Matthew Burton

Yesterday, Dan Phiffer and I launched Speechology.org. Think of it as an online fact checker for political ads and debates. Here’s the backstory:

A few months ago, I was watching the New Hampshire Republican debate. Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee got into an argument when Huckabee accused Romney of not supporting the surge:

MR. ROMNEY: Number two — number two, I did support the surge. On the same day the president announced the surge, I also…laid out my plan that I thought made sense — actually, even before the president’s speech — calling for additional troops; I called for a different number. So I also supported the surge from the very beginning.

But look, I — you know, Governor

MR. HUCKABEE: I’m way over.

MR. ROMNEY: Don’t try and characterize my position. Of course, this war has

MR. HUCKABEE: Which one? (Scattered laughter.)

MR. ROMNEY: You know — you know, we’re wise to talk about policies and not to make personal attacks.

MR. HUCKABEE: Well, it’s not a personal attack, Mitt, because you also supported a timed withdrawal. And Senator Pryor, from my state

MR. ROMNEY: No, that’s

MR. HUCKABEE: — was praising you for that, and

MR. ROMNEY: I do not — I do not support and have never support a timed withdrawal.

… Read the rest

The first draft of my most recent essay had a big chunk on politicians: running for office was the final of three suggestions I made to people who want to reform our government. I removed that chunk, but with PDF 12 hours away, I figured I’d post it anyway, as its own little musing. So here it is:

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“Suppose two politicians are running for president, and one goes through the farm section and is asked, `What are you going to do about the farm question?’ And he knows right away – bang, bang, bang. Now he goes to the next campaigner who comes through. `What are you going to do about the farm problem?’ `Well, I don’t know. I used to be a general, and I don’t know anything about farming. But it seems to me to be a very difficult problem, because for twelve, fifteen, twenty years people have been struggling with it, and people say they know how to solve the farm problem. And it must be a hard problem. So the way I intend to solve the farm problem is to gather around me a lot of people who know something about it, to look at all the experience that we have had with this problem before, to take a certain amount of time at it and then to come to some conclusion in a reasonable way about it.

… Read the rest

Three years ago, when I told a mentor from the tech sector that I was soon leaving my job as an intelligence analyst to start a technology Masters program, she replied, “It’s good that you’re getting out of that field.”

She didn’t like the Intelligence Community’s work, and in her eyes, the longer I stayed, the more it would corrupt me. I’ve always thought of it in reverse: the longer I stayed involved, the more opportunities I would have to change it. Afterall, if you want something to get better, should you entrust the job to those who caused the problem in the first place? Or should you take care of the problem yourself? To me, it’s a pretty simple question. (That’s why I still work with the Intelligence Community as an outside consultant.)

Unfortunately, among my colleagues—fellow politicos and geeks who are trying to reform the U.S. Government—my mentor’s philosophy seems to be more popular than mine. It’s a philosophy that won’t get us very far. By not engaging our government directly, and instead choosing to merely blog about it from afar, we are surrendering the most important, most influential roles to the very people we want to get rid of.… Read the rest