… Clinton and, even more so, Obama, were successful presidents. Yet their administrations were still hindered by a certain naïveté. Officials sometimes tried to perfect policy design while proudly ignoring political impact, as if the two could be separated in a democracy.
Republicans don’t suffer from this naïveté. Again and again, they push policies meant to affect politics, such as campaign-finance deregulation, voting restrictions and labor-union constraints. Republicans understand a concept that political scientists refer to as “policy feedback” — namely, that policy can influence politics in ways that make future policy changes more or less likely.
In the last several years, policy feedback has finally started getting more attention in progressive circles. And one of the politicians who’s most interested in the subject happens to be running for president: Elizabeth Warren. CONT.
David Leonhardt, New York Times