Obama: Neoliberal, or Civic Republican?
Cautioning against making war for democracy in Iraq, Colin Powell famously cited the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.
Cautioning against chasing neoliberal prosperity, I'm sorely tempted to warn that the currents and powers driving its transactions will break you, own you, and throw your body into neoliberalism's iron (if padded) corporate cage and your civic-republican dignity into history's dustbin.
One mustn't say that, of course, and it's certainly not what Francis Fukuyama had in mind in The End of History or Tom Friedman in The World is Flat. But look honestly at America's decay and face the painful truth which David Brooks helped Harvard neoliberals to avoid facing in Bobos in Paradise: "C'mon," he purred (I'm characterizing his thesis, not quoting him), "You know that you love your unearned income and real estate and that you'd rather circulate commodities than ideas, and [wink, tickle], that's okay!"
It's not okay, and Brooks, moving along now in his political makeover, is beginning to wonder what we've paid for it. He won't take us far toward an answer. Nor, he therefore assures us, will Barack Obama, a Harvard neoliberal, even though he has all the grace notes Larry Summers lacked. From elsewhere on the spectrum, the political philosopher Michael Walzer agrees, telling a conference in Istanbul this month that "leftist economists will be critics from the outside" of Obama's circle. We are all in the neoliberal cage, it seems, except for a few tenured radicals and union fuddy-duddies.
Progressive economist and Obama advisor James K. Galbraith insists otherwise, but he's outnumbered, and, given our "winner take all" campaign discourse, expect more straddling by Obama on NAFTA, lobbyists, campaign financing, and the like.
There's some hope in the fact that Franklin D. Roosevelt didn't reveal his intentions while running in 1932, even during a Great Depression that had lasted for three years, partly because Roosevelt didn't really know what his intentions were, as Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter shows in The Defining Moment. Once in the White House, FDR found the courage and flexibility to save American capitalism from itself enough to fight a war against capitalist monsters elsewhere. And he did it under Keynesian, sometimes even social-democratic, terms that forestalled a post-war depression and produced the Marshall Plan in Europe.
Obama has courage, flexibility, and more intellectual acuity than FDR. But even a Keynesian liberal or a social democrat trying to govern in today's flat neoliberal dispensation would soon become as desperate as any conservative to fend off the world's rising tigers, even if that means slashing the taxes that fund schools, health care, infrastructure, and, with them, any sovereignty over the rules of the fight.
And what awful rules they are! Our cage-fighting economy fobs the social costs of living like tigers onto the weakest and most fickle among us, through state-sponsored lotteries, the pornification of public space, and deregulation that unleashes predatory lending. You see the casualties lining up for lottery tickets in any gas station or corner store. Can Obama begin anew with gurus like former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and allies like Gov. Deval Patrick, formerly Bill Clinton's assistant attorney general for civil rights, who is working hard to bring casino gambling to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts?
Brooks now laments such practices as if they weren't consequences of the forces and priorities he's ridden and rhapsodized for years. He ducks the causes of those consequences, such as massive corporate welfare and the sweetheart deregulation of a conservative "ownership society" that has already robbed millions of Americans of any prospect of home ownership, setting the stage for a frightening "Survivor" politics we can only hope Obama's leadership might deflect.
Obama may not really know what his own intentions are. Only if the economic and social situation worsens as horribly as some intelligent pessimists predict might he manage to break the taboo on criticizing today's capitalism, which subverts any Lockean liberation of individual creativity and independence, as well as any credible notion of justice or social felicity. We have the taboo partly because the old left's rigid economic determinism and tyrannical ideologizing of all social pain and hope discredited criticism of capitalism and made conservative and neoliberal alternatives seem liberating.
What the latter have delivered is not liberation but escapism into "shop till you drop" consumerism and such compensations as obesity, road rage, empty micro-moralisms, and the sexual self-degradations which Brooks described with some bemusement in Bobos, in ways and for reasons I've explored.
I've just come from Istanbul, whose downtown streets have no wastebaskets but also no litter, because people wouldn't dream of littering, and where there is almost no violent street crime, and where drivers weaving their ways through incredibly dense human and vehicular traffic seldom honk their horns, and where young male friends who aren't gay walk down the streets together, arms wrapped endearingly around each other, at least partly because billions of advertising dollars aren't being spent on inculcating in them sexual insecurities and fears of all sorts.
The point is that Turks have some freedoms we simply don't have because the consumer-marketing juggernaut hasn't yet crushed or dissolved their internalized sense of authority, and also because they retain the premises and folkways, even when not the observances, of Islam, much as, say, New England in 1950 was still residually Calvinist in ways that sustained civil society without suffocating it.
In downtown Hartford, CT a few weeks ago, a man run over by a car was left to die like a dog by gawking passersby, and a 71-year-old former deputy mayor was mugged and thrown to the ground, prompting the city's police chief to cry that thirty years ago, "anyone would have helped him across the street." That is where we are, and we are living accordingly.
In his first book, Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class, Ross Douthat - whose Grand New Party (co-authored with Reihan Salam) we'll discuss here at TPM next month -- showed how the many modulations of surrender to cage-fighting logic have worked their way into high neoliberals' rites of passage and thence into their most intimate bondings, habits, perceptions, and symbolic escapes.
At Yale's commencement this year, President Richard Levin and Class Day speaker Tony Blair urged the graduates (including Blair's son Euan, who got a master's degree in international relations), to be "global citizens." Fine, but would that really mean building global institutions that actually vindicate otherwise-powerless citizens' rights and legitimately summon their sacrifices for democratically recognized common ends? Commencement rhetoric says so, but Yale and Harvard are creating a global ruling class unaccountable to any polity or moral code, according to former Harvard College Dean Harry Lewis.
Many who share Lewis' and Douthat's worries about this are looking nervously to writers like Brooks to cue them to new variations on the old theme, "This is the best of all possible worlds," which they recite these days with a studied irony that barely conceals their cynicism."Cynicism is a sad kind of wisdom," Obama said almost off-handedly but knowingly the night he won the Potomac primaries.
But what if the only counter to a neoliberal global shell game pitting tigers against tigers is for workers of the world to unite to rein in their trainers? That, ironically, is the very hope which Obama's appearance and name beam to billions of people who know nothing of his Harvard neoliberal training, leavened though it is by the influence of his visionary mother and by his own youthful forays into community organizing and his encounters with racism's grinding realities in our political economy.
The purist neoliberal answer is to drop racism and sexism on your way into the tiger cage, there to compete in equal degradation, like screaming, sweating participants in midday television spectacles and prime-time "reality" shows that eschew racism and sexism in their rush to equal-opportunity humiliation.
Walzer guesses that Obama's transcendence of such escapism holds "a strong appeal to what may be a minority of the country." We'll know soon enough if it's a minority or majority. If Obama does win, we'll know whether he and we are ready to transcend not just racism but a neoliberalism graced only with Obama's signature on Kyoto-type accords and trade deals that gesture feebly toward worker and environmental protections.
The real challenge -- which he understands and might in some measure be able to lead if there's a good wind behind him -- is to leave aside conservative free-marketeering, Marxist prescription, and cultural-leftist fantasy and to advance, from straight up the middle, a concerted civic-republican resistance to what today's global, Texas Enron, and Merrill Lynch capitalism is making of our lives.
That may require a crisis terrible enough to galvanize a leadership and a movement ready to meet it. But it woulld take more than a movement and a leader. It would require a re-weaving of social affirmations and civic norms which no one knows quite how to put back together. It's something that Obama has done creatively and more than decently in his own life but that he can't do for the rest of us.
Comments (57)
So we should spend the next six months discussing what Obama's "true" ideas are, even when we are supposed to concede that he may not know them himself yet?
That doesn't sound very rewarding to me. The simple fact is that big money controls the electoral process, whether its the Dems or the GOP. You need millions to get elected, and only those with money have money. We live in a one dollar = one vote society, not one citizen = one vote. So, for the foreseeable future, business is going to set policy. The Dems will throw a few bones at the weakest in terms of enhanced social services, that's all.
So, what should we be doing instead of speculating on what goes on in Obama's heart of hearts? How about defining a real progressive policy that takes into account the realities of big money and the inability of single countries to constrain the behavior of multi-nationals any more?
Then add in some realistic ideas about adapting society to a level where resource supplies are adequate indefinitely. This means reducing consumption now and not waiting for some imaginary technological fix to solve the problems.
Tweaking the tax code, or shifting subsidies from oil to wind, or some other marginal efforts are minor details. We need to face up to the unprecedented challenges facing the earth now.
While the campaign is going on is exactly the time for the boldest ideas to be brought forth, save the legislative details for later when they might actually get enacted.
How about switching to an any four day out of seven work week to cut down on commuting and congestion? How about scheduling truck deliveries only in off hours at night for the same reason? How about considering tradeable gas ration coupons (or their electronic equivalent) to force those using the most to cut back?
How about closing some of the 750+ foreign military bases and using the savings to build schools in the US? How about skipping the next generation of billion dollar military toys and using the money on bridges instead?
There are dozens of ideas like this floating around. All you have to do is ask the public and they will respond.
The president is supposed to be the chief executive, not the chief architect of policy. The public is supposed to design policy goals and, hopefully, congress will provide the enabling legislation. Then the president sees that the laws are carried out.
Of course the president has input into this process, but he's not the only one. We don't need to wait for Obama to figure things out, we need to tell him what we want done.
June 13, 2008 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed that speculation on one man's "heart of hearts" is probably not the best use of time. Next question: if Obama is interested in & able to move ahead with new ideas, and has constructed a (somewhat) new kind of campaign/movement, how can that new movement & its new people & new tools, be mobilized to generate good ideas, priorize & publicize them? Because if it doesn't/can't, all we'll be left with is a machine that cranks up the hype around yet another "personality," and then abandons or devours them when they - standing & acting alone - inevitably fail.
And if it fails....
June 13, 2008 5:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Right. This is Jim Sleeper Navel Gazing at its worst. WTF is he even babbling about? If there's meaningful fact or point in there anywhere I couldn't find it.
Again, exactly what I can't stand about the pundit industry and it's endless navel gazing, random vague association, and Rorschach splatters vomited into the public square.
Does Jim Sleeper have a specific policy he's like to discuss? Something even slightly substantive? Otherwise, spare us the babble. Doesn't he have some papers to grade or something useful to humanity?
June 13, 2008 6:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not just to Kozmik, but to all of you who denigrate Sleeper, I think he's got some great insights.
I don't know that Obama is as much a neolib as the Slickster was, but, everybody who chants "change" like a Transcendental Meditation mantra will be surprised in a year or two, assuming Obama gets elected.
If George H.W. claimed to be a "kinder, gentler, conservative," Obama will, whether he makes the claim or not, likely try to govern as a "kinder, gentler neoliberal."
Or else as an updated neolib version of Carter.
Caveat emptor, but most buyers here probably will never check the label.
Jim, thanks for the thought-provoking post. You've inspired me to some follow-up ruminations at my blog.
June 14, 2008 2:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Don't project whatever naivete you may have onto others or your nihilistic crap.
The Obama supporters I've met are also the most pragmatic people I've met. Nobody is predicting miracles. We've never had a perfect president and never will because it doesn't exist.
But Obama is certainly shaping up to be one of the better and more transformative Presidents. He'll enter office with a greater reform mandate than any President in a long time. He's also funded by and responsible to people more than any President in a long time. Which is plenty good enough.
June 14, 2008 5:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
With all due respect I don't think that Sleeper--with whom I often disagree--is asking us to speculate on Obama's heart of heart or what not.
As far as doing a 180 as you suggest, that happens only in fairy tales. Given that forces are in motion and as we invest more and more in military others are are wont to do likewise and if we unilaterally reverse our spendig priorities it does not follow that others will also do likewise, it seems rather naive to think that we can just write a letter to Congress expressing our wishes as to how the world should be and they will pass the legislation that Obama will faithfully carry out to make it so. It does not work that way.
(I think that was a run on sentence there but I'm too lazy to fix it.)
June 13, 2008 9:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
What the hell is a "neoliberal"?
Give examples, and explain why he/she is a neoliberal.
June 13, 2008 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Technically the "neoliberals" were a self described movement originating in the 70s but really peaking during the 80-90s. There's not a lot of difference between neoliberalism and neoconservatism actually. Not surprising considering they originate in large part from the same corporate sponsored think tanks and have a lot of cross pollination.
Both are laissez faire economics and aggressive militarism towards corporate imperialism. Another word for which is basically fascism, though it's a loaded term. But laissez faire + corporatism + militarism = fascism or at least proto-fascism.
Obama is neither a neoliberal or neoconservative.
Obama is just about the opposite. That's fundamentally what the CHANGE represents, a move away from the failed aspects of neoliberalism and neoconservatism.
I don't think it has a simple label yet, at least not in US politics, which will be difficult for bloviating charlatans to cope with. But it's essentially pragmatism learning from the mistakes over the last 30 years.
Obama has chided the Clintons for thier lack of transformative leadership and and lack of ideas since the Reagan era and he's also been very critical of GW Bush. I.e. he's criticised the failings of both neoliberalism and neoconservatism for the last few decades.
***
Reagan and the Bushs' neoconservatism was laissez faire and supply side economics along with aggressive militarism and conservative to reactionary social policy. Expansion of Executive power seems to go along with that. Iran Contra for example. Various deregulation leading to S&L collapse. The war on Drugs, skyrocketing incarceration rates, while slashing programs. Rising corporate malfeasance. Out of control spending and deficits. etc.
On the Democratic side, the Clintons, DLC, New Dems, were the epitome of neoliberalism having adopted much of the worst of Reagan, from aggressive militarism, to laissez faire and supply side economics, combined with social liberalism. Examples including gutting Glass Stegal (New Deal banking regulation) which contributed to the housing bubble, or NAFTA which created to wealth disparity and weakening American infrastructure. Continuing the deregulation and consolidation of media and telecoms from Reagan. Deregulated energy markets creating ENRON. Was in favor of line item veto and expansion of executive power, ruled unconstitutional, but which gave GW Bush the excuse for his signing statements.
We all know how awful GW Bush and the neocons have been, so need to itemize all their FUBARs.
So again, that's the CHANGE. We all like markets, we all like public schools. We all want healthcare, and we all want economic growth. I think we all know the way we've been going about those goals has been too ideological and often counterproductive. We don't need hardline laissez faire or socialist nonsense. No more hippies, no more hicks.
If you look around the world, to the partnerships between industry and government such as Korea's internet or European wireless, or the various universal healthcare strategies, they're not having these ideological debates up in the stratosphere the way we do. They have practical solutions tailor to fit. It's better social policy in some areas, more competitive markets in others and partnerships in yet others.
There's no way to sound-bite it, which our media hates. How do you encapsulate pragmatism and learning from all the mistakes we've made over the last few decades? It's post ideological. Issues have to be looked at individually and solutions tailored to fit them.
June 13, 2008 7:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for this.
"You break it, you own it" - absolutely right, but two ways it applies: 1) Will Obama be broken & owned by the powers that be? But also, 2) Who will "own" the worsening situation/crisis you describe? i.e. Will the powers-that-be, the salesmen & neoliberals, be stuck with the "blame?" If they ARE, Obama has more room - much more room. If not.... he's stuck with the same old economic advice of the last 20 years.
As you said, FDR & co. required time to work out ways forward. And personal characteristics of flexibility, imagination, courage. They didn't come into office with a mandate or detailed plan labelled "The Way Out." And it's unlikely anyone can win a Presidency when the public, media & powers are so far behind in grappling with what exists, much less what is coming.
Has Obama shown ANY signs that he has the stuff to move as FDR did? A few. Let's call them signs of hope, and be generous:
1- Beyond knowing some of black and white world, an international childhood doesn't hurt, when it comes to understanding these things. Perhaps better to know Indonesia than to be able to name all 50 state capitals.
2- His "community organizer" time. No matter how shallow or brief it may have been, he's read, met, seen, acted in a world outside the world of traditional faculty debate.
3- Perhaps most hopeful is his campaign itself. The openness to engaging people outside the existing (demobilized and compressed) two-party system. The new fund-raising methods. The internet perhaps reaches parts of the societal body that old-style fund-raising can't even see.
4- Policy? Well, some - albeit small - hopes. Semi-solid ground on rolling back Bush's tax cuts, on wealth/capital gains. Weaker, but still positive grounds on expanding health care. The clear sense that the Iraq war is too costly, economically & in human terms. And an interesting refusal to cave on the gas tax holiday.
Critics will say "grasping at straws.... weak straws." Perhaps. But for a nation already well into this sort of multi-faceted peril - Iraq, Housing, Banking, a $600 Billion a year bleed-out for oil - it's clear that "more of the same" fails. Which - arguably - makes Obama the best mix available of "electability" and "hope," in one person.
But to move, to have any HOPE of moving, it is imperative that we - the wider public - run hard, think hard & talk hard about what's gone wrong, why, and what might be done. Like FDR, Obama will need that climate created, ideas generated, and broad public support already moving.
June 13, 2008 4:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Someone should give this guy an enema.
June 13, 2008 5:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Vlad. Don't be passin' the buck on the enema front. Military man like yerself outta have his hand in the air, volunteering for the mission. Dirty job... etc.
June 13, 2008 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Right. The upshot of Sleeper's sophomoric bloviating, is basically to ask: Can Sleeper peg Obama into a narrow little box and label him, so Sleeper doesn't have to climb off his pedestal, get off his laurels, and actually bother to inform himself on specific policies so he could discuss them in detail.
I'm sick of these gas bags and sophistic phonies.
Perhaps the root-of-all-pundit-evil, is the refuge they take in vague bloviating which avoids any accountability or definitive statements, to the point where saying anything concrete is a professional liability in an industry where perpetual spin is the norm.
By comparison, look at someone like Elizabeth Warren who I respect and appreciate greatly. Actually covers concrete issues, provides useful information, supports various legislation. Lives in the real world.
June 13, 2008 6:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
@kozmik
Seconded, with gusto. I should have complimented her long ago. Doing so is even more important than criticism.
June 13, 2008 10:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know, the nice thing about blogs is that they're a "pull" medium. You choose what you want to read. So if you don't like it, don't read it. And if you choose to comment, say something productive (critical or otherwise).
June 13, 2008 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Andrew:
Don't be coy, the reason you solicit certain contributors is because you know that they will spark discussions. If you are going to select people that push other's hot buttons you have to expect a few of the wrong buttons to get pushed too.
People reply for several reasons:
1. to affirm the person's position
2. to point out inaccuracies
3. to vent
4. to start a fight (flame war in the jargon of the old Usenet groups)
The innovation in the new 24/7 world is that those who are shown to be in error never go away as long as their positions are useful to some faction or other. Shame and disgrace have been banished from the public square. That's when type 3 comments become type 4.
If you want to see a different tone find some policy experts and not just political pundits to write entries. I suggest a few real physical and social scientists and a few less strategists and political observers.
Look at Elizabeth Warren, every time she posts her article cites some real data. That's how you improve the quality of the discourse.
June 13, 2008 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sparking discussion is not the same thing as sparking childish insults.
June 14, 2008 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think he just gave himself an enema all over TPMC.
June 13, 2008 6:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama may not really know what his own intentions are.
Well, plans can change. But Obama is the midst of a two week tour in which he is unrolling his entire economic plan in a very comprehensive fashion. So maybe we should start by examining that actual plan, and the philosophical themes that are laid out in his many speeches, rather than begin with the speculations of the punditry.
One thing that strikes me about Obama is how frequently he refers to FDR in his speeches. He views Roosevelt as a man who responded decisively and effectively to a deep crisis, and made significant, long-needed structural changes to an out-of-control and poorly governed economy. I don't think he is saying we need to turn the clock back and have another New Deal, exactly, but my sense is that he believes we are also called on in our time to make some significant structural changes in our economic system, that we need to do much more in the area of public investment, and that we need to get a much better handle on a recklessly and dangerously deregulated economy.
Obama frequently speaks against acquisitiveness, especially in his speeches to young people, and it seems clear that he believes service to others and participation in the common life of a community are not just duties, but are essential to true happiness, and to the fulfillment of our highest potential. I don't how his attitude necessarily translates into any policy changes, but one gathers that he does not really think much of people who simply go for the big bucks, and that is bound to effect his judgments in some way.
I like Jim Sleeper's dig at casino gambling. If there is anything that qualifies as a mark of decadence, it is the willingness of a society to raise revenues for essential community needs by actively promoting gambling and taxing it. Not only is gambling an inherently irresponsible behavior, gambling taxes are among the most regressive in existence. Across America, affluent individuals with significant combined political power are refusing to pony up for the common good, but instead have no problem encouraging some of America's poorest people to throw their money away on a legalized numbers racket, or allowing seniors to pump their social security checks into one-armed bandits.
As Jim Sleeper knows, the matrix of civic republicanism lies in the private and civic virtues of the republic's citizens. We are in a realm here which goes beyond politics, and the sorts of policies that even a dynamic and effective politician can possibly enact. If the citizenry lacks the attitudes and habits of behavior that are essential, then there is not very much a politician can do to create them or restore them. A broader cultural movement is required.
June 13, 2008 7:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama may not really know what his own intentions are.
Notwithstanding some exceptions due to Freudian subconscious motives and such, every individual for the most part knows exactly what her intentions are after they perform the act. If someone were to ask me what my intention was in writing this little note, I would know the answer to that question. Then again it is very common to have multiple intentions in performing an act. That is a complicating matter. We might know some of our intentions for the act and not others. But needless to say, our own minds are relatively transparent to ourselves (as Descartes famously pointed out).
What might be true is that nobody knows what one's future intentions will be, and that's trivially true. It is not much more than saying that nobody knows the future, in the strict sense of "know".
Given this I'm pretty sure that Obama probably has a pretty good idea what he is up to in his own mind, just like we all know what we are up to in our own minds. What Obama may not know is what will happen to HIM after (and if) he gets elected president and he steps into the job. He might have an idea what he wants to do. He might have some preconceptions about it. So it is a matter of pure judgment on our part as to what Obama is up to and what his intentions are now as to what he wants to do once in office and it is a matter of at least some speculation for Obama to KNOW what he will think once he actually steps into the White House.
June 14, 2008 5:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't see Obama as ideological. He strikes me as a pragmatist willing to think outside the box. I expect his success will depend on how able he is to pick a good team of advisors, not just the same old establishment hacks.
June 13, 2008 7:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, though he needs to accomplish that by picking a mixture of people that will be the most productive together. I think he's doing a good job and his choices fit togeather very well. (Dean Baker's sour-grapes post was absolutely pathetic as is this post by Sleeper.)
It's easy to take the low road and pick a bunch of people who always agree or pander to a specific school. (a major problem in Bush's administration was the bubbled mindset and lack of curiosity.)
It's also easy to pick a bad mix of people who may have good intentions but who won't function together and produce no policy or triangulated policies of lowest common denominator, often reverting to whatever corporate interests want. (a problem Clinton had.)
Obama is picking a group that compliment each other well.
Some must have ties to the establishment and political capital to move issues. Your cheerleaders and front office types. They're counterbalanced and challenged intellectually.
Then there's fresh blood of people who are experts in various areas, specialists who tend to be very post ideological. The brains. Which is where I expect the real leadership will come from and where Obama leans. But they're the back office types, not your point people. (as Samantha Powers clearly demonstrated.)
Ferment and creative minds in back, establishment cheerleaders and talking heads up front. And he just has to control this and be the smartest guy in the room, which he clearly is. Very, very smart.
June 13, 2008 8:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
btw, Obama's healthcare strategy is a clear example of moving past the maddeningly stupid and ideological ways which both parties have been approaching issues.
The staid Democratic school said you do a Big Government program and mandate it from day one. Though HillaryCare failed in 92, it's not their fault, and they should just keep trying it, again, and again, to eternity if need be, with the confidence that eventually things will get so bad we'll undertake another New Deal era of reform, as in the fabled Democratic Glory Days.
The staid Republican school says the government can't do anything right, it shouldn't even be allowed to compete in the market because the Holy of Holies, the Invisible Hand of the Market, may not be sullied or questioned. Only IT will ultimately provide a solution, and so we must just wait and suffer the mysterious ways of The Market, waiting for the Free Market Rapture, for eternity if need be.
Then there's times when you can't tell the parties apart at all. Bush's biggest domestic policy was No Child Left Behind, a ginourmous fiasco of a top down, big government mandate FUBAR. Clinton does NAFTA, a ginourmous fiasco of laissez faire "Free Trade" and trowing Americans to the mercies of transnational corporate greed, another complete FUBAR.
Why not reasonable academic standardization willing to deal with the messy and imperfect, but very real, complexities on the regional level?
Why not FAIR trade and what happened to the stimulus that was supposed to cusion the blow and reinvigorate lagging sectors and economic losers?
They're both so f'ing crazy. We keep getting the worst of both worlds.
Obama's plan is to build a gov program and work the kinks out, not mandate it from day one. Let it compete with private programs and see which the American people actually prefer. End the predatory practices such as cherry picking, denying care, and practices which are outright predatory and immoral.
On the one hand, it's so obvious and common sense.
On the other hand, considering how ideologically divided we've been for decades into these mind numbingly stupid camps, and considering the resistance from special interests, it takes a brilliant leader just to speak the obvious truth.
June 13, 2008 8:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great post.
June 13, 2008 8:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
How is Obama not pandering to the wall street demographic of the democratic party to which very few of us actually belong?
His economic advisers are Liebman, cutler, goolsbee, and now Jason Furman of the Rubin based Hamilton project. Even if Jared Bernstein is on the team (in an extremely peripheral role comparative to the rest of the team, if you dont believe me, email him), that is hardly a balanced ticket. And maybe this is your cup of tea, but it is not much of a departure from the clinton team. Im sure this is politically "pragmatic," and that is fine, but these times call for a radical departure from mere pragmatism. Roughly 80 percent of Americans have not seen a wage increase in three decades, yet there fixed costs keep going up. To change this we need to radically shift the allocation of wealth, significantly raising taxes on wealth and re-regulating run-away finance. Obama plans to tinker a little with marginal rates, returning them somewhere near the Clinton years, not much more.
In short, being pragmatic about a flawed political enterprise (free markets, empire etc) is not particularly a groundbreaking plane for "change." However, I do think he will be better than much of what we have seen in recent history, which is not saying much
June 13, 2008 8:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Like I already said, you're making the mistake of focusing on the front office rather than the intellectual ferment behind them, and you're cutting Obama himself out of the equation.
Obviously Obama makes the final decisions, and his front office advisers are in fact mostly concerned with cheer leading and selling his plan. (at least that's the way it works under a capable and intelligent leader, unlike GW Bush.)
Besides, we already know Obama's major policy planks. Sleeper's notion they're mysterious, it's just goofy.
Again, look at Obama's HCI plan. Obama has laid out the fundamentals which are going to get a lot of pushback from Wall Street becasue the notion of any government policy competing with them terrifies them. We know that. we know the usual kneejerk partisan politics blaming litigation and such, is nonsense and diversions. We also know, HCI costs are killing US industry, and if it;s not fixed, really fixed, the fallout and blowback is going to be enormous.
So, given that real need for reform, and given a President wiling to do it, you want to have someone like Rubin as your front man.
Because he can sell it on efficiency, and go to industries like GM and detail why it's good business for them. He can also reassure them Obama isn't a "marxist" or whatever, and that he doesn't intend to nationalize large swaths of US industry.
If you don't get that, I don't know what to tell you. But it's a very smart way of doing things.
June 13, 2008 9:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amazing. This is a truly beautifully written piece about the true failure of the American polity, whereby pre-packaged "change" is somehow considered "new."
Mr. Sleeper is absolutely dead on, and I am sorry that the readers at TPM seem hardly able to think outside the small ghetto of Democrat vs. Republican politics and see that America is wildly adrift, and Obama's grand political rhetoric (with its meager change in policy) is too little.
On Iraq: Obama plans to remove all the combat brigades in 16 months. Does that mean an end to the war and the occupation? No. Combat brigades make up only half of the population of American troops in Iraq. And, as the always dutiful Jeremy Scahill pointed out, Obama is more than willing to increase the number of "security contractors" in Iraq. He also plans on maintaining the green zone from what I understand.
On the economy:
More of the same from American liberalism, translating into a hands off approach to the deregulated cesspool of out of control finance. I suspect obama has good political instincts and will govern much like Bill Clinton, something I dont find particularly. I think the evidence is pretty clear in his tepid policy proposals and his chicago-school economists.
But the thing I find disconcerting is that the TPM community cant even stomach fair criticism of its party our its candidate. In reality, Mr. Sleeper's indictment is much less about Obama than it is about our political system. And no, I am not a Naderite and will definitely vote for Obama, but I do think it's important that people take a big picture view of their country. And the reality is that since the 1970s the Democratic party has become a party of neoliberalism at home and abroad. Im not sure why that is such a hard sell here. But Obama's support for such principles are manifest in his voting record, rhetoric, policy positions and advisers.
June 13, 2008 8:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't see that at all. Sleeper's navel gazing and maximum verbosity is truly soporific. It's a great example of academic retroactive and revisionist innovation. It's the intellectual equivilent to backdating stock options.
Gotta love the pundit industry. They've thought of everything beforehand, after the fact.
His language is so fuzzy, he could argue equivalence or causality or historical analogy between anything and anything else.
Where is Sleeper's healthcare insurance plan?
Where in recent US politics is the school which championed Obama's carefully chosen and pragmatic strategy? Nowhere. Certainly not any major school of thought in power during the last 30 years.
Keynes and his ideological descendants would have endorsed a big social program. Milton Freidman would of course have advocated purely for profit laissez faire.
Pundits, on both sides, didn't get it. It's not from either of their schools. They don't know what to make of it. No check boxes, no litmus test, no simple labels. That's also why it has resonated with the public as a pragmatic solution, who are less burdened by ideological allegiance.
June 13, 2008 9:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks to K-town, Dan K, and others here who've written constructive comments. The "TPM Community" isn't negative; these posts get thousands of readers who don't post their own comments but do read the essays and pass them on to friends or by links, leaving the trolls behind.
My purpose in this post isn't to discuss specific policy proposals, much less indict Obama, but, as you and others have noted, to highlight some of the pressures and constraints of the American political system that have made his course hard and that have therefore left more than a few people doubting what he would actually do as president. Despite these doubts, I maintain some hopes for him, as I've mentioned. The best responses are those that carry the discussion forward, not those that attempt (and fail) drag it down. I just stop reading and scroll down right past the negative ones as soon as I see things like "WTF." I'm sure that others do, too.
June 14, 2008 12:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh baloney. To windbag, let me add pretentious windbag.
Obnoxious:
Unsubstantiated navel gazing of Bob Novak proportions:
More, seemingly endless, random association:
June 14, 2008 6:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think the evidence is pretty clear in his tepid policy proposals and his Chicago-school economists.
Not to mention that Chicago is the epicenter of Neo-conservatism too re: Leo Strauss and his gang.
Not to say that geography is destiny.
June 14, 2008 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Riiight. The "Chicago School" of Economics, and Obama is an Illinois Senator... AH HAH!
:rolleyes:
Like I said, Andrew Strat is either a Rt Wing troll, or stupid beyond belief.
June 16, 2008 7:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Civic Republican?
Cicero? Plutarch? Washington, Franklin, Jefferson?
M.N.S. Sellers? Michael Sandel?
Somebody help me out! What the hell is Sleeper talking about?
June 13, 2008 8:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Any treatment of republicanism, civic or otherwise, must necessarily begin with the Graeco-Roman writers who placed public participation, civic pride and discussion at the heart of the body politic: the Greeks, after all, defined as an idiot anyone who was not an active citizen or who had no time for public affairs. Here the author gives us a clear interpretation of the central strands in civic republicanism: they are, predictably, freedom, the civic virtues, participation, the common good, and public versus private interests.
Civic Republicanism. Iseult Honohan. Routledge. 15.99 [pounds sterling]. 328 pages. ISBN 0-415-21211-1.
I would imagine it is the classic kind of Greco-Roman republicanism, of Aristotle, Cicero etc
But I see your point. It seems that civic republicanism is a redundancy. What other type is there, right?
res publica which translates literally as "things public,". I always looked at res publica as opposed to say res domestic Things private or domestic encompassing the household.
But Honohan traces civic republicanism from these ancient roots to the emergence of nation states and beyond.
Here is another little snippet from the review of her book
If you want to read the whole review of the book, here is the website
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2242/is_1653_283/ai_110266776
Apparently Sleeper has been doing his homework. I can wholeheartedly agree with his call to civic republicanism as understood in the classic era.
June 14, 2008 12:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
It does seem to me that as a practice or an ideal, it's only ever been expected to be applicable to an elite.
Cincinnatus sacrificed the security of his family (res domesticae) by leaving home to take up his duty as dictator in the defense of Rome (res publica) and then, retired once his duty had been fulfilled.
He did, thereafter, come out of retirement one time -- to put down a revolt of the plebeians, a rather elitist, aristocratic notion of one's duty (respublica).
June 14, 2008 3:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
You add a different dimension to the discussion; namely that those who could effectively participate in res publica where for the most part patrician members of the elite. However, you must concede that citizenship (which in Rome was conferred to any free person born within the borders of Italy)did carry with it some privileges.
The fact that, foreigners, slaves, women etc were given an inferior position in these societies does not detract from classic republicanism’s essentially participatory nature. The concept is purely formal.
We have won many freedoms since then and the circle of those who can participate in the res publica/i>has expanded greatly.
Do we have elites more or less calling the shots? Sure. Yet the voice of the common citizen does count for something nowadays, as feeble as it is. The elites themselves are split and not monolithic. The ruling elites do worry about what the people think given the obsession with polls.
To be sure, "the people" are also carefully monitored as to what they think and the media plays a great role in shaping these so-called "aggregate thoughts".
But Ellen you are slightly too cynical about it all. Look here at TPM and elsewhere we have a forum more-or-less concerned with the people's interests. And it is a lively place that accommodates pedestrian concerns alongside of more elevated discussion. The beauty of this forum is that you can pick and choose what to read and the avatars make it easy to identify the usual suspects.
res domesticae I know I was not getting it right but was too lazy to do the Google thing. Nice to know you are as sharp as always.
June 14, 2008 3:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
"...even a Keynesian liberal or a social democrat trying to govern in today's flat neoliberal dispensation would soon become as desperate as any conservative to fend off the world's rising tigers, even if that means slashing the taxes that fund schools,..."
"Only if the economic and social situation worsens as horribly as some intelligent pessimists predict might he manage to break the taboo on criticizing today's capitalism,..."
Your thinking seems quite limited on these points. A visionary leader will find a way to overcome almost any challenge. Also, nobody knows who Obama really is yet, or what he and his team will be capable of accomplishing.
Otherwise, I think this is one great piece and I completely agree that Obama's best chance to really lead or have any impact of his own is for him to rally the citizenry. He won't need a catastrophe; he'll need a good strategy. And he'll have a very ready, unified---and I'd bet a huge majority--movement if he really educates citizens about what's up and guides them to impact their world.
If Obama is elected, I think he has a spectacular opportunity to leave his mark and put this country and the world on a much better path. Here's hoping he doesn't allow himself to be subjugated by anyone, and that instead, he leverages his network of broad support and begins to move mountains.
June 13, 2008 9:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Huh? What don't you understand about his HCI plan?
That's like saying Bill Clinton was a mystery when he campaigned for NAFTA. Or Reagan was a mystery when he campaigned on deregulation and supply side. Nonsense.
June 13, 2008 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama can have all the plans he wants, but he's got no magic wand. If lawmakers in Congress don't pass laws to implement his plans, or if they don't adequately fund those plans, Obama's plans will go the way of so many other plans thrown around during campaigns.
We don't know if Obama is strategic enough to leverage his popularity in a way that ensures Congress can't refuse his leadership and plans. To date, he has delivered much truth and some great ideas--and that's much more than we get from most. A very good sign. Other than that, he's delivered some first-rate speeches and a brilliant campaign.
I'm betting on him, but nothing is certain.
Sorry for the double post (below) folks.
June 13, 2008 11:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
The article and a commenter mention that influential "neoliberal" and "neoconservative" thinkers have largely emerged from think tanks after graduating Harvard.
Obama went to work in Chicago as a communty organizer on the South Side.
I think this difference is important.
I think he eludes even Mr. Sleeper's analysis, because comes from somewhere different, and is attempting something different, than any of those thinker/talkers have imagined.
Obama is not in the cage. Those rules don't apply.
June 13, 2008 10:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Senator Obama is putting forth concrete proposals on how to improve the lives of the struggling middle class and poor. Chew on this one Mr.Sleeper, instead of floating off into some imaginary vapor realm, that has not a damn thing to do with the daily lives of the masses who are watching their standards of living being stolen from them, in order to pamper the obscenely wealth Oligarchy.
Remarks on Retirement Security
Senator Barack Obama
Friday, June 13th, 2008
Columbus, Ohio
As Prepared for Delivery
For generations, we have worked to keep a simple promise in this
country – Americans who work hard their entire lives have earned the
right to retire with dignity and security.
That is the promise that my grandparents knew, even though they came
of age in the Depression. My grandfather would go on to serve in
Patton’s Army, and my grandmother worked on a bomber assembly line
while he marched across Europe. When they set out west from Kansas to
build their lives after the War, they did so with the confidence that
Washington would help them reach a secure retirement. That was the
promise that FDR made, and it was a promise that Washington kept for
decades while folks like my grandparents moved through the ups and
downs of life in America’s middle class.
But today, Washington is not working to preserve this fundamental part of the American Dream.
A secure retirement is no longer a guarantee for the middle class.
It’s harder to save and harder to retire. People are losing their
pensions. If we do not act, the promise of social security will grow
harder to keep. That’s why I will fight every day to extend the promise
of a retirement that is dignified and secure when I am President of the
United States.
It starts with protecting Social Security today, tomorrow, and
forever. For millions of Americans, Social Security is the difference
between a comfortable retirement and the risk of poverty. We have an
obligation to secure the future of one of the most successful programs
in our history. And that starts with talking straight to the American
people about the challenges that lie ahead.
Social Security is strong, but as more baby boomers retire, the
long-term cash-flow needs to be addressed. We have to make sure Social
Security is there for future generations.
Now, John McCain’s ideas on Social Security amount to four more
years of what was attempted and failed under George Bush. He said he
supports private accounts for Social Security – in his words, “along
the lines that President Bush proposed.” Yesterday he tried to deny
that he ever took that position, leaving us wondering if he had a
change of heart or a change of politics.
Well let me be clear: privatizing Social Security was a bad idea
when George W. Bush proposed it. It’s a bad idea today. It would
eventually cut guaranteed benefits by up to 50%. It would cost a
trillion dollars that we don’t have to implement on the front end,
permanently elevating our debt. And most of all, it would gamble the
retirement plans of millions of Americans on the stock market. That’s
why I stood up against this plan in the Senate, and that’s why I won’t
stand for it as President.
But Senator McCain’s campaign went even further a few months ago,
suggesting that the best answer to the growing pressures on Social
Security might be to cut cost-of-living adjustments or to raise the
retirement age. I think there is another option that is fairer to
working men and women. We have to protect Social Security for future
generations without pushing the burden on to seniors who have earned
the right to retire in dignity.
Here’s where I would start. Right now, the Social Security payroll
tax is capped. That means most middle-class families pay this tax on
every dime they make, while millionaires and billionaires are only
paying it on a very small percentage of their income. That’s why I
think the best way forward is to first look to adjust the cap on the
payroll tax so that people like me pay a little bit more and people in
need are protected. That way we can extend the promise of Social
Security without shifting the burden on to seniors. And we should
exempt anyone making under $250,000 from this increase so that the
change doesn’t burden middle-class Americans. This means that 97% of
Americans will see absolutely no change in their taxes under my plan –
97%.
Now, there was a time when John McCain thought this wasn’t such a
bad idea. When he was asked a few years ago whether he could see
himself lifting the cap on the payroll tax, he said, “I could.” But
today, he’s attacking me for holding the very same position.
You know, John McCain has proposed a series of debates, and I’m
looking forward to having them. But when it comes to Social Security,
he might want to finish the debate with himself first.
Now, even if we keep Social Security strong for future generations,
it’s still not enough to help seniors who are struggling with the cost
of everything from gas to groceries – because we know that rising costs
are hardest for folks on fixed incomes. That’s why I’ll make retirement
more secure by eliminating income taxes for retirees making less than
$50,000 per year. This would completely eliminate income taxes for 7
million seniors. Two of those people are Ron and Jane Payne, who I just
met before the event. Since they retired, they’ve been spending more
and more of their limited income on gas and groceries and health care
premiums. This tax cut would eliminate the income taxes they pay and
save them over $1,400.
In contrast, John McCain believes that senior citizens living on
modest incomes should continue to pay taxes. In fact, the tax cuts for
the rich he is proposing would provide essentially no benefits to the
vast majority of senior citizens.
And it’s time to end the outrage of CEOs cashing out while workers
lose their pensions. Right now, bankruptcy laws are more focused on
protecting banks than protecting pensions. And that’s how John McCain
wants to keep things for another four years. He voted against a
proposal that would’ve made the claims of workers and retirees a
priority in bankruptcy court – and he opposed a proposal that said
companies should not unfairly cut the pension benefits of men and women
who’ve worked their whole lives to earn them.
Well that’s not fair. That’s not the America that I believe in. It’s
time to stop cutting back the safety net for working people while we
protect golden parachutes for the well-off. If you work hard and play
by the rules, then you’ve earned your pension. If a company goes
bankrupt, then workers need to be a top priority – not an afterthought.
As President, I’ll limit circumstances when retirement benefits can
be cut, and increase the wages and benefits that workers can claim in
bankruptcy court. We’ll require companies to disclose their pension
fund investments. We’ll put an end to the outrage of executives getting
bonuses while workers watch pensions disappear. And we’ll make sure
that no American goes bankrupt just because they get sick.
Finally, we’re not going to help folks reach a secure retirement
unless we encourage savings. But today, personal savings is at an
all-time low as Americans are dealing with higher costs and a credit
crunch. Meanwhile, 75 million working Americans don’t have
employer-based retirement plans.
That’s why I’ve proposed automatic workplace pensions. There will be
no red tape or complicated forms – employers will provide a direct
deposit of a small percentage of each paycheck into your account. You
can add to it, or you can opt out at any time. And employers will have
an easy opportunity to match employee savings. If you switch jobs, your
savings will roll over into your new employer’s system. If you become
self-employed, you will control your account. Studies show that about
80 percent of Americans will enroll if given the option to pursue our
type of plan. And we will also help middle-class families start their
own nest egg by matching 50% of the first $1,000 saved – a match that
will be directly deposited into your savings account; a tax cut that
will truly encouraging savings, investment and wealth creation. These
steps will put a secure retirement within reach for millions of working
families.
Since the New Deal, we’ve had a basic understanding in America that
if you work hard and pay into the system, you’ve earned the right to a
secure retirement. That’s the promise that was kept for my grandparents
and Michelle’s parents, and for so many families here in Oregon and
across the country. And if we keep that promise today, we’re not just
valuing work and our workers, we’ll be keeping our businesses and our
economy strong for the next generation. That’s a future worth fighting
for. And with your help, that’s what I will do when I am President of
the United States of America.
June 13, 2008 10:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama can have all the plans he wants, but he's got no magic wand. If lawmakers in Congress don't pass laws to implement his plans, or if they don't adequately fund those plans, Obama's plans will go the way of so many other plans thrown around during campaigns.
We don't know if Obama is strategic enough to leverage his popularity in a way that ensures Congress can't refuse his leadership and plans. To date, he has delivered much truth and some great ideas--and that's much more than we get from most. A very good sign. Other than that, he's delivered some first-rate speeches and a brilliant campaign.
I'm betting on him, but nothing is certain.
June 13, 2008 11:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Neoliberal or Cvic Republicanism? Good question.
I fear that Obama shows no sign as of yet of attempting to revive civic republicanism.
Neoliberalism is a movement that blurs the distinction between res publica as understood in the classic time and private life.
In a sense neoliberals are corrosive to private life in that they seek to integrate as much of the res publica as possible into the private realm. they are enamored the with free market concept of privatization which paradoxically throws all our private lives into the mindless marketplace.
June 14, 2008 12:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
ON the one hand I seem to recall Mr. Sleeper supporting the promise of Obama's candidacy not long ago. Now it appears, Mr. Sleeper is wondering if perhaps Obama is caught in the trap of neoliberalsim (a nice name for the DLC brand of politics or being a coprorate Democrat)or will he be a daring, Rooseveltian leader who recognizes the disasterous situation America is now in.
There are numerous complexities regarding our present political dillemma not the least of which is that Obama, if elected, will not have huge and obedient Democratic majorities that will get behind his policies. Nor will he have any help whatsoever from the Republican side and he is almost entirely precluded for giving them the hell they deserve as a result of his emphasis on stopping partisan rancor. Instead, he will find a congress not unlike that which Jimmy Carter dealt with which whose leadership was weak and the ranks of Democrats were filled with giant egos all looking out for themselves and their benefactors instead of the interests of the people or the nation.
There seems no question whatever, to me, that next January the nation will find itself in the worst economic crisis in the nation's history. Strong leadership and bold new programs will be required to put America on the road to recovery, but sadly we have already losst our once unrivaled economic stature. We have only the military left and that is the root cause of our downfall. Over half the nation's federal spending is for "defense" which is a euphemism for funding the bloated carcass of the military industria complex that has literally sucked the life out of our nation.
We cannot and will not be able to deal with education, healthcare, global warming, nuclear proliferation or any other major problem until we have drastically scaled back the literally insane level of military spending. I don't mean adjusting it, I mean cutting it in half. The binge we have been on these past 7 years is obscene and totally unnecessary. The money we waste on war and killing and keeping the imperial fantasy alive is destroying our nation.
If Obama recognizes this and attempts to do anything about it we have a chance of survival in the long run. If he does not, it will soon become apparent that the lunatic right and the DLC type Democrats who enable their disasterous policies will have finally cooked our goose.
It isn't too much partisanship that has caused all this. It is too little. We have but one party in the United States and it is the party of money and wealth. It has two wings: Republican and Democratic. A sliver of the Democratic wing is actually the core of a second party but it is kept small and weak by many disparate but powerful forces. It last rose up in the 30's and was so strong then that it took 50 years to suppress it. Unless we all wake up and understand that the greed and malice of predatory wealth is the enemy and that our nation must change the way it does business (not merely tweak it), then we are all screwed.
A few voices tried to get the great mass of Democrats to ask some of the questions on Sleeper's mind last spring but were shouted down. Voices of caution and concern about not simply accepting the wink and nod of the Obama camp that "once he wins" then we'll do the right thing. Now Obama is the leader and if he wins we will find out within days whether or not he's just the same old thing in a different package or really and substantively different than the rest.
June 14, 2008 12:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
. . . until we have drastically scaled back the literally insane level of military spending. I don't mean adjusting it, I mean cutting it in half.
But, oleeb; Americans love their military, the bigger the better. And too, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.
June 14, 2008 2:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I think you're right that people love the military, but they also don't have any idea how expensive it has become. If people understood that we spend more annually on military spending than the rest of the world combined I think people would be ready to reassess just how much we actually blow on the imprlements of death and destruction.
I have no doubt the nation would be stunned. But we never hear about this. We only hear that "entitlement spending" is too big even though SS and medicare pale in comparison to the waste, corruption and genuine insanity of a defense budget such as we have. It is obscene and nobody, when informed could think otherwise. It simply cannot be justified under any circumstances.
June 14, 2008 3:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I think we have to make greater effort to explain the costs of the war and our over extended military commitments in language that resonates with the general public. McCain gives us that opportunity if someone drives the point home. We should stop fearing the spin and start ridiculing it. How much has it cost in today's dollars for Korea and our other commitments? What's the cost of 100 years in Iraq? What do we have to show for it? Korean made cars running on $5 a gallon gas?
June 14, 2008 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brooks now laments such practices as if they weren't consequences of the forces and priorities he's ridden and rhapsodized for years.
It has always struck me as ironic how the conservatives have, through their economic dogma, transformed avarice into the supreme virtue of "enlightened self-interest" and then bemoaned the decadence that has followed. Just as ironic is how the conservative defenders of "traditional values" have in actuality turned those values completely on their head by advancing the radically modern idea that greed is not among the deadly sins but instead is the driving force behind all progress toward the good.
All Sleeper is saying is that as long as we continue to accept as truth the prevailing dogma of the conservatives (and the neoliberals), we will remain lost souls, unable to rise from the fourth circle of hell.
June 14, 2008 9:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, for the last seven years we've been on the express train to the lowest level of hell. Pulling the emergency break while we're still in the fourth circle sounds like big progress to me.
June 14, 2008 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Seems like "conservatives (and the neoliberals)" takes up about 99% of the Congress (Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders, excluded).
At the usual replacement rate we should get over the hump sometime around 2054.
June 14, 2008 12:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Robert Reich even goes as far as saying the term, Neo-liberalism is a fabrication of the far left. These Clinton liberals really need to get real jobs.
Radical realism is what is needed. Socialism is what we need, actually.
June 14, 2008 12:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
What we need--I think--is a rethinking as to what the social contract is all about: about reasons why we should "go along" with the general scheme of things in our society.
You will say "well suppose we decide we don't want to go along, what then?" Contractarians entertain the myth that we can "opt out", but in practice we can no more opt out of our being-in-society as we can opt out of being-in-nature, or at least close to it.
I have the view that psychiatric wards are full of people who could not tolerate their particular being-in-society and the only way to "opt out" for them was insanity.
I would love to have an extensive examination of neo-liberalism here at TPM.
Sleeper pines for the days of Civic Republicanism but how realistic is that in an age of globalization where the "tigers" are loose and nobody is safe from ruin.
June 14, 2008 6:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
You break it, you own it - unless posted in plain sight - is not necessarily the case.
Some years ago, as a matter of fact, a customer who accidently broke an item which a store had on public display, was NOT legally responsible for its cost or its replacement. If that law is still in place, maybe we don't 'own' Iraq afterall - which would be a great relief to the Iraqis.
June 14, 2008 1:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks to Quinn, among others, for getting my observations and arguments right.
I should add (and I've revised the last paragragh of the post to do so) that, indeed, it would take more than a typical American political "movement" and more than well-defined policy initiatives to get us out of the hole we are in. That argument is beyond the scope of a post like mine, but I was hinting at it in contrasting Istanbul and Hartford, CT.
Connecticut was once known as the land of "steady habits" grounded in civic-republican virtues that went back to the Puritan. Its growing economic and racial inequalities are straining that social fabric, as much in its upscale suburban redoubts as in its cities. Capital is flowing out and immigrants are flowing in too quickly for society to adjust, and some of the state's richest residents are those who, unlike most Americans, profit from those capital flows no matter which direction they're moving.
Istanbul, too, is changing, although it still has a pre-Wall St. culture of honor and, compared to Harford, a lot more ethnic and religious homogeneity, and a civic life grounded in widely shared, if residual Islamic assumptions and folkways, even among the many unreligious. (Istanbul also has a greater history of cosmopolitan tolerance of religious minorities, going back to the Ottomans, the big exception being Turkey's past conflicts with Greeks and Armenians, which involved territorial claims.)
The streets I walk in Istanbul are mostly in the old center city, but much of the larger city looks post-modern and sprawling now, bigger than either Los Angeles or New York; and while old habits and relations persist, they may well not last. For now, though, what Turks still lack in corporate efficiency and market inventiveness, they make up for amply in sheer human warmth, enthusiasm, and good will. One needn't be a romantic Orientalist to see and feel the differences from New York-- or Hartford.
June 15, 2008 4:11 AM | Reply | Permalink