Polity by Rob Salmond

Last week, a 112-page slide deck from the Jeb! campaign was leaked to US News. It details the briefing top Bush lieutenants gave to their donors to try and calm the nerves.

It’s a fascinating document, for many of the wrong reasons.

First, when you feel the need to issue a 112 page document about how you’re not in the schtuck, it usually means you’re in the schtuck.

Second, the level of Powerpoint crime is pretty mind-boggling. I’ve written about Powerpoint crime before in academia, and in 2010 the NYT had a great expose of it in the US Army. Sadly, it looks like the Republicans are guilty, too.

There are train schedule slides trying to cram fourteen goals across fifteen time periods into one visual. There’s a pie chart with twelve slices, each labeled in tiny writing, on half a slide. There’s a line chart with ten lines criss-crossing all over the place. There’s a pair of bar charts where nothing is labeled at all, so they could be about anything. And so on. Here’s an example “visual bowl of spaghetti” crime:

 The big problem with Powerpoint crime is that it undermines Bush’s message. He wants to appear calm and in “we got this” control, but the visuals evoke a headless chicken clutching at straws.

Third, they’re obviously spinning their friends. That’s a bad sign. Here’s a poll question the Bush team has been asking:

Jeb Bush has proposed a series of reforms to change the political culture in Washington DC, including calling for a Balanced Budget Amendment, term limits and a six year lobbying ban for former lawmakers, and a new law that would cut Congressmen and Senators’ paychecks when they skip votes or hearings.

Most people, unsurprisingly, agree with Bush on this. Who doesn’t like sticking it to absentee politicians and former politicians who play the revolving door?

But Bush’s team tried to tell donors this question was actually about spending restraint (Balanced Budget Amendment) rather than about “culture change in Washington DC” and sticking it to bad lawmakers. They say it shows the public agrees with Bush’s fiscal plans. They’re delusional, and it’s pretty obvious.

Fourth, I was pretty interested in Bush’s analytics platform, despite the fact they called in Ackbar (“It’s a trap!”). They claim to have over 3,000 pieces of information about each of the 260 million people in their database.

That means they’re spending up hugely on consumer data to fine-tune their models. They’ll know not only who voted in which primary in previous elections, but who subscribes to Field & Stream, who has a Twitter account, and who does the grocery shopping in their house. They’ll probably have to estimate who trims downstairs or feeds chickens, but they’ll be pretty good guesses.

But, impressive as that data gathering effort is, the Bush staff are overselling it. On slide 83 (!), they claim:

We know exactly which Republicans are the most likely to turn out and what issues matter to them.

Er, OK. Knowing exactly which people are most likely to do something is an empty claim, because of the uncertainty around “most likely.” If I know exactly that you’re 50% likely to do something, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re about to do. It’s a known unknown, but its still an unknown.

Also, claiming to know exactly what issues matter to a large group of people just isn’t credible. Ask any statistician. Overselling is another sign of panic. When they make non-credible claims, they undermine their other, more credible ones.

Most of Ackbar’s screenshots are of pretty simplistic data like counts of events by state or polling averages. But they do also show fancy-pants Campaign Simulations. There’s a scatterplot slide with masses of dots, all of which show Jeb winning New Hampshire. Great!

Note of caution, though: They may have stacked the deck, just a little, by only showing the simulations where Bush has a 5+ point lead in the polls on election day. Hmm.

To be fair to Ackbar, the work they’ve done to make their TV advertising 28% more cost effective than buying on ratings alone is pretty impressive, even if it is copied from an Obama technique that was made public a few years ago. They should be well pleased with that.

Overall, though, despite the lead Bush has built in the “invisible primary” for elite endorsements, this slide deck shows a campaign in deep trouble. They’re defensive and casting around for good news, and they’re not in control enough to hide it.

For me, this suggests a subterranean shift in the establishment Republicans away from Bush and towards Rubio, who helped his cause still further in last week’s debate. Assuming the party doesn’t go anti-establishment nuts with someone like Trump, Rubio’s now the favourite.

A couple of years ago, an English journalist stumbled across some scrawl in an All Blacks meeting room:

We are the most dominant team in the history of the world.

After retaining the Rugby World Cup emphatically, it’s a title some other journalists are now throwing around, not just for rugby, but across all sports. While these All Blacks’ historic supremacy in rugby isn’t in doubt, does their record justify the title of “best anywhere, anytime, at anything?”

Bad news first: the All Blacks are not the most dominant sports team in the history of the world, and probably never will be.

The US men’s basketball team – of 1992 Dream Team fame – has an all time winning percentage of 86.4%, including going 130-5 at the Olympics. The All Blacks, for all their greatness, have an all time winning percentage of only 76.8%.

To match the US basketball team’s record, the All Blacks need to win more than 250 more tests, in a row. That’s a big ask.

The US women’s basketball team and US women’s soccer team have similar win-loss records, and are similarly impossible to catch.

Of course, the goal of being the most dominant team in any sport, ever is – to channel Steve Hansen – “fairly ambitious.” So if there’s still the odd team above them, exactly how great is the All Blacks brand, and this All Blacks group in particular?

First, let’s look at soccer. Brazil is the all-time best national soccer team in the world, winning 63.4% of its games. By itself, that doesn’t seem anywhere near the All Blacks’ 76.8% record. But draws are much more common in soccer, due to its low-scoring nature. Are the laws of soccer masking Brazil’s true dominance?

Brazil’s full international record is 599 wins, 160 losses, and 186 draws. For the All Blacks it is 413-106-19. To address the too-easy-to-draw effect, we can remove all draws from both teams’ records, comparing only wins and losses.

On that apples-for-apples measure of dominance, the All Blacks win 3.90 matches for every loss, while Brazil only gets 3.74 wins per loss. All Blacks win.

Club soccer? Manchester United was the most dominant team over the first 125 years of British league soccer, managing a record of 1,688-869-987, for 1.71 wins-per-loss. Every time the All Blacks lose, they win more than double that in response. Full historic records for European and South American clubs are harder to come by, but none will be twice as good as Manchester United.

The All Blacks all time record also leaves top performers in America’s professional leagues in the dirt. The most dominant franchise is the LA Lakers, with a 60.4% win rate in the NBA. The Green Bay Packers are the best in the NFL (57.6%), and the New York Yankees in baseball (56.8%).

How about this current group of All Blacks?

Their record is even better, beating the most celebrated efforts in basketball, baseball, soccer, or even tennis.

The 1995-6 Chicago Bulls, led by Michael Jordan, posted the most dominant season in the history of the NBA. They went 72-10 over 82 games (87.8%) in the regular season. But these All Blacks have won 90.2% of their last 82 games.

Babe Ruth played on the legendary 1927 New York Yankees, sitting alongside Lou Gehrig in a “murderers row” of feared hitters. They’re widely seen as the best team in baseball history, even though the 1906 Chicago Cubs actually have the best record. Those Yankees went 110-44 in the 154 game regular season, a 71.4% win rate.

Over their last 154 tests, the All Blacks win 87.0% of the time. They lose less than half as often, over just as many games, as the best baseball team ever.

Much has been made of the All Blacks record since the last world cup. Four years, 49 wins, three losses, two draws. That’s a four-year period with over sixteen wins per loss. Sixteen.

Manchester United’s most dominant four year stretch ever was from 2005-2009, under Sir Alex Ferguson. They won a Champions League title, two FA Cups, and three EPL titles. Over that time, they amassed a 108-19-25 record, for 5.68 wins per loss. It’s, relatively, pathetic.

From 2004-2007, Roger Federer utterly dominated tennis. He won eleven grand slam titles. His record was 315-24, clocking up 13.13 wins per loss. That’s near All Black levels of dominance, but these All Blacks are still better.

So, that’s where the world champion All Blacks stand in the pantheon of global sports. All time, they’re not quite the Dream Team, but they’re better than Brazil or any American franchise. And the current All Blacks are better than Michael Jordan’s best NBA team, Babe Ruth’s best baseball team, Sir Alex Ferguson’s best Manchester United team, and Roger Federer’s best years.

That is global, historic greatness.

As readers know, the Liberal Party won Canada’s election earlier this week. Justin Trudeau is the new Canadian Prime Minister, and will lead a majority government.

First, I have a Wea Culpa on this result. A few weeks ago, when the New Democratic Party was leading in the polls, I posted at PA about what was driving their ascent, and what lessons that might bring for New Zealand. I said:

While there’s a tight election campaign on in Canada right now, next month the NDP is most likely to head the Canadian government for the first time.

At that time, the odds were stacked in the NDP’s favour. But of course, the NDP didn’t win in the end. The Liberals did. So I – like many others writing at the time the NDP was leading – was wrong. Wrong!

Philip Tetlock famously showed that expert predictions are wrong quite frequently, and they’re only moderately better than monkeys with typewriters. Glad to see I can play my own small part in keeping Tetlock’s distinction as the exception to his own rule alive!

So, what can we in New Zealand learn from the campaign?

I suppose people are going to see what they want to see.

Cam Slater saw the result as evidence that I’m broadly useless and that Labour should fire me. Duly noted and filed.

Steph Rogers and Gordon Campbell saw the Liberals’ win as a victory for the true left, because the Liberals are willing to go into deficit for the next two years whereas the NDP wasn’t. They suggest it was the NDP’s commitment to running continued surpluses that killed them in the final weeks as they came to be seen as too centrist and too like Stephen Harper.

I’m not so sure.

First, the NDP’s more centrist stance was highly public in general terms both when they went up in the polls, and also when they went down later. That makes it hard to sustain an argument that it’s the centrist stance that killed them. It would be causation without correlation.

And any claim that a single announcement about a set of budget forecasts can explain a loss of ten percentage points in a month isn’t grounded in the reality of how voters decide their choice.

Second, and more importantly, anyone claiming Canadians now see the Liberals as the party of the true left in Canada needs to talk to more Canadians.

For about 50 years, the Liberals have positioned themselves right of the NDP but left of the Progressive Conservatives / Conservatives. The new Prime Minister’s dad, Pierre Trudeau, was PM for 15 of those years, governing near the centre.

Both those facts stand as massive barriers to an 11^th hour change in perception about which party stands for what.  

In this election, it’s certainly true that the Liberals had a looser position on deficits than the NDP. But on many other issues, the old pattern remained unchanged. Here, for example, is the NDP unapologetically claiming the mantle of the left, on issues ranging from the minimum wage to student debt, homelessness, childcare, and income support.

Third, for most of the year and across almost all issues, the Liberals have pitched themselves as centrist. Look at their platform, titled “A New Plan for a Strong Middle Class.” The main policy sections are squarely aimed at middle income earners, especially those with kids.

Most of the revenue from the new tax on the wealthiest 1% gets spent on a “middle class tax cut.” Most of the $22 billion in new benefits for children is paid for by cutting $20 billion of other benefits for children. And so on. It’s a cautious platform, with plenty for middle income families and little for those at the bottom of the heap.

No wonder the NDP thought there was room to run surpluses and still claim the mantle of the left!

So, what do we learn from this? Certainly there are lots of technical lessons to learn, and I have been following the platforms and the ads and the debates. More broadly it is, of course, too early to tell for sure. I imagine all the parties, and plenty of Canadian psephologists, will be sending their statistical software into overtime trying to make sense of the patterns.

But from the outside I see a historically centre-centre-left party winning by being itself, against the shadow of a deeply unpopular incumbent. It’s another data point for broadly progressive causes to consider, going into the pantheon right next to, but very different from, Jeremy Corbyn’s victory an in internal party election last month.

I just turned 40. The old saying (and song!) says life begins at 40. It’s an allure, with the promise of good times ahead.

But the numbers say different. “Life begins” a few years later. For the average person around the world, their forties is the unhappiest time of their life.

Responsibility and realism look to be the twin culprits.

40-something is often when people, in Western societies at least, are bombarded with the widest range of happiness-crushing responsibilities.

Those who bought houses are usually still paying off the mortgage. Those who had kids are usually still caring for them. Those climbing career ladders have often climbed far enough to be stressed out, but not far enough to be in charge.

They’re not financial independent, as they have the bank to answer to. They’re not personally independent, as they have their kids to care for. And they’re not professionally independent, as they have both bosses to answer to and junior staff to care for.

It’s a perfect storm of mainly joyless adult responsibilities.

For those people who do better than average on some things, and worse on others, the other bad news is that it really doesn’t balance out. Swings and roundabouts aren’t created equal. In emotional terms, people feel losses more acutely than successes. Losing $100 has twice the emotional impact, compared to winning $100. And with more responsibilities comes more chances for something to go awry.

So many people, whose lives may appear “normal” at a distance, harbour some kind of world-gone-wrong demons. In my case, for example, it’s a dead child followed by a dead marriage. My most abiding adult memory is of holding Sophie for the last time, singing to her and telling her how well she’d done, just before I asked the doctors to remove her breathing tube so she’d suffer no more. The joy of a rewarding job I love, great friends, and a loving partner I adore are all wonderful. But they can’t ever fully erase that stain.

For others, it’s care of a sick child or parent. Or their own mortality. Too many kids. Not enough kids. Too much work. Not enough work. Too much stress. Not enough money. It goes on and on, each circumstance different, but each anchor weighing people down more than the good things lift them up.

Nonetheless mostly we Kiwis keep up our invincible façade in public, saying “great!” when people ask how we are and leaving the hurt to fester. That isn’t healthy.

Another driver of middle-aged sadness is the death of ambition. Lots of 20-somethings see themselves as future Nobel winners, All Blacks, or Secretaries-General. Lots of 30-somethings who rent their home or don’t have kids or haven’t found a career they love still plan on the basis of achieving all their dreams, whatever they are.

In people’s 40s, the truth starts to sink in. Ambition dies slowly, and acceptance grows even slower again. While ambition wanes and acceptance awaits, lots of people’s self-image takes a tumble.

For me, through my 20s I wanted to help drive social progress as a Cabinet Minister. Now I tell myself I don’t want that any more, because I’ve seen the lifestyle and it’s too hard on family. I’m sure there’s an element of that, but it’s probably in part a rationalisation, too. It’s always easier to accept a failure if you couch it as a “decision not to try.”

Again, every story is different, but so many people start off talking big and delivering less. Among my friends, there are a lot of 40^th birthday parties going on – September and October are popular months for being born around here. (I blame the mistletoe...) Almost all the birthday boys and girls appear strong and successful, in the career of their choice. From the outside, they’re excelling. But whenever I know the person well, I also know the truth is more complex.

The good news for all those people – note to self: including me! – is that it probably will get better. For most of us, happiness goes up as we get older. But there’s a decent patch of stress and unhappiness still to go before the upswing.

As a left I always wonder “can the government help?” I think there are small things it can do, such as provide more mental health and wellness programmes aimed at people in middle age. There’s a bit of a donut hole in that kind of care for mid-lifers at present. But beyond that, it the State can’t really do much, short of compulsory Soma rations.

The community really can help, though. Knowing that the middle-aged, supposed powerhouses of the workplace, self-identified rocks in their family, usually aren’t as bulletproof as they project is a good start.  

As everybody knows, the TPPA deal is settled, and we can expect a full text to scrutinise within a month.

The deal really is a very big one globally; it’s just not such a big deal for New Zealand.

It looks to me like the biggest loser in the deal is Mexico. It doesn’t get much in the way of market access that it didn’t already have via NAFTA, and the US-Japan deal on autos hurts a lot of Mexican factories purpose-built to supply auto parts from Japanese car companies into the US.

New Zealand isn’t as big of a loser as Mexico, but its gains are very small, and could get swallowed by the sovereignty losses. On the gains:

• The increased beef access to Japan has to be shared with other big beef exporters and is slow to come in.
• The increased dairy access is pathetic. Fonterra is right to be disappointed.
• The US removing tariffs on baby formula but not milk powder is a non-event for New Zealand, because we mainly sell milk powder, not baby formula. Other, non-NZ, firms turn that milk powder into baby formula will reap the rewards.
• The cheese access isn’t a big deal, because it is only very partial in the US, and Japanese cuisine is cheese-light compared to most others through the TPP region.

We have to give way on copyright rules, but for me I don’t see that as a huge deal as it only affects works that are between 50 and 70 years old. Right now it’s Elvis and early Hitchcock. Meh.

More problematic is the ground we’ve had to give on foreign investment. We now cannot prevent TPPA-nationals buying land in New Zealand unless it’s worth over $200 million. That doesn’t actually make things any worse for home ownership from their current situation, which allows foreign nationals to buy houses here without restriction. But it will make it harder for a future Labour government to fix it. The government’s propaganda on this suggests we could still have at least some levers left:

New Zealand retains the ability, however, to impose some types of new, discriminatory taxes on property.

I’m guessing the devil’s in the detail on this. Let’s see exactly what they mean by “some” taxes. My guess is that we’re now severely restricted, and this vague wording is spin. If I’m right on that, it will lock in the low level of home ownership in New Zealand, which is an awful result.

One bouquet here is that tobacco companies have been specifically shut out of the new ISDS rights, meaning we can now safely move to impose plain packaging on cigarettes. (They’d better get on with that now.) Good on whoever negotiated that exclusion into the ISDS chapter.

As a small country, however, we are still in danger of being spent into the ground by lawyers representing clothing companies or Hollywood over parallel importing, or global tech firms over taxation. That scares me.

Some in New Zealand – including Tim Groser – are claiming they can always renegotiate the bad bits of the deal later. I think they’re whistling Dixie. New Zealand has no leverage to demand a renegotiation, and nothing to trade with if one happens anyway. The renegotiation will go the same way as the negotiation we’ve just seen – New Zealand screams for more in the corner, and the big players ignore us. I’ve written about Groser and this naïve belief before. “Direction of travel” and “we’ll renegotiate” are both canards.

Among other countries, Canada did OK by continuing to protect dairy / poultry, and gaining better access to US beef markets. The Aussies did well, holding the line against Big Pharma while gaining new North American access for sugar, wheat, and other horticultural products.

From here, the only big wildcard is what happens in the US Senate. Because the Obama administration got trade promotion authority for the TPPA negotiations, the Senate will be stuck with a simple up-or-down vote on the deal, and won’t be able to try to insert amendments. Donald Trump hates the deal, but then the Senate hates Donald Trump. So, will that vote go up or down?

Well, Hollywood got what it wanted, with the copyright extensions. On the flip-side, the drug companies got very little. American agrictulture came out even as well, with small tariff concessions and modest access gains to Canadian and Japanese markets. And on autos, American consumers will get slightly cheaper Japanese-brand vehicles, which will hurt Detroit. But the Senate is probably past doing favours for Detroit after the auto bailouts. Overall, the US seems to have come out with one big, rich winner and one big, rich non-winner out of this deal, which I would guess isn’t enough to prevent it going through the Senate.

Next step – let’s see the damn text!