Ed Glaeser Does the Best He Can To Say Something Nice About John McCain

There’s one of the oddest presidential endorsements you can imagine over at the New York Sun, in a grumpy editorial by Harvard Economics Professor Edward Glaeser (link--HT Mankiw). Glaeser comes out for McCain—or I guess he does--under the headline “The Case for McCain,” which might just as well might be matched by others called “The Case for McKinley,” or “The Case for McDuck.” So far as I can tell, the only good things he can figure out to say about McCain are (a) the polls say he can beat Hillary; and (b) Tom Delay doesn’t like him.

True as far as it goes, I guess, but he also says:

The most important tasks of the next president lie in foreign affairs. Since that is not my area of expertise, I don't know whether Mr. McCain or Mr. Giuliani or Mr. Romney would be the best president.

Whoa, Sasquatch, don’t go overboard now, big guy. This is an endorsement, remember, (or maybe it isn’t). In fairness, Glaeser the economist does weigh in on his own special subject:

The [Republican] party must once again make the case that its economic policies offer the brightest future for middle income Americans.

Which is a lot more than just true enough. But it doesn’t inspire confidence that McCain himself says that economics is not his strong suit, and drives the port home by showcasing the support he gets from Mr. Supply-Side, Jack Kemp. I don’t know about Glaeser himself, but I know that the number of mainstream economists who regard supply side as anything other than dope-smoking is small enough to fit into the downstairs broom closet, with space left over for the editorial board of the National Review.

Glaeser also makes space for—indeed he opens with—a swipe at Democrats:

The party of Jimmy Carter will nominate a candidate for the world's most important executive position without significant executive experience.

He actually has a point about Clinton and Obama—a point which might gain more force if he didn’t throw in a snide remark about one president who actually did have significant executive experience and proved, if nothing else, that executive experience is hardly the defining factor.

Anyway, having swiped at the Democrats for not having executive experience, Glaeser moves on to endorse the one GOP candidate who has substantially none. But hold the message here: when you want change, you pick the oldest guy in the room, the one with longest service in politics, and the one with closest ties to Washington. And don’t worry about that foreign policy thing.