If you're explaining, you're losing....

U.S. Presidential election campaigns are awesome! For some the permanent campaign in American politics is tiresome, expensive, and makes a mockery of democracy. I'm not in that camp. American presidents don't always work out well, but getting to the White House means going through the toughest job interview process on the planet. The gig itself isn't for the faint of heart, so it's no surprise that the process for getting there is equally rough.

Hillary Clinton's campaign faces a growing set of problems that have little to do with challengers from either party. Many, in fact, are own goals. Back in April, I wrote a post about Hillary Clinton's announcement that she was going to make another run at President in 2016 (Link). I will take the opportunity to gloat a little and suggest that you revisit the list of challenges that the 2016 version of the Clinton campaign would face (see points 3, 4 and 6, in particular). Hillary Clinton's campaign is doing too much explaining. And, as President Reagan once said, "if you're explaining, you're losing."

Foreign Policy Sausage

 It's often said of sausage that you never really want to know how it's made. The same cannot be said about policy. What goes into the policy-sausage is as important as the policy-sausage itself, especially if it turns out badly.

There is a fantastic piece by Karen DeYoung in today's Washington Post about the inner workings of the Obama Administration's National Security Council (linked here). It describes bureaucratic bloat, indecision, sketchy inter-agency coordination, infighting, and competition, and an all too frequent emphasis on process that has often generated more paralysis than meaningful policy; foreign policy sausage-making at its finest.

Have Canadian Bovines Scuttled TPP?

This past Friday (July 31) was to have marked the completion of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a signature effort for a President that I might best describe as agnostic about trade liberalization, but nevertheless a critical piece of his foreign policy agenda. Well, it didn't happen. Why? Canadian diary cows.... or more specifically, the heavily protected farmers that raise them.

If you've ever wondered why milk and other dairy products on Canadian grocery stores never seem to go on sale, look no further than Canada's supply management system; a regressive, and outdated set of policies that distort prices, controls supply, and limits competition in the Canadian dairy sector. Canada's dairy industry goes to some effort to defend this system, in part arguing that they are defending the health and welfare of Canadians. The reality is that it's mainly about protecting a small group of relatively affluent farmers (poultry too, by the way).