I first ran for office as an ordinary citizen from New Hampshire in 2004. My hope when I ran was to help change the course of the nation and to effectively represent the people of my state with independence, integrity and imagination. I was fortunate to meet those goals before joining the ranks of The Recovering Politician.
I was part of a historic new majority in the House of Representatives and was chosen by my peers as President of the Freshman Class of 2006. I served on the Oversight and Government reform committee and the Financial Services committee during a period of unprecedented activity.
As a freshman congressman from the first in the nation primary state, I was courted by Presidential candidates. I believed that the wave of change that swept me into office was not finished and that business as usual in Washington needed some shaking up. Against all odds, I decided to support a long-shot candidate for whom change was a theme, Barack Obama. I had the honor of serving as a national co-chair for the President’s first campaign.
The wave elections of 2006 and 2008 were countered by the tsunami of 2010 when I decided not to run for my congressional seat; instead I ran, unsuccessfully, for the United States Senate. Politics has a lot to do with timing and luck. You can’t surf a tsunami. As a musician I should know a bit about timing. Suffice it to say, I had quite a while to confront the idea of political afterlife while I ran for the Senate, a tremendous experience nonetheless.
Read the rest of… Paul Hodes: On the Way to Recovery & Renewal
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue May 10, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET
Today’s guest on RPTV is a true Renaissance woman.
Nell Minow is both a leading expert on corporate governance — some even have called her the Queen of Good Corporate Governance — as well as a nationally-followed family movie critic, using her nom de plume, “Movie Mom.”
She’s got some famous relatives as well: Her sister, Martha, is the Dean of the Harvard Law School (and one of the RP’s favorite former professors); and her father, Newton, was the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and the man who presciently and famously called television a “vast wasteland” exactly fifty years ago.
In her Fifteen Minutes of Fame, Minow discusses the impact of the recent financial reform laws on corporate governance, recommends some excellent movies for your family, and gives a surprising (and funny) answer when questioned on her greatest point of pride about her famous family.
After watching this enlightening interview, check out Nell’s corporate governance site, Governance Metrics International; read her business watchdog column, Risky Business; and don’t take your kids to another movie without first vetting it on her blog, Movie Mom.
But first enjoy Fifteen Minutes of Fame with Nell Minow:
We are proud to announce that our own contributing RP, Jeff Smith, has been asked to join “The Arena,” Politico’s daily debate with policymakers and opinion shapers.
Jeff’s first piece was in response to the group’s discussion of the state of the economy:
Using the absolute number of jobs created as a gauge of employment trends can be deceiving for a couple simple reasons.
1) The economy needs to add somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 jobs per month just to keep up with population growth. So the first couple hundred thousand jobs added generally won’t reduce unemployment because of a growing denominator…
In the spirit of “You get what you pay for,” out of the 20 RP contributors who offered their handicapping skills…and among the 13 different horses predicted by these same contributors…and including the more than a dozen commentors here at the RP and on the RP’s Facebook page…not a single person correctly picked Animal Kingdom to win the Run for the Roses.
Bad news: I lost my shirt at the Derby. (It only cost $5.) Good news: I don’t have to buy anybody any mint julep mix for winning our prediction contest!
I know one person who actually picked the winner. And on Thursday, we will feature her as brand new Friend of RP. Of course, she’s a month shy of 15 years old. You will have to stay tuned to read her wisdom.
Until then, if you want some good laughs, re-read our KY Derby post. And stay to the very end to read the prediction of the winner of a box of chocolate bourbon balls for the funniest one-liner.
By Robert Butkin, on Mon May 9, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET
When asked to provide a post for a website called “The Recovering Politician,” I tried to figure out what in the blazes I’m supposed to be recovering from. In fact, in the six years since I left my position as Oklahoma State Treasurer, I have never looked back or regretted either the time I spent in elective public service or my decision to leave after a decade in office. I left when I determined that I had accomplished all that I had set out to do when I first ran for the job.
That’s not to say that there is not much still to be done with the agency, and in fact my successors have developed new initiatives that have improved the operations of the office. I had accomplished everything that I had set out to do. Despite my concern about the advisability of term limits, I do believe that all of us who are privileged to serve in elective office should be willing to limit our own terms and turn our offices over to energetic– and hopefully idealistic– successors when we have accomplished our mission. One should never be a “placeholder” when holding an office of public trust.
In many ways, I was the most unlikely of political candidates. Nobody in my family had ever run or thought of running for political office, but like many who came of age in the 1960s and the 1970s, I was convinced that elective public service was the highest calling a democracy could offer. A chance meeting with a candidate for Oklahoma Attorney General in 1986 gave me an opportunity several months later to join his staff to serve as an Assistant Attorney General, and in that capacity I had the opportunity to serve as the people’s advocate in utility rate proceedings and to represent Oklahoma in a landmark Clean Water Actcase, Arkansas v. Oklahoma, that I argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991.
In 1993, I began to think seriously about a race for political office. We had had a bi-partisan tradition in the Oklahoma Treasurer’s office –a bi-partisan tradition of crumminess. Democrats and Republicans alike had been beset by scandals, investigations and indictments. Confidence in our state’s ability to manage our finances with integrity was at an all time low, and as somebody who believed in public investment, I knew that if the citizens of Oklahoma could not trust where and how their tax dollars were managed, they would not be willing to come together to invest in better schools, roads, and health care.
We won narrowly in 1994, a victory that truly would not have been possible had not dozens of volunteers, who normally pay no attention to elections for offices like state treasurer, cared enough about the need to restore integrity to the office that they joined our cause. And I would not have been successful without an outstanding staff who every single day put the interests of our state first. Many of our earlier accomplishments were far from glamorous, involving new accounting controls and speedier processes to convert cash to investable funds. But when I began giving taxpayers a running total of how much money we had saved or earned through cost saving efficiencies without a need for tax increase, they responded, and I believe our work has played a role in the willingness of Oklahomans to support new investments in education and health care over the last decade.
Read the rest of… Robert Butkin: Leaving Politics With No Regrets
By Grant Smith, RP Staff, on Fri May 6, 2011 at 3:00 PM ET
The Politics of Wealth
The confusing politics of the Sport of Kings: jockey Calvin Borel and Kentucky Derby 137. [ESPN]
The Magical Mystery Tour II: Did Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando really take a road trip together to escape New York in the aftermath of 9/11? [The Guardian]
Wal-Mart tops the Forbes 500 list for the second year in a row. [Fortune]
The world’s richest supermodels: comparing their assets. [Forbes]
Lifestyles of the rich and infamous: how Bin Laden’s million dollar compound lacked luxury. [Bloomberg]
By Jonathan Miller, on Fri May 6, 2011 at 2:15 PM ET
Tomorrow is a quasi-religious holiday in my home state — the one day we put aside our obsession with college basketball, and focus on something truly spiritual: a two-minute race, involving about 20 three-year-old thoroughbred horses and a bunch of vertically-challenged guys riding on top of them.
Wherever you are, you might have an opportunity to place a small wager on the race, or to select a horse’s name on a piece of paper from a punch bowl at a Derby party. Because The Recovering Politician‘s mission is to serve our readers with critical information at timely moments like this, our Contributing RPs, the Friends of RP, and even the RP staff have been asked to share their expertise and give you their recommended picks.
(OK, they’ve been bribed: Winning entries from the RP team will receive a bottle of mint julep mix; the funniest pick wins a box of delicious chocolate bourbon balls.)
So, with all the obvious disclaimers (adults only; gamble in moderation; if you wager at a track, consider your bet a contribution to Kentucky’s struggling horse industry; picking a horse by its color or name is often as effective as studying the Daily Racing Form; females, be sure to wear an outrageous hat to your Derby party–see an example to the right), here is the deeply-educated, passionately-considered handicapping of the RP team:
The RP: My brother-in-law, Clark Mandel, is a chiropractor who works with horses, and a very serious handicapper. His picks are in this order: Archarcharch, Pants On Fire, and Soldat. I will follow his advice, putting my big money ($5) on Pants On Fire because of Jeff Smith’s comment at the bottom of this post.
John Roach: If the track is dry, I like Mucho Macho Man and Nehro. For longshot plays, I like Twice the Appeal and Master of the Hounds.
Grant Smith (RP Staff): I’m going with Twice the Appeal. Not only is Calvin Borel the jockey, the horse’s position at Gate 3 only increases the odds that Calvin “Bo Rail” will be able to pull off his famous rail-riding antics all the way to victory.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend: I am going with Twinspired…I like the cleverness of the name…and I have two sets of twins as nieces and nephews, and they inspire me with their grace and ability!
Kristen Hamilton (RP Staff): I love Calvin Borel, but if I were to pick one based on a name, it would be Archarcharch, because that is exactly what I said after taking finals. :/
Andrei Cherny: I say Mucho Macho Man in honor of Arizona’s Hispanic heritage.
Stephanie Doctrow (RP Staff): My favorite Derby horse has to be Stay Thirsty… I don’t know much about the horses this year, but as an upperclassman at a Big Ten university, I feel obligated to pick the one with that name!
Loranne Ausley: I was going to go with Watch Me Go as a Florida bred with a female trainer (only 2 female trainers tomorrow making them the 14th and 15th in history of Derby), but I am going with Pants on Fire. Not Florida bred, but ridden by a female jockey…..if they win, Rosie Napravnik would be first woman jockey to win the Derby! Only 5 previous female jockeys in the history of the race. Here is a link to a story in the St. Pete Times Politifact (yes, Politifact has opined on this because “Pants on Fire” is a term of art in their political fact checking world!)
Antics in the Derby infield
Zack Adams (RP Staff): Twice the Appeal. I’m betting on Calvin Bo-rail, winner of 3 of the last 4 Derbys.
Steven Schulman (Who attended the Derby infield with the RP while in high school): From personal experience, I can’t say there are horses at the Derby. But I will pick Mucho Macho Man. Of course.
Carte Goodwin: When I was living in Atlanta, a radio station used to periodically have a contest called Rock Band or Racehorse. The DJs would read a name, and callers would have to identify it — say Veruca Salt as a band, or Unbridled as a horse. So in honor of that contest, Santiva sounds like a good band name (or at least better than Pants on Fire.)
If you read contributing RP Carte Goodwin‘s inaugural piece on Wednesday, you learned that the first vote he cast in his brief four month tour of duty as a U.S. Senator was one of his most important. Indeed, Carte was the deciding vote to break a fillibuster in order to extend unemployment benefits to some of the nation’s most needy citizens.
Today’s RPTV Friday Flashback memorializes that epic moment in Carte’s life:
By Jonathan Miller, on Fri May 6, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET
Today, we debut a new contributing RP through the magic of Skype video.
Dan Hynes served with distinction for three terms and twelve years as Illinois’ state Comptroller. He took two tries to leap to higher office, once barely losing a Democratic primary to the incumbent Governor (2010), and once finishing in second in a Senate primary (some guy named Obama won that race.)
An expert in fiscal management and public pension funds, Dan speaks with the RP about the economic outlook for our states and the nation, and gives his perspective on the job performance and political prospects of his former rival and current friend, President Obama:
I would be the first to admit it – I am not a patient person. For example, I’ve owned 5 different cell phones in the last 3 years. Why? Because I get impatient whenever a new feature comes out that my phone doesn’t have! If you want to torture me, ask me to wait in the grocery check-out line. On my birthday, we open gifts at 7 AM. Waiting a few minutes at the coffee shop for a friend running late tests my patience. Yet, in my professional career, it has been my lack of patience that actually changed the entire course I have taken.
I am an economist who specializes in crunching giant datasets to figure out what patterns exist in the data and how to rigorously test hypotheses. After a very short stint as an academic after graduate school (again, impatient!), I began a career at one of the top economic litigation consulting firms in 2001. My job the past decade has been to provide expert witness testimony in antitrust and labor and employment litigation matters.
About three years ago, during a performance evaluation, one of my bosses tried to pay me a compliment when he told me I had been a “superstar” at the firm, but sometimes being so successful so quickly meant people didn’t exactly know what to do with me. Then he gave me some advice which I will never forget– I just needed to be patient because I was a big part of the future of the firm.
You can probably guess that I didn’t take that advice so well. Something about the discussion crystallized for me that to be truly satisfied in my professional career, I was going to have to shake things up and venture out on my own. So, after nine years, I decided to leave the security of a large firm to venture out on my own (in the worst recession of the last few years).
Thus, in September 2009, Edgeworth Economics was born.
Francis Edgeworth
I quickly realized that I had a certain vision for the firm that would have my name on it. But, as you probably noticed, my name is Johnson, not Edgeworth! That was actually the point. Francis Edgeworth was a 19th century economist who developed, amongst other things, a model of trade called pareto optimality. The theory of Edgeworth’s model is that gains from trade can be made to the point at which everyone has been made better off, and no one is made worse off. We have used this concept to guide decisions at our firm from the beginning: a belief in a culture that serving clients can be done and a work environment can be created in which we all can flourish by putting the needs of the firm above those of ourselves.
Our firm started with six of us in what quickly became a very cramped temporary office space in Washington, DC. At times it has felt like Art Linkletter might be hiding in the office waiting to jump out and say “this is your life…”. Our recruiting efforts have brought a group together from all different parts of my life: my two co-founders were both colleagues from my former firm who I have known for almost a decade. Our HR Director was my best undergraduate student from Illinois. Our COO is my former research assistant who was finishing an MBA as we started the firm. One of our senior PhD economists was my daughter’s first babysitter. And even my wife jumped in to the mix—handling all sorts of crazy tasks for us whenever we needed her help.
About 19 months later, and having run out of people I know, we are about to hire our 22nd employee and once again find ourselves expanding our office space to fit all of our staff. One of the best parts of this experience for me has come from the ability to create a unique culture of professionalism, shared sacrifice, and working together for the benefit of the entire firm. Our client base is varied—but the hallmark of our firm has been great attention to our clients and providing rigorous, objective analysis. In many respects, we are academic in our approach. My firm specializes in teaching our clients, attorneys, judges, and juries. And in some respect, that is how my career has gone full circle from my short stint at a professor.
Every day, I try to teach my employees – leading by example, building our culture, pushing our potential, and sharing this experience.
Every day, I attempt to teach my clients – what does all this economics analysis mean, how it is relevant to their case, and what the implications are.
And not a day goes by that I don’t learn something from my colleagues and my clients – either about myself, about running a business, or about life in general.
Being The Boss can be very rewarding.
My experience at Edgeworth Economics has been one of the most exciting and rewarding of my professional life. I never knew what it was like to love going to work every day. In addition to the great rewards that have come from professional successes, the true meaning of Edgeworth for me has been creating a little corner of the world that reflects the values of myself and my colleagues. I doubt I’ll ever be able to work for someone else again, but in some respects, that was the whole point in starting Edgeworth Economics.
Being my own boss fits me well. In this job, I get to be impatient everyday, which fits my entrepreneurial side well, and it has been most rewarding. It is something I hope I never recover from.
I first ran for office as an ordinary citizen from New Hampshire in 2004. My hope when I ran was to help change the course of the nation and to effectively represent the people of my state with independence, integrity and imagination. I was fortunate to meet those goals before joining the ranks of The Recovering Politician.
As a freshman congressman from the first in the nation primary state, I was courted by Presidential candidates. I believed that the wave of change that swept me into office was not finished and that business as usual in Washington needed some shaking up. Against all odds, I decided to support a long-shot candidate for whom change was a theme, Barack Obama. I had the honor of serving as a national co-chair for the President’s first campaign.
