\u00a0Resource Security Watch<\/em>\u00a0publication. He is proficient in the Russian language.\u00a0<\/p>\n","post_title":"Matt Maldonado","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"matt-maldonado","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-10-27 17:38:14","post_modified_gmt":"2020-10-27 17:38:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/?post_type=speaker&p=676","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":680,"post_author":"38","post_date":"2020-10-27 17:42:59","post_date_gmt":"2020-10-27 17:42:59","post_content":"\nChloe is a law student and JD candidate at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She received her B.A. at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also worked as a J.J. Pickle Undergraduate Government Research Assistant. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Chloe Slusher","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"chloe-slusher","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-10-27 17:43:00","post_modified_gmt":"2020-10-27 17:43:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/?post_type=speaker&p=680","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"transcript":"
Hello. Welcome back. So seven of the Policy Agendas podcast. AM E.J. Fagan tonight joined<\/p>\n
by four very special hosts, our co-hosts. So I was going to left or right. I<\/p>\n
am joined by Chloe Slusher. Say hello. Hello. Krista Kolinsky.<\/p>\n
Hi, Matt Maldonado. Hello. Now, these three are Pickel fellows. They are undergraduate students<\/p>\n
who’ve worked with the project for most of the last year and have produced some really great research that we’re gonna talk about.<\/p>\n
But I’m also joined by the director of the Policy Agendas Project, Brian Jones himself. Hey, guys.<\/p>\n
Okay. So thank you, guys all for all for joining me. It’s it’s been a great semester. I have. It’s been a pleasure<\/p>\n
working with all of you for this semester. For anybody listening who who might not know<\/p>\n
what have you guys been up to for the last four months? Four policy agendas.<\/p>\n
So we’ve been coding a serious<\/p>\n
report with E.J. Congressional Research Service. Yes.<\/p>\n
Which has been an interesting experience to see like what Congress, men and women<\/p>\n
requests like for a report. Very interesting topic that they want. What<\/p>\n
you’ve not read more IRS reports released that titles and summaries of Sciarra supports than any people<\/p>\n
alive. So what do you what do you guys glean from this? What what what did you learned<\/p>\n
about the CPRS that that was surprising? I was surprised by the,<\/p>\n
I guess, versatility that the Congressional Research Service has in regards to writing these reports.<\/p>\n
Members of Congress come up with all kinds of questions, some very broad. For example, like you’ll<\/p>\n
you’ll see serious reports that are just like Uganda. Question mark, like very little context. Just tell me everything<\/p>\n
there is to know about the country. It is located in Africa, on the east side, near the Great Lakes region.<\/p>\n
Things like that. But then you also get some very specific questions that are geared towards economic policy.<\/p>\n
What are the effects of this specific sanction on this specific country or the specific trade<\/p>\n
provision? So I thought their versatility in research was very interesting.<\/p>\n
Would you guys like to work for Sarah someday? It’d be an interesting job,<\/p>\n
I think. I don’t ever do that. Good. I go into long term. But I would be interested<\/p>\n
to see how it works on their side to the we we talk to a former Suarez<\/p>\n
analyst as we were we were putting this together. Matt lassman<\/p>\n
and what I find fascinating about that, some other serious analysts I’ve read about is that one of those reports,<\/p>\n
or maybe two or three of those reports is their career. So their job is to be the person<\/p>\n
who is the expert on the post office. It first e.r.’s and you know that that<\/p>\n
report is everything that they know and it’s all written down on paper and it’s their job to take that information and<\/p>\n
make it available to Congress and and a help Congress that way. So they’re fun. And you<\/p>\n
notice they update these reports, right. Sometimes we had to figure out<\/p>\n
which version we’re supposed to take a look at, whether we’re to count those separate. Yeah, I think context<\/p>\n
is very important. One of the things that helped us code these serious reports was looking at<\/p>\n
not only the what they spoke about in the report, but looking at the the day<\/p>\n
and understanding what kinds of conversations were going on in Congress around those times. It kind of gives<\/p>\n
you more, more context for how to code them. So, Krista, you’ve<\/p>\n
you’ve read a lot of these. I’m curious, do you have a report that really stuck out as just weird? Anything<\/p>\n
anything that you read that just just shocked you that it existed? There is something about an<\/p>\n
agricultural tax on like pigs feet or something like that. It was<\/p>\n
really, really specific. There are a lot of really strange ones, but there are also a lot of really broad<\/p>\n
just tax policy, those kinds of things. It it it’s a great<\/p>\n
dataset. You guys are hard at work finishing the last rung, a bit of coding for it. And then we’ve got a<\/p>\n
whole lot of reconciliation and cleaning to do after you guys go after you guys not graduate, I guess, but are done for<\/p>\n
us, for us over the summer. And hopefully we’ll have that report that that dad set<\/p>\n
out at some point this summer. So great work, guys. We we and all of all of the country and academia<\/p>\n
appreciate your hard work. And in the future, it will be available on the Policy Agendas Web site. Yep.<\/p>\n
Probably June or July is my guess at this point. So we’ve got we got some research<\/p>\n
to talk about. So you’re not just not just research assistants, your researchers and you three have<\/p>\n
been working all year on projects for our Pickel program. And one of you guys just described briefly<\/p>\n
the what the Pickel program is. Sure. It’s a yearlong research fellowship<\/p>\n
with the government department here at U-T. So students apply. And when you’re accepted, you spend<\/p>\n
a year doing an independent research project as well as helping the government department with any research<\/p>\n
they’re doing. And so, yes, the policy agendas project, such as the policy agendas projects.<\/p>\n
And at the end of the second semester, we take a trip to D.C. and<\/p>\n
get to interview some really cool people and see all the sights. It’s it’s fun. It’s just over.<\/p>\n
You enjoy it? Yeah, it’s fantastic. The the program is wonderful<\/p>\n
because they they develop a research project, which we’re going to talk about for the rest of this of<\/p>\n
this podcast. So back way back in September, they’re asked to propose an idea,<\/p>\n
find some data to analyze that idea, work for professors and graduate students to come up with a research design and<\/p>\n
execute it. And then last week, earlier this week, they presented those those projects in a poster<\/p>\n
session in the government department and university wide. So to start with, Krista<\/p>\n
so Krista, you did a rally to call Congress a Congress project.<\/p>\n
So can you describe your project for us? Sure. So my research project is modeled on<\/p>\n
a project that Professor Sean Theriot did back in 2006. So looking at party polarization<\/p>\n
based on member adaptation and member replacement, so whether new members are<\/p>\n
contributing to the increase in polarization or current members of Congress are<\/p>\n
changing throughout the course of their career and becoming more polarized.<\/p>\n
So I found a little bit. My results were a bit different than<\/p>\n
theresults and that no replacement accounts for more polarization only<\/p>\n
in the Senate now, whereas member adaptation actually is contributing more in the<\/p>\n
House. In 2006, he found that member replacement was contributing<\/p>\n
more in both the House and the Senate. So as he’s changed over the last decade. Half. Mm hmm. What<\/p>\n
do you think is changed? We think it may be because of the House Freedom Caucus.<\/p>\n
In addition, the polarization rates in both chambers are a bit different.<\/p>\n
So the Democrats in both chambers are polarizing at about the same rate. The House a bit more polarized than the Senate,<\/p>\n
but the Republicans in the Senate are actually polarizing quite a bit faster. And they’ve actually caught<\/p>\n
up to the Republicans in the House. So they use today’s asymmetry between the House Republican caucus in the House Senate<\/p>\n
caucus. I know they’re called a caucus, but they have senators, Republican senators. And that’s pretty<\/p>\n
much going away because of adaptation or because or because of or because of replacement.<\/p>\n
In the Senate, it’s more because of replacement, although members are adapting as well. So a bunch of moderates are losing their elections<\/p>\n
and being replaced with with with extremists. Right. That’s that’s interesting. This was this project<\/p>\n
was a hit on Twitter. So so Krista asked me or tweeted yesterday<\/p>\n
after after her tweet, got 18 likes on Twitter, which was which was the most of any of our of our projects<\/p>\n
because it was first. But but she got a lot of questions on Twitter and asked, is this what it’s like to be famous?<\/p>\n
And I told her, coming on the podcast is what it’s like to be famous. So, Krista, famous person,<\/p>\n
a question of Twitter was about tournaments and asked if this if<\/p>\n
your results suggests that term limits could increase polarization. What do you think?<\/p>\n
I think they could. Specifically with the House right now, what we’re seeing<\/p>\n
is that members are adapting over the course of their career to become more polarized.<\/p>\n
If term limits were to be imposed on the Senate, I think that could change Senate polarization quite<\/p>\n
a bit. But I think just as well, it could happen in the House.<\/p>\n
Back when Presser theory out that his research, he found that no replacement accounted for two thirds of polarization<\/p>\n
in both the House and the Senate. And so that’s changed a little bit now. I don’t see any reason why<\/p>\n
new members couldn’t make the House a lot more polarized. Why do you think?<\/p>\n
Why do you think that replacement such a powerful mechanism? Is it that primary voters aren’t<\/p>\n
actually making threats to existing incumbents successfully? And then their only real opportunity to<\/p>\n
come up with find a real, real true believer is to wait for that incumbent to be gone?<\/p>\n
Or are incumbents just, you know? Is it just an age thing where you were you know, it just<\/p>\n
takes time for ideology, kind of trickle its way up to senators who<\/p>\n
have more elected initially. Thirty years ago. I think it’s probably more so the latter.<\/p>\n
You see a lot of senators and representatives who have been in Congress for 30<\/p>\n
plus years and only recently they’ve become much more ideological than they were.<\/p>\n
And so Lindsey Graham used to be one of the good ones we’re getting on. But I wonder if there’s<\/p>\n
something you could think of that you studied this in detail that might help the situation by<\/p>\n
help as a good centrist that would say make the whole system more, more moderate.<\/p>\n
That stuff has gotten increasingly tough, hasn’t it? Yeah.<\/p>\n
I don’t know. I feel like that’s not a question. I<\/p>\n
mean, I don’t. Well, yeah, I guess maybe maybe<\/p>\n
I’m maybe I’m playing in my own dissertation here. A little bit of what you guys think about the CPRS. Is the Sierra as a force<\/p>\n
for centrism or for extremism?<\/p>\n
I mean, I think it depends on the the members who are using cigarets. I think if you have some<\/p>\n
very polarized members who are asking you some very polarizing questions, the<\/p>\n
reports that Ceres is producing are going to be somewhat extreme depending<\/p>\n
on how the question is asked. But yeah, I don’t I don’t. I think it depends on the member.<\/p>\n
Primarily, do you see any and maybe move to Matt’s project<\/p>\n
because it has a problem solving angle, doesn’t it? Did you notice<\/p>\n
any changes over time in terms of members asking fewer problem oriented, problem<\/p>\n
solving oriented questions for sea areas and more? I want to find the answer I<\/p>\n
already know. Questions. Or did you notice? Nothing. Did you even think of that?<\/p>\n
In regards to my research 0 ACARS first and then we’ll turn to your research and.<\/p>\n
Let’s talk about series quickly and I want you to explain your research before we turn to it more serious.<\/p>\n
The way that our reports were assigned to us that were reported to us thematically.<\/p>\n
So I don’t think we got a natural progression as far as time. So<\/p>\n
every week we’re dealt 400 serious reports in no particular order. Alphabetical<\/p>\n
order, alphabetical order. But they’re not chronological. So I think it’s a little bit difficult<\/p>\n
to get an understanding of how issues are spoken about in CRF reports over time.<\/p>\n
Did you. Did you see both of you? Please also chime in. Did you see any aying that seemed<\/p>\n
extreme to you or did it seem fairly boring? Is the word I’ll use<\/p>\n
these much urging them in a back room? Or are they or are they true believers? I think it seemed fairly<\/p>\n
neutral. The titles weren’t formatted in like the questions<\/p>\n
that the CPRS was asked. It was just whatever topic they were talking about in that report.<\/p>\n
So it seemed fairly neutral from our standpoint, but we didn’t read too deeply into any one report.<\/p>\n
Yeah, the few that I like did end up reading in an effort to code them just to figure out what they were about.<\/p>\n
It seemed like there was definitely an effort to just present the facts as they are. I didn’t notice<\/p>\n
much like bias or anything along those lines in the reports that I have like<\/p>\n
don’t dove deeper into. Yeah, I think I might just<\/p>\n
show my cards or might for my dissertation is I think increasing the size and<\/p>\n
power of v._c._r.s or at least to the resources available to the CPRS would be a good way to kind of fight<\/p>\n
against polarization. We may be we may be too far, too far out with some of these very<\/p>\n
extreme current members to do that. But they go for and I’m going to move on. Yeah, I was gonna ask the question wasn’t<\/p>\n
serious. One of the institutions that was gutted by Speaker Gingrich when he took<\/p>\n
power was in 1995. You dramatically cut the budgets of the CBO,<\/p>\n
ACARS, J.O. and Office of Technology Assessment, and then their budget got zeroed<\/p>\n
in and sort of was coming back. Actually, the Congress passed a bill<\/p>\n
last year which required the J.O. to basically create its own little office of technology assessment,<\/p>\n
which hopefully will help. But I want to move on and talk about our next project. That’s projects so that<\/p>\n
your project has a very long title, which is why I didn’t even try to say titles. But why do you say the very<\/p>\n
long title of your project? So my project is titled The Reactionary Presidency.<\/p>\n
Question Mark The Speed of Presidential.<\/p>\n
I honestly don’t remember the whole thing. That’s a long drive. Yeah, looks great on a poster.<\/p>\n
But explain it. Yeah. So for my project I won. I took a two pronged approach for<\/p>\n
looking at agenda setting policy agenda agendas, policy agenda. So<\/p>\n
I picked three policy topics that historically had not been dealt with specifically<\/p>\n
by the federal government on. Minority discrimination. Higher education<\/p>\n
and air pollution policy. And I picked three policy mediums in which<\/p>\n
these issues were being expressed during the mid 20th century, so I looked at State of the Union<\/p>\n
rhetoric, party platform rhetoric and congressional hearings in order to get an understanding of when<\/p>\n
these policy issues sort of peaked or broke through the legitimacy barrier in each<\/p>\n
one of these different mediums. And in addition to that, I took the two<\/p>\n
rhetorical mediums, party platforms and state of the unions, and I coded them using an experimental<\/p>\n
coding book for problem and solution statements to get an understanding of not only<\/p>\n
when these issues were being talked about, but how these issues were being talked about. So that<\/p>\n
that was the essence of my project and was the result. So the result was when you plot<\/p>\n
those three policy issues in those three mediums, you see that they first<\/p>\n
came to prominence in party platform rhetoric, which was then very fault,<\/p>\n
very quickly followed by presidential rhetoric and State of the Union addresses. But<\/p>\n
both of them taproot off. And when you compare that to congressional hearing data,<\/p>\n
you see that these three policy issues<\/p>\n
grew much more slowly and much more steadily over the years, but continued to grow beyond the scope of this study.<\/p>\n
I cut my years off in 1984, and that was in the hearings. That was in the hearings. So for me, that points<\/p>\n
to a change in the way that these issues are being talked about, primarily<\/p>\n
through the use of investigative hearings and using the language<\/p>\n
from the the foundational text that it used, the great broadening, which is just not even out yet, which is not even<\/p>\n
out yet. Government attention in government policy thickened after it. brotton.<\/p>\n
So that was my finding as far as plotting those three. So yeah, there’s very clear order of<\/p>\n
operations, right? So the party platforms start to talk about an issue. Then<\/p>\n
the president starts to talk about an estate of union and then you get congressional hearings on the issue and then plot<\/p>\n
this. But presumably after that and you get policy change. Yes. And so you’re showing this very early<\/p>\n
stage of the process. It’s actually led by parties. Yes. That’s what the data points to. Why<\/p>\n
do you think that it is? I think if<\/p>\n
I was the pair of party platforms, I’d say to the Yoon’s together, I think I mean,<\/p>\n
rhetoric is so much easier than kinetic action with congressional hearings. You got it. You need<\/p>\n
to get a policy issue on the agenda. You need to take it through the process<\/p>\n
to that point in order for this body to meet and therefore register in the in the<\/p>\n
data set. So I think it’s a lot easier if you’re a party who wants to<\/p>\n
expand the issues that are being talked about to just include an item and party platforms,<\/p>\n
because let’s be real. Unless you’re super partisan, you’re not going to reach<\/p>\n
those party platforms. So that that’s a venue where an issue can be slipped in<\/p>\n
and over time it can snowball into action down the line, whether it’s<\/p>\n
from the president or whether it’s from Congress. Maybe you get the president on the deal and more rhetoric,<\/p>\n
even if you follow other venues, you could find some supporting evidence of that, I suspect. But<\/p>\n
what about the problem solving set of questions? Where do you find there? Yes,<\/p>\n
I think my most interesting finding from that dataset was that when you when you compare<\/p>\n
the party platform rhetoric in election years where the party is trying to reclaim<\/p>\n
the White House. So, for example, Republican Party rhetoric from the 1968<\/p>\n
platform or Democratic Party rhetoric from the 1972 platform, Democrat<\/p>\n
Democratic rhetoric has a much more positive spin on the issues when compared<\/p>\n
to Republicans. Republicans had a much larger percentage of problem statements and statements, which<\/p>\n
I’m calling both statements that express both a problem and a solution within a single statement.<\/p>\n
And I mean, that intuitive intuitively makes sense when you think about it. For a lot of those years,<\/p>\n
at least the House, if not the Senate, were controlled by the Democratic Party. So it’s much it’s much<\/p>\n
easier for the Republican Party to be able to sling things at the opposing<\/p>\n
party because they’re perceived as being in power. They have control of a lot of the chambers.<\/p>\n
So I will move on to topic Chloe’s project. So clearly, you didn’t do anything involving Congress.<\/p>\n
You did not you, since you are a future lawyer. Yes. You did something involving<\/p>\n
the courts. Yes, I did. So my project was inspired by a combination<\/p>\n
of things. The great broadening English book coming out soon. It’ll be a podcast episode<\/p>\n
on May. Yeah. So I read that. And basically it talks<\/p>\n
about how government has gotten bigger and federal agencies have increased starting in the 1940s.<\/p>\n
And that kind of got me thinking because I’ve always kind of really liked the institution of the Supreme Court. So it’s<\/p>\n
not something that I think on a personal level I’ve been very interested in. And so I kind of thought about how those two<\/p>\n
things could possibly relate to each other and the effect that this like great<\/p>\n
increase in the big ocracy, animistic number of agencies, how that would affect the types of cases the Supreme<\/p>\n
Court has been seen in so long, that logic. I kind of hypothesize that<\/p>\n
there’d be a correlation between the increase in the bureaucracy and the number<\/p>\n
of cases before the Supreme Court, citing like problematic bureaucratic or federal agency rules<\/p>\n
that rules that kind of came in, came into clash with the Constitution<\/p>\n
or with some type of law. However, kind of surprisingly, I think<\/p>\n
the hypothesis was wrong and there has been no increase or no real correlation<\/p>\n
at all from what I can tell. So the court isn’t so the bureaucracy grows, adopts<\/p>\n
a whole bunch more policy issues, and the court just doesn’t seem to care. Yeah, that’s kind of<\/p>\n
what my that’s what the data that I have collected has shown that<\/p>\n
the court seems to be pretty much letting the theocracy do what they want. So I think it’s a more interesting finding them than finding<\/p>\n
what you were expecting. So, yeah. So why what what’s what’s going on? You know, I don’t know.<\/p>\n
I think I’m almost kind of at a loss at this point because I was so ready to find exactly<\/p>\n
what I thought I was going to find. And why didn’t I? I first I thought I did this wrong<\/p>\n
or something. And so I went back and kind of checked and looked to see what it could have done differently. And<\/p>\n
I did it again. And I came up with the same answer. You know, the rules don’t have to<\/p>\n
conflict with with the Constitution. They can be a statutory interpretation, which the court<\/p>\n
does. And that’s what surprises me about this finding that they got into that more.<\/p>\n
John Roberts, when he took over as chief justice, said, we spend too much time on<\/p>\n
the social issues, on criminal justice, want to spend more time solving business issues.<\/p>\n
I wonder if in the future some new Supreme Court justice will call on saying we need to<\/p>\n
figure out how to handle the amount of rules that are coming up without treating them in a simple<\/p>\n
fashion, deferring too much to the agency or being too critical of the agency’s<\/p>\n
work in this area. Are you optimistic or pessimistic? I don’t know. I think<\/p>\n
that, like, if I were to choose one explanation, I think it’s odd that the Supreme<\/p>\n
Court doesn’t care and that they maybe won’t revisit it in the future. But I do think that if I<\/p>\n
had the data set, I’d like to repeat this project, like for the D.C. courts. I think that they<\/p>\n
catch a lot of the cases that I would be interested in before they reach TuneCore. And I think that the Supreme Court<\/p>\n
has been deferring to their rulings. Great point. It’s a wonderful board.<\/p>\n
The courts specialize. And that’s the that’s the brand. That is the district that handles<\/p>\n
most of these appeals. Great. And you would think that the Administrative Procedures Act probably<\/p>\n
governs most court challenges and some of the follow up at ACS, which put requirements<\/p>\n
on the regulating process. That’s. That’s not a problem for the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court does<\/p>\n
need to resolve those issues. Right. In whether or not like a law or regulation, I went through,<\/p>\n
you know, proper cost benefit analysis. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That’s exactly. I think. I think that the<\/p>\n
problems like they’re just kind of deferring to the lower courts because the problems aren’t big enough<\/p>\n
for them to feel like they have to step in. But even that that I’m surprised that there’s not bigger<\/p>\n
problems because I think that like beer, like bureaucrats, like they may be experts on whatever<\/p>\n
agency, the EPA environment, for example, but they don’t necessarily know like<\/p>\n
exactly like how the law works. And so I’m surprised that there aren’t bigger problems that<\/p>\n
have swayed. The court is not paying enough attention. Are the bureaucrats are better than we thought there were? Yeah, pretty much.<\/p>\n
That’s the big takeaway from my project. So I like to wrap up<\/p>\n
here and ask you guys just a little bit of a valedictory question. Right. So it’s been a year<\/p>\n
you guys have been doing research for a year. You’ve been working with Policy Agendas Project for a year. You’ve spent a<\/p>\n
intense week in D.C. interviewing people as key as each NAMEY. One thing that<\/p>\n
you’ve learned about public policy in the United States that you did know<\/p>\n
a year ago. And I’ll give you guys a second. A minute. I mean, I talk for a little bit while you guys think<\/p>\n
and tell everybody that we’ve got a nice upcoming schedule for the next month or so if you’re still<\/p>\n
listening to this process that is at the top of the show. But whatever, we’ve an education policy<\/p>\n
podcast coming hopefully in about two weeks and then we’re gonna be doing the great broadening with<\/p>\n
with Brian, his coauthors and coauthors, Sean Perry and Michele Wiman at some point in<\/p>\n
May. So now that I vamped a little bit, who would like to go first? What do you guys learned,<\/p>\n
Krista? What have you learned? I think just in the course of my<\/p>\n
projects specifically. I think I expected to see<\/p>\n
some massive change in 150+ Congress with Trump coming in and with that<\/p>\n
what seems to be a pretty big change in political rhetoric, rhetoric, but really<\/p>\n
polarization is not the rate of polarization isn’t really changing much at all.<\/p>\n
So I was really just surprised to see that despite all the negative attention<\/p>\n
politics is getting in the media. Nothing’s really<\/p>\n
changing all that much between the parties. So is the Trump phenomenon a symptom<\/p>\n
of a longer problem or is it causing a new problem? It’s definitely a symptom.<\/p>\n
Nothing new is really happening, at least in terms of party polarization.<\/p>\n
Sometimes you don’t pay enough attention to the trends or want to see this dramatic effect from one new<\/p>\n
leader. And sometimes that’s not the way it works. Matter of fact, I think most of the time it doesn’t.<\/p>\n
Man, what you learned this year. Hopefully something. Yeah, I think if I did<\/p>\n
boil it down to one specific thing, I I was a little bit surprised as to how<\/p>\n
positive the party platform statements were. I I assume going into<\/p>\n
the into my research that in especially in years where parties were trying to reclaim the White House.<\/p>\n
Party platform rhetoric would be extra overwhelmingly negative, but<\/p>\n
with the exception of that one instance, with Republican Party platforms in<\/p>\n
those White House seeking years, almost all other instances,<\/p>\n
the positive statements hovered around 50 percent and that stayed consistent across parties<\/p>\n
across election year. So I was actually surprised by that. Why do you think that is? That’s<\/p>\n
a good cause. I think the question I always ask. I think just because<\/p>\n
of the spectacle that is the convention and the show that the parties are trying to put on for their constituents,<\/p>\n
they want to keep things positive, especially because, I mean, even when you’re,<\/p>\n
for example, if you’re in the minority party, if you’re trying to reclaim the White House, you still have a stake in the<\/p>\n
in the legislative process. There are still Republicans involved. So I think being overwhelmingly negative<\/p>\n
in the end doesn’t necessarily help your cause because there was there were still Republican hands in the pie,<\/p>\n
for example. What do you. Well, see, guys think about that. So why why are these these party platforms and I’m<\/p>\n
with men. I’ve read a lot of them. And they’re they’re very aspirational. So why why are party’s aspirational?<\/p>\n
What we hear about negative campaigning is the most effective type of campaigning. And this is in a way, a campaign document,<\/p>\n
but it doesn’t look like the rest of the campaign.<\/p>\n
Is all in the end as most American dialog about<\/p>\n
aspirational matters, that is freedom and liberty and<\/p>\n
choice. And shining city on the Hill to quote President Reagan.<\/p>\n
I think it dominates in many ways American politics. I’m surprised, as Matt is that<\/p>\n
it shows up in the party platform. Well, yes, it does. I feel like parties like to be associated,<\/p>\n
like if it’s on their platform, it’s really closely associated with them. And so they like to be like more<\/p>\n
positive. But the negative campaigning. It’s effective, but they just don’t necessarily<\/p>\n
want to associate with them directly. They won’t sign a name to it. Yeah.<\/p>\n
They don’t like openly. Yeah. They don’t want on their website or anything. But yeah, it’s.<\/p>\n
I am just my thoughts about this. Yeah. I don’t know how much of you how much C-SPAN you guys have watched during that during<\/p>\n
the party conventions. I’ve watched a number of party conventions through and through every minute of them.<\/p>\n
And they’re fun. Like they think that the delegates who go there, like they really love what<\/p>\n
they do. They they love politics. They love. They love policy. They think that they’re there for a purpose.<\/p>\n
And when the parties are putting their mission statement out there, I think that they’re they’re putting<\/p>\n
out something aspirational, believe, because that’s what they are. They are they’re an aspirational institution. And, you know, even,<\/p>\n
you know, there’s some parties in recent years that I have disagreed with strongly. But you go you watch video of their convention<\/p>\n
there. They’re holding up American flags and enjoying themselves and having the time of their lives.<\/p>\n
And and I think that’s I think I think I think we underrate that in our cynicism sometimes.<\/p>\n
And as a future professor, hopefully that is one of my one of my goals with my students. What are<\/p>\n
the things you should look at then? Is a comparison of party platforms here and other countries of the world<\/p>\n
to see if we’re more or less aspirational compared to see if you, as he thesis, matter<\/p>\n
clearly. One thing you have learned and this podcast is I cannot. Two things.<\/p>\n
One, just how powerful like federal agencies are. That’s definitely a big takeaway<\/p>\n
from my project. But also just coding ACARS reports gave me a really good insight<\/p>\n
as to how the lawmaking process works on the side of senators<\/p>\n
and representatives. Just like that, they don’t know everything they’re legislating<\/p>\n
on and that they need help. New information. I thought that was really interesting.<\/p>\n
Just the topics that they choose to. It just gave me a really good insight as to the<\/p>\n
legislative process or a better insight. Yeah. You guys have you guys not just worked on Sciarra supports. You guys have now<\/p>\n
read congressional hearings. A lot of congressional hearings. Right. You guys are<\/p>\n
about to do go visit a whole lot of public log Web pages, by the way, just just on your way out the door.<\/p>\n
They’re all they’re all smiling and very happy about the work I’m doing. I’m going to give them you guys.<\/p>\n
I’m trying to. What else you guys you guys have worked on. But you guys have been have have,<\/p>\n
I think, really seen the legislative process in detail. So clearly, I<\/p>\n
want to ask you, what what do you think of something that Congress does that you do know it did<\/p>\n
that that that that’s just interesting. I mean, I didn’t know that the concussion<\/p>\n
like Sierras existed until I entered the. So it’s OK. I mean, until<\/p>\n
this I think I the main source information that I thought of was like lobbyists<\/p>\n
and think tanks. I knew that that’s where a lot of people are. Representatives got their information.<\/p>\n
And I’d say I did not know there was this whole service that provides very detailed information makes me feel<\/p>\n
better almost. I think they know it’s talking to the experts. Yeah. Somewhere<\/p>\n
down the street. Yeah. Let’s go talk to ask them. They’re they’re running<\/p>\n
Windows XP on their computers, but they they’re some of the most ideological congressmen<\/p>\n
can come up with some major policy proposals perhaps because of<\/p>\n
operations like the IRS might get to is famous for being a little bit<\/p>\n
kooky out of west Florida has a wonderful climate change proposal. Really?<\/p>\n
Yes. What’s the proposal? That’s for another price. All right.<\/p>\n
Thank you, guys for joining me. This has been your Policy Agendas podcast.<\/p>\n"},"episode_featured_image":false,"episode_player_image":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2018\/12\/The-Policy-Agenda-Logo3-e1545063000555.png","download_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/podcast-download\/44\/episode-7-polarization-agenda-setting-and-the-court.mp3","player_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/podcast-player\/44\/episode-7-polarization-agenda-setting-and-the-court.mp3","audio_player":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/podcast-player\/44\/episode-7-polarization-agenda-setting-and-the-court.mp3<\/a><\/audio>","episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":[],"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/feed\/podcast\/the-policy-agenda","embedCode":"Episode 7: Polarization, Agenda Setting, and the Court<\/a><\/blockquote>