The New Republic

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece about how too many academic economists are doing cute and clever work instead of tackling weighty questions ("Freaks and Geeks," April 2). I placed some of the blame for this on Steve Levitt, the University of Chicago professor and author of Freakonomics. Levitt, I argued, was both a leading practitioner of cute-and-clever and a role model to top young economists. READ MORE >>

By the time Fred Thompson decides whether or not to join the presidential fray, you will have heard the story of his red pickup truck at least a dozen times. The truck in question is a 1990 Chevy, which the famed statesman-thespian rented during his maiden Senate campaign in 1994. The idea was that Thompson would dress up in blue jeans and shabby boots and drive himself to campaign events around the state. Upon arriving, he'd mount the bed of the truck and launch into a homespun riff on the virtues of citizen-legislators and the perils of Washington insider-ism. READ MORE >>

There comes a point in the life of every fan when he must confront the mounting evidence that he and the rest of the world part company on the object of his fan-dom--and the rest of the world may have a point. I have in mind here such historic milestones as year four of the disastrous Bobby Bonilla experiment in New York, the year I fell out of love with the Mets. On paper, the Mets of early '90s vintage looked like world-beaters. Somewhere in the middle of their third consecutive losing season, however, it became clear that this team was never going to put it together. READ MORE >>

Related Links: Steven Levitt's response to Scheiber's argument, and Scheiber's response to Levitt. READ MORE >>

One of the few papers I actually read as a grad student was written by a pair of economists named Josh Angrist and Alan Krueger. In the early '90s, Angrist and Krueger set off to resolve a question that had been gnawing at economists for decades: Does going to school increase your future wages? Intuitively, it seemed obvious that it did. When you compared the salaries of, say, Ph.D.s with those of high-school dropouts, the grad-school set almost always did better. The question was whether education accounted for the difference. READ MORE >>

In the current issue, I criticize the recent rush by economists to produce cute and clever work, à la Freakonomics. But cleverness isn't always a bad quality in an economist. Herewith, a guide to four papers (available publicly only as working papers rather than in their final forms) that use cleverness to answer genuinely important questions: READ MORE >>

It's a Tuesday in mid-October 2005, and Kansas Senator Sam Brownbackis chairing a meeting of a little-known but highly influentialSenate group called the Values Action Team (VAT). Think of it as aPTA board for the vast right-wing conspiracy: The Concerned Womenfor America has a standing invitation, as do the Family ResearchCouncil, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the NationalRight to Life Committee. The activists sit around a conferencetable in the Capitol building and plot strategy on matters likebroadcast decency, Internet gambling, and anti-abortionlegislation. READ MORE >>

Three quick thoughts in response to Jason's post about Poppy and Jeb. First, it's not such a stretch for Jason to theorize that, deep down, H.W. might have preferred Jeb to be the son who ascended to the White House. The Bush family literature is filled with this kind of thing. For example, The Bushes, the tome written by Bush-family confidants Peter and Rochelle Schweizer, includes the following paragraph about H.W.'s thoughts during the 1994 campaign season: READ MORE >>

It’s the afternoon of December 19, 1998, the day the House will impeach Bill Clinton, and one Republican representative can’t bring himself to vote. Not, as you might expect, because he’s torn between his partisan passions and constitutional principle—the representative has just delivered a screed pronouncing the president’s offenses impeachable. But because he literally can’t vote. He has emptied his wallet, ransacked his office, and badgered his aides, all to no avail: Our poor hero has misplaced his electronic voting card. READ MORE >>

Sandbridge was once a sleepy patch of coastline tucked between Virginia Beach and the North Carolina border. Until about 50 years ago, no one but the odd duck hunter or fisherman ever set foot here. That's when Phil Kellam's dad brokered the deal that brought development to the area. Today, a mix of modest bungalows, high-rise condos, and multimillion dollar homes lines the coast.Kellam, the Democrat hoping to represent this southern corner of Virginia in Congress, is telling me this as we head north along the READ MORE >>