Eli Dourado made the claim on twitter that he is indifferent between between Obama, Palin, Trump, Bachmann, and Romney as President. When asked if he was indifferent to policies, given that all of these people varied greatly on policy beliefs, he replied “Of course not. They all suck in their special ways and it pretty much washes out. After reoptimization, no real change.”

I find this to be extremely dubious. First of all, if any President eventually “washes out” and comes out equal to all others, then you should be indifferent to all of the current President’s exiting policies choices. After all, Presidents have discretion. You can appeal to the median voter theory all you want, but on any given policy different politicians would do things differently were they president. So if a President is using his discretion poorly today relative to other possible presidents, it will wash out in the long-run, presumably by using his discretion in a good way.

This type of thinking tells us we should all have Zen-like reactions to bad policy choices, with the response always being “it all washes out in the long-run”. This is further implied by indifference between possible Obamas. There were many possible ways for Obama to be president. And at every turn, according to Eli’s theory, for every bad choices he has made, some future good choice will be made to undo it.  Would you have preferred Obama not go into Libya? Why? If he didn’t do that, he would have done something else you didn’t like, but now he’s not going to do that thing. Just tell yourself “it all washes out”.

My favorite example for how worse off we could be is always John Edwards. This man was a contender. If he were president, he and Treasury Secretary Stiglitz would have tried to  nationalize Citigroup, had a 100% infrastructure $1.5 trillion recovery act. They would have used their political capital to pass something stronger than Card Check, and they would have been throwing up protectionism wherever they could, trying to rebuild America via manufacturing and textiles.  Our handout to GM would have been way more egregious were Larry Summers and Austen Goolsbee replaced by Stiglitz and Richard Freedman.

But let’s look in the other direction. You know who else ran for President in 2008? Ron Paul. President Paul would have yanked out Bernanke and put in a gold bug, which would have outdone anything any other president could do, short of unnecessary nuclear war, in terms of a welfare loss. President Paul would have heralded in the Great Depression 2, not the Great Recession.

So what does this mean for the current crop of politicians gaming up for 2012? Well, it’s early in the campaign and neither have given much in the way of specifics. In general, I think Bachmann and Trump are fun mixes of crazy and stupid, and that they will use their presidential discretion in crazy and stupid ways.  I think both would make relations with China much worse with the sort of dumb, blustery rhetoric they both always and forever use. I think a China that is even 10% less cooperative is a serious problem. I think the probability of a war with Iran, however small that is now, would more than double under either of these clowns. This will be due too their dumb, blustery styles, their ideologically clouded thought processes, and their likelihood of having a poorly chosen cabinet that advises them badly. Nobody who has been president in the last 100 years* would be dumb enough to say something like this:

“I very simply said that Iran is going to take over Iraq, and if that’s going to happen, we should just stay there and take the oil. They want the oil, and why should we? We de-neutered Iraq, Iran is going to walk in, take it over, take over the second largest oil fields in the world. That’s going to happen. That would mean that all of those soldiers that have died and been wounded and everything else would have died in vain– and I don’t want that to happen. I want their parents and their families to be proud,”

Importantly, it seems there’s a decent chance whoever is president in 2012 will have a Republican controlled House and Senate. What particular policies would Bachmann or Trump pass with a friendly house and senate? I think they would both pass terrible immigration laws, generally make things worse off for existing illegal immigrants, and it would mean less immigrants overall. Trump is the guy who once said “I’m opposed to new people coming in… We have to take care of the people who are here.” I think Romney and Daniels would have better sense than this. Even Palin knows better.

Perhaps most importantly, I think both Bachmann and Trump would not look credible to our lenders. The next president will nominate a Fed Chairman in 2014, again, with the possible support of Republican congress. The mere prospect of these two being able to nominate someone (Fed Chairman Vince McMahon? Makes about as much sense as President Trump) could cause people to lose faith and decide to stop buying treasuries well in advance of 2014, sending interest rates skyrocketing. The consequences here could be disastrous.

I can understand how someone with a particular set of political beliefs could be indifferent between President McCain or President Obama. But if you’re indifferent between Present Trump and… well, almost any other candidate, I think your crazy.  I mean, if this is the case, would you be indifferent to President Glenn Beck? There is a button, and his finger would be on it… constantly. Is there anyone you wouldn’t want to be President?

You shouldn’t be indifferent to President Bachmann or President Trump, if for no other reason, because of what them being elected would say about America.

 

*Teddy Roosevelt, the last President who would have said something like this, ended his term 102 years ago.