Marching orders: impeachment around the world

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. For years, Cuba ran its economy on two currencies, the peso and the convertible peso, pegged to the American dollar. As slow change comes to the island. Now the dollars themselves are legal tender again and shops that take them are popping up. And America's political divides come with some intriguing and strong correlations. It seems Republicans and Democrats like different movies, pets, even Internet browsers. Our analysis reveals a fascinating partisan divide in music, too. First up, though, Today House Democrats will vote on two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. The first claims that Mr. Trump abused his power and the second alleges he obstructed Congress. He looks set to become the third president in history to be impeached by the House, and he's not taking it very well. Look, it's a hoax.

The whole impeachment thing is a hoax.

He angrily denounced the impeachment process in a letter to Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, accusing her of, amongst other things, declaring open war on American democracy. While Democrats have banded together in favor of impeaching President Trump, Republicans have continued to support him throughout the process.

House Democrats slapdash impeachment inquiry has failed.

To come anywhere near, anywhere near the.

Bar for impeaching a duly elected president.

This afternoon, I think we can expect the House to vote to impeach Donald Trump along largely partisan lines.

John Fasman is our Washington correspondent.

I think there has been one Democrat who said he'll vote no. That's Colin Peterson, who represents a conservative district in upper Minnesota, and one Democrat who plans to switch parties, and that's Jeff Van Drew from New Jersey. Justin Amash, who, who was elected as a Republican, he's from Michigan, has come out in favor of impeachment, but he's also left the party. Aside from that, I don't think we're expecting many or even any other dissenters from either side.

And then after that, there'll be the Senate trial probably next month. I guess we know how that's going to play out.

I expect largely the same outcome, that you will have a vote to acquit or convict along largely partisan lines. I think there may be some defectors, some Republican senators who vote with Democrats to remove President Trump from office. You need 67 senators. A few may break ranks, but I don't think they'll get 67.

What about Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader who will run the Senate trial? Last week he said he'd be taking orders from the White House, and now he's come out to say he won't interview four key witnesses that the Democrats requested.

So Senator McConnell did say that he will be working closely with the White House. He has also said that he's not impartial, that impeachment is a political process, and he's a political actor. He sets the rules for the impeachment trial, but those rules need the approval of a majority of senators, so he can't entirely go his own way. I would expect that he would get some pushback if he tried to slant the rules too much.

I mean, what's striking here is just how strongly this impeachment is going to fall along partisan lines. Is that unusual to your mind?

There's nothing usual about impeachment at all. There have only been two, two presidents who've been impeached. In the case of Bill Clinton, you had plenty of Democrats who voted to impeach. In the case of Richard Nixon, he resigned because congressional Republicans told him that he had lost their support. This happens to be a more polarized time than either of those times before, so it's not surprising that it's partisan. But I don't think you can say that anything is usual when it comes to impeachment.

And so, given the way this is going to go, with the Democrat controlled House voting one way and the Republican dominated Senate voting another, it'd be easy to call this an exercise in futility.

Well, barring some extraordinary turn of events, President Trump will not be removed from office. Does that make impeachment futile? I don't know. I mean, he will be one of three presidents in American history to ever have been impeached. It'll be a stain on his legacy forever. And I think that starting by thinking about political utility is a mistake. I think that the question is whether a majority of the House of Representatives believes that this President did things that are so dangerous to the Republic that he deserves the most severe reprimand that is available to a sitting President. If a majority of the House believes that, and a majority of the House votes their conscience in that way, then the impeachment is not futile. The impeachment is necessary.

Impeachment may have dominated American headlines in recent months, but plenty of other countries have faced similar battles. Since 1990, at least 132 different leaders have faced some 272 impeachment proposals in 63 countries. Charlie Wells writes for the Economist and has found that the rest of the world might have a thing or two to teach America.

There are a number of problems with the way that America deals with impeachment. And I think one of the big ones is that it's actually incredibly vague. So legislators have to demonstrate that a president has committed, quote, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. And that actually leaves a lot of room for debate. There are also some structural problems with impeachment that mean it can sort of descend into the parochialism and partisanship that we're seeing this year.

What kinds of structural problems?

I think one of the complications here is that both houses of the legislature are involved. So, you know, the House of Representatives could come up with one conclusion, and the Senate could come up with something entirely different. And that's actually what we're sort of expecting with this round of impeachment in America this year. Another problem is that in America, impeachments can lead to what are sort of lame ducks administration. So even if a president does get impeached, as happened with Bill Clinton, if he gets acquitted by the Senate, he can still sort of stick around. So you've got this guy sitting in the White House impeached, but not really doing all that much. And that's a problem.

And from a structural point of view, this is not how impeachment is done in other countries?

Well, it's different in other countries. They've come up with some mechanisms to address some of these problems. In a lot of countries, the grounds for impeaching a president could be potentially broader. So in, in Tanzania, the president can be impeached if he has, quote, conducted himself in a manner which lowers the esteem of the office of president. Honduran presidents can be impeached for incompetence. And in Ghana, bringing ridicule to the office can also be impeachable. And that actually sort of makes getting the process started a little bit easier. The process itself may be quite different in a number of countries, too. So in the United States, the Senate is required as a second body to kind of approve impeachment, whereas in other countries a court, a sort of special constitutional court or body will be the one that ultimately approves the decision. And that can make things feel a little bit less partisan, a little bit more impartial. And then finally, in a lot of other countries, the outcomes are different. So in the United States, lame duck administrations can happen because elections are not called immediately after an impeachment. A vice president takes over and sort of fills out the rest of the term, whereas in a majority of other presidential systems, snap elections are called. So if a president is impeached, and if that's improved, there's an election. And that can actually be a lot more satisfying to the electorate because it's a more immediate political change.

And taken in some, these other mechanisms reduce the partisanship that plagues the American system.

That's right. So if you've got a political body or a legislative body initiating impeachment, but then if you have a more court like body approving it, that can kind of make it seem as if it's not an entirely political process, because as we've heard about all year, impeachment is both a political and a legal process.

But what about that point that in other countries the grounds can be more broad? It can simply be a matter of incompetence or of bringing disrepute to the office and so on. That sounds even broader and more vague than the American system that you've faulted for vagueness.

That's a really good point. And I think America suffers from this sort of start stop system where it feels broad and debatable. But up to a point, and there's this issue of crimes, which we hear a lot in the United States, and if you've been tuning into cable news, hear a lot of commentators ask, you know, has the president committed a crime. It seems like there's this incredibly high bar that a president must pass in order to be impeached, whereas in a number of these other countries, that bar seems almost lower and it's almost not less of a big deal, but there's a lot more ways in which a president can be impeached. And so there's a sort of more open understanding of impeachment.

And so with all that in mind, do you think that the impeachment system, as America uses it now, is fit for purpose, that it could be reformed?

I think there certainly is a case to be made that it could be reformed. That this current impeachment proceeding has been damaging for American democracy. Does that mean that things will change in the United States? I would say probably not. Impeachment is enshrined in America's constitution, and I think that makes it very, very difficult for the process to be changed.

But for people interested in reform, it's worth remembering that these systems could be different.

Yeah, I think a lot of people have forgotten that impeachment is actually a common process around the world, or at least threats of impeachment. And we can learn a thing or two from those other countries.

Charlie, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you for having me.

Cuba's relationship with money is complicated. Since 1994, it's officially had a dual currency economy. The Cuban peso is used for small purchases like street food or bus travel. The convertible peso, or seusay, is much more widely used and pegged to the American dollar. Now another currency is being added, the dollar itself. The decision has been prompted in part by demand for a new way of getting around the island.

While the streets of Havana are looking.

Different these days, Roseanne Lake is our Cuba correspondent.

In addition to the magnificent cars that trundle along the streets, you've got magnificent shades of red and pink and yellow and blue. Some of them are beautifully restored and others not so much, which make them more interesting. You've got shiny new electric scooters, and these were once quite rare in Havana because they were hard to get into Cuba. They needed to be purchased in Panama, Mexico, or the Dominican Republic, all popular destinations for Cubans to bring goods that are not available on the island into the country. And then they would have to be purchased at a. At a markup on the black market. They're now available domestically and far more cheaply. But there is a catch. Instead of paying for any currency that they earn money in, Cubans must pay for them in American dollars.

But I Thought the state wasn't keen on US Dollars.

The Cuban government definitely was not keen on using US dollars. They were actually banned in 2004. But starting in October, in response to economic difficulties, the government said that citizens were able to open special accounts at the banks that would allow them to receive essentially remittances from abroad. And these remittances could be received in dollars, yen, euros, or other European currencies. And you would deposit that money in the bank and get a card in exchange that you could take to these stores. They're called convertible currency shops, where you shop with the special card that you get in the bank and where everything is priced in dollars and whatever you buy is debited from your account in dollars. These are quite popular. 70 of them are planned for the island. And when they first opened, the queues were wild. Basically, everyone in Cuba needs a refrigerator, everyone needs an air conditioner. Car parts are definitely very much in demand. And television sets, and these were things, you know, before that you could only purchase pretty much on the black market when somebody went abroad, imported them, sent them back on a boat three months later, and sold them to you on the black market or at a much higher price on the street.

So it sounds as if there's an almost entirely parallel economy here. The, the peso and the dollar.

Cuba, up until the dollar was recently reintroduced, had two currencies, two working currencies. There was the Cuban peso and the cuc, the convertible peso. And they're only distinguishable by the products that you can use them to make purchases with. For example, basic things. Most state employees in Cuba are paid in Cuban pesos. And they're also the currency that you use to buy things like electricity, water, bus tickets, basics, and then anything premium you would pay for in Cusa. So that would be petrol, Internet access, hotel stays, or meals at fancy restaurants. But now that there's a third currency, you can buy things in dollars. So it essentially boils down to simple equations like this. You would pay for your driver's license in pesos. You would pay for petrol in, say, you say, and you would now buy spare car parts in US dollars. All very simple.

Well, it's really not. I mean, why would the government bring in another currency altogether?

Well, essentially, when the ceyouse debuted in 1994, it was pegged at 1 to 1 to the US dollar. But they've been naughty and there's been a bit of overprinting. And most people realize that the value of the ceuse is no longer what a US Dollar is. And so an attempt to bring in even more foreign currency, foreign currency that is desperately needed at this point because Cuba is very dependent on imports. And a big part of what allowed them to sustain their imports were deliveries of subsidized oil from Venezuela, which we know have taken a turn for the worse, given the overall economy in Venezuela. And. And the government was forced to cut bus services, suspend manufacturing, and urge many farmers to actually use oxen instead of tractors.

You mentioned that American dollars can only be used in these convertible currency stores to buy TVs, fridges, electric scooters. Why do it in that way?

Well, it's actually a rather stealthy way of keeping foreign currency in the country. So Cubans used to purchase these things, right? But before they used to do that from somebody on the black market, someone who had purchased that item in Panama or somewhere else, and of course, that money would leave the country. Right. Cuba was basically losing the money. So this is actually a very smart way of keeping the money in the country by allowing people to actually make these purchases at home instead of abroad.

So how to view this move, though? I mean, it sounds like a bit of a reaction to a currency crisis and a bit of funny currency accounting, I suppose, but it also represents some freedoms that businesses didn't have before.

Many hope that this means that they will be reinvesting this money into state enterprises which desperately needed, which would then help boost domestic production, alleviate shortages of consumer goods, and make Cuba's economy a little bit more autonomous and a little bit more productive. There are signs that this is happening, and certainly keeping money in the country is an excellent opportunity to begin doing that. Right. To get things kickstarted. But Cuba has the perennial problem of not really being able to loosen restrictions on private enterprise and just allow more foreign investment. Right. They're selective about how these projects go about. So we see them sort of slowly letting go of the reins. But it is a sign that good things can happen, right? That there's this intent to reinvest, possibly the idea that the currencies will be unified, that the peso and the ceuse will no longer coexist, which is ultimately quite silly, and that the value of currency in Cuba would be more stabilized, but that's still a long way coming. They've been trying to unify currency in Cuba for over 20 years.

So for now, Cuba has these three currencies, the Cuban peso, the convertible peso, and now the dollar wouldn't just rather have a single unified currency.

To an optimist, this proliferation of currencies means more buying power. It means that more dollars are coming into Cuba, that Cuba will have more foreign currency to pay off its debts and to buy basic things like food it imports for 80% of its food, things that it needs for its population. To more of a realist, this could seem like a bit of more of the same, even a Repeat of the 1990s when another currency is introduced to alleviate the inadequacies of the Chinese domestic economy. And to the average Cuban, it could just mean that scooters are cheaper.

Roseanne, thank you very much for joining us.

All right. Thank you very much.

The American political scene is as tribal as most anyone can remember, with this week's impeachment news as a painful example. The evident divides aren't just plainly political, though. Republicans are more like than Democrats to prefer dogs to cats, neat desks to messy ones, action films to documentaries, even Internet Explorer to Google Chrome. But beyond pets and pastimes, there's also a difference in what Democrats and Republicans listen to.

The Economist's analysis of data on music preferences and election results finds that the music most associated with liberalism is hip hop.

Elliot Morris is one of our data journalists.

And for conservatism, it's country. In the 2016 election, we found that Donald Trump and the Republicans performed better in counties that liked country and that Hillary Clinton and Democrats performed better in counties that liked hip hop.

I mean, on first blush, that seems like something I might have guessed. I mean, why is there more subtlety to it than that?

Well, it's true that this is a rather intuitive finding on the surface. In the cities where there are more African Americans, there's more Latinos, people listen to more hip hop and Latin music, the genres associated with those groups. In more rural areas where there are more white people, people listen to more country music, another genre sort of associated with rural living. And on the border, people, again, like Latin music. But even when we control for an area of the country's education and race, age and income, musical preferences still explain voting behavior.

So even when you strip away everything else that you would associate with political alignment, there's still something in the data that suggests music and politics are connected.

Right? So the Economist combined data from Vivid Seats, which is an online ticket marketplace, about how many concert tickets were bought in each of these musical genres with a county's demographic attitudes. And when we combined all this information in a statistical model, we found that musical preferences still drove political behavior, all else being equal.

So what do you mean by that? Once you hold everything else equal what does this correlation look like?

Well, in the 2016 election, in counties where country music outsold hip hop, Donald Trump did better than Hillary Clinton, on average by 22%. If we try to predict those boating attitudes, only with demographics, we can predict an 18 point difference. But without musical preferences, we cannot explain that residual for percentage points. In other words, demographics get us a lot of the way there. But music preferences still are important.

I mean, why do you suppose that? Is this is but a correlation? Is there some sort of causation going on in there, do you think?

Well, correlation is not causation, and in this case, that's probably particularly true. Liking hip hop doesn't necessarily make you more democratic, but there could be something that drives both of those. You might live in an area with more African Americans and therefore are more likely to be exposed to hip hop music. And like hip hop music. And also being in that community might make you more likely to vote for that group's preferred political party, the Democrats. Whereas living in a rural area might expose you toward a life on the farm, perhaps, and make you more attuned to the values espoused in the Republican Party and also those similar values espoused in country music.

And so is it just these two, hip hop and country, that kind of emerged in the analysis? Are there other genres to consider if we're gonna start counting this as a. As a predictor?

Well, in terms of predicting things, the best predictor of Donald Trump's increased vote share versus the 2012 election was actually a county' preference for hard rock music. And there we might explain the relationship by saying that people who like hard rock music might like the anti establishment, tear it all down message that typically comes along with those songs and also are drawn to Donald Trump's anti establishment political rhetoric. There might also be some element of nostalgia to these things. So our hard rock bands included things like acdc, which many Americans associate with a previous era of politics in America. And we also know from social science that this nostalgia was a driving force in Donald Trump's vote share as well.

So from what you've learned here, you would use music preference as an actual sort of data point in your future analyses?

Yes, we absolutely will. When we performed our analysis of Louisiana's governor's election in 2019, we found that the difference between a county's preference for hip hop and country music was just as good a predictor of the Democratic and Republican vote shares as race or population density was.

Elliot, thanks very much for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

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