O enigma de Verissimo

Rodrigo Constantino

Quando você lê com certa frequência as colunas do Verissimo, como eu faço (provavelmente por causa do meu lado masoquista), você começa a compreender melhor como o simpático colunista faz para passar suas mensagens pelas entrelinhas. As mensagens, invariavelmente, levam ao mesmo lugar: a defesa do socialismo. A forma é dissimulada, envergonhada muitas vezes. Mas o destino é sempre este. É o nosso Toohey tupiniquim, para quem leu "A Nascente", de Ayn Rand (para quem ainda não leu, está esperando o que?).

No artigo de hoje, "O enigma", Verissimo tenta culpar o anacronismo russo pela desgraça soviética, livrando assim a cara do comunismo/socialismo. Eis o que ele escreve:

"A própria experiência comunista só enfatizou o enigma. Grande parte da armação teórica da revolução partiu da 'intelligentsia' russa, mas não havia lugar mais improvável para uma revolução proletária do que a Rússia, com sua tradição de servos hereditários e submissos e seu feudalismo medieval. O próprio Marx levou um susto. Um dos problemas do Ocidente na sua relação com a União Soviética durante a Guerra Fria era nunca saber se estava tratando com o comunismo soviético ou com o anacronismo russo, passional e imprevisível."

Perceberam a malandragem? A experiência comunista não veio dos proletários (em lugar algum veio), e o lugar era inapropriado para tal revolução. POR ISSO é que deu errado, ora bolas! Não vem ao caso lembrar que o comunismo deu errado em Cuba, na Coréia do Norte, na China, na Iugoslávia, na Polônia, e onde mais tenha sido imposto pela "intelligentsia" (da qual, por sinal, o próprio Verissimo é um ícone perfeito).

Também não vem ao caso que, segundo Verissimo, o próprio Marx levou um susto com o experimento russo, sendo que Lênin tomou o poder pela força em 1917, enquanto Marx morreu em 1883. Como exatamente Marx fez para levar um susto com um evento que ocorreu 34 anos após sua morte permanece um mistério.

Talvez ESSE seja o enigma do artigo! Até porque, convenhamos, no restante não há enigma algum. O comunismo, inexoravelmente, leva ao caos, miséria e escravidão. Na Rússia ou em qualquer outro lugar, feudalista ou não, anacrônico ou não. Verissimo pode ignorar o fato o quanto ele quiser, mas o fato não muda: o problema é o comunismo em si, este modelo nefasto que deixou um rastro de 100 milhões de mortes na história.

Mas isso não é tudo! Verissimo, depois, tenta ridicularizar Reagan, como fazia a "intelligentsia" mundial na época, por chamar a coisa pelo seu nome, com os devidos pingos nos is. Ele escreve:

"O 'Império do Mal', nas palavras do Ronald Reagan, seria do mal mesmo sem o comunismo. De tais simplificações era feita a política externa americana."

Viram só? Reagan era "simplista" por chamar um "Império do Mal", que escravizou o povo todo, matou milhões, ameaçou a paz mundial, exportou o caos e levou todos à miséria, de "Império do Mal". Eu digo que Reagan era apenas objetivo, e disse uma verdade autoevidente. Isso costuma chocar os comunas mesmo. E novamente, Verissimo tenta jogar a culpa da desgraça soviética nos russos, e não no modelo. Seria o mal "mesmo sem o comunismo".

Calma que não acabou! Verissimo escreve ainda:

"Quando o comunismo caiu, a Rússia adotou o capitalismo selvagem sem nem um período de adaptação. Talvez seja mesmo um caso de caráter nacional."

Verissimo solta no ar a transição para o "capitalismo selvagem", colocando o capitalismo no mesmo saco podre do comunismo, e concluindo que deve ser um problema do "caráter nacional" do país. Entenderam como a estratégia dele funciona?

Haja Engov para aturar Verissimo!

PS: Neste meu artigo de 2005, para o IL, mostro como Putin já derrubava os pilares frágeis do capitalismo no país, resgatando o modelo soviético.

Economics for the Long Run

By JOHN B. TAYLOR, WSJ

Individuals should be free to decide what to produce and consume, and their decisions should be made within a predictable policy framework based on the rule of law

As this election year begins, a lot of people are wondering what we can do to restore America's prosperity and create more jobs. Republican presidential candidates are offering their ideas, and at his State of the Union message on Tuesday President Obama presented his. I believe the fundamental answer is simple: Government policies must adhere more closely to the principles of economic freedom upon which the country was founded.

At their most basic level, these principles are that families, individuals and entrepreneurs must be free to decide what to produce, what to consume, what to buy and sell, and how to help others. Their decisions are to be made within a predictable government policy framework based on the rule of law, with strong incentives derived from the market system, and with a clearly limited role for government.

The history of American economic policy displays major movements between more and less economic freedom, more and less emphasis on rules-based policy in fiscal and monetary affairs, more and less expansive roles for government, more and less reliance on markets and incentives. Each of these swings has had enormous consequences. Taken together, they make for a historical proving ground to determine which policy direction is better for restoring prosperity.

A big move toward more interventionist policies started in the mid-1960s, after more activist Keynesian economists came to town in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and it lasted through the 1970s in the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. We saw short-term stimulus packages, temporary tax rebates or surcharges, go-stop monetary policy with inflationary overexpansion followed by severe contraction, wage-and-price guidelines and controls. The eventual result was high unemployment, high inflation and slow economic growth.

This was followed by a shift toward more predictable policies and a more limited role for government starting in the Reagan administration and largely continuing into the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations. The result was lower unemployment and higher economic growth with long expansions and few recessions.

More recently—beginning during the George W. Bush administration but really taking wings in the current Obama administration—policy has returned toward more and more government intervention, with results we are all experiencing.

How to move the country back toward the policies that sustain economic freedom and prosperity? To start, much can be learned from the stories of the politicians and economic officials who got us in and out of these messes, and remembering that the cast is bipartisan. Most pertinent to our current predicament is the story of how we got out of the economic mess of the late 1970s.

It's difficult to recall now the seriousness of the U.S. economic slump at that time. Unemployment was high and persistent. Inflation had increased past the creeping stage to a trot. Confidence in U.S. economic leadership was plunging at home and abroad.

That changed when Ronald Reagan became president in 1981. Temporary, short-term Keynesian actions and interventions were out. Stable, permanent policy was in. Reagan proposed and Congress passed critical long-term reforms, especially across-the-board tax rate reductions.

The president was a firm believer in economic freedom, an avid reader and follower of economists like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. Between the time he failed to unseat President Gerald Ford in the 1976 Republican primaries and his announcement to run again in 1980, Reagan gave innumerable radio addresses putting forth his principles. He used down-home stories of economic freedom that he could tell in three minutes or less. There were no ghost writers—he wrote his stories in long hand on lined yellow paper as he traveled around the country. The failed policies of the 1970s made Reagan's case appealing across the political spectrum. He based his winning election campaign on these principles.

Reagan appointed a large number of economic officials who also were firmly committed to moving away from interventionist policies. No members of the original Council of Economic Advisers under Reagan had come from the Keynesian school of thought, and most of them during the Reagan administrations were influenced by Milton Friedman.

In addition, the president appointed a group of outside economic advisers—originally including George Shultz, Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan, Arthur Laffer, William Simon and Thomas Sowell—who helped him and others in the administration implement policies to move the country toward economic freedom and then stay the course.

As an example of Reagan's firm commitment to principle, consider monetary policy. When he became president, Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, a Democrat appointed by President Carter, was determined to reduce inflation and end the go-stop interventions of the 1970s. That meant temporarily high interest rates, which contract the economy. One might have expected Reagan to pressure the Fed to lower interest rates to give a short-term boost to the economy. He did not, despite the political costs. In comparison with the political pressure put on Fed Chairman William McChesney Martin by the Johnson administration and on Arthur Burns by the Nixon administration to follow easy money policies, Reagan's decision to support Mr. Volcker was remarkable.

The president's economic strategy was ready to go as soon as the votes were counted in November 1980. That same month, George Shultz, along with many of the economists who had worked in the campaign, wrote an extraordinary memo to Reagan entitled "Economic Strategy for the Reagan Administration." It began with a call for action: "Sharp change in present economic policy is an absolute necessity. The problems . . . an almost endless litany of economic ills, large and small, are severe. But they are not intractable. Having been produced by government policy, they can be redressed by a change in policy. . . . The need for a long-term point of view is essential to allow for the time, the coherence and the predictability so necessary for success."

That predictable, long-term view continued well beyond the Reagan presidency, but it is no longer with us. The clear lesson is to find and select those leaders, regardless of political party, who along with their advisers are most firmly committed to the principles of economic freedom and who know how to implement and maintain them.

Mr. Taylor is a professor of economics at Stanford and a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. This op-ed is adapted from "First Principles: Five Keys to Restoring American Prosperity," published this week by W.W. Norton.

The State of His Policies

Editorial do WSJ

Obama has done nearly everything he wanted. That's the problem

President Obama delivered a State of the Union address Tuesday night that by the account of his own advisers is more campaign document than a plan for governing. He's running against Republicans in Congress, Reaganomics, wealthy bankers and inequality.

Normally a President at the start of his fourth year would be running on his record, accentuating the legislation he's passed. Mr. Obama can't do that with any specificity because the economic recovery has been so weak and the legislation he has passed is so unpopular. So last night he took credit for the shale gas revolution he had nothing to do with and proposed new policies to "spread the wealth around," as he famously told Joe the Plumber in 2008 before he took the words back. We thought he meant it then, and now he's admitting it.

Perhaps this will work if Republicans nominate a standard-bearer who is damaged, or too cautious or guilty to challenge this politics of envy. Mr. Obama clearly has Mitt Romney and his 14% effective tax rate in his sights (see the editorial nearby). The President will try to portray Mr. Romney as Mr. 1%, and if the Republican settles for defending the current tax code, he will lose. He needs a tax reform proposal of his own, as well as the self-confidence to argue for it in the same moral terms that Mr. Obama will attack him.

Meantime, as Mr. Obama begins his fourth year in power it's a good moment to recount the economic record that he'd rather not talk about. The President inherited a deep recession, but in political terms that should have been a blessing. History shows that the deeper the recession, the sharper the recovery, and Mr. Obama was poised by take credit for the economy's natural recuperative powers. Instead, we've had the weakest recovery since the Great Depression and stubbornly high joblessness.

The nearby chart compares rates of quarterly growth during the Reagan and Obama economic recoveries. The comparison is apt because both recoveries followed deep recessions in which the jobless rate reached more than 10%. Once the Reagan recovery got cooking, in 1983, growth stayed above 5% for 18 months and never fell below 3.3% for 13 consecutive quarters.

In the Obama recovery, growth has never exceeded 4% in any quarter and fell off markedly in mid-2010 through the third quarter of 2011. For the first nine months of 2011, growth averaged less than 1.2%. The economy finally picked up again in the fourth quarter, but still at a rate that is subpar for a recovery that long ago should have become robust and durable.

As he runs for re-election, Mr. Obama is trying to campaign as an incumbent who is striving to help the economy but has been stymied at every turn by Congress. Not even MSNBC can believe this. For two years he had the largest Democratic majorities in Congress since the 1970s and achieved nearly everything he wanted.

The New Yorker magazine this week has posted on its website a 57-page memo that economic adviser Larry Summers wrote to Mr. Obama in December 2008. It lays out nearly his entire agenda for the "stimulus," reviving housing, the auto bailout and saving the financial industry. If anything, the memo overstates what would be needed to stabilize the financial panic, but nearly all of the stimulus spending priorities that the memo deemed "feasible" made it into law. They simply didn't work as promised.

The Pelosi Congress also passed ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, cash for clunkers, the housing tax credit, and much more. The only Obama priority it didn't pass was cap-and-trade, which was killed by Senate Democrats.

Mr. Obama's regulators also currently have some 149 major rules underway, which are those that cost more than $100 million. The 112th Congress hasn't been able to kill a single major rule. The most it has been able to do is extend the Bush tax rates—which helped the economy by avoiding a tax shock—and slow the rate of increase in federal spending. This President has been "obstructed" less than anyone since LBJ.

Mr. Obama clearly has a spring in his step these days, figuring that the public hates Congress and thinks Republicans run it, that the GOP will field a weak presidential candidate, and that he can fool the public into believing only Mitt Romney's taxes will rise if Mr. Obama wins a second term. He has only one big obstacle: his record.

The Myth of Conservative Purity

By PETER BERKOWITZ, WSJ

Adam Smith, the Founding Fathers, Ronald Reagan—all practiced the art of wise compromise.

With the opening of the fall political season and tonight's Republican candidate debate, expect influential conservative voices to clamor for fellow conservatives to set aside half-measures, eschew conciliation, and adhere to conservative principle in its pristine purity. But what does fidelity to conservatism's core convictions mean?

Superstar radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has, with characteristic bravado, championed a take-no-prisoners approach. In late July, as the debt-ceiling debate built to its climax, he understandably exhorted House Speaker John Boehner to stand strong and rightly praised the tea party for "putting country before party." But then Mr. Limbaugh went further. "Winners do not compromise," he declared on air. "Winners do not compromise with themselves. The winners who do compromise are winners who still don't believe in themselves as winners, who still think of themselves as losers."

We saw the results of such thinking in November 2010, when Christine O'Donnell was defeated by Chris Coons in Delaware in the race for Vice President Joe Biden's vacated Senate seat. In Nevada Sharron Angle was defeated by Harry Reid, who was returned to Washington to reclaim his position as Senate majority leader. In both cases, the Republican senatorial candidate was a tea party favorite who lost a very winnable election.

The notion of conservative purity is a myth. The great mission of American conservatism—securing the conditions under which liberty flourishes—has always depended on the weaving together of imperfectly compatible principles and applying them to an evolving and elusive political landscape.

William F. Buckley Jr.'s 1955 Mission Statement announcing the launch of National Review welcomed traditionalists, libertarians and anticommunists. His enterprise provides a model of a big-tent conservatism supported by multiple and competing principles: limited government, free markets, traditional morality and strong national defense.

These principles may appear harmonious. That's because they all served the cause of preserving freedom against the leading threats of the day: massive expansion of government, intrusive regulation of the economy, a breakdown of established sources of authority and belief, and communist tyranny. But harmony was an achievement. Just ask those who made a priority of limiting government about the impact of funding and maintaining a powerful military. Or inquire of a traditionalist what measures are necessary to maintain the virtues amidst the constant churn and cultural cacophony generated by capitalism.

Our greatest conservative president, Ronald Reagan, prudently wove together a devotion to limiting government and protecting the moral bases of a free society. But the policies he pursued were not mechanically derived from his principles. They stemmed from complex considerations concerning the necessary, the desirable and the possible. His landmark pro-growth tax cuts of 1981 were followed later by some tax increases. On divisive social issues such as abortion and school prayer, he offered strong words but restrained actions. And in confronting the Soviet Union, he insisted on the unmitigated evil of communism while pursuing dramatic negotiations to lessen the threat of nuclear conflagration, thereby paving the way to victory in the Cold War.

The intellectual architects of the American political and economic order were also blenders and weavers. For example, John Locke, the great 17th-century theorist of individual rights and limited government, argued in "The Second Treatise of Government" that in the event a father dies and fails to provide for the care and education of his son, the state must make provision.

And in "The Wealth of Nations," Adam Smith, the father of free-market economics, maintained that the public should offer and require an education for almost all. While it would be grossly misleading to designate Locke and Smith as founders of the modern welfare state, it would be negligent to overlook their teaching that beyond securing individual rights, governments devoted to freedom had interests in the welfare of their citizens.

Today, we are urged by tea party activists, and with excellent reason, to look to the authors of "The Federalist," the authoritative expounders of the Constitution, to recover the principles of limited government. But it is instructive to recall that in their day the makers of the American Constitution were the enlargers and strengtheners of federal power.

Hamilton, Madison and Jay defended the new Constitution not only because of the many and varied limitations it imposed on the exercise of power. They also defended it because, in contrast to the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution incorporated in the national government the power to operate without the regular intervention of state governments; assigned it ultimate authority in matters requiring uniformity, including regulation of trade and naturalization; and made it supreme over the states, including in judicial matters.

On issue after issue, fidelity to the variety of conservative principles imposes not only the obligation to blend and balance but also to give due weight to settled expectations and longstanding practices. For instance, an appreciation of these crisscrossing obligations should impel conservatives to work both to improve the public schools we have and to increase competition and parental choice among an array of options.

While developing cost-cutting and market-based reforms for health care, conservatives should frankly acknowledge, as does Rep. Paul Ryan in his bold plan, the importance of maintaining a minimum social safety net. And in the Middle East and elsewhere, conservatism encourages a vigilant search for opportunities to promote liberty while counseling that our knowledge is limited, our resources scarce and our attention span poor.

Compromise can be, and often is, the path of least resistance, the province of the mealy-mouthed, weak-kneed, and lily-livered. Yet when circumstances warrant—and they often will—compromise will be the considered choice of the steely-eyed and stouthearted.

Clarity about principles is critical. It enables one to spot the betrayal of core convictions. But contrary to the partisans of purity, in politics winning and compromise are not antithetical.

Mr. Berkowitz is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

Obamanonics vs. Reaganomics

By STEPHEN MOORE, WSJ

One program for recovery worked, and the other hasn't

If you really want to light the fuse of a liberal Democrat, compare Barack Obama's economic performance after 30 months in office with that of Ronald Reagan. It's not at all flattering for Mr. Obama.

The two presidents have a lot in common. Both inherited an American economy in collapse. And both applied daring, expensive remedies. Mr. Reagan passed the biggest tax cut ever, combined with an agenda of deregulation, monetary restraint and spending controls. Mr. Obama, of course, has given us a $1 trillion spending stimulus.

By the end of the summer of Reagan's third year in office, the economy was soaring. The GDP growth rate was 5% and racing toward 7%, even 8% growth. In 1983 and '84 output was growing so fast the biggest worry was that the economy would "overheat." In the summer of 2011 we have an economy limping along at barely 1% growth and by some indications headed toward a "double-dip" recession. By the end of Reagan's first term, it was Morning in America. Today there is gloomy talk of America in its twilight.

My purpose here is not more Reagan idolatry, but to point out an incontrovertible truth: One program for recovery worked, and the other hasn't.

The Reagan philosophy was to incentivize production—i.e., the "supply side" of the economy—by lowering restraints on business expansion and investment. This was done by slashing marginal income tax rates, eliminating regulatory high hurdles, and reining in inflation with a tighter monetary policy.

The Keynesians in the early 1980s assured us that the Reagan expansion would not and could not happen. Rapid growth with new jobs and falling rates of inflation (to 4% in 1983 from 13% in 1980) is an impossibility in Keynesian textbooks. If you increase demand, prices go up. If you increase supply—as Reagan did—prices go down.

The Godfather of the neo-Keynesians, Paul Samuelson, was the lead critic of the supposed follies of Reaganomics. He wrote in a 1980 Newsweek column that to slay the inflation monster would take "five to ten years of austerity," with unemployment of 8% or 9% and real output of "barely 1 or 2 percent." Reaganomics was routinely ridiculed in the media, especially in the 1982 recession. That was the year MIT economist Lester Thurow famously said, "The engines of economic growth have shut down here and across the globe, and they are likely to stay that way for years to come."

The economy would soon take flight for more than 80 consecutive months. Then the Reagan critics declared what they once thought couldn't work was actually a textbook Keynesian expansion fueled by budget deficits of $200 billion a year, or about 4%-5% of GDP.

Robert Reich, now at the University of California, Berkeley, explained that "The recession of 1981-82 was so severe that the bounce back has been vigorous." Paul Krugman wrote in 2004 that the Reagan boom was really nothing special because: "You see, rapid growth is normal when an economy is bouncing back from a deep slump."

Mr. Krugman was, for once, at least partly right. How could Reagan not look good after four years of Jimmy Carter's economic malpractice?

Fast-forward to today. Mr. Obama is running deficits of $1.3 trillion, or 8%-9% of GDP. If the Reagan deficits powered the '80s expansion, the Obama deficits—twice as large—should have the U.S. sprinting at Olympic speed.

The left has now embraced a new theory to explain why the Obama spending hasn't worked. The answer is contained in the book "This Time Is Different," by economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. Published in 2009, the book examines centuries of recessions and depressions world-wide. The authors conclude that it takes nations much longer—six years or more—to recover from financial crises and the popping of asset bubbles than from typical recessions.

In any case, what Reagan inherited was arguably a more severe financial crisis than what was dropped in Mr. Obama's lap. You don't believe it? From 1967 to 1982 stocks lost two-thirds of their value relative to inflation, according to a new report from Laffer Associates. That mass liquidation of wealth was a first-rate financial calamity. And tell me that 20% mortgage interest rates, as we saw in the 1970s, aren't indicative of a monetary-policy meltdown.

There is something that is genuinely different this time. It isn't the nature of the crisis Mr. Obama inherited, but the nature of his policy prescriptions. Reagan applied tax cuts and other policies that, yes, took the deficit to unchartered peacetime highs.

But that borrowing financed a remarkable and prolonged economic expansion and a victory against the Evil Empire in the Cold War. What exactly have Mr. Obama's deficits gotten us?

Mr. Moore is a member of the Journal's editorial board.

How to Get That AAA Rating Back

By ROBERT BARRO, WSJ

Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama have at least one similarity. They both were confronted by great economic challenges when they became president.

Mr. Reagan's immediate challenge was that inflation and interest rates were out of control. He met this great test by allying with the Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, in accomplishing a return to price stability, even through the 1982 recession when the unemployment rate hit 10.8%.

Reagan's success is not in doubt. Inflation and interest rates were reduced dramatically, and the recovery from the end of 1982 to the end of 1988 was strong and long with an average growth rate of real GDP of 4.6% per year. Moreover, Reagan focused on implementing good economic policies, not on blaming his incompetent predecessor for the terrible economy he had inherited.

Mr. Obama was equally in position to get credit for turning around a perilous economic situation that had been left by a weak predecessor. But he has pursued an array of poor economic policies, featuring the grand Keynesian experiment of sharply raising federal spending and the public debt. The results have been terrible and now, two and a half years into his administration, Mr. Obama is still blaming George W. Bush for all the problems.

Friday's downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard & Poor's should have been a wake-up call to the administration. S&P is saying, accurately, that there is no coherent long-term plan in place to deal with the U.S. government's fiscal deficits.

The U.S. Treasury could have responded in two ways. First, it could have taken the downgrade as useful information and then focused on how to perform better to earn back a AAA rating. Instead, it chose to attack the rating agency as incompetent and not credible. In this respect, U.S. officials were almost as bad as Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who responded to warnings from S&P and Moody's about Italian government debt by launching police raids on the offices of the rating agencies in Milan last week. The U.S. Treasury's response also reminds me of Lehman Brothers blaming its financial problems in the summer of 2008 on evil financial analysts and short-sellers.

The way for the U.S. government to earn back a AAA rating is to enact a meaningful medium- and long-term plan for addressing the nation's fiscal problems. I have sketched a five-point plan that builds on ideas from the excellent 2010 report of the president's deficit commission.

First, make structural reforms to the main entitlement programs, starting with increases in ages of eligibility and a shift to an economically appropriate indexing formula. Second, lower the structure of marginal tax rates in the individual income tax. Third, in the spirit of Reagan's 1986 tax reform, pay for the rate cuts by gradually phasing out the main tax-expenditure items, including preferences for home-mortgage interest, state and local income taxes, and employee fringe benefits—not to mention eliminating ethanol subsidies. Fourth, permanently eliminate corporate and estate taxes, levies that are inefficient and raise little money.

Fifth, introduce a broad-based expenditure tax, such as a value-added tax (VAT), with a rate around 10%. The VAT's appeal to liberals can be enhanced, with some loss of economic efficiency, by exempting items such as food and housing.

I recognize that a VAT is anathema to many conservatives because it gives the government an added claim on revenues. My defense is that a VAT makes sense as part of a larger package that includes the other four points.

The loss of the U.S. government's AAA rating is a great symbolic blow, one that would cause great anguish to our first Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton. Frankly, the only respectable reaction by our current Treasury secretary is to fall on his sword. Then again, "the buck stops here" suggests that an even more appropriate resignation would come from our chief executive, who, by the way, is no Ronald Reagan.

Mr. Barro is a professor of economics at Harvard University and a senior fellow of Stanford's Hoover Institution.