Barack Obama Proves Decentralization Works

Barack Obama's field operation has been getting a lot of buzz lately. I spent my summer working for a Congressional Campaign as our field director. My experiences working to organize volunteers and constituency groups makes Obama's campaign that much more amazing.

You can read about the structure of Obama's field organizing here. To sum a fantastic article up in pitifully too few words: The Obama campaign gave up hierarchical control over their field operation, and instead gave tremendous autonomy to field organizers and lead volunteers to run their operation. They set up neighborhood teams, covering about ten precincts, and allowed those teams to find their own way to achieve a vote goal in that area.

The Obama campaign has a textbook way of organizing each district, but that functions only as a tool to guide field organizers and team leaders, not to rigidly direct their actions. Organizers will modify the plan to suit their own district, or come up with new ways of doing things. They recruit team leaders, who recruit other leaders, who recruit other volunteers, who work to persuade, register, and turn out voters. The whole thing is organic.

I consider myself a libertarian for a lot of reasons. One is ideological - my belief that individuals have a human right to control their own social, political, and economic spheres. I believe that government's power should be limited simply because people never signed any sort of social contract, and therefore are forced into the system.

That's all fine and good in a political theory book. The real reason that I am a libertarian is I believe that it works. The key difference between liberals, conservatives, and libertarians is a belief in the power of a human person. Conservatives believe that humans are in effect powerless compared to all-powerful forces like the divine and tradition. They don't trust human beings to make decisions, and instead rest upon the decisions that have persisted throughout history. Liberals trust human beings, but just a few of them. They believe that the "goodest" and smartest people in the room should make decisions for everyone else, for their benefit. Both fear that individuals will choose the wrong option, and therefore will harm themselves and everyone else.

I have a faith in the human being as a decider, and so does Barack Obama's campaign. We both recognonize our own limitations (our inability to be God; to make the correct decision for others) and we both have faith in the ability of trusted to make that decision, provided that they are accountable for the result (our ability to recognize that human beings are powerful enough to overcome the need for a God to direct our actions) and with a common goal.

Markets are about a lack of control. As George Will says here, no one knows how to make a pencil. The person mining the graphite in a mine somewhere does not know where it is going, nor does the person producing the wood or the rubber, and the person putting it all together has no idea where it comes from. The market functions as its own healthy organism, powerful in its ability to adapt and innovate.

Barack Obama (or at least the people running his campaign) seems to get that. Its really difficult for someone to sacrifice control in order to achieve a better product: it seems like a tremendous risk. Ron Paul did it very poorly. Structure and accountability are important, but they are desigend to empower the individual, not to constrain him. I hope that President Obama (now just short of a certainty) learns this lesson when sets up his government. He cannot "manage" an economy, but rather he can assure its accountability and structure. He needs to both lose his faith in his own personal ability to make the correct decision all of the time, and have faith in the ability of others to do just that.

An interesting side question: What happens to this structure after the campaign ends? Where do all of this field organizers and volunteers go? This seems to me like a great opportunity for we as a society to rebuild our social capital and community organizations.

EJF


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Interesting post, EJF - and I generally agree with what I take to be your point, namely: Barack Obama should be a President who surrounds himself with accountable people whom he trusts to run things. He should not attempt to take on every issue individually. I think you take the decentralization of his campaign to be an analogy of this. But your post is also all over the place in terms of what you're trying to accomplish. You seem to argue (1)for decentralization, (2) for the rise of libertarianism, (3) for the philosophical superiority of libertarianism over conservatism and liberalism, (4) for atheism, (5) for increasing our trust in everybody, (6) for free markets and finally (7) for Obama to "lose his faith in his own personal ability to make the correct decision all of the time." I'm not sure what many of these have to do with your overall point, but I've a few problems with some things you said.

First, whenever one is faced with an argument from analogy (as we are here), it is important to consider whether the entities being compared are similar. This is where I take issue with what you've laid out. Yes, Obama's campaign operations are decentralized. But do you really believe that campaign operations are similar in nature to the daily/monthly/yearly operations of the various sectors of the American government? In other words, is a campaign organizer facing the same decisions and repercussions that the President of the United States is? Surely not. Obama as campaign leader is free to decentralize his operations because if something were to go wrong, he could simply fire whomever messed up and replace them with one more apt. Contrarily, Obama would have no such luxury as President (just look at the flack Bush Jr. took when he had to replace Alberto Gonzalez). Simply put, there is MUCH more on the line when you're directing an entire country's operations. Obama as President is, in an enormous way, more responsible for his failures or successes than Obama as campaign manager. Thus, while it may actually be the case that decentralization is a workable and successful model for a President to adopt, we surely could not prove that proposition by pointing to the successes of his campaign operations.

Second, I'm going to attack your definition of "libertarian." You claim that you are a libertarian because you believe "individuals have a human right to control their own political, social and economic spheres." (emphasis added) Perhaps your addition of the word "human" before "right" is an unintended argument, but couple this with your atheistic ramblings later in the post, and it seems to indicate that you are intentionally drawing a distinction between "human rights" and "natural rights." I will have you know that "natural rights" do not imply the existence of a God, and thus, as an agnostic myself, I can happily consider myself a natural law legal theorist. So where do your "human rights" come from? Who defines these rights? Every individual? Do I have a "human right" to use my property in such a way that it becomes a nuisance for my neighbors? Or does that "human right" interfere with their "human right" to be free from nuisances? Furthermore, your social contract theory would be a fantastic argument...if only contracts worked that way. You ignore the fact that consent plays a large role in social contract theory. Of course there is no literal contract wherein every citizen of the United States, from 1776 to 2009, signed the document and attested to every term within. The general idea is that, in a democratic republic, we have elected leaders who act on our behalf, who DID literally sign a contract (you may have heard of this thing called the Constitution). Now, your argument may be that, hey, I didn't vote for James Madison, so he can't really represent me...thus, because my ancestors signed the contract and not me, I'm not bound by it. This is also not how contracts work. First, I'd argue that we are, at the very least, third party beneficiaries to the Constitution, simply because the benefits and burdens of the contract passed to us. I would argue more directly, however, that we (citizens today) are a party to the social contract simply because we continuously assent and consent to the terms of the contract itself. Also, what does any of this have to do with your main argument? Why even bring up libertarianism? Don't Conservatives also argue for decentralization?

Which brings me to my next point, what is this junk about the differing views of liberals, conservatives and libertarians regarding human nature? Where are you getting this? Personal experience? Can't be, unless you've completely ignored all of your empirical data. Libertarians believe in the "power of a human person?" I think you might mean autonomy...because if libertarians believed in the power of a person, then surely they could see the benefit of government (after all, government is just a group of "persons" organized to maintain order and structure in large societies). Next, you claim conservatives distrust people because they put all of their faith in God and "tradition." First off, I love sweeping, blanket-generalizations that clearly fail prima facie. Second, really? Are you talking about social conservatives? Or fiscal conservatives? I refute your argument by pointing to my friend EJB, a conservative, who believes in the power of people. Thirdly, "tradition?" Well...who makes tradition? People. So conservatives really do trust people...just not today's people...only past people...or something? What the hell are you arguing!? You also claim liberals only trust a few people, who should thus rule over others. Nice to see you've bought into the "elitist liberal" argument, but this classification is best conferred upon Platonists. Because that is Plato's Republic, certainly. I don't see many liberals arguing that the "philosopher king" should rule our country. In fact, again, we live in a democratic republic where we don't necessarily believe the our leaders are MORE trustworthy than us, they are simply acting on our behalf...thus both parties (lawmaker and citizen) are considered to be trusted (one in leading, the other in electing good leaders).

Then, inexplicably, you add that you and Barack Obama (I smell a sitcom...) have the "ability to recognize that human beings are powerful enough to overcome the need for a God to direct our actions." Two things: 1) Now we're arguing theological viewpoints? Why is this in here!? 2) Is your point that all conservatives, because they believe only in the "all-powerful forces of the divine and tradition," believe they are divine-right leaders? I kind of hope that is your point because it's gloriously insane. Christopher Shays is not a divine right proponent! Take it back!!

Finally, I want to get back to one more point about your "libertarianism." You state that "government should be limited because people never signed any sort of social contract, and therefore are forced into the system." So, if you're arguing that our government is established on a faulty premise (that is, there really is NO social contract), wouldn't that necessarily lead to the conclusion that our government is, a fortiori, illegitimate? Wouldn't this bring you out of libertarianism and into anarchism? Or are you equating the two? Why should government's powers simply be "limited" if the social contract we ground our system upon is invalid? Why would the government have any power?

In your defense, though, I will repeat that I agree with your overall argument. Obama, as President, should NOT attempt to manage every single facet of our government himself. And I don't think he will. He is a smart enough man to know how to appoint smart and trustworthy people to whom he can delegate some decision-making power. Clinton did it well, Obama will likely fit that mold. I still dislike his candidacy though, and will not vote for him.

~JSK

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Thanks JSK. There's a lot to get through, and this post is sufficiently long already, so I am going to have to be a little selective in my responses.

First on the overall argument and intent - I want to look at what Barack Obama's basic values about management are. I think you characterized my argument correctly here.

A lot of elected officials try to use the "IBM method" to run their governments. Jon Corzine in New Jersey is an excellent example. They determine the exact right course to take in a given situation, and create structures to carry out that directive. Individuals are replacable parts with distinct and unchanging goals. This apporach is simplified to by the phrase, "top down leadership", and is often common among Governors who come from the private sector. It generally does not work in governance. Most campaigns are structured this way - the article that I linked to talks about Kerry's campaign - and it hurts efficiency.

Barack Obama's campaign demonstrates that he (or whomever is proxying the decision for him) believes in the branch method, or a bottom up management style. I think that is pretty clear - he makes speeches about it all of the time. I think that this a clear characteristic of how we can reasonable expect him to manage a White House - something very similar to how Al Gore's "reinventing government" campaign reformed much of government during the 1990s, and a clear difference from how George Bush runs his government.

This observation has led many libertarians (Andrew Sullivan being a great example) to support Obama, branding him a libertarian paternalist - kind of a cross between a liberal and a libertarian, as per my previous definitions. A libertarian paternalist believes that humans can generally be trusted to make good decisions on a collective basis, but government deciders can be useful to nudge an individual in one direction or another. One example would be providing tax incentives to put money into a 401k - creating the "choice architecture" for something overall beneficial to society.

My hope is that Barack Obama, who has stated goals that I disagree with like wealth redistribution, will at least recognize that markets are his most efficient path toward his goal.

Now, this brings us to my other claim, the idea of a debate about human power among ideologies. While I may be generalizing by assigning the labels liberal and conservative, which have different connotations, I think that my observations are accurate absent them. The word conservative has lost its original meaning - I don't think that EJB is a conservative, nor do I think he would generalize himself under what that label means today. If we look at the leaders of the conservative ideology today, we look at faces like Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin, George W. Bush, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, etc - we see a basic distrust of human reason as a central tenant of their world view. We can evidence this in the intelligent design debate.

I don't think that it is outlandish to define social conservatism as one of the primary, if not most powerful, political ideologies in the U.S.A. today. The Republican Party is governed almost exclusively by it - just ask Amit. The Democrats don't have as much of a coherent ideology governing them, which is why Barack Obama's thought process is very interesting to me.

- EJF