New Ideas

By Ezra, Who's Not At The Beach Because Ro De Janeiro Decided to Rain on Him.

One quick addendum to the no-new-ideas-needed argument: The press corps, which doesn't get paid based on their familiarity with the world of policy proposals, really isn't looking for "New Ideas." Social Security privatization, the "New Idea" around which the Chait piece and this whole conversation originally took place had, after all, been kicking around Cato since the 70s. Chile had implemented it decades prior. It just seemed new to the press.

Indeed, the word new" is actually muddling the conversation a bit. What the press is interested in is better described as "fresh." It could be an idea they haven't heard. Or it could be an old idea that's more radical than they're used to. Or demonstrates an approach they weren't expecting. Or is sold in a way they haven't grown inured to. John Edwards got a lot of press for a health care plan that wasn't in any sense new thinking, but which was expansive enough to seem worthy of buzz. Bush got his new idea cred for an old, bad idea that was unsettlingly radical, and which his administration kept selling as new. The difference between a new idea and an old idea is largely good press management*. And Democrats do need to get better at that.

*The corollary to this is that a new idea is what the press says it is, and so there are certain ideas they don't like and will bash as old thinking simply because it's an easy attack. For instance, anything that makes the welfare state more, rather than less, expansive, will probably be derided by Robert Samuelson and Sebastian Mallaby as old, industrial age, thinking. Not much to be done about that.