Embrace the Dominant Paradigm
Bill Clinton's campaign genius, James Carville, was once a populist. He was quoted as saying "I do politics; I don't do government." Arcane matters of political economy he left to the best and the brightest -- folks like financial master of the universe Robert Rubin and Harvard (Harvard!) wunderkind Larry Summers. The best and the brightest. The very same people who can claim a liberal share of the blame for the collapse of the world economy and its leading financial institutions. Because they're so brilliant, didn't you know?
Now we have this nebbish, this shmendrik, one Steve Hildebrand, presuming to lecture the nation about public policy, a topic concerning which, as his post reveals, he ought to just shut his stupid face.
SH's message can be aptly recapitulated -- it need not be summarized, since there is so little to distill -- as (paraphrasing) governing is not about ideology, it's about gathering the best qualified people. Ideology is bad because it is divisive and Barack Obama is president of all the people, who have many ideologies. And we've got real hard problems people, so we need to pull together and be the change we have been waiting for.
Am I being unfair? I really don't think so. Unfortunately, the words of this simpleton are an echo of the campaign. (Hey it worked! I know, I know.) But now the play-acting is over. Being elected is one thing; being successful is another. The skill-sets are not the same. George Bush sure proved that. Great credentials are not enough. You have to be right. Who is right? Obviously that's hard to know, which is why the sensible leader collects some diversity of advice. There is no intellectual diversity in the Obama White House. The left brain of the party is missing. As smart as Obama is, he cannot personally supply the 'Team B' expertise he will need in economics, finance, and other matters not found in law school curricula.
Of course qualifications matter. But so does ideology. Ideology might be understood as the summary of a view of how the world works, a set of predispositions, rules of thumb, and yes, biases, all informed by intelligence, study, experience, and practice. The "Team of Rubins" has ideology too, and now we are living with its fruits. How is that working out for us? What does it take to discredit these blokes? If their policies resulted in hordes of flesh-eating zombies roaming the countryside, would that be enough? I fear not.
The joker missing from the deck of Obama's brilliant team is a single, solitary person with an eminent track record of scholarship reflecting a critical understanding of the shortcomings of markets. Joe Stiglitz is the most obvious example, but there are others no less qualified than Obama's choices. On the domestic front, the critical missions are combating recession, reconstructing the nation's financial institutions, devising new rules for financial markets, and recasting our health care system. Infrastructure, sure; but that's relatively easy.
If being president of all the people means synthesizing solutions to grave problems with ingredients of bat-sh#t insanity from the 46% of the great American public who thought Gabby Hayes would make a good president, we are in for a bumpy ride.
You have to be right. Creating our own reality is so 2003. You have to be right.
.
Wow . . .
Just a general observation to most here, yet very specific to one Steve Hildebrand:
Not all, but many well trained consultants believe without a doubt that they have a special perspective on how the world around them should react to every word they utter. The actual damage that this belief causes has nothing to do with the belief itself, but with the psychology of human nature, and the manipulation of that nature by these wordsmiths and consultants and their fellow minded salesmen by whom they are surrounded.
It's time to stop talking and get working. WORK? I'm sure this fella Hildebrand has many duties to take care of in his little bubble world. But to those across this country who are at this time suffering for the past stupidity and lack of competent representation they don't give a crap about left, the right or up-side-down. They have kids to feed and cloths to buy and bills to pay. And nobody at the top is going to get anything done immediately. The true work starts at the bottom up.
I wonder if anyone has clued Hildebrand into this? (said with tongue firmly planted in cheek).
~OGD~
December 9, 2008 1:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Rotwang, Rotwang, you are SUCH a child. Have a little faith, willya? Enough with the "hand-wringing." Let's let the grown-up, "qualified" people do their work. For starters, you progressives don't seem to understand PRIORITY-SETTING. You see, "First let's get our economy moving, bring our troops home safely, fix health care, end climate change and restore our place in the world." THEN we can do all those things you progressives have been yammering on about.
Actually, I'm sorry, I have to stop there. When a complete ass like this gopher guy gets ink to write shit like this? It's beyond mocking. What does this little twerp think? That the "Centrists" were out there raising climate change ahead of the pack or opposing Iraq first? That the "qualified" people were the leading critics of the financial bullshit we now have to survive?
Obama should cut this little shit off at the knees. And if he doesn't, then I gotta say - since he's not dumb - that he's playing a lot nastier political game than I'd recommend.
Hey... Hildebrand! Why not select a Cabinet full of white people or consisting entirely of men, and then tell people to shut up because we want "qualified" people. Pathetic.
December 9, 2008 2:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
But Hildebrand told the Progressives they were already rewarded - they got Hillary and Daschle, every Progressive's dream couple, no?
December 9, 2008 7:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Last Wednesday's meeting, down on the docks, I tell you, the posters and T-shirts of those two were selling like.... awww, you fill in the rest.
December 9, 2008 10:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
As far as I know SH is not now employed by Obama, so his opinions reflect his opinions and nothing else. I have a hard time caring what he had to say, so whatever it was, it didn't bother me at all.
December 9, 2008 9:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's be specific.
Of the 4 appointees in the photo I'd have thought you'd have no objection to Christie Romer and Melody Barnes.If I've got that wrong , sorry. I'd be interested in what you actually do think.
Either way I expect the real question is with the two white guys.A couple of weeks ago your position seems to have been that despite your many reservations Summers skills are so exceptional and so exceptionally applicable to the financial mess that Obama would have been wrong to play the hand without this ace.
Which leaves Geithner.And I concede that his appointment is a missed opportunity to add a different perspective to the mix.
That said, it seems to me your bitterness is less connected to the team-three out of four ain't bad-than to Hildebrand's condescension.Talks cheap , this week, as you write, he's annoyed a lot of people. Next week it'll be: Steve Who? Let it go.
December 9, 2008 3:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've got no objection to Christie Romer, but she's no progressive, has zero visibility on the left. I would use Summers too, though I wouldn't put him in a position where he had administrative power to filter the ideas of others. Geithner and Barnes may be brilliant as all get-out, but they haven't the background of contributing new ideas for bold experiments, which is what FDR was about, by the way. I would not expect all of these types to be absent from ObamaLand. It's the missing pieces that are the point.
December 9, 2008 6:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Fair enough
December 9, 2008 8:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bravo as usual Rotwang!
You have put it all in a nice neat package, but that won't matter to the kool aid crowd. They just want people to line up behind the wise and merciful Obama and to "hope." Hope alone is nothing more than an empty slogan as we know.
One wonders if it ever occured to the ever so smart set of insiders that the outsider is insulating himself with, that the guys on the left of the party have been right on every major (and minor) issue confronting the country not just in the past 8 years, but really in the past 30 years? All the predictions of the bad results of simply letting the businessmen run amok and do as they please and to "trust" the markets has now come to pass in spades and is even worse than anyone imagined since all the cons have collapsed at the same time.
Given that the left has been right with such incredible regularity, you'd think Obama might put just one person who thinks left near him. But he hasn't done that? Why?
Methinks it is because Obama, though new to DC, is the consumate insider and he will play the usual insider's game. Of course, the teensy weensy problem with that is that the insider's game isn't going to solve any of our problems. Chances are that set of off the shelf insider solutions are as likely as not to make things worse and perhaps much worse. Why not just listen to the guys who have been right for the past several decades instead and bypass all that pain? Ya gotta wonder how so many really smart people really just don't get it and insist on doing what has never produced the desired results in the past.
December 9, 2008 3:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Never wrong in 30 years? That's quite impressive!
December 9, 2008 11:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Could it be that Obama's main concern right now is to calm the Markets?
I'm not sure appointing left leaning economic advisors would have accomplished that.
December 9, 2008 6:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bwakfat' comment “Could it be that Obama's main concern right now is to calm the Markets?”
Exactly, whom is Obama trying to calm?
Ideology is at the root of the problem and it is the reason it will obstruct the best solution.
Trickle down, or supply side economic policies are only one of many schools of thought.
To the Rubins of the world it’s like the old skit says "Baseball... been berry berry good... to me." - Garrett Morris as Chico Escuela on SNL, as spoken to "Hane" Curtin.
It’s what they know it’s what they believe in.
Surprisingly, Obama failed to truly explain before the election, what side his economic policies were on. He talked about the abuses, but never discussed alternatives. He never talked of dismantleling this System.
His supporters assumed he would.
His values weren’t where the populist or the left side of the party were.
But then he may not have won the election, if he had been that frank.
Even his slogan about Hope, and YES WE CAN, may have just been good sound bites, good speeches. The electorate may have just put faith in those words.
But when you look closely at the word faith (Hebrews 11:1) 11 Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld.
It may be that the demonstrations of the realities, may have just exposed our foolishness. The UNassured expectations of things hoped for.
We’ll see if he keeps the support of those who brought him to power or maybe he’ll just be a flash in the pan
(Hebrews 11:3) 3 By faith we perceive that the systems of things were put in order . . .
The System of things, to be supported, continued, by all means, by the Rubins and Paulsons and other supply-siders and Capitalists with free market ideas. (Ideology) despite it’s past record of failure.
The ideas of the left are ignored and resisted. That is not the system some of his appointments are willing to support.
That is the reality.
December 9, 2008 8:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
.
Okay . . .
But what does Reverend Benny Hinn and the rest of the pulpit preachers have to say about all this?
~OGD~
December 9, 2008 4:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Like it or not, Hildebreand is correct. Bashing your leader before Inauguration just goes to show you'll do anything, including self-immolation to feed your oversize egos.
Keep up the good work. Heh.
December 9, 2008 8:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
The English language is wonderful! Isn't it ncredible that so many disjointed, facile, and moronic phrases can come together to create a "message" that is actually capable of parsing.
And the glimmering shadow wound snarkily with giant sneezes and never crept.
December 9, 2008 10:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Would that some people had appreciation for low-brow humor. But I guess that's oh so passe at this point.
December 9, 2008 10:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
shooter,
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
December 9, 2008 4:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
.
Well well . . .
Shooter242 ... Eh?
Slow day over in the kool-aid land of Freeperville?
Your concern is noted, spindled and mutilated.
Thanks for taking the time to drop in and blow hot smoke out your asteroid-orifice.
What would we all do without you?
I'm sure we'll find a way.
~OGD~
*Separating the fluent from the effluent in the Café since 2005*
December 10, 2008 3:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obama the listener. The man is going to be plugged in, not ensconced in a Washington cocoon. He is going to have his blackberry get out and hear the people. That is why you on the left should shut the fuck up. He doesn't hear well when people are complaining.
December 9, 2008 9:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Someone feed his Blackberry, it's hungry - been scratching at the door since 6:30am, even scared off the paper boy.
December 9, 2008 10:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
I just got one of those new "Progressive-Liberal-Left" Blackberries - the "Brie." And it's got the coolest features.
Like, when I set it on silent, a little "hands" symbol comes on, and just cycles... endlessly... wringing and wringing... in complete futility.
Amusing anecdote. A pragmatic friend of mine (well, more of a moderate, or a centrist perhaps, than a real pragmatist - no Dewey, this lad) anyway, he was mocking me about it. But after I beat him senseless with the Brie, I tell you he was a new man. Wanted to hear all about the titanium case, the demi-jagged embedded diamond tips, and he seemed most taken with the extrudable-rods that only come out on contact with dull flesh.
December 9, 2008 10:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Do you know many acres of African Jungle were cleared to make your precious "Brie-Berry"?
Some liberal you are!
December 9, 2008 11:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Right you are, Rotwang. The notion that one can govern without a guiding ideology is silliness. I think that Obama has simply set himself to govern safely from the Center. If we want to pull his policy agenda to the Left, we are going to have to work for it. The battle lines have been drawn.
December 9, 2008 9:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
The left, not the center not the right, manned the battle lines.
Obama owes a lot of political capital, to those who lifted him up at the crucial time.
When it appeared that many others, recognized that he was inspiring, and that Hillary was not capturing the lefts agenda sufficiently.
His momentum, OUR momentum, had found a leader, WE THE PEOPLE could bring forth. Without us, he’d have been the junior Senator from Illinois. The center wanted no part and the right surely fought his nomination. It was only when these groups recognized he had a groundswell of support from the unwashed, the unclean, did groups want to back what appeared to be a future winner.
Now for Obama’s team to now say thanks for your early support, but we no longer need you. We can do it now, go home.
I'd say, don't even dis me.
Reminding me of the movie Braveheart, having won the victories against the enemy, did the families recognize it was in their best interest to support this new leader, only to get into the inner circle, in order to destroy it from within.
December 9, 2008 12:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, Rotwang, for so concisely stating the issue - Obama's team has not "a single, solitary person with an eminent track record of scholarship reflecting a critical understanding of the shortcomings of markets."
It's pretty amazing that after the markets have plunged us into a new depression, that there are still people like Hildebrand, della Rovere, and shooter242 who still do not understand the crucial role of ideology. Reminds me of something John Maynard Keynes wrote: “The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”
December 9, 2008 10:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks. Mine was parody, actually sarcastic parody. I do not like being lumped with Hildebrand.
December 9, 2008 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hmm, OK, sorry, by snarkometer broke down.
December 10, 2008 9:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with most of your comments, and from an ideological perspective, Obama's choices might be suspect. But I am still willing to bet that Obama will maintain control of the decision making process, and be still more open to bucking a perceived ideology to do what he determines is the best course for all. I also beleive that he is smart and learned in economics enough to realize where his ideological shortcomings in his staff exist.
I am not a kool-aid drinker for Obama but we still need to give him and his process time (he is not President until Jan. 20 no matter what anybody else does or say -not enough time to change the Constitution)to see if he is on the right track.
I for one am content to wait and see. Seems to me from reading his second book, that his choices somewhat mirror what he has told us. It is everyone else that is fretting.
December 9, 2008 10:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
I just want to know what set Hildebrand off. We progressives have been taking it pretty easy on the new president, I think.
December 9, 2008 11:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Gamma Ray apparently struck his neuron.
December 9, 2008 12:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly the right question.
December 9, 2008 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
destor23
I don't know the answer to your question. Maybe a big expansion of the war in Afghanistan is being planned. Or more big giveaways to CorporationsUSA. Somehow this seems like a deliberate effort to neuter the left in advance (of what???).
December 9, 2008 1:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
In advance of what? I'll tell ya, at least in part: in advance of rolling out an inadequate program of repsonses to the horrific conditions abroad in the land which will be wildly popular inside the beltway and likewise too little, too late out in the hinterlands and not so popular. Once it becomes apparent the responses are too little too late the same crowd will be lecturing us all saying wait a bit and give him the benefit of the doubt. etc...
December 9, 2008 6:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm thinking big economic giveaways to our Corporate elite with nothing back and/or a big expansion in Afghanistan. Has anybody noticed just how much Hildebrand sounds like the DLC?
December 9, 2008 11:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
As far as Obama's economic team goes, if their reputation for 'brilliance' is deserved they'll admit and accept that an economist is a guy who can't tell you tomorrow why what he forecast yesterday didn't happen today - in other words, kiss your pet economic ideologies goodbye with a healthy good riddance to bad rubbish.
December 9, 2008 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obama's campaign should have prepared us for the fact that he is not a left leaning liberal. He is centrist, through and through. I lost a lot of enthusiasm for him early in the campaign when this fact became obvious to me. It was very difficult at that time to find quotes from Obama that I could use in campaigning for him as a very left liberal. His book "The Audacity of Hope" is not a liberal tome. It is a "let's all get along together" tome.
My enthusiasm for Obama increased by orders of magnitude when McCain began to show his real character, and I am still awed by how great it is that we didn't elect McCain.
Now, to second one of the posts above, it is our job to push Obama to the left as far as we can. If we fail to do that, it is our failure, not his.
December 9, 2008 9:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree Hoppy, I never saw Obama as particularly left, which is why between Obama and Clinton I found myself unable to work up much enthusiasm.
Anyone that voted for Obama thinking he was a leftie wasn't really paying attention.
The alternative was unthinkable.
The center looks pretty good after the last 8 years, I'm counting our blessings. I do think Obama is a good and decent man. That will make all the difference.
December 10, 2008 8:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed! I see Obama as the right person at the right time for America. If he can be nudged to the left a bit more than he is inclined to lean, the country just might be primed for someone who really is a liberal to be the next president. But right now what we see as a centrist is a flaming left winger compared to Bush and Cheney.
December 10, 2008 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink