The Administration’s Ideology

Via Henry Farrell, Nolan McCarty takes a rigorous look at the ideology of the Obama administration:

To gauge the differences between the administration and Congressional democrats, I use Keith Poole’s “common space” measurement of conservatism. This measure is an adjustment of DW-NOMINATE scores designed to facilitate comparison of the House and Senate. Each legislator is given a single conservatism score for her entire career ranging from around -1 (very liberal) to 1 (very conservative). One drawback is that these scores are only available up through the 109th Congress (2005-2006). So I can only compare the cabinet to the Democratic caucuses of that term. Another is that Bill Richardson’s score more than a decade old (but the rest continued to serve through the 110th Congress).

The following table list the conservatism scores for the administration as well as the House and Senate leaders and the medians of the caucuses.

The evidence is pretty strong that the administration lies considerably to the right of the Democrats in the House, but is reasonably representative of Senate Democrats. But only Solis comes from the most liberal wing of the party. The center of the party is well represented in powerful positions by the president, vice-president, secretary of state, and WH chief of staff while the lower cabinet is filled with more moderate Democrats and a Republican.

Needless to say, the median senator is more conservative than the median senate Democrat. And many bills can only be passed with the support of ten senators who are more conservative than the median senator. So as I was saying yesterday even if the Obama administration were to shift its position more in the direction of Nancy Pelosi, I doubt that would change many legislative outcomes. The bulk of the Obama administration is more conservative than I am, but less conservative than the pivotal members of congress.