On Senator Chuck Hagel

It has recently come to my attention, thanks to a brief post by Russ Mitchell at Boxing Alcibiades,  that the Senator from Nebraska, Chuck Hagel, has been labeled both a presidential hopeful and a 'centrist' by David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register.  Russ posits that identifying Senator Hagel thus is a sign that "American Politics is messed up", and also a sign that the Democratic Party in the US has moved far to the 'left', assuming of course that Yepsen is himself a Democrat, despite not having overtly announced his partisanship in the Register article. 

Granted, Carl at High Energy in Nebraska is doubtless more familiar with Senator Hagel than I am; yet Russ' dispute of Yepsen's claim proved for me too much too resist putting the Senator to the LEO test.

I initially sought to test Senator Hagel's Issues pages in a manner similar to my tests of Senators Santorum and Clinton  back in August.  However, Hagel's web presence proved to be a challenge, since the manner in which the Nebraska Senator chose to present his Issues pages was by linking to a Thomas server result for the 108th Congress. This choice suggests one of at least two possible interpretations:

1) that the Nebraska senator is interested in facilitating full disclosure of his activities in the US Senate, or at least his sponsorship record, or

2) that the Nebraska senator is interested in obscuring his ideological preference from those who are neither inclined to search through the text of bills nor familiar with the language of legislation.   

A quick perusal of his sponsorship record during the 108th Congress shows that Sen. Hagel's name tends to appear alongside both Joseph Biden of Vermont and Richard Lugar of Indiana with roughly equal frequency.  This same perusal also reveals that unless Hagel is the principal sponsor of the legislation, he also tends not to put his name to a bill until after some revisions have been made.

But what of his putative centrist position?  To test this claim, I have decided to take a sample of Sen. Hagel's 108th Congress sponsorship record and put it to the LEO test using the same method I  have used to test other political actors before.  Here are the results:

Raw Scores:

Adjusted Scores:

Aggregate, Mean, and Median Scores:

The sample itself is composed of the text of the first fifty bills returned by the Thomas server's search engine for Senate bills featuring Chuck Hagel as a sponsor or cosponsor at their introduction to the Senate.  Additional bills were included avter having removed those bills which only gained the Senator's support after it had been revised.

The first graph above shows the raw results of the four test tables.  It is curious that the first table yielded a generally establishmentarian (conservative) signature while the other three produce solidly --and similarly-- egalitarian (liberal) signatures.  It is likely that a key ideological indicator is not captured by the first table that is captured by the other three.The second graph shows percentage scores for each of the four tables.  One may note that in terms of the LEO model, from the three tables that yield a generally liberal score, the other two sets of indicators appear to be more or less evenly divided.  One may also note that for every table, libertarian references trailed.The third graph is a relatively new product within this project.  It shows the proportions of the aggregate, average, and median LEO scores from the four test tables.  Each one indicates a clearly liberal signature.

Given this signature, one may reasonably assert that ideological libertarians are not likely to view Chuck Hagel as a centrist.  Instead, they will see him as a liberal, and perhaps as a liberal ideologue.  Ideological conservatives are perhaps less likely to see Sen. Hagel as a liberal ideologue, but they will still be disinclined to call him a centrist. 

Why, then, does David Yepsen insist that Sen. Hagel is a centrist?  And why does Russ Mitchell suggest that Yepsen's claim reflects an inherent "leftism"?  There are two possible explanations. 

First, it is possible that both Yepsen and Mitchell are observing Chuck Hagel through the figurative lenses of their own distinct ideological preferences. 

In the first case, Yepsen's own ideological preference may be extended somewhat father along the egalitarian line, and because Hagel has demonstrated some conservative attenuation of his egalitarian preference Yepsen therefore sees the Senator more moderate than he sees himself.  Because David Yepsen has not been tested, the ideological myopia interpretation remains a hypothesis.

Russ Mitchell, on the other hand, has been tested using an ideological preference inventory based on the LEO model, and is shown to maintain a different ideological preference from the Nebraska Senator. See below:

Mitchell's LEO score (used with permission)

In this case, Russ Mitchell's ideological preference is extended farther along the libertarian line than Sen. Hagel.  Also, since Mitchell's egalitarian score trails the other two much like Sen. Hagel's libertarian score, it is likely that he would recognize liberal rhetoric more readily than one whose egalitarian score was higher.

Second, and more likely, Yepsen is observing the Nebraska Senator using a variation of the Political Spectrum model as a yardstick, while Mitchell is clearly not.  The sum of libertarian and establishmentarian scores for each test is nearly equivalent to Hagel's egalitarian score, and if one were to assume, albeit incorrectly, that libertarians are a species of conservative, only then could one reasonably assert that Chuck Hagel is a centrist.

Both interpretations above may explain why the Des Moines Register and Boxing Alcibiades differ in their assessment of Sen. Chuck Hagel.  However, the second may explain why the author of Boxing Alcibiades, an ideological libertarian, openly challenged Yepsen's claim.

Comments

[JimDesu]

Perhaps the rhetoric surrounding LEO differentials is itself fodder for some interesting head-scratching.

[jonathon]

Given that it has been a long day for me, I have to ask what you mean...
If you mean the peculiar difference between the scores in Tests 1 and the other three, I have noticed that for some tests, three tests generally match while a fourth does not. It's not always Test 1, though. Tests 2 and 3 are usually in agreement, and sometimes 1 and 4 are.

[JimDesu]

I more meant, if you score ABC and someone else scores XYZ, how you perceive the XYZ-scorer. This could bring another layer of analysis of the rhetoric (although it'd be hard to automate).

[jonathon]

Oh yes. On one hand the inventory that Russ took actually measures perceived opposition. On the other hand there is the hypothetical phenomenon of idoelogical myopia, where individuals perceive the "center" closer to themselves that it actually is. On top of that, once population scores are established, a relative center for that population can be observed. All of these are connected to what you just suggested. That's one of the directions this project has been going.
And you're right about automating it. Not sure how to accomplish it. The Inventory is a start with its multiple measures. The score I used for Russ is only one of the products of the I3P.

[Hanging Shingle]

As a personal note to Jonathon, I just started writing my own blog. Thought I might let you know.
http://hangingshingle.blogspot.com/

[jonathon]

Thank you, Hanging Shingle. I'll have to take a look.