Brookings Press Blog

"Primary Politics" author argues “Health care could help climate bill” on Politico.com

Conventional wisdom has it that the angry and protracted health care debate killed the chances of a climate change bill. Neither side has the energy or the will to come back to the table, according to this view. But Primary Politics author and U.S. Climate Task Force co-chair Elaine Kamarck takes a contrarian view. “While everyone was focused on health care, environmental and energy legislation advocates had time to rethink their policy,” she contends. Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Susan Collins (R-ME), John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) are among those outlining new proposals. As a result, Kamarck concludes, “Chances have now increased substantially that, in spite of everything, a climate bill can be passed.”

- Read “Health care could help climate bill.”

- Learn more about Primary Politics.

On Economist.com, PRIMARY POLITICS Author Elaine Kamarck Debates the Obama Administration’s Record with Cato’s David Boaz

In an online Oxford-style debate moderated by The Economist’s Washington correspondent Robert Guest, Elaine Kamarck is currently arguing against the motion, “This house believes that Barack Obama is failing.” Kamarck notes that public trust in government has declined as dissatisfaction with job creation efforts, banking reform, and mortgage assistance programs has grown. The president has also failed to rally the public to his side in the debate over health care reform.

“Obama's first-year troubles,” she says, “were entirely predictable. In fact, in November 2008, my colleague William Galston and I did exactly that. In a long article titled ‘Change You Can Believe in Needs a Government You Can Trust,’ we reviewed the decades of data from the American public showing a severe and persistent lack of trust in the federal government. This lack of trust is an especially difficult problem for a Democratic president with an activist and progressive agenda.”

Nonetheless, Kamarck argues, the administration is now on the right path: “The fix began in the State of the Union address. I carefully watched the clock. It took 40 minutes for him to even mention the words ‘health care.’ And in the 40 minutes before that he talked of nothing but the economy and jobs. The State of the Union was a recalibration of his presidency that will limit his losses in the midterm elections to within the normal range and guarantee his re-election….Obama got the most important message when he said, ‘We face a deficit of trust—deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years.’ This is not a man who will fail. This is a man who will learn and thrive.”

- Join the live debate.

- Read David Brooks’s take on “politics in the age of distrust.”

- Learn more about Primary Politics.

Will Sarah Palin be the 2012 Republican nominee for president? How the GOP’s winner-take-all primaries could boost her chances

The release of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s new book, Going Rogue, is creating a lot of buzz. Many political observers wonder if her book tour is laying the groundwork for a run for president in 2012. Could such a polarizing figure win the Republican nomination?  Walter Shapiro outlines a possible scenario in his Politics Daily column.

Republican Party rules are made-to-order for a well-funded insurgent named Sarah to sweep the primaries before anyone figures out how to stop her. If Palin can maintain, say, 35-percent support in a multi-candidate presidential field, then she is the odds-on favorite for the GOP nomination.

The secret of Palin's presidential potential is the Republican Party's affection for winner-take-all primaries. According to my friend Elaine Kamarck's invaluable new book, Primary Politics, 43 percent of the 2008 Republican delegates were selected in primaries where the winner corralled all the delegates by winning a state or congressional district.

Illustrating how candidates have used the delegate counts to create momentum is one of the topics Kamarck discusses in Primary Politics. The book offers an insider’s view of how the presidential nomination process became the often baffling system we have today.

- Read the full article

- Learn more about Primary Politics

Elaine Kamarck Interview on "Primary Politics": Presidential Nominating Process is Out of Control

Elaine Kamarck recently appeared on BroadSide, a program from New England Cable News. Talking about her book Primary Politics, Kamarck said the presidential nominating process is out of control. If she could change one thing, she “would allow the later states, the states in May and June, to be winner takes all.” This adjustment would focus the candidates’ attention on the people of states who are often overlooked in the primary elections.

- Learn more about Primary Politics

“Primary Politics” Event Wrap Ups

Blogger and columnist Tom Schaller offers two recaps of the recent Brookings event for Elaine Kamarck’s new book Primary Politics. In a post on the blog FiveThirtyEight.com, Schaller outlines the main points presented by the panelists and offers his own observations. He writes that “Kamarck noted that for the first time the Republicans, who historically have only permitted rule changes to be considered at their quadrennial national conventions, are now also looking at their own presidential nomination process during the interim between 2008 and 2012.”

In his column in the Baltimore Sun, Schaller emphasized that the rules of the primaries matter. They can and do affect the outcome of elections. He quotes Kamarck as saying that “last year the Democrats' proportional allocation rule for delegates prevented Mrs. Clinton from racking up delegates in the big primary states she won, including New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Had all state contests been winner-take-all, Kamarck estimates the former New York senator would have won the primary by about 300 delegates.”

- Read more about the event on FiveThirtyEight.com

- Check out Tom Schaller’s column in the Baltimore Sun

- View the transcript of the event

- Learn more about Primary Politics

Brookings Hosts Discussion of "Primary Politics"

Elaine Kamarck, Dan Balz, and Walter Shapiro to speak on October 9

On Friday, October 9, Washington Post political correspondent Dan Balz and PoliticsDaily.com columnist Walter Shapiro will join Harvard Kennedy School lecturer Elaine Kamarck to discuss the past and future of the presidential nominating system. Kamarck is the author of the new book Primary Politics: How Presidential Candidates Have Shaped the Modern Nominating System. The discussion will be moderated by Brookings senior fellow William Galston. This event is part of the Governing Ideas series, which is intended to broaden the discussion of governance issues through forums on timely and relevant books on history, culture, legal norms and practices, values, and religion.

- Register for the event

- Learn more about Primary Politics

Elaine Kamarck to Speak on Political Partisanship at the University of Virginia

On Friday, October 2, Primary Politics author and DNC member Elaine Kamarck will join Washington Post columnist and Brookings senior fellow E.J. Dionne; William Kristol, editor and publisher of The Weekly Standard; and Sidney M. Milkis, White Burkett Miller Professor of Politics, for a panel discussion titled “Party Animals: Is Political Partisanship Obama's Problem or Solution?”. The session, which begins at 1:30 p.m., will be moderated by media columnist Edward Wasserman and is cosponsored by UVA’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, Washington and Lee University, and the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.

- Read more about the event.

- See Austin American-Statesman’s coverage of Primary Politics.

Now that the June 12 elections are over, how does the U.S. undertake relations with Iran?

Brookings author Suzanne Maloney reveals the key to U.S. strategy toward Iran

Global news headlines read “Iran vote Illegitimate,” “Sanctions on Iran” and “G8 'deplores' Iran poll violence” as the world grapples for better options to address the issues rising in the country. In a conference by United States Institute of Peace, Suzanne Maloney, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of the book Which Path to Persia?, uncovers solutions that address the right path to resolve the issues in Iran. In the conference titled "Iran's Presidential Elections: Implications for US-Iranian Engagement." Maloney offers her ideas on how the U.S can aid Iranian democracy and development.

Maloney studies Iran, the political economy of the Persian Gulf and Middle East energy policy. A former U.S. State Department policy advisor, she has also counseled private companies on Middle East issues. Maloney has also published books on Iran and its role in the Middle East.

While the title of Which Path to Persia? asks the all-important question, its content tackles the issues and provides options for a new American strategy toward Iran. In the book, Maloney teams up with Ken Pollack, former Director for Persian Gulf affairs at the National Security Council; Dan Byman, Director of Georgetown University’s Center for Peace and Security Studies; Martin Indyk, acting vice president and director of Foreign Policy at Brookings; Michael O’Hanlon, senior author of the Iraq Index; and Bruce Riedel, senior advisor to three U.S. presidents on Middle East issues. Together, this team of experienced scholars offers the most important policy solutions available to the United States with regard to Iran and the Middle East.

- Learn more about Which Path to Persia?

- Read full details of the conference from an article by the National Iranian American Council

Reforming the Primary Process: Author Elaine Kamarck shares perspective

“Democratic Change Commission” hosts Kamarck at public meeting

It’s an off year between presidential election seasons, so the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee have begun to discuss, once again, the many issues entangling the presidential primary elections. According to a Washington Post article on Sunday, June 28, Primary Politics: How Presidential Candidates Have Shaped the Modern Nominating System author Elaine Kamarck added her own opinion to the debate at a public meeting held by the “Democratic Change Commission.” Speaking before an audience of political elites, Kamarck suggested that superdelegates be eliminated from the primary process, a controversial stance that garnered a mixed response. From the article, Kamarck argued that “the selection of presidential nominees is now a public process and has eliminated the need for elites who could assert themselves in the equivalent of a back-room role.”

Kamarck’s Primary Politics, which explores how the presidential primary process became the complex, often confusing system that it is today, will be published this July.

- Read the Washington Post's "There They Go Again: Fixing the Primary Process"

- Learn more about Primary Politics

Outrage in Iran: "Which Path to Persia?"

Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran

What do we do about Iran? Over the past thirty years, Washington has produced an unimpressive track record for policies - ranging from undeclared warfare to unilateral concessions - that have largely failed to convince Tehran to drop its support for terrorist groups, the pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, or its wider efforts to overturn the regional status quo. Now the world watches as protests continue to heat up over the apparently rigged elections that have given hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad an overwhelming victory over reformist Mir Hossein Moussavi.

Available in July, Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran, objectively presents the most important policy options available to the United States in crafting a new strategy toward Iran, including: diplomacy, military, regime change, and containment. The distinguished group of authors, all senior fellows with the Saban Center at Brookings, points out that no one strategy is ideal and that all involve heavy costs, significant risks, and potentially painful tradeoffs.

- Learn more about Which Path to Persia?