WHY SPECIFICS? Krugman warms my heart today with a column calling for substance from the presidential hopefuls and laying out an array of issues on which the electorate deserves to know specifics from those seeking to lead. I'm also fascinated by the counterargument he identifies, in which candidates need to be elected and adapt to changing circumstances and so cannot offer defined policy choices without limiting their appeal or constraining their future options. This has always struck me as bunk. That said, I don't quite agree with Krugman when he says that "[t]he best way to judge politicians is by how they respond to hard policy questions," as I remember Bush promising a humble foreign policy that would eschew nation building. It's simply not clear to me that policy answers offer much in the way of personal insight. But they do create markers, mandates, a public record which candidates can be held to and attacked with. The downside of reneging on a promise is certainly somewhat higher than the downside of disappointing a supporter's hunch, and so, since I don't trust my candidates to present their truest selves, I'd at least like to force them to offer a self that's relatively difficult to deviate from. Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge doesn't keep all Republicans from raising taxes, but it scares a certain number of them into avoiding it, and it's an easy symbol to use in a future campaign. In other words, it makes deviation from conservative policy preferences more politically troublesome. It may not help you know your candidate's innermost self, but it maximizes the chances that you know what she'll actually do. And, in the end, that's the important thing. --Ezra Klein
