’s what we really care about, isn’t it?

Politifact has gathered together some salient views on the relationship of expanded drilling to price at the pump. Here’s the summary in a nutshell:

• Opening up drilling is a long-term plan, not a short-term solution. Although Gov. Palin claims only 5 years are needed to bring ANWR online, energy experts say 10 years is a more realistic estimate.
• The impact to gas prices at the pump would be marginal at best

Both the offshore continental shelf reserves and ANWR are only small contributions to the overall world reserves. So, their effect on price is small. A report by the Energy Information Administration estimates that oil from ANWR could “subtract anywhere from 41 cents to $1.44 per barrel of crude oil around 2025.” This could perhaps be doubled if both offshoring drilling and ANWR came online together. These will be a few percent changes in price, which translates to small change at the pump–a few pennies to perhaps 25 to 40 cents.

To make a good choice about whether to support such drilling, we have to consider the benefit (a small reduction at the pump in 10 years) versus the potential environmental impacts.

The McCain campaign has been trying to paint Senator Obama as intending to raise taxes. In fact, Obama’s plan calls for cutting taxes for the majority of Americans, as shown in the table below.

Republican VP nominee Gov. Sarah Palin explained the discrepancy in a recent interview with Charles Gibson:

GIBSON: … Why do you both keep saying that Obama is going to raise people’s taxes? It’s been pretty clear what he intends. [Obama's] talked about middle-class tax cuts, extending Bush tax cuts on everything but people who own or earn more than $250,000 a year — cuts taxes on over 91 percent of the country. Why do you keep saying he’s going to raise people’s taxes?

PALIN: Well, I would argue with the whole premise of that, that his mission is to not increase taxes. He’s had 94 opportunities to either vote for a tax cut or not support tax increases. And 94 times, he’s been on the other side of what I believe the majority of Americans want.

So in this rather dubious line of reasoning, Palin attempts to argue that Obama is just instrinsically motivated to raise taxes or has some kind of mission to raise taxes as much as possible, and she discards his stated plan to actually reduce taxes more than McCain’s plan. This would be like Biden arguing that McCain intends to reduce taxes until the government is broke and falls apart. But politicians don’t raise or lower taxes just for the sake of it, they do it to achieve certain social goals. To call someone a “tax raiser” or “tax lower” without reference to the sought after goals of the action is just intentionally trying to stir people up and confuse the real issues.

For a dizzying array of information on tax policy, see the Tax Policy Center.