Tom Ferguson and the Myth of the Median Voter

[Brad De Long]

>Dear Brad,
>
>I too think highly of Professor Ferguson's work.  I own his book which I have
>read with the critical interest of a practitioner of  union democratic
>politics.  I also enjoyed watching Ferguson discuss his book on C-Span and
>noted that his personal observations of his work differed somewhat from
>what he
>had wrote.  A true politician.
>
>I have been told that Ferguson is somewhat of a difficult character,  does he
>challenge people to arm wrestling contests?
>
>Sincerely,
>Tom Lehman
>
Not me at least. But I haven't seen him in a number of years.

I remember him telling me in the summer of 1992 that the real decisions in
the Clinton administration were going to be made by (i) people from Wall
Street like Bob Rubin and Roger Altman, (ii) people with strong Hollywood
connections, and (iii) some of the people from the Silicon Valley
crowd--although they would have less leverage because they were more nearly
split.

When I look at Clinton administration decisions like the decision to go for
deficit reduction as job 1 (even though I agree with that decision) and for
"international market access" as job 2, like the solicitous concern the
Clinton administration has shown for the Scientologists in Germany, and at
the weird schizophrenia with which Al Gore on the one hand lauds the
information superhighway and on the other serves as the NSA's ambassador to
Silicon Valley to explain why they had (past tense now) to give the NSA the
power to decode any digital transmission anywhere, I think that Tom knows a
lot of stuff...

Brad DeLong