Late October 2012: Dan Drezner Accidently Reads Niall Ferguson
Dan Drezner: Does the international affairs community need some Razzies?: "I made the mistake of clicking....
An alternative surprise... I have long expected the president to pull if he finds himself slipping behind in the polls. With a single phone call to Jerusalem, he can end all talk of his being Jimmy Carter to Mitt Romney’s Reagan: by supporting an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities...
A few things: (1) Here’s a pro tip: if your foreign affairs observations represent a reprise of wacky Donald Trump musings, maybe it’s best to take your ball and go home.
(2) It’s really kind of adorable that Ferguson thinks a foreign policy surprise would move that many voters. Sorry, Niall.... (3) If you want a foreign policy "tell" that Obama is in such serious straits that he’s willing to gamble... an opening to Cuba.... (4) The laziness involved in Ferguson’s essay... could this be the worst international affairs column of 2012? How can we be sure?... Why shouldn’t the foreign policy community have it’s own version of the Razzies? To that end, I hereby ask commenters and the foreign affairs blogosphere to suggest candidate entries and possible rules...
And, of course, in 2016 Niall Ferguson has done even worse. We have:
(Late) Monday Smackdown: Josh Barro Makes Me Aware of Niall Ferguson...: Calling Noah Smith! Calling Noah Smith! Drive down to Stanford's Hoover Institution this afternoon and make Niall Ferguson put his money where is mouth is: make him bet you even odds on Trump vs. Clinton. Then lay off your risk by hedging with a normal person. The arbitrage profits will keep you in Lagunitas IPA for the rest of your life....
The problem with Niall Ferguson is that America--even white America--is not politically divided into a small Democratic "cognitive elite" living in "Belmont" and a large Republican "new lower class" living in "Fishtown".
She is behind by roughly 22%-points among Southern whites--who are, increasingly, acting like a very separate ethnicity (and 40%-points behind, perhaps, among Southern white males--suggesting white females are close) in which the misogynist-white racialist hate of a Donald Trump has truly deplorable amounts of purchase.
Outside of the south, CNN tells us, Hillary Rodham Clinton is even with Trump among white Americans and leading by roughly 68%-points--yes, that is sixty-eight--among the three-tenths of the electorate that says it is non-white.
Why the difference? Because the "Fishtowns" of the Northeast, Midwest, and West are, increasingly, multi-racial communities. And in them the misogynist-white racialist hate of a Donald Trump may have a depressingly large but it does not have sufficient purchase...
And:
A Gift That Keeps on Giving: Invictus on Niall Ferguson from Four Years Ago: "Niall, babe, I got one word for you: Census (pdf)...
...The spike... which Ferguson claims is stimulus-related is actually Census-related.... 564,000 temporary Census workers on the Fed’s payroll that Ferguson seems to think were related to Obama’s stimulus package. As one would expect, as the Census was completed, the government just ‘shut that whole thing down,’ to borrow an Akin-ism. Adjusted for Census workers, the Bloomberg graph would look exactly as you’d expect – a fairly steady, consistent downward sloping line.... This is the risk one runs when letting one’s ideology run wild – that one twists, contorts, and distorts the facts (in extreme cases, perhaps, without even realizing it) to fit one’s narrative. A mistake regarding such a fundamental matter is inexcusable, particularly for someone who’s (apparently) taken as seriously as Ferguson, and who scores a Newsweek cover story. I guess, like Akin, Ferguson will probably claim that he ‘misspoke.’ Or something. But, as my Dad liked to say, you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube...
Plus:
