While not yet a declared presidential candidate, Gov. Tim Pawlenty needs to recruit some well-respected economic advisers. When governors like him run for president, executive experience is their strong suit, but they lack experience in national economic issues.
That is why smart candidates recruit prominent economists to advise them. This kills two birds with one stone. It keeps them from making embarrassing mistakes in their economic platforms and it adds to their public credibility, particularly with business and finance leaders who can mobilize large campaign contributions.
It is always smart to try to correct your own weaknesses, and economics is not Pawlenty’s strong suit. His stances on energy mandates and borrowing to fund road improvements are particularly frustrating to Republican economists who otherwise agree with his views. This may not be a fatal flaw at the state level, but could cause problems when exposed to the harsh glare of a national campaign.
Here are three distinguished Republican economists who could improve Pawlenty’s grasp of economic issues and burnish his credibility with economists and the business community:
Greg Mankiw: Pawlenty most frustrates economists who would be his natural supporters when he insists on arbitrary government mandates, such as the ones he championed to require that Minnesota get a certain percentage of its electricity from renewable sources by certain dates. If economists approach unanimity on any issue, it is that the governor’s approach is the worst alternative and that the market-based policies he spurns are the best.
Greg Mankiw headed the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during George W. Bush’s first term. He is a sharp macroeconomist who also is insightful and articulate on energy and the environment and who leads a campaign to bring his party around to supporting market-based approaches in these areas. Pawlenty should seek his counsel on energy and the environment and then stick around to hear his views on economic recovery, tax policy and long-term deficits.
Martin Feldstein: Feldstein also headed the CEA, but during Ronald Reagan’s first term. He is a tax and public finance specialist who long emphasized the importance of moderate tax rates on economic growth, but he also is a deficit hawk. He had a distinguished career in academia and government.
Feldstein would support Pawlenty’s low-tax views. But when it comes to budget deficits, the governor always has preferred borrowing money (called bonding at the state level) or kicking the fiscal can down the road with budget gimmicks or by shifting the burden to local government. This did not impede his career here, but credibility on deficits and debt will be a core issue nationally in 2012. Pawlenty needs someone like Feldstein to help.
Kenneth Rogoff: Our country still is in the worst financial-sector crisis in 70 years, one that is enormously complicated by international economic flows and the fact that 50 percent of our national debt is now owed to foreigners. No one knows more about financial crises than Rogoff, past chief economist for the International Monetary Fund. As a McCain supporter in 2008, Rogoff is up for grabs for 2012.
All three of these superb economists happen to be Harvard profs, but don’t hold that against them. All have sound Republican credentials, even if they are not loved by the whacko right wing.
None of the three are abstract theorists or blind ideologues — and that is precisely the point. Abandoning experience and prudence for blind ideology is what got us into the mess we are in. We need experienced pragmatism to have any hope of getting out, and these three economists fill the bill. Governor, give them a call.
© 2009 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.