Category: Political Philosophy

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Domestic issues Economics Election 2008 Political Philosophy Politics The Opinionsphere

David Brooks’s Brand Loyalty

David Brooks has apparently had enough of the Republican party as most of us know it:

…let us recognize above all the 228 who voted no — the authors of this revolt of the nihilists. They showed the world how much they detest their own leaders and the collected expertise of the Treasury and Fed. They did the momentarily popular thing, and if the country slides into a deep recession, they will have the time and leisure to watch public opinion shift against them.

House Republicans led the way and will get most of the blame. It has been interesting to watch them on their single-minded mission to destroy the Republican Party. Not long ago, they led an anti-immigration crusade that drove away Hispanic support. Then, too, they listened to the loudest and angriest voices in their party, oblivious to the complicated anxieties that lurk in most American minds.

Now they have once again confused talk radio with reality.

The frustrating thing about David Brooks is that, as reasonable as he may seem on occasion, he refuses to leave the Republican party because of what he imagines it could be – a national greatness party that balances individualism and collectivism, that has a relatively big government, that promotes good behavior.

I find it difficult at times to see what keeps Brooks in the Republican party except brand loyalty.

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Election 2008 McCain Obama Political Philosophy Politics

The Difference Between McCain’s Bi-Partisanship and Obama’s Post-Partisanship

[digg-reddit-me]It drives me nuts the way so many otherwise intelligent people seem to accept the fact that bi-partisanship is the answer to our country’s problems. It makes me even more frustrated that John McCain has been able to sell bi-partisanship as a type of reform. Bi-partisanship is neither of these things.

The first thing to make clear is that bi-partisanship is only a tactic. It is not a philosophy. It is not a theory of government. It is a way to get things done. Bi-partisanship is generally used for one of two ends:

  1. To avoid taking action or making a decision on a controversial issue; or
  2. To avoid responsibility for the consequences of an action that needs to be taken or a decision that needs to be made.

Bi-partisanship is sometimes – to paraphrase Churchill’s defense of democracy – the worst influence on government, except for all of the others. On certain issues which have paralyzed the government, bi-partisanship is sometimes the only answer. When paired with a robust federal system – which allows regions and states to pass more specific legislation on contentious issues – it is sometimes the only way to keep a country together. The culture wars of the 1990s involved good examples of issues that fit this criteria – issues such as abortion, gay rights, and gun control. When two roughly equal sides have solidified their positions, based on their lifestyle and their core values, forcing either partisan position onto the public at large becomes political suicide and creates backlash. Thus, the only solution is a bi-partisan mish-mash that accomplishes as little as possible while giving cover to both sides.

On other issues that require action on the part of the government, bi-partisanship is the most politically feasible way to deal with sensitive issues – such as social security, war, climate change, government bail-outs, and immigration. Bi-partisanship is a political necessity with these issues because it allows blame to be diffused for the inevitable negative consequences of dealing with these issues. On these issues, federalism doesn’t work – and federal action must be taken in order to deal with the issue effectively. Both sides generally compromise what they want – and the result is sometimes effective and sometimes not. Generally bi-partisanship of this type is only able to be summoned during a crisis, or on the verge of an immediate crisis.

But even the defenders of bi-partisanship must realize that it is the system of bi-partisanship itself that has propped up many corrupt practices throughout American history – from slavery to segregation to the centralizing of power in Washington to the culture of lobbying. Slavery was not ended until it became a partisan issue. Official segregation was ended on a bi-partisan basis, but that compromise created a partisan backlash that reshaped the party landscape. The final two issues are still supported by a bi-partisan consensus and attacked by members of both parties.

Bi-partisanship – in essence – only acts to protect the status quo. In those rare instances in which it has been used for reform – rather than to shore up and protect the status quo – the bi-partisan consensus has quickly been destroyed as other influences took advantage of the inevitable backlash that accompanies reform.

As described, bi-partisanship is about compromise, getting things done, protecting the status quo, and consenus. Which is why it is so ridiculous to call McCain a bi-partisan figure. There are virtually no issues on which McCain has been bi-partisan. Most of the examples given of McCain’s bi-partisanship instead point to instances in which he became a partisan for the other side.

McCain was not being bi-partisan – he stood against his party and with the Democrats. His positions were not “bi-partisan” – they were examples of a Republican acknowledging his party had the wrong position.

It is also worth noting that the Republican party, on all of these issues that McCain broke with them, had blatantly wrong and unserious positions. Defending torture? Denying global warming despite the widespread consensus of scientists? It certainly takes a measure of courage to stand up to your party, even when it is  clearly wrong, but if you think your party is so clearly wrong on so many issues, why do you remain a member of that party? This was the question that McCain faced in the years after Bush’s initial election – and why he was considered as John Kerry’s running mate and why he considered switching parties.

But something happened on the way to 2008 – and McCain, who had acted as a partisan for the Democratic positions on a number of issues, backed away from these positions and adopted hardline conservative positions – which is what makes his current bragging about bi-partisanship so clever. He is essentially telling conservatives to believe what he says and what the hard-advisers who have surrounded him say and not what he has done in the past; at the same time, he is telling independents and potential Democratic supporters that he has a history of bi-partisanship, and that they should trust that his past actions rather than his current words, advisers, policies, and campaign.

This is all very different than Obama’s post-partisanship. While bi-partisanship is merely a tactic, post-partisanship is a specific approach to governing that calls for bi-partisanship as a tactic to neutralize certain issues while advocating common sense, a focus on the long-term, and an emphasis on “tinkering” to deal with more significant issues.

This term was initially used by conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans in the late 1990s to describe an agenda which consisted of entitlement reform and deficit reduction – perhaps the two greatest accomplishments of the Clinton presidency. The term fell out of use until Gov. Schwarzenegger and Mayor Bloomberg became prominent figures, in a large part by eschewing controversy and culture war issues and focusing on longer-term issues. Obama, though not using the words himself, was seen as a post-partisan figure because his approach to politics was a more progressive take on the Schwarzenegger and Bloomberg approach.

Obama’s post-partisanship calls for a focus on common ground over division on culture war issues – and strives to neutralize them – as Obama attempted to do in his acceptance speech in Denver. Obama sees these issues primarily as distractions from the systematic and strategic long-term challenges America has been avoiding for the past twenty years while engaged in these culture wars. Post-partisanship attempts to synethsize the best points made by the opposition while still taking action. This approach stands in opposition to Clinton’s triangulation which was a political tactic used to accomplish neo-liberal ends. Instead, post-partisanship takes into account the essential ideological critique of the opposition and proposes programs which pragmatically deal with long-term issues.

More than anything else, post-partisanship calls for tinkering – trying new approaches and sticking with what works, no matter the idea’s ideological pedigree:

I’m a Democrat. I’m considered a progressive Democrat. But if a Republican or a Conservative or a libertarian or a free-marketer has a better idea, I am happy to steal ideas from anybody and in that sense I’m agnostic.

Obama’s health care plan is a good example of this agnosticism and post-partisanship. In dealing with a serious, long-term issue, he incorporates markets, avoids coercion, and yet makes a solid attempt at fixing a broken system by tinkering with what we have.

McCain’s “bi-partisanship” has consisted of breaking with his party on a number of issues and siding with Barack Obama and the Democrats – and he deserves credit for that. But Obama’s post-partisanship is actually a strategy that describes how he will govern. That’s the difference.

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Domestic issues Election 2008 Libertarianism National Security Obama Political Philosophy Videos

Jesse Ventura vs. The Black Swan

[digg-reddit-me]

[Jesse Ventura, former professional wrestler and governor of Minnesota, speaking at Ron Paul’s Liberty Rally in Minneapolis last week. For the rest of this Jesse Ventura’s speech, check out Fora.tv.]

You certainly didn’t see this in the mainstream media.

I don’t agree with Ventura’s points completely – but he makes a very compelling case for libertarianism. He does it by avoiding subtlety and going for the jugular – which is what you’d expect of gladiators in either politics or professional wrestling.

He speaks to the tremendous anger at our current political and economic system – the anger tapped by Ron Paul in his presidential run.

Barack Obama stands for the hope that our current political and economic system does not need to be overthrown in a revolution, but instead can be ameliorated through gradual and focused change. For example, if the middle class is being squeezed – then give them tax cuts, and ensure that they can get health insurance, and attempt to create new green collar jobs in America.

Ron Paul (and Jesse Ventura) both stand for the anger and revolutionary impulse to overthrow the existing order. Revolution is a word both Ron Paul and Jesse Ventura use in their respective books prescribing what we need to do. Ron Paul for example preaches the reinstitution of the gold standard, the abolishment of the Federal Reserve, and other revolutionary measures. These men have little time for such tinkering as Barack Obama proposes within our current system. As such, they see him and John McCain as equally part of the problem.

That’s where I have to part ways with these two men. I admire them and their passion. But I mistrust any ideology to give me all the answers. As for tinkering – I think, in many ways, that is the best we can do.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a scholar who predicted the latest financial crisis, speaks of “tinkering” as the ideal form of change because we shouldn’t “disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time [as w]e don’t understand their logic.” As Brian Appleyard described Taleb’s views in the Sunday Times:

Taleb believes in tinkering – it was to be the title of his next book. Trial and error will save us from ourselves because they capture benign black swans. Look at the three big inventions of our time: lasers, computers and the internet. They were all produced by tinkering and none of them ended up doing what their inventors intended them to do. All were black swans. The big hope for the world is that, as we tinker, we have a capacity for choosing the best outcomes.

“We have the ability to identify our mistakes eventually better than average; that’s what saves us.” We choose the iPod over the Walkman. Medicine improved exponentially when the tinkering barber surgeons took over from the high theorists. They just went with what worked, irrespective of why it worked. Our sense of the good tinker is not infallible, but it might be just enough to turn away from the apocalypse that now threatens Extremistan.

By this logic – revolution is dangerous because it fully commits us to a change, a change which can result in enormous negative consequences. The American Revolution was a kind of beneficial black swan – that ended up producing a unique, stable, and free form of government. The French Revolution on the other hand unleashed a Reign of Terror and totalitarianism – all justified with the same values as the American Revolution. Tinkering allows us to experiment and see what works best and to adopt those measures that work best. It is precisely this determination to tinker that imbues Obama’s plans – from health care to energy policy to education. It’s why Obama’s health care plan works with the current system, creating incentives to fill gaps, rather than mandating an overhaul as the Clintons attempted in 1992 or attempting to push everyone out of the current system as McCain proposes now.

I admire Jesse Ventura for his inspiring rhetoric – and we always need scourges who point out how our society fails to live up to it’s ideals. But if there is anything redeemable in America, if there is any hope that through some determined tinkering we might make things better, then revolution is not yet the answer. Barack Obama and John McCain are not equally part of the problem. Obama seeks to tinker with our economy and government to protect the middle class and to soften the jarring forces of globalization; John McCain seeks to double down on Bush’s policies based on an ideological faith that markets will, on their own, produce goodness and light.  Although Jesse Ventura doesn’t know it, he’s fighting the Black Swan – that knowledge that we do not understand the world as well as we think we do, and revolutions fail far more often than they succeed. That’s why we need a tinkerer in the White House come January 2009 – and not yet another ideologue.

Continue reading “Jesse Ventura vs. The Black Swan”
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Economics Election 2008 Foreign Policy History McCain Obama Political Philosophy Politics The Opinionsphere

Vision versus Compromise

Sam Tanenhaus, an historian and editor of the New York Times Book Review, had a piece in Saturday’s Week in Review discussing vision and compromise in politics. The byline was: “Vision has its limits. Compromise has its opportunities.” While I agreed with the overall thrust of the piece – that a mediocre man’s compromise is often more effective a great man’s vision – Tannenhaus is setting up a false dichotomy:

Visionary leaders are inclined to create or imagine their own goals and then try to propel others toward them. Sometimes these leaders achieve greatness. Lincoln is the salient example. But he was also a canny and calculating politician, attuned to the nation’s mood, whereas another visionary president, Woodrow Wilson, was stymied precisely because of his imperious disregard of the public will.

I don’t see how an historian who had studied Lincoln can believe that vision and compromise can be mutually exclusive. The genius of Lincoln was that he first saw the world for what it was, saw what was possible and what was not, identified the core challenges ahead, and took what steps were necessary to achieve his objectives. Lincoln did have a vision – but it was a vision anchored in reality, and one that changed as realities changed. For Lincoln, his vision was not an independent idealistic end, but a goal that was based on the best he could do at that moment. He was willing to allow slavery to preserve the Union; he was willing to fight a brutal war to prevent secession; he was willing to let Britain commit acts of agression without retribution in order to keep the nation’s focus; he was willing to contravene the Constitution in order to preserve it. Lincoln cast a cold eye on war and peace and did what he believed was needed. Lincoln was neither an idealist nor a flip-flopper. He did not act as if there was something irreconcilable about having a vision of a better nation and actually accomplishing something. Lincoln believed that through powerful words and determined action, and most important, an understanding of the world and the possible – an individual must strive to do whatever they could, and to make the world a better place. Wilson failed because he was a stubborn idiot (whose stubbornness was exacerbated by medical issues) – not because he was a visionary.

Tanenhaus tries in his piece to treat John McCain and Barack Obama evenhandedly. But clearly, he favors Obama. He treats Obama’s flip-flip on public financing and change in tactics regarding telecom immunity (which Tannenhaus grossly mischaracterizes or misunderstands as a change in position on FISA) with McCain’s radical changes of position on tax cuts and on whether or not to run an honorable campaign. (He doesn’t mention McCain’s other flip-flops on offshore drilling and torture.) In attempting to treat them equally, he does a disservive to both men. But most importantly, by setting up an inherent conflict between being a visionary and a statesmen, he ignores the clear lessons of history. (And by equating partisan politicians with visionaries, his argument verges on the ridiculous.) Statesmen have propped up some of the worst regimes on the planet and protected the worst practices – all in the name of reasonableness and compromise. Visionaries have wreaked the worst violence on the history of the planet, attempting to remake the world to match their visions.

If all we can do is choose to compromise or choose to see a better world, then there are no good choices. But history shows us a better path – one which Lincoln demonstrates above all. Radicals are visionaries who seek to remake the world to match their visions; apologists are statesmen who compromise to protect the status quo at all costs. Lincoln was a pragmatic politician who had a few ideas about how to approach the challenges our country faced, who was willing to compromise to get something done, who saw the world as it was and not as he wished or feared it to be,  but who most of all attempted to push – to nudge – the country in a better direction.

As Sam Tanenhaus knows, and as I know – John McCain is not that type of politician. He has a set view of the world – and he believes that America can demand everything it wants and get it. He does not realize that we live in a nonpolar world in which states have great power, but not all power. He does not realize that if we kick Russia out of the G-8 as he was threatening to do before their invasion of Georgia – then we will pay a price in less cooperation on other fronts. He has accepted the failed orthodoxy of the far right-wing on economic policy – an orthodoxy that has led us to Enron, to a shrinking and less stable middle class, to a destabilizing dependence on oil, to an ossification of American society into classes, ((Except that those in the middle have no safety net to prevent them from falling into poverty while those as the top have various safety nets to prevent them from becoming middle class.)) and to the perfect storm of crises we are in the midst of now.

As Sam Tanenhaus knows, and as I know – Barack Obama could be that politician. He might fail – but there is no doubting that he is a pragmatist who sees that we are the single most powerful force in in a nonpolar world; but who also sees that unless we invest in our infrastructure, in new industries, and take steps to prevent us from becoming a stratified society, we will not be able to maintain our power. He has a vision of a better America, still unseen, around the corner – and his policies are all attempts to nudge our society in the right direction.

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Criticism Economics Libertarianism Political Philosophy

Holding a Grudge Against the Bank of America (Part 1)


[Photo by Steven Rhodes licensed under Creative Commons.]

Corporations are considered individuals by the law. Yet they have no conscience to guilt; they have no eternal soul to damn ((if you go for that sort of thing)); they have no empathy, no compassion – no emotion of any sort; they cannot be sent to prison; they can live forever; their single purpose is to make money – and they are legally obligated to make as much money as possible. Yet despite the fundamental differences between corporations and human beings, corporations have been given all of the rights of human beings. They have the right to free speech, the right to assemble, the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures – and all those other rights we mere humans take for granted.

Is it any wonder then that all large corporations – once they are no longer the responsibility of a single individual – begin to act as if they have no conscience or compassion – exploiting legal loopholes and damaging society at large? Insurance companies derive enormous profit from denying legitimate claims and every claim that they possibly can. Oil companies lobby and erect barriers and do anything they can to eliminate the possibility of alternative energy sources being developed. Manufacturers externalize the costs of their pollution – spewing toxic chemicals into streams and lakes and the air and the ground – and after paying some negligible penalty, the government (with the people’s money) takes responsibility for cleaning up the mess. ((Much of the analysis and examples given in these first two paragraphs is inspired by The Corporation by Joel Bakan – as well as the documentary of the same name. I do not entirely accept the conclusions of the film or book, or the methods they use to come to their conclusions. The book and the film are both extremely useful and worthwhile but are ultimately limited because they are polemics that do not seek to give a fair analysis but to persuade. Sometimes, the tools they use to persuade are a bit too blunt – as when in the documentary, the filmmakers say that the corporation as a type of instituition was responsible – in part presumably – for the Holocaust and other atrocities – when it is easier to blame “the government as an institution.” As a matter of fact – most of the criticisms of “the Corporation” can be equally applied to the State as an institution.)) Big lenders and bankers take unwise risks that allow them enormous profits in the short term – and the American people then pay to bail the companies out of the deficits they find themselves in. ((This is obviously references specifically the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Bear Stearns deals which the Financial Times of London called the most deceitful kind of socialism.))

The companies survive – they thrive. It is the people who work for them and who are their customers – the people that are fired, and the people that get sick, and the people denied coverage. Then to top it all off – it is these same people who have to pay when companies that are too big to fail end up failing due to their own recklessness.

I don’t believe that corporations are inherently good or inherently evil – they are tools that are used for many purposes. But when we discuss economics and public policy it is essential that we acknowledge the limits of corporations. This inevitably leads to certain positions:

  • If corporations, by their nature, attempt to externalize as many costs as possible – forcing problems onto the public such as pollution – then government regulation is necessary to force corporations to deal with these externalized problems.
  • If corporations have no conscience or compassion, we cannot necessarily trust them to take care of us in times of need. Although random acts of kindness and charity occur more often than is sometimes acknowledged, they do not change the scope of the problem.
  • If corporations do not take affirmative steps to protect public goods and institutions – such as the national infrastructure, education, political institutions, and the nature of our society – someone must. Today, corporations are radically altering our society on many fronts – and as such they are a threat to its cohesiveness – by encouraging mass immigration and sexual immorality from a conservative perspective, and by creating vast inequities between the rich and everyone else from a liberal perspective.

Liberals, progressives, and Democrats have come to a broad agreement in recent years on some general steps that need to be taken to protect our economy and our country in an increasingly globalized world. (Some deeper critiques and potential solutions from a liberal perspective can be found in William Greider’s The Soul of Capitalism.)

This includes raising the tax rates on those making over $250,000.00 a year and on corporations to the same rates as at the end of Bill Clinton’s term; focusing on developing a clean energy industry to replace traditional manufacturing; increasing funding for infrastructure maintenance and development; protecting the foundations of the internet through net neutrality; and taking various steps to reform our educational and health care systems. (A thoughtful piece in this weekend’s New York Times by David Leonhardt delves into Obama’s economic worldview.)

Health Care

The best insight into the Democratic consensus on these issues comes from the issue of health care.

Barack Obama has said that if he were to design a health care system from scratch, the system would be single-payer. At this time, however, Obama believes we need to work within the system that we have. As with most issues, what Obama proposes here is to tinker with the current system to try to reduce the problems immediately and gradually move towards a better solution. On health care, this means working with the current employer-based system – and creating incentives to reduce the number of people not covered. These incentives incude a mandate for children, tax incentives for those who seek their own health insurance, penalties for large companies that do not provide health insurance (in the form of payroll taxes), the expansion of existing programs, and support for small businesses to assist them in providing health care for their employees.

In addition to the above and more short-term solutions, Obama proposes to open up the health care plan used by members of Congress to the public – and to create a “National Health Insurance Exchange” focused on assisting people who wanted individual or family insurance plans while providing rules and guidelines for participating companies. In the long-term these two changes have the potential to remake the field of health care. If the government program is able to provide better services for less cost than it’s competitors, then if the market works as it should, more and more people will move over to the government plan – unless other health insurance companies are able to take steps to compete.

This combination of freedom of choice for citizens/customers, government regulation for companies wishing to get into a potentially lucrative market, government competition against private companies, and letting the market decide who wins in the long-term – this combination may be too clever to work. But it has far more potential than the giveaways to health insurance companies that the Republicans are proposing.

What does all of this have to do with holding a grude against the Bank of America?, you might ask. That’s coming up in Part 2.

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Domestic issues Election 2008 Foreign Policy Liberalism Libertarianism Obama Political Philosophy Politics Reflections

Why I Support Obama

[digg-reddit-me]A few months ago, on the Long Island Railroad in the evening on my way home after work, a young black woman asked me if she could sit on the inside seat. (I always sit on the outside, and this was a three person seat.) After she sat down, she noticed the Barack Obama button I had on my bag at the time and pointed to it and said: “Thank you.”

We went on to have a conversation about the campaign and the Broadway play she had just been to – but that, “Thank you” bothered me. She was not a member of the campaign or a relative of Obama’s. I, in fact, have raised over $3,000 for the Senator, donated a good deal myself, and have tried through this blog as well as other activities to support his campaign. Although I do not know this for certain – based on the tone, the way she said it, and the rest of our conversation, I think that she was thanking me, as a white person, for supporting Barack, “her” candidate.

What I felt, but did not say, was that I was supporting Obama not because he was black or because any of my friends are black or because I wanted to make up for persecution of blacks in American history – but because … well, I’ll get to that in a minute.

One more story. A co-worker of mine described Obama to me as an empty suit, a typical, spineless, academic, elitist, whose only redeeming and unique quality is his race. ((Although I attempt to converse with my co-worker about this, our conversations always end up in some nether world of side topics – debating evolution or global warming or whether Congress has any power to intervene in foreign policy.)) He never believes me when I deny that my support of Obama is because of his race.

I have explained several times on this blog my gradual evolution from a McCain supporter in 2000 to an Edwards then Hillary than Obama supporter in 2007, including most recently here. By the summer of 2007, I had decided to support Obama – and had started talking about trying to work for the campaign. ((Unfortunately, a relative of mine persuaded me otherwise, saying that the wise thing to do was to wait it out.))

Since then, my opinion has been reinforced by events more often than it was challenged.

My decision to support Obama did not hinge on any single issue or position, but was a reflection of my attempt to gather as much information as possible about all of the candidates. I assumed that the direction the country needed to go in was rather obvious – as most Democrats and many moderate Republicans agreed, from Secretary of Defense Gates to Secretary of Treasury Paulson to Secretary of State Rice to Senator Clinton to Senator Obama to (I thought) Senator McCain. The real question is what specific policies, what methods, what means could be used to get there.

I did not support Obama because he was black, liberal, progressive, young, charismatic, or an idealist.

What did lead me to support Obama first was his character and judgment: he is a liberal pragmatist, with a conservative temperament, who seeks to understand the world as it is, to identify our long-term challenges, and to push (to nudge it) in a positive direction by tinkering with processes and institutions and creating tools to get people more involved in the government.

In addition, there are three extremely positive movements that are associated with Obama’s candidacy:

The intellectual ferment around Obama’s campaign – with Lawrence Lessig, Cass Sunstein, Richard Thaler, Samantha Power, and many others, all reflective thinkers who have influenced his campaign policy and would play a role in an Obama administration – is tremendously exciting. Added to this ferment is a sense of humility that is a bit odd. Samantha Power, who traveled to war zones around the world in 1990s, and learned the lessons of Rwanda and Sarejevo and Kirkuk deeply, does not believe unilateral American force must be used to stop genocide. Rather she places the blame on a flawed international system. Lawrence Lessig describes our political system as inherently corrupt – yet his Change Congress movement is not a radical call to arms but a series of modest proposals designed to catalyze serious changes. Cass Sunstein’s and Richard Thaler’s libertarian paternalism probably best encapsulates the pragmatic steps that can taken to greatly improve the lives of most Americans.

The grassroots movement supporting Obama also reveals the hidden side of this past four years – as George W. Bush created a liberal majority. This movement represents a new force in American politics.

The international support for Obama demonstrates that, like many Americans, people around the world want a new face to represent America – a re-branding, and hopefully a reevaluation of America’s priorities around the world.

By the time John McCain abandoned sensible policies in his quest to win over the Republican base – and emphasized his least attractive quality, a preference for the use of military force – I had already decided Obama was the best candidate.

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Domestic issues Election 2008 Foreign Policy Iran Iraq Law Liberalism Libertarianism National Security Obama Pakistan Political Philosophy Politics The Opinionsphere The War on Terrorism

A Liberal Defends George W. Bush’s Legacy

Or, how George W. Bush has been just awful enough

[Photo by schani licensed under the Creative Commons and found here.]

[digg-reddit-me]Many liberals argue that George W. Bush’s presidency has been an unmitigated disaster; most libertarians see George W. Bush as the worst thing to happen to America since our government interned hundreds of thousands of Americans purely based on race and expanded government involvement in the economy at the same time. Even many conservatives now see George Bush’s tenure as a series of betrayals. The past eight years have been a dark time – with the specter of terrorism hanging over our lives – with an economy that has only benefited the elites – with America’s standing and influence in the world dropping precipitously – and with a government flailing about in attempts to prevent the next attack, attempts that have primarily succeeded in undermining our inherent liberties.

There is clearly a broad consensus that the Bush presidency has been a failure. A recent poll of historians recently ranked George W. Bush’s presidency as the worst in history; late last year, The Atlantic ran a cover story asking what lessons we can learn from Bush’s failed presidency; the American people have given George W. Bush the lowest approval ratings for a president since polls have been taken; and recent news reports have shown that over three quarters of Americans believe our country is on the wrong track. The consensus clearly is that Bush’s presidency has failed. It’s true that a number of conservatives have tried to defend Bush – Ross Douthat for example pointed out that Bush’s disasters do not rival the catastrophes of Civil War or Great Depression yet. But even the group considered the architect of many of Bush’s policies – the neo-conservatives, have begun to argue – as have failed ideologues again and again throughout history – that it was not that their ideas that failed – rather their ideas were never truly tried. Bush must know he is in trouble when even the neoconservatives are attacking him as weak and ineffective – or to use the term they use, “liberal”.

Having a somewhat contrary nature, I’m not so sure this almost universal consensus is true.

While I do see Bush’s presidency as a disaster, I believe a kind of redemption can be found in this disaster because Bush’s presidency: (a) could have been much worse; and (b) has created a unique historical opportunity.

My postulate is that George W. Bush’s presidency has been just bad enough to avoid destroying the core institutions that form the backbone of our society while creating a virtuous backlash that will strengthen these institutions in the long term. Bush has abused his power just enough, and aggravated festering issues just enough, and presided over a decline that was so sudden that he has created near ideal conditions to move the country in a positive direction.

Throughout history, the price of radicalism has been steep and the chances of reversing deep-seated trends has been long. Conservatives who opposed the social welfare programs of the New Deal tried and failed for a generation to rollback the programs that Franklin Delano Rooselvelt instituted in the wake of a Republican-abetted disaster. Unsuccessful and marginalized, these conservatives finally settled on a strategy of indirection. They called this strategy “starve-the-beast.” Seeing that they could not win by attacking the institutions of the New Deal directly, they decided to deliberately increase government spending to irresponsible levels while cutting taxes – which would leave no choice for a hypothetical future administration but to raise taxes massively or to reduce the size of government. ((What else but this strategy could explain Ronald Reagan’s and George W. Bush’s massive deficit spending?)) These conservatives realized that the only way to achieve the ends they sought was to create a set of circumstances that proved their opponents wrong, to discredit, through their actions, the basis of liberalism and create a virtuous backlash against excessive governance. They had seen that effective change throughout history had only occurred when the reigning ideology was proved bankrupt by circumstances. These conservatives believed that if they could undermine the credibility of government enough, their ideology would be the only alternative.

Unfortunately for these conservatives, whatever George W. Bush’s intentions were, his administration has been the most effective proponent of liberalism in modern times – as it demonstrated the bankruptcy of contemporary conservatism, undermined the credibility of the Republican Party, and created precisely opposite virtuous backlash than which they intended.

Bush’s effectiveness in advancing the goals he stood against comes has taken several interrelated forms:

  • Theoretical extremism: Although Bush has asserted virtually unlimited power – to torture, to detain anyone without charges, to engage in military action and wiretap without congressional approval – he has been relatively modest in his use of what he asserts are near unlimited powers. This has allowed significant forces to grow in opposition to this power grab without the widespread societal chaos that would have arisen out of a president fully exerting the powers he has claimed. (If Bush used the powers he asserts are his on a greater scale in America, our society would clearly be a totalitarian one. Instead, we remain a fragile liberal democracy until either Bush’s assertions of power are repudiated or are fully asserted.)
  • Overuse of a single method: Karl Rove directed three national campaigns – using national security, patriotism, and September 11 as partisan tools to bludgeon the Democrats. In each successive election dominated by these themes though, they lost effectiveness until 2006 when finally, they ceased being the controlling factor as the people – fooled for some of the time – handed an historic loss to the Republican Party. (If Karl Rove hadn’t used these themes so promiscously and shamelessly, more people might have put stock in the current smear campaign and fear-mongering being used against Obama and the Democrats.)
  • Exacerbating existing conditions: Bush has accelerated a number of longstanding trends: towards domestic inequality and the stratification of Americans into a class-like system; towards the decline in America’s power in the world; towards the government’s fiscal insolvency; towards the expansion of executive power; and towards the increase in the price of oil. This acceleration has exacerbated these issues so as to make them more noticeable.
    A lobster will not realize it is being cooked if it placed in a pot of water at room temperature and gradually boiled to death. In the same way, many Americans did not realize the dangers and the extent of the changes to American society that have been ongoing since at least the 1970s. The Bush administration – in a number of areas – raised the temperature fast enough and carelessly enough that many people have begun to notice. (If the price of oil had increased more regularly, people would be less worried about how it would be affecting them – and less attention would be paid to the largest transfer of wealth in human history that is currently taking place. If Iraq hadn’t demonstrated the limits to American power, it might have taken much longer for policy-makers to realize that we no longer live in a unipolar world.)
  • Suddenness: The suddenness of America’s decline in relevancy has led to a widespread desire for America to re-assume some leadership role with the next president – a desire reflected most significantly in the worldwide and domestic support for Barack Obama.

Bush has – in almost every respect – pointed America in the direction it needs to go. He has demonstrated what not to do. It is hard to imagine the libertarian or the progressive movements achieving their widespread support and strength if not for Bush’s presidency.

This election cycle has already demonstrated the strength of two responses to the Bush administration’s legacy – the libertarian response as embodied in the unlikely success of Ron Paul and the progressive response as embodied in the progressive netroots which powered Obama’s campaign. As a card-carrying civil libertarian and a lifelong progressive, Barack Obama has an opportunity to synthesize these two competing movements – to create a rough political consensus of the next steps we need to take. (I’ve written before both about how the libertarian movement and liberalism seem to be converging and about how Obama represents some part of this.) However, Obama’s vote for the FISA Amendments Act was a poor start to the creation of this alliance – as he took a position in defiance of both of these movements.

In a very real sense George W. Bush’s legacy depends on how well the next president is able to capitalize on the opportunity given to him – in this campaign and in his potential presidency. The final judgment on Bush will not be knowable when he leaves office. Rather, some years later we will be able to make a definitive judgment – after we see how intractable the problems he leaves for his successor are and when we see what precedents the next president will reject and which he will build upon. Bush may be forgiven for his disrespect for the Constitution if the next president repudiates these precedents. (After all, Washington was forgiven for Hamilton’s army; Lincoln was forgiven for becoming a tyrant for several weeks; and FDR was forgiven for trying to pack the Supreme Court.)

But while I argue that Bush’s primary legacy is that of a uniter-not-a-divider whose presidency set America on a better path, this rosy evaluation of Bush’s legacy still leaves three areas uncovered – areas in which Bush created unique problems rather than exacerbating existing ones: Iraq, the War on Terror, and global climate change.

Complications

Iraq

It is hard to imagine another president invading Iraq under the circumstances that George W. Bush did. The many American and the far more Iraqi dead that resulted from this foolish gamble, this dumb war, will surely burden his soul and must undermine any positive legacy he leaves behind. Even assuming the best of intentions, the Iraq war has proved to be a strategic blunder that has empowered Iran, destabilized the region, inspired more extremism, degraded our military, and only achieved the removal of minor antagonist. Making this strategic error worse was the hubris and idiocy that dogged every step of the occupation. Although our alliance of convenience with the Sunni extremists who were fighting us just a few months ago has helped to stabilize Iraq and even given the recent show of independence by the Iraqi president in his call for us to set a firm date of withdrawl, Iraq still has a long way to go before we can get out of this quagmire. Until we get out, the Iraq war will continue to eat our resources, undermine our global position, and strengthen our enemies.

The War on Terror

Domestically, the Bush administration has done virtually nothing to harden potential targets of terrorism – allowing the use of the funds appropriated for this purpose to be pissed away on pork barrel spending. The main steps it has taken within America seem designed primarily to expand executive power rather than to achieve any particular goals related to terrorism – asserting the power to crush the testicles of a potential terrorist’s child, to detain individuals without charges for indefinite periods of time, to torture, and to ignore any laws that limit the president’s power. Abroad, the Bush administration squandered our best opportunity to destroy Al Qaeda when it began to shift resources to Iraq and away from those who attacked us. The nexus of world terrorism shifted as a result of the War on Terror from the center of Afghanistan to the lawless areas of the Afghani-Pakistani border – where Chechnyan islamists, the remants of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, veterans of the Zaraqawi’s Iraqi campaign, and other terrorists from around the world are now working together and with greater freedom than at any time since the attacks on September 11. The successes we have had in the War on Terror seem largely to be the fruits of our failures – as the islamist ideology has proven to be an unattractive one once it begins to rule any territory.

Global Climate Change

It is hard to imagine another president ignoring the growing signs and consensus of global climate change so steadfastly. The eight years the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases has wasted ignoring the problem – despite the near universal consensus of the scientific community – have made more drastic steps necessary to correct the problem before it is too late. What other president – with a legacy on climate change such as this – would have bragged at a recent G8 summit about being the “world’s biggest polluter“?

Conclusions

Lincoln Chafee, the Republican Senator from Rhode Island, observed upon first meeting Bush that Bush did not seem up to the job of being president. The past several years have proved this observation prescient. I cannot argue that Bush’s actions have been wise, although I do generally think that they have been well-intentioned. ((I know there are many who disagree.)) But while George W. Bush and his administration have committed petty crimes, war crimes, and constitutional violations, attacked liberties, advocated the preemptive surrender of American values, usurped independent branches of the government for partisan ends, and caused the injury and death of thousands of Americans citizens and citizens of the world – it is Bush who created this moment – this moment for renewal that has traditionally been what sets America apart.

While Ron Paul believed we needed a revoliution to begin to reverse the growing encroachment of government (even if that required the exploitation of poisonous racial resentments) – all we really needed was George W. Bush.

If America truly is a great nation – and in order to redeem the vision of the Constitution of the Founding Fathers, of that great address of Abraham Lincoln, of the square deal of Teddy Roosevelt and the four freedoms of his cousin, of the city on the hill that an old Hollywood actor once invoked – we must take advantage of this opportunity. The American moment is now – as all of us, feeling the fierce urgency of now, must work to restore the America that we grew up believing in – to restore the ideal and to form a more perfect union. Throughout the dark times in American history, Americans have believed and fought for this idea of America – to make this idea a reality and to protect this idea from the encroachments of tyranny and totalitarianism.

Change doesn’t come easy – but the greatest legacy of George W. Bush is that he has made it easier – and given us this opportunity to create a more perfect union. There will be obstacles and compomises in the days ahead – but (yes) we can achieve real change. Bush, more than anyone, deserves responsibility for that.

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Election 2008 Obama Political Philosophy Politics Reflections

America’s Inherent Fragility

[digg-reddit-me]Without endorsing the report or the think tank, here’s an appropriate quote from the Harry Bradley Foundation’s report on America’s National Identity [pdf] (h/t David Broder):

America is unique among nations in being founded not on a common ethnicity, but on a set
of ideas. A nation based on ethnicity perpetuates itself by the fact of birth. But a nation founded
on an idea starts anew with each generation and with each new group of immigrants. Knowing
what America stands for is not a genetic inheritance. It must be learned, both by the next generation and by those who come to this country. In this way, a nation founded on an idea is inherently fragile. And a nation that celebrates the many ways we are different from one another must remind itself constantly of what we all share

This understanding of the inherent fragility of America represents the essential insight of American conservatism – an understanding that George W. Bush has entirely rejected. I describe this as a conservative insight based on a more traditional view of conservatism that, in Buckley’s phrase, “stands athwart history shouting ‘Stop!’ ”  A conservatism that in the tradition of Edmund Burke and Russel Kirk respects traditions and the status quo.

George W. Bush is not a conservative by any of these standards.  He is instead, a right-winger, divorced from the divorced from the inherent moderate or even reactionary elements of the conservative tradition.  He is not a liberal – as some conservatives now claim, trying to distance themselves from him.  Bush is a radical right-winger whose main focus has been the establishment of an American empire abroad and an elected monarch at home.

What is most perplexing about Bush is that even as he has sought monarchical powers – the ability to imprison people without charge or judicial review indefinitely, the right to be free from the constraints of law, the authority to wage war without checks or balances, and the protection from accountability to the people or other branches of government – he has been relatively restrained in his use of them.  This makes his presidency all the more insidious – as the greatest majority of Americans have not noticed the growing power of the presidency even as it threatens the very idea of America – and idea which is inherently fragile.

This report focuses on how we need to educate America children and citizens in order to enable America to survive.  This is true.  But what this report appears to miss is that the most dire, the most pressing threat to America today is the legal framework and the precedent set by the actions of the Bush administration.

Categories
Election 2008 Law Liberalism National Security Obama

Obama’s critics

After criticizing the Obama critics in my past few posts, let me point to a recent critic of Obama’s moves whose recent criticisms I largely endorse – Glenn Greenwald.

His most recent post criticizing certain people defending Obama was right on.

He makes sure to strike a reasonable balance between criticizing Obama and comparing him to the alternative:

I’ve written endlessly on all of the reasons why a John McCain presidency would be disastrous for this country. The entire last chapter of my book is devoted exclusively to documenting that fact. I have no doubt I will write much more on that topic between now and November. I still think that just as strongly. But basic honesty and adherence to one’s core political values compels criticism for what Obama is doing here, and it’s just distasteful and destructive – not to mention dangerous – for people to invoke patently false rationalizations in order to excuse or support what he’s doing.

Amen.

I do tend to think that Greenwald overstates the damage to the core principles of America that this current compromise will do:

…another nail in the coffin of Fourth Amendment protections and privacy rights…

…eroding core constitutional liberties…

…a grave assault on the Constitution…

All of these are true to a degree.  But – as a post I am working on now will illustrate – I think laws like this are as much an opportunity as a danger.

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Domestic issues Election 2008 History Liberalism Obama The Clintons

Krugman throws a tantrum

Paul Krugman, after defending the Clinton legacy for many long months, and trashing Obama for criticizing it, finally decides it is time to agree with Obama’s critique of Clintonism.  Of course, Krugman only does so in order to taunt Obama as Krugman demonstrates an incredibly shallow grasp of politics and recent history.

The problem with Krugman’s little tantrum here is that he confuses politics itself, especially in a two party system, with Clintonism.  It’s not as if Bill Clinton himself invented compromise.  That was invented some time before Pericles.

The problem with Clintonism was not in the fact that the Clintons compromised in order to gain power – it was that they believed the only thing needed to change America was for one of them to be in charge of the system as it was.  So they played the game, campaigned on trivialities and money, and took over, only to realize with the health care debacle and Somalia that they couldn’t force their way.

Obama’s approach is clearly different.  His campaign is less about himself, and more about a movement.  His policies are less about top-down government demands and more about adjustments that will gradually change the way the system works.

Krugman doesn’t see it. Instead, he projects from the mild events of the past week an abrupt turnaround on Obama’s part to embrace the Clintonism he rejected.  The blindness is glaring.

Continue reading “Krugman throws a tantrum”