Election 2020: The Economy As An Election Issue

With two months until the November presidential elections, Folio continues its series of critical discussions on the potential outcomes of the election at the national and state level; led by noted national commentator and Folio Board Secretary Mort Kondracke.

The US economy is officially in a COVID-induced recession, which makes economic recovery and lasting prosperity a major 2020 campaign issue between President Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, and their respective parties.

The fifth conversation of the series features Doug Ericksen, member of the Washington State Senate for the 42nd District in Whatcom County since 2011, and ranking Republican on the Energy, Environmental and Telecommunications Committee; Stanford University Political Science Prof. Margaret Levi, formerly of UW, who's developing a model US economy for the the coming Artificial Intelligence/robotics era, UW Political Science and Statistics Prof. Christopher Adolph who studies the politics of economic policy and health policy, and William Galston, former White House domestic policy adviser to President Clinton, founder of the bipartisan group No Labels and author of nine books, the latest Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy.

Margaret Levi is the Sara Miller McCune Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford, Professor of Political Science, and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University. She is also Jere L. Bacharach Professor Emerita of International Studies in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington. She is the winner of the 2019 Johan Skytte Prize. She became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in 2002, a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2015, the Robert Dahl Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 2017, and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2018. She served as president of the American Political Science Association from 2004 to 2005. In 2014 she received the William H. Riker Prize in Political Science, in 2017 gave the Elinor Ostrom Memorial Lecture, and in 2018 received an honorary doctorate from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

Born and raised in Whatcom County, Doug Ericksen has been bringing hometown values and solutions to Olympia since 1998.   After serving six terms in the House, he was elected to the Senate in 2010. Senator Ericksen represents Whatcom County’s 42nd District, from Bellingham to the Canadian border. Senator Ericksen is ranking minority member on the Senate Energy, Environment and Technology Committee. He also serves on the Higher Education and Workforce Development Committee. His legislative priorities include providing solutions to keep energy prices low, create jobs and enhance our quality of life.

Christopher Adolph is faculty member of the University of Washington, Seattle, where he is an associate professor of political science, an adjunct associate professor of statistics, and the director of consulting in the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences. His current research focuses on comparing policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic across the US states. He lead a team of political science and public health researchers collecting and analyzing data on state-level social distancing policies. Frequently updated data are available at covid19statepolicy.org.

William A. Galston holds the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program, where he serves as a Senior Fellow.  Prior to January 2006 he was the Saul Stern Professor and Acting Dean at the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, founding director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), and executive director of the National Commission on Civic Renewal, co-chaired by former Secretary of Education William Bennett and former Senator Sam Nunn.  A participant in six presidential campaigns, he served from 1993 to 1995 as Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy. Galston is the author of nine books and more than 100 articles in the fields of political theory, public policy, and American politics.  His most recent books are Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy (Yale, 2018), Public Matters (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), and The Practice of Liberal Pluralism (Cambridge, 2004).  A winner of the American Political Science Association’s Hubert H. Humphrey Award, Galston was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004.