I've not hidden the fact that I am not Barack Obama's biggest fan. Many of my blog posts have had his policies at the center of my criticism, from his contempt of the free market, to his penchant for growing government and high levels of regulation and taxes, to his abdication of American leadership in foreign affairs.
But while reasonable people can disagree on policy solutions for societal problems, what bothers me most about Obama is his inability to support his case with data and make a case for his position. Instead, his typical tactic is to create a straw man and then mock his critics. He did it throughout the 2012 campaign, and it actually worked to some degree (e.g."the 80's are now calling and want their foreign policy back" to address Romney's assertion that Russia is a serious threat). However, his derisive dismissal of ISIS as the "JV" and his assertion the day before the Paris attack that ISIS was "contained" shined a spotlight on Obama's inability to correctly analyze risk based on facts and data, or at least engage in an open and fair debate about them. And, I would assert, that his political opponents are not much better.
On domestic policy, Obama leaped to the conclusion that white cops are systematically using excessive force in policing African Americans. His supporters cite the bare number of deaths of black youths at the hands of white cops as sole evidence for that proposition. Worse, Obama used a few isolated cases--- the Michael Brown incident being the most egregious as poster children for that proposition (and we know that the officer in that case was completely exonerated). But real world analysis is much more complicated. Since any interaction involves two or more people, we would have to control for a number of factors to understand the nature of that interaction, and the be able to ascertain whether there is actual racism at issue or whether there is something else going on. Is the behavior of African Americans more aggressive, more threatening than that of whites? Do they involve more serious alleged crimes? Do they more often involve more than one person so officers feel more threatened? Those are the kinds of questions and analysis that must be done to determine the correct course of action and whether better training, screening and monitoring will make a difference. We might even find after careful analysis, that police are, in fact, generally exercising tremendous restraint already. Instead, the Obama administration jumped to the conclusion that cops need to be restrained and that military style weapons needed to be taken from them. The result of the Obama/Holder policies after Ferguson has been a huge spike in urban crime--the Ferguson Effect. Even Obama's former Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel has complained that police officers are now taking a very passive approach to police work. There are some 20 million arrests each year in the U.S. and many more stops. Without good data, one can just as easily argue now that Obama policies are the proximate cause of more deaths of black youths than overzealous law enforcement officers.
Similarly in foreign policy, the overarching goal needs to be the reduction in the risk of a mass casualty event like 9/11 or the Paris attacks earlier this month. Especially given the explicit statements of ISIS, it is perfectly reasonable and sensible to raise the issue of whether the government is taking sufficient steps (or whether it has the ability to do so) to minimize the risk that Islamist attackers may be among the people that Obama is proposing to take in as refugees. Instead of making his case, Obama simply derided the opposition as "being afraid of widows and orphans" and flatly stated that the refugees posed no greater risk than tourists (which begs the question of whether we need to tighten up policies on tourists) and then compared the refugees to tourists. These rhetorical assertions flew in the face of the fact that 80% of the refugees were draft age males and the head of the FBI stated that the government does not have the ability to properly vet these people. While Obama is mocking conservatives for being afraid of widows and orphans (never mind that they represent a tiny fraction of the influx), I, and many others are asking how the vetting is being done and what is the integrity of the data that is being used to vet these people. We can safely assume that Damascus is not going to provide the U.S. with meticulous records on these folks.
In both domestic police work and vetting immigrants, it is impossible to have a system that has 100% effectiveness (as Rubio is demanding for the refugees). It is not possible to produce a police force that will always use precisely the amount of necessary force to deter a criminal. Likewise, it is simply not possible to provide 100% assurance that no ISIS sympathizer will tag along and embed himself among these refugees. But before we jump to conclusions in either case, we need to enlist the assistance of statisticians and talk in language of acceptable risks before we leap to conclusions and implement policy solutions. Neither President Obama nor his political opponents seem to be willing to do so. An open and honest debate on the data would be refreshing and helpful progress in lieu of demanding perfection or demonizing the other party.
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