Donald Trump and Dale Bumpers

By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The late Arkansas Sen. Dale Bumpers and Donald Trump have had two things in common: similar names, and their skillful use of a similar communication technique when running for their first major offices.

After starting the 1970 governor’s race in obscurity, Bumpers defeated the old guard in his own party, including former Gov. Orval Faubus, and then beat his obviously well-financed opposing party candidate, Republican Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller. The charismatic Bumpers frustrated his opponents with his issues-free, platitude-heavy campaign, leading Vice President Spiro Agnew to say in Fort Smith that he offered little more than “a smile and a shoeshine,” as recounted by the Arkansas Times’ Ernie Dumas.

Bumpers is hardly the only elected official to rely on broad themes rather than specific policy proposals, and this is not a criticism of him. The American people look for big ideas and shared values knowing that political candidates can’t or won’t keep their campaign promises, anyway.

And that brings us to Trump. The other night, Scott Adams, the creator of the “Dilbert” comic strip, told TV host Bill Maher that, far from being the shoot-from-the-hip buffoon that a lot of intellectuals think he is, Trump is actually a master persuader who will beat Hillary Clinton in the fall.

Adams, a trained hypnotist and student of persuasion, recognizes some of the communication techniques Trump is using.

One of those techniques D-Trump is using is the same one used by D-Bump in that 1970 race: vagueness. Like Bumpers then, Trump speaks often in generalities – we’re going to start winning at these trade deals, we’re going to make America great again – which gives opponents fewer targets. As Adams earlier told Reason magazine, “Sometimes you want to tell the story in a way that lets people fill in the blanks with whatever would make them the happiest.”

Why put so much stock in Adams, a comic strip artist? Because he first predicted Trump would win on Aug. 13, 2015. That’s back when the other 16 Republican candidates and their high-paid political consultants either were expecting Trump to flame out, or they were building their strategies around being the last candidate standing against him. It’s back when Nate Silver, who everybody in the political world thought was some kind of data-driven prophet because he correctly predicted all 50 states in 2012, was saying Trump had little mathematical chance.

And it’s about the time when, after Trump insulted Sen. John McCain and other prisoners of war by saying he likes people who weren’t captured, I wrote dismissively, “So that’s probably enough about Donald Trump.”

Before a mob of Arkansas Democrats attack, let’s be clear that “vagueness” may be the only similarity between the early Bumpers candidacies and Trump’s current one. For example, Bumpers avoided insulting his opponents, at which Trump is quite good. Adams says that when Trump started calling Jeb Bush “low energy,” it effectively stuck to him partly because that’s a new insult in the political world. Now he’s helping shape public opinion by referring to Clinton again and again as “crooked Hillary.”

Adams isn’t just saying Trump, who wrote, “The Art of the Deal,” is good at this persuasion stuff. He told Maher that Trump is “taking a flamethrower to a stick fight. There’s nobody using the same tools he’s using.” Among those tools is “anchoring,” or presenting something big and visual to give his audience something to think about. While others debate fuzzy illegal immigration policy, Trump describes a big wall. And when asked in a debate about his previous demeaning comments about women, Trump replied that he was referring to “only Rosie O’Donnell,” which made his audience see her and her personality, not him and his.

In the same way Nate Silver’s data-driven analysis was proven to be imperfect, so too can Scott Adams’ skills-based one. Clinton enters the race with advantages, including the fact that states with 242 electoral votes have voted for the Democrat in six straight elections, leaving her needing only 28 more to win. Every election cycle, the country’s demographics move in a direction more favorable to Democrats. And voters, after electing the country’s first African-American president, may still be in a history-making frame of mind and ready to choose a woman.

On the other hand, that’s the same kind of analysis that led people, including me, to dismiss Trump before, until he closed the deal on the Republican nomination.

Related:
Trump played checkers and they played chess – in a checkers year
What Dale Bumpers was

Health insurers want to raise prices. What now?

By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The big news in health care this week was that most of the state’s insurers are asking for rate increases for policies purchased individually or through the state’s Arkansas Works program.

The bigger issue – rising health care costs, and the political system’s inability to address them – is not new.

The two Blue Cross providers are asking for 14.7 percent increases, while QualChoice Life and Health and QCA Health Plan are asking for increases of just under 24 percent. The state’s fifth insurance company, Ambetter, is asking for less than 10 percent and is not required to publicly disclose or justify that amount. The sixth insurance company, UnitedHealthcare, unable to make a profit, is leaving the market.

The Arkansas Insurance Department still must approve the requests. Commissioner Allen Kerr sounded skeptical in a statement released by his office.

There are many reasons for the requested hikes. I’ll summarize those given by Arkansas Blue Cross spokesperson Max Greenwood. Patients are using more health care than expected. Costs are rising, particularly for prescription drugs and catastrophic claims of more than $50,000. The Affordable Care Act’s transitional reinsurance fee, which offset higher cost enrollees, is going away.

One other factor pertains to Arkansas Works, the program formerly known as the private option that uses federal funds to purchase private insurance for lower-income Arkansans. Remember last year when we learned many people living out of state, or not living at all, were being covered? When that was more or less fixed, Blue Cross lost a population of 25,000 members whose premiums were being paid but who didn’t use much health care, especially the dead ones. So now the insurer says it has to adjust.

Of course this all happens in the context of Obamacare. Sen. Tom Cotton, Rep. French Hill and Rep. Bruce Westerman released statements calling once again for the Affordable Care Act to be repealed and replaced with patient-centered reforms.

That’s easier to say than do. Since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law more than six years ago, congressional Republicans have voted dozens of times to repeal it. Replacing it? Not so much. True, Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., a physician, has been offering alternative bills since 2009, and Donald Trump’s website lists a framework of reforms. But the party has never coalesced behind a detailed, specific plan and then spent political capital selling it to the American people. Instead, it’s mostly just voted to repeal Obamacare knowing that, ultimately, President Obama would veto the repeal anyway.

Health care is by far the most difficult issue facing policymakers. There are many reasons, including that it’s a service Americans believe should be unlimited and cheap, which is a high standard. We need health care like we need groceries, but with food, most of us want steak but will buy canned tuna if that’s all we can afford. With health care, we all want nothing less than steak, but at canned tuna prices.

Like any other service, someone has to pay for a health care provider’s costs, and there are only three imperfect ways to do that. One is the free market approach where the consumer pays, which offers more freedom but less security and doesn’t have a clean answer when the consumer can’t afford the care. Another way is for the government to pay, which offers more security, at least initially, but less freedom. In that case, the government is deciding how life and death resources are allocated. Then there’s the third approach: Someone else pays, typically an insurance company. That method tries to strike a balance between freedom and security but gives a lot of power to a private corporation and in recent history has not effectively controlled costs.

The American health care system was a convoluted concoction of those three payment methods before Obamacare, and it still is. Prices were rising before Obamacare, and they still are. Undoubtedly, more Americans have insurance now than they did, and that’s a positive that shouldn’t be ignored. But many still are uninsured, and the big problem – cost – has not nearly been solved.

Republicans at the national level would do well to follow the example set by Republicans in Arkansas, who have done most of the creating, amending, defending and opposing of the aforementioned private option/Arkansas Works.

We can debate whether Arkansas Works is a good idea. But at least it’s a new one, with specific details that are clearly communicated and fought for.

Related: The real goal of the private option: Changing U.S. health care

Two governors: Hutchinson and Beebe

Govs. Asa Hutchinson and Mike Beebe

Govs. Asa Hutchinson and Mike Beebe

By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

No two individuals are alike. This past week was a reminder of how that’s the case with Gov. Asa Hutchinson and his predecessor, Gov. Mike Beebe.

Hutchinson called legislators to Little Rock to raise $50 million to make the state eligible for $200 million in federal highway funds each of the next five years. His bill did that by relying largely on surplus funds and interest income, which some legislators thought was the wrong way and/or not enough. It was over in three days, and while it was probably inevitable that the governor’s bill would pass, it wasn’t always easy.

This was the second special session this spring. This first was to pass Arkansas Works, the program that uses federal Medicaid dollars to purchase private health insurance for adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.

Hutchinson has been in office about 16 months and has called three special sessions. In eight years, Beebe called only three special sessions, though two were in his last 15 months in office.

That’s one big difference. Another is this past session included 15 items. That’s not particularly large by historical standards; then-Gov. Bill Clinton once called a special session with 285. However, Beebe’s three sessions combined had only 17 items.

The other big difference is in Hutchinson’s and Beebe’s approach. Beebe, who became governor after a long legislative career, didn’t call lawmakers to Little Rock until the bills were written and the votes counted. Everything was largely done behind closed doors, and then legislators voted and went home.

In contrast, during this past highway session, the actual bill wasn’t filed until legislators were arriving in Little Rock, leading Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest, to tell the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, “There have been as many Bigfoot sightings in the past 20 years as there have been of the final draft of the governor’s highway bill over the last week.” The bill failed to pass the Senate Transportation Committee, which meant the sponsor, Sen. Bart Hester, R-Cave Springs, had to move it to another, friendlier one.

Eventually it passed, and Hutchinson signed it into law on the session’s third day, which is as quickly as he’s allowed under the Arkansas Constitution.

Is one governor’s approach better than the other? Let’s just say they’re different. It’s probably true that the highway session was messier under Hutchinson than it would have been under Beebe – in public. Under Beebe, the messiness would have happened earlier, in private.

You could make the case that Beebe’s way is more efficient and that Hutchinson’s is more transparent. Under Beebe, legislators came to Little Rock for very specific purposes and then left, which is good in that it meant they weren’t debating a bunch of bills that were better left for a regular session. With Hutchinson, the process was more open and visible – the debate occurring on the Senate floor and in committee hearings in addition to back rooms.

Meanwhile, the two governors have operated under different circumstances. Beebe led a Legislature that was full of not particularly committed Democrats when he entered office who were replaced by Republicans by the time he left. Hutchinson leads a fractious Republican caucus with a Democratic minority that’s trying to figure out how to assert itself. For a variety of reasons, maybe Beebe had to work things out beforehand, and maybe Hutchinson can’t.

There was some grumbling among legislators about this session’s disorganization. When I asked Hutchinson why, unlike Beebe, he didn’t have all his ducks in a row, he said lawmakers needed the pressure of a session.

“What’s the objective in life?” he asked. “Is it to accomplish significant legislative action, or is to to get things done in a cookie-cutter fashion where the outcome is known before you start? While you like to do all your homework in advance, the fact is, if I would have insisted upon, ‘Everybody sign on to the highway plan before we start,’ we’d never got it done.”

I took that as a defense of his own approach, not a criticism of Beebe’s. They govern in different circumstances, and no two individuals are alike.

Libertarians, Greens better choice than death

Hand with ballot and boxBy Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The first line of an actual recent obituary reads, “Faced with the prospect of voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Mary Anne Noland of Richmond (Virginia) chose, instead, to pass into the eternal love of God on Sunday, May 15, 2016, at the age of 68.”

If only she had known she had other choices.

Those would include the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, and assorted others.

Let’s focus this column on the Libertarians, Arkansas’ most active third party. If you’re not familiar, it’s the one that says it’s for less government and actually, really, really means it. The Libertarians would cut social programs, including the popular ones, and they support gun rights. But cutting government also means shrinking the military, and they also would remove government from people’s personal decisions, which means they’d legalize marijuana and end the drug war. The party’s chairman in Arkansas, economist Dr. Michael Pakko, describes the party as a combination of small government constitutionalists, anarchists who want virtually no government, and “minanarchists” who fall somewhere in between.

The Libertarians this year are running 23 candidates in Arkansas, including likable party veteran Frank Gilbert for U.S. Senate and candidates in all four congressional races: Mark West in the 1st District; Chris Hayes in the 2nd; Steve Isaacson in the 3rd; and Kerry Hicks in the 4th.(Democrats could muster a candidate only in the 2nd District.) Eleven Libertarians are running for the state Legislature. And the party is doing this despite the fact that, under a law passed by Republicans and Democrats, it had to select its candidates a year before the election.

For Libertarians, this year represents the party’s best hope to ever make a splash. Their two-time presidential candidate, former Republican New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, won only 1.5 percent of the vote in Arkansas in 2012, but a recent Fox News poll showed him with 10 percent support in a hypothetical matchup with Trump and Clinton, and his running mate, former Republican Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, is an effective fundraiser.

The Libertarians won’t get 10 percent. Republicans and Democrats are highly skilled at painting each other as so terrible that many voters will decide they must pick one to save the country from the other. So don’t look for the United States to produce its third President Johnson.

But if Johnson can win 3 percent of the vote in Arkansas, it would be a big win for the state party. That’s the threshold it needs to qualify for the ballot in 2018 without having to collect 10,000 voter signatures, a task that Pakko said cost $34,000 this year as well as a lot of legwork.

How doable is 3 percent? The Libertarians’ top vote-getter in 2014, Hayes, won 6.36 percent in the treasurer’s race. Some conservative Republicans won’t vote for Trump, and they’re certainly not going to vote for Clinton, so they’re looking for an alternative. Gilbert said some Republicans won’t forgive Gov. Asa Hutchinson and legislative Republicans for Arkansas Works, which is the state program that uses Obamacare dollars to purchase private health insurance for Arkansans with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. Meanwhile, maybe the Libertarian nominee could pull votes from disaffected Bernie Sanders supporters who see Clinton as part of the problem. Some Sanders voters will vote for the Green Party candidate, presumably Jill Stein, who won .9 percent of the Arkansas vote in 2012.

If the Libertarians do win 3 percent, the next question is, so what? Probably the party takes more votes from the Republicans than the Democrats, but that won’t matter in most races in a state as red as this one is becoming. Libertarians are a long way from actually winning races for important offices. The party wants a much smaller government than most Arkansans would support. To win, Libertarians would have to moderate, but if they do that, would they become what they’re fighting against?

For now, Libertarians, Greens, and other parties offer this – a choice, one that Mary Anne Noland’s son, who wrote her obituary in honor of her sense of humor, didn’t take into account.

Related: Trump played checkers and they played chess – in a checkers year

Back to Little Rock again

Editor’s note: A previous version of this column was headlined “Not paid by the hour” and referenced the fact that legislators aren’t paid that way. But they do receive per diem expenses – in other words, payment by the day. So this changes the reference in the beginning and the end.

CapitolBy Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

State legislators are heading back to Little Rock – for the third time this year.

This time, it will be for (hopefully) a three-day session whose primary purpose will be to find about $50 million a year in state funds to qualify for $200 million in federal funds over the next five years. Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s highway bill raises that $50 million mostly through surplus and “rainy day” funds, along with funds generated by the state treasurer’s office.

Typically, governors call special sessions for very specific purposes, and only when they are comfortable they will get what they want. Much of the real action occurs before the session as the details are wrangled over in the Capitol. When the governor issues his “call,” it can be so specific that only his favored bills likely will be considered.

That means that, eventually, Hutchinson’s highway bill probably will pass. However, there’s a hiccup: The bill is expected to be assigned to the Senate Transportation, Technology & Legislative Affairs Committee, where four Republican legislators – half the committee – proposed a more substantive eight-cent motor fuels tax increase for highways, perhaps coupled with cuts in other spending elsewhere. It’s a worthy idea, but no legislator is too excited about voting to raise gas taxes, and Hutchinson is firmly opposed. But those four are not that excited about Hutchinson’s plan, either, and bills need a majority to get out of committee.

Even Hutchinson admits his bill represents a short-term fix for a longer term problem. Motor fuels taxes haven’t changed at the federal level since 1993 or at the state level since 2001, despite highways becoming much more expensive to build. Meanwhile, cars have become more fuel-efficient, which means drivers are buying fewer gallons to drive the same number of miles, and therefore paying less in taxes. In effect, we’re all getting a tax cut every year, though few taxpayers understandably will see it that way

Prior to the session call, House Speaker Jeremy Gillam, R-Judsonia, was saying the governor’s call would contain between five and 15 items.

It contains the latter, many of which are technical and uncontroversial but some of which are kind of important, including a bill by Sen. Greg Standridge, R-Russellville, that would close a worker’s compensation trust fund for deaths and permanent disabilities that’s $130 million in the hole. If the bill passes, the state will spend the next three decades paying off existing claims – and taxing businesses as it does now – but new claims will be paid through employers’ insurance companies. The State Chamber of Commerce thinks more time is needed to help businesses withstand the blow, but Standridge says he has enough votes, and he’s charging forward. There’s also a bill to declare a one-year moratorium on placing schools in academic distress, just to let everyone catch their breath after all the changes of the past few years.

Sen. Jake Files, R-Fort Smith, says this all could have waited until January, when legislators will gather in Little Rock for the big every-other-year regular session. In an interview, he questioned the “potpourri of ideas and conglomerations” and asked, “At what point does a special session cease to be special?”

Files’ frustration is borne of the fact that this will be the third time legislators have traipsed to Little Rock this year. On April 6, Hutchinson called legislators to gather for a very difficult special session dedicated to his Arkansas Works, which is his continuation of a state program that uses federal dollars through Obamacare to buy private insurance for lower-income Arkansans. That session was a doozy. Then legislators gathered for a fiscal session to pay for everything in the budget, including Arkansas Works. It was another doozy.

Aside from all that, legislators’ party primaries were March 1, and many still have general election foes in November.

So we’re halfway through May, and legislators have spent a good chunk of the year meeting in session, preparing for one, and campaigning. This should be the last special session of the year, which will be a good thing. The Capitol’s a beautiful building – sometimes, particularly when it’s quiet.

Related: Voters – better roads, same taxes