Don't Fear the Quitter
It usually doesn't work, but once in a while I can stop myself from getting overanxious about amplified right-wing bile by mentally taking myself back to the magical summer of 1992. I'd been watching the Republican National Convention at home before going to visit some friends, and I'd gotten very upset at the sound and fury of Patrick Buchanan basically shouting that I and everyone and everything I loved was evil and hateful and un-American. I went to see my friends with storm clouds over my head, and when they asked what was wrong I told them about Buchanan's spew and the rapturous response his speech had drawn. And my friend Abby, bless her, looked at me like I had two moron heads--she did that a lot when we were teenagers--and asked why I would let the blatherings of marginalized imbeciles ruin my mood.
I was thinking of this a couple days ago when I heard about Sarah Palin's speech to the Tea Party. Yeah, it was hateful, ahistorical and nonsensical--but again (thought my 19 year-old self) the fact that so many people ecstatically lapped it up had to be a little troubling. And it is, it is, but on the big question, whether Palin will ever win the presidency, I'm still certain that the answer is no.
Why? Four words: SHE QUIT HER JOB. Enough remains of the traditional American character that she'll never draw over 40 percent or so in a general election campaign--and I'd guess half that is a more realistic forecast, particularly given the likelihood of a third candidate--for that one simple reason.
We as Americans don't especially care if someone half-asses a job, or barely shows up. (Witness Obama's two-thirds of a Senate term.) The rule is that you can leave the job for a better one--again, as Obama did. But you can't just walk away from your responsibilities for no good reason, and "making lots of dough stoking the fears of the invincibly ignorant" doesn't count.
There's no tolerance in our culture for quitters. I'm still not sure Ross Perot wouldn't have won in that same year of 1992 had he not dropped out of the race for awhile later that same summer. My guess is that if Palin does even run--and I'm still not convinced she will; why chance damaging her future ratings or book sales with an undertaking likely to end in failure that carries all kinds of risks?--Romney or Huckabee or some governor who actually finished his/her term and achieved something, anything, will knock her off in the primaries. A plurality of Republicans will conclude that it really would be better to have someone in there with proven aptitude for and interest in showing up to work.
Palin represents a perspective in our national conversation that's been present at least since the Know-Nothings in the mid-19th century, through the darker strains of Populism, the rise of the Klan, Father Coughlin, Joe McCarthy and the John Birch Society, the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition. It's ugly and frightening, and the new aspects of it--Palin's status as the first demagogue who can plausibly haunt the sex fantasies of the older white men who form the core Fox News audience, and the protective shield of an unambiguously partisan media--add an additional layer of concern.
But the same media dynamic that props her up now will bring her low later, if she even does run. The total absence of "there" there will burn off the novelty, particularly in contrast to a substantive guy like Obama. She can only say the very limited number of things she can say in so many different ways, if you get my meaning. That kind of rhetorical red meat is crack for the Rage Right, and their tolerance for it will build up quickly.
(If you want to really worry about something, try this one on: a more skilled and intelligent public figure with the same basic message, without Palin's baggage and abundance of "odd lies," who knows how to maximize the financial backing of corporations unleashed by the Citizens United ruling as well as how to play the mainstream media. If Marco Rubio wins the Florida Senate race, he might be the one we need to keep an eye on.)
Monday, February 08, 2010
Saturday, February 06, 2010
This Stupid Country
Here's some good timing: the same day that the scared-of-their-own-shadow Democrats met for their aptly named winter retreat and the Tea Party people ("The other White Party!"?) convened for a weekend of rage, Slate details the national dumbassery:
This is why I don't think much of polls: for the answers to have any guiding relevance to elected officials, it seems the answering public should have some idea about the facts on the question on which they're opining. But all we know is what we want: "We despise the government, but want it to solve all our problems. We pay too much in taxes but will see services cut, even demonstrably wasteful ones, over our dead bodies. We're always for forceful response and bold action, until reality confounds us again by not immediately conforming to what we want it to be or, above all, moving as quickly as we wish it to."
Human nature being what it is, it's actually neither surprising nor, in the larger sense, particularly distressing that so much of public opinion seems indistinguishable from a teething two year-old. Most people don't have the time or inclination to follow the news closely, and given the imperatives of for-profit media, what they mostly do see when they're paying attention is process-guided conflict freighted with despicably parochial considerations, not a clash of principles or ideals. The Founders intuitively understood this, which is why we have a representative democracy with a wealth of checks and balances (probably more than is good for us in a moment when partisan forces act in bad faith) rather than a plebiscitary system or something more directly responsive to popular will at any given moment. Ugly as it was when George W. Bush spoke in early 2005 about the "accountability moment" he'd faced and survived in the 2004 election, he wasn't wrong: that was the electorate's chance to express a judgment on his record. On an everyday basis, public opinion simply shouldn't matter very much.
But even the core leap of faith--that the electorate generally gets it right when called upon to do so--comes into question when polling so strongly suggests a foundational ignorance of the issues. That's doubly true when politicians gleefully fuel and exploit that ignorance:
I really like this typology of public figures. Unfortunately--and this gets back to the severe structural problems that I and others see bedeviling us right now--the incentives are all lined up against those who try to be honest and constructive. This past week, Republican Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin did something I think unique for his party since it's been in opposition: he proposed a serious long-term budget that would eliminate the federal deficit. I don't think it's a great proposal on the merits: Ryan wants to privatize Medicare, and do so in a way that would render the program far less effective, and revive the private accounts model for Social Security that Bush tried to push forward five years ago. But it's an actual attempt to grapple with problems. And Democrats are attacking it to score political points in a manner roughly as shameless as the Republican barrage against the proposed health care reforms.
Thus it becomes that much more difficult for Ryan or any other Republican who might be inclined to propose something necessary but politically painful. And we continue to want ever more from government while putting in ever less.
Here's some good timing: the same day that the scared-of-their-own-shadow Democrats met for their aptly named winter retreat and the Tea Party people ("The other White Party!"?) convened for a weekend of rage, Slate details the national dumbassery:
Anybody who says you can't have it both ways clearly hasn't been spending much time reading opinion polls lately. One year ago, 59 percent of the American public liked the stimulus plan, according to Gallup. A few months later, with the economy still deeply mired in recession, a majority of the same size said Obama was spending too much money on it. There's nothing wrong with changing your mind, of course, but opinion polls over the last year reflect something altogether more troubling: a country that simultaneously demands and rejects action on unemployment, deficits, health care, climate change, and a whole host of other major problems. Sixty percent of Americans want stricter regulations of financial institutions. But nearly the same proportion says we're suffering from too much regulation on business. That kind of illogic—or, if you prefer, susceptibility to rhetorical manipulation—is what locks the status quo in place.
At the root of this kind of self-contradiction is our historical, nationally characterological ambivalence about government. We want Washington and the states to fix all of our problems now. At the same time, we want government to shrink, spend less, and reduce our taxes. We dislike government in the abstract: According to CNN, 67 percent of people favor balancing the budget even when the country is in a recession or a war, which is madness. But we love government in the particular: Even larger majorities oppose the kind of spending cuts that would reduce projected deficits, let alone eliminate them. Nearly half the public wants to cancel the Obama stimulus, and a strong majority doesn't want another round of it. But 80-plus percent of people want to extend unemployment benefits and to spend more money on roads and bridges. There's another term for that stuff: more stimulus spending.
This is why I don't think much of polls: for the answers to have any guiding relevance to elected officials, it seems the answering public should have some idea about the facts on the question on which they're opining. But all we know is what we want: "We despise the government, but want it to solve all our problems. We pay too much in taxes but will see services cut, even demonstrably wasteful ones, over our dead bodies. We're always for forceful response and bold action, until reality confounds us again by not immediately conforming to what we want it to be or, above all, moving as quickly as we wish it to."
Human nature being what it is, it's actually neither surprising nor, in the larger sense, particularly distressing that so much of public opinion seems indistinguishable from a teething two year-old. Most people don't have the time or inclination to follow the news closely, and given the imperatives of for-profit media, what they mostly do see when they're paying attention is process-guided conflict freighted with despicably parochial considerations, not a clash of principles or ideals. The Founders intuitively understood this, which is why we have a representative democracy with a wealth of checks and balances (probably more than is good for us in a moment when partisan forces act in bad faith) rather than a plebiscitary system or something more directly responsive to popular will at any given moment. Ugly as it was when George W. Bush spoke in early 2005 about the "accountability moment" he'd faced and survived in the 2004 election, he wasn't wrong: that was the electorate's chance to express a judgment on his record. On an everyday basis, public opinion simply shouldn't matter very much.
But even the core leap of faith--that the electorate generally gets it right when called upon to do so--comes into question when polling so strongly suggests a foundational ignorance of the issues. That's doubly true when politicians gleefully fuel and exploit that ignorance:
The politicians thriving at the moment are the ones who embody this live-for-the-today mentality, those best able to call for the impossible with a straight face. Take Scott Brown, the newly elected Senator from Massachusetts. Brown wants government to take in less revenue: He has signed a no-new-taxes pledge and called for an across-the-board tax cut on families and businesses. But Brown doesn't want government to spend any less money: He opposes reductions in Medicare payments and all other spending cuts of any significance. He says we can lower deficits above 10 percent of GDP—the largest deficits since World War II, deficits so large that they threaten our future as the world's leading military and economic power—simply by cutting government waste. No sensible person who has spent five minutes looking at the budget thinks that's remotely possible. The charitable interpretation is that Brown embodies naive optimism, an approach to politics that Ronald Reagan left as one of his more dubious legacies to Republican Party. A better explanation is that Brown is consciously pandering to the public's ignorance and illusions the same way the rest of his Republican colleagues are.
I don't mean to suggest that honesty is what separates the two parties. Increasingly, the crucial distinction is between the minority of serious politicians in either party who are prepared to speak directly about our choices, on the one hand, and the majority who indulge the public's delusions, on the other. I would put President Obama and his economic team in the first group, along with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Republicans are more indulgent of the public's unrealism in general, but Democrats have spent years fostering their own forms of denial. Where Republicans encourage popular myths about taxes, spending, and climate change, Democrats tend to stoke our fantasies about the sustainability of entitlement spending as well as about the cost of new programs.
I really like this typology of public figures. Unfortunately--and this gets back to the severe structural problems that I and others see bedeviling us right now--the incentives are all lined up against those who try to be honest and constructive. This past week, Republican Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin did something I think unique for his party since it's been in opposition: he proposed a serious long-term budget that would eliminate the federal deficit. I don't think it's a great proposal on the merits: Ryan wants to privatize Medicare, and do so in a way that would render the program far less effective, and revive the private accounts model for Social Security that Bush tried to push forward five years ago. But it's an actual attempt to grapple with problems. And Democrats are attacking it to score political points in a manner roughly as shameless as the Republican barrage against the proposed health care reforms.
Thus it becomes that much more difficult for Ryan or any other Republican who might be inclined to propose something necessary but politically painful. And we continue to want ever more from government while putting in ever less.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Slow and Steady
While I entirely buy the premise that the time is always right to do what's right, I'll admit thinking that the complaints of liberals over President Obama's evident unwillingness to issue an executive order ending the ban on gay Americans serving openly in the armed forces are both naive and a bit hypocritical. The hypocrisy has to do with the fact that we didn't much like it when President Bush did most anything by diktat; the naivete is an unwillingness to face the reality that when you're pushing a cultural (I guess in this case, subcultural) change of some significance, there will be tension and potential or actual conflict. On a human or political level, I can't imagine a worse outcome than Obama or any perceived liberal Democrat ordering an end to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and then some Army unit beating the hell out of or, God forbid, killing a known or suspected gay soldier. A conversation I had last summer with a former Marine of unquestionable liberal views suggested that this was all too real a possibility if the change came too quickly.
So the news earlier this week that the administration and top military brass are moving forward on repealing that odious policy was welcome indeed--arguably it was the first good news we've heard in public life in 2010--and I wasn't troubled by the caveat that it might take a year or so. The key element will be to manage the change, preparing servicemen and servicewomen for the possibility of a gay comrade. The hierarchical nature of the military probably makes this slightly easier than it might be in other walks of life. That the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs characterized repeal as "the right thing to do," joining the civilian president and secretary of defense, is very encouraging in this regard.
As it happens, I think that allowing gay soldiers to serve openly not only will prove much ado about nothing in terms of peoples' fears on the question, but could represent a huge step forward in finishing the job of normalizing homosexual orientation in our society. Certainly it doesn't seem to be a major issue for some of our most culturally similar allies. But perhaps more to the point, there's nothing like direct experience and proximity, particularly under stressful conditions, to break down walls of misunderstanding and dispel myths. Support for same-sex marriage is sharply higher among people who actually know gay folks (or rather, I should say, know they know gay folks). Once the utter sameness of newly out gay soldiers is evident to all, a lot of straights mustering out are likely go home and spread the word that the fear and animosity toward gays they might have grown up in is groundless. At that point, it'll be much more difficult to maintain the other vestiges of legal bias on grounds of sexual orientation.
While I entirely buy the premise that the time is always right to do what's right, I'll admit thinking that the complaints of liberals over President Obama's evident unwillingness to issue an executive order ending the ban on gay Americans serving openly in the armed forces are both naive and a bit hypocritical. The hypocrisy has to do with the fact that we didn't much like it when President Bush did most anything by diktat; the naivete is an unwillingness to face the reality that when you're pushing a cultural (I guess in this case, subcultural) change of some significance, there will be tension and potential or actual conflict. On a human or political level, I can't imagine a worse outcome than Obama or any perceived liberal Democrat ordering an end to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and then some Army unit beating the hell out of or, God forbid, killing a known or suspected gay soldier. A conversation I had last summer with a former Marine of unquestionable liberal views suggested that this was all too real a possibility if the change came too quickly.
So the news earlier this week that the administration and top military brass are moving forward on repealing that odious policy was welcome indeed--arguably it was the first good news we've heard in public life in 2010--and I wasn't troubled by the caveat that it might take a year or so. The key element will be to manage the change, preparing servicemen and servicewomen for the possibility of a gay comrade. The hierarchical nature of the military probably makes this slightly easier than it might be in other walks of life. That the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs characterized repeal as "the right thing to do," joining the civilian president and secretary of defense, is very encouraging in this regard.
As it happens, I think that allowing gay soldiers to serve openly not only will prove much ado about nothing in terms of peoples' fears on the question, but could represent a huge step forward in finishing the job of normalizing homosexual orientation in our society. Certainly it doesn't seem to be a major issue for some of our most culturally similar allies. But perhaps more to the point, there's nothing like direct experience and proximity, particularly under stressful conditions, to break down walls of misunderstanding and dispel myths. Support for same-sex marriage is sharply higher among people who actually know gay folks (or rather, I should say, know they know gay folks). Once the utter sameness of newly out gay soldiers is evident to all, a lot of straights mustering out are likely go home and spread the word that the fear and animosity toward gays they might have grown up in is groundless. At that point, it'll be much more difficult to maintain the other vestiges of legal bias on grounds of sexual orientation.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Moral Satisfactions of the 2009 NFL Playoffs
It's probably no surprise to regular AIS readers (the few, the proud!) that I was emotionally crushed and spiritually appalled by the Eagles' pair of season-ending blowout losses to the Dallas Cowboys, an organization I'd rank near the Club for Growth, if not NAMBLA and al Qaeda, in terms of pure evil. If it weren't for the company and comfort of friends, and some high quality musical entertainment enjoyed with vodka and beer immediately after the second of those losses, the aftereffects might have lingered much longer. (I guess it's arguable too that I've grown up some since my late teenage years, when an Eagles loss on Sunday would weigh on my spirits till about Thursday. Though my wife might argue that one.)
But while nothing can totally remove the sting of my beloved Eagles getting waxed by those bastards--and the shot of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and George W. Bush high-fiving in a skybox after the game-sealing touchdown in the third quarter was one of the most horrifying images I've ever had to endure--the way the NFL postseason subsequently played out was pretty gratifying. First, the Cowboys themselves got embarrassed by the Minnesota Vikings eight days later, losing 34-3, with the last Vikings touchdown coming on a fourth-down attempt with under two minutes left. It might have been the most beautifully vicious fuck-you gesture in pro football since former Eagles coach Buddy Ryan called a fake kneeldown against the Cowboys that led to a touchdown in the final seconds of a 1987 game the Birds won 37-20. That Vikings coach Brad Childress was a longtime Eagles assistant, and surely had been talking to former boss and good friend Andy Reid during the week, added an extra dose of zing.
After the Vikings performed that socially useful fumigation purpose, they went on to face the New Orleans Saints for the NFC title last week. From a narrative standpoint, that game saw the perfect end of the Brett Favre story, which has agitated football fans for years. If you don't know, it goes something like this: Favre, the object of more sports-yak fellatio than anyone this side of Derek Jeter, publicly vacillates on the subject of whether or not he'll retire at the end of each football season--then comes back, basks in adulation, plays well for awhile and then fucks up in some highly consequential moment, killing his team. In the morally absolute football universe dreamt of by ESPN's Gregg Easterbrook, Favre is undone by his hamartia, or tragic flaw--in this case, the same need to be the star and hero of the story that drives his annual offseason Hamlet routine. All I know is that after a season in which he was uncharacteristically careful with the football, the "ol' gunslinger" threw just about the most damning interception possible at the last and worst moment, with his team on the cusp of victory... and now he and his team will watch the Super Bowl at home like the rest of us. This is beyond perfect:
(But the vexing thing about Favre is that, like Jason or Freddy or Michael Myers, however many times you seem to kill him, he keeps coming back! His last pass could have been the interception he threw against the Eagles in overtime of the NFC Divisional Round in January 2004, leading to a 20-17 loss for his Green Bay Packers. Or, more plausibly, his last pass for the Packers four years later: another overtime interception, against the Giants, to set up the game-ending field goal that gave New York a 23-20 win in one of the most exciting games I've ever seen. Or in the season-ending 24-17 loss to the Dolphins in 2008 while with the New York Jets that finished a 1-4 tailspin after an 8-3 start to miss the playoffs. But the guy simply doesn't fucking go away. I guess it's almost as admirable as it is pathetic.)
The Super Bowl matchup of Saints vs. Colts next weekend is the one a lot of us were hoping for as far back as three months ago, when both teams looked like they might get there undefeated. While that didn't happen, there's no villain that I see; it should be nice to enjoy the game without hoping someone will get a comeuppance and fearing that they won't.
It's probably no surprise to regular AIS readers (the few, the proud!) that I was emotionally crushed and spiritually appalled by the Eagles' pair of season-ending blowout losses to the Dallas Cowboys, an organization I'd rank near the Club for Growth, if not NAMBLA and al Qaeda, in terms of pure evil. If it weren't for the company and comfort of friends, and some high quality musical entertainment enjoyed with vodka and beer immediately after the second of those losses, the aftereffects might have lingered much longer. (I guess it's arguable too that I've grown up some since my late teenage years, when an Eagles loss on Sunday would weigh on my spirits till about Thursday. Though my wife might argue that one.)
But while nothing can totally remove the sting of my beloved Eagles getting waxed by those bastards--and the shot of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and George W. Bush high-fiving in a skybox after the game-sealing touchdown in the third quarter was one of the most horrifying images I've ever had to endure--the way the NFL postseason subsequently played out was pretty gratifying. First, the Cowboys themselves got embarrassed by the Minnesota Vikings eight days later, losing 34-3, with the last Vikings touchdown coming on a fourth-down attempt with under two minutes left. It might have been the most beautifully vicious fuck-you gesture in pro football since former Eagles coach Buddy Ryan called a fake kneeldown against the Cowboys that led to a touchdown in the final seconds of a 1987 game the Birds won 37-20. That Vikings coach Brad Childress was a longtime Eagles assistant, and surely had been talking to former boss and good friend Andy Reid during the week, added an extra dose of zing.
After the Vikings performed that socially useful fumigation purpose, they went on to face the New Orleans Saints for the NFC title last week. From a narrative standpoint, that game saw the perfect end of the Brett Favre story, which has agitated football fans for years. If you don't know, it goes something like this: Favre, the object of more sports-yak fellatio than anyone this side of Derek Jeter, publicly vacillates on the subject of whether or not he'll retire at the end of each football season--then comes back, basks in adulation, plays well for awhile and then fucks up in some highly consequential moment, killing his team. In the morally absolute football universe dreamt of by ESPN's Gregg Easterbrook, Favre is undone by his hamartia, or tragic flaw--in this case, the same need to be the star and hero of the story that drives his annual offseason Hamlet routine. All I know is that after a season in which he was uncharacteristically careful with the football, the "ol' gunslinger" threw just about the most damning interception possible at the last and worst moment, with his team on the cusp of victory... and now he and his team will watch the Super Bowl at home like the rest of us. This is beyond perfect:
(But the vexing thing about Favre is that, like Jason or Freddy or Michael Myers, however many times you seem to kill him, he keeps coming back! His last pass could have been the interception he threw against the Eagles in overtime of the NFC Divisional Round in January 2004, leading to a 20-17 loss for his Green Bay Packers. Or, more plausibly, his last pass for the Packers four years later: another overtime interception, against the Giants, to set up the game-ending field goal that gave New York a 23-20 win in one of the most exciting games I've ever seen. Or in the season-ending 24-17 loss to the Dolphins in 2008 while with the New York Jets that finished a 1-4 tailspin after an 8-3 start to miss the playoffs. But the guy simply doesn't fucking go away. I guess it's almost as admirable as it is pathetic.)
The Super Bowl matchup of Saints vs. Colts next weekend is the one a lot of us were hoping for as far back as three months ago, when both teams looked like they might get there undefeated. While that didn't happen, there's no villain that I see; it should be nice to enjoy the game without hoping someone will get a comeuppance and fearing that they won't.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
This Could Take Awhile
A little less than a year ago, I had the opportunity to interview economist Anthony Carnevale for CUF. During our conversation, he made a point I hadn't previously thought about: the way recessions work now is that the bulk of job loss isn't cyclical, but rather structural. In other words, you don't grow out of modern economic downturns by hiring back people who've been laid off from their old positions, but rather by creating whole new categories of jobs for them to fill.
A New York Times blog post from a couple days back made much the same point:
The diagnosis of a structural versus cyclical recession changes the prescription for how to ease the pain and restore growth. In addition to steps like putting more money into programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps, there's much more of an imperative for government to take what actions it can to accelerate the process of new business development and job creation. That means investment in research and development, financial support for post-secondary education of all kinds and at all levels, and steps to make credit more readily available. Obviously, the Obama administration did a good deal of this through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act passed a year ago in February, but it's now clear that they underestimated just how bad this recession would be and passed a too-small, too-slow measure as a result. (Frustratingly, the truly bright folks like Carnevale didn't--but they weren't "centrist" Republican Senators or "pragmatic" White House insiders, so their views weren't determinative.) And it's arguable that other measures within the ARRA that clearly had a longer-term focus and purpose, while probably justified in and of themselves, exerted an opportunity cost of less "stimulus" per se.
The political problem for the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress is twofold. One, if they don't see economic gains this year, they're going to get wiped out in November and even the president's reelection in 2012 might be at risk; two, the unprecedented lack of faith in government's ability to do pretty much anything both constrains what they can do in response, particularly with fears of the structural budgetary imbalance now well established in the public mind. (That Republicans are approaching all these challenges with utter cynicism--blasting the president on deficits with a straight face, then turning around and voting en bloc against restoration of pay-as-you-go budgeting, because cutting taxes is more important than moving the budget toward balance--doesn't help either; and that they're counting on the cognitive dissonance of the electorate to shield them from paying for this hypocrisy at the ballot box is additionally depressing.) In December, the president described this as "about as difficult an economic play as possible": trying to goose growth while being prepared to slam on the spending brakes as soon as the recovery is deemed secure. This is the signal they're trying to send by mooting the (substantively quite dumb and ineffectual) freeze on discretionary domestic spending.
Long-term, the problem is that the American public isn't ready to come to grips with the fact that our means--the revenue structure we've created for ourselves--are nowhere near sufficient to pay for our desired ends of generous entitlements, super-aggressive (and by any rational standard wildly and wastefully excessive) international/"defense" posture, and expansive safety net. I think Obama gets this, and he probably has a sensible plan to bring the country toward that realization. But unless we pull out of the worst of this downturn by 2012--with unemployment below 8 percent and real wage gains at the median--he probably won't have the chance to try it. For everyone's sake, other than perhaps the Republicans hoping to ride economic misery back into power, let's hope those new jobs show up sooner than later.
A little less than a year ago, I had the opportunity to interview economist Anthony Carnevale for CUF. During our conversation, he made a point I hadn't previously thought about: the way recessions work now is that the bulk of job loss isn't cyclical, but rather structural. In other words, you don't grow out of modern economic downturns by hiring back people who've been laid off from their old positions, but rather by creating whole new categories of jobs for them to fill.
A New York Times blog post from a couple days back made much the same point:
Lots of the bloodletting we’ve seen in the labor market has probably been permanent, not just cyclical. Many employers have taken Rahm Emanuel’s famed advice — never waste a crisis — to heart, and have used this recession as an excuse to make layoffs that they would have eventually done anyway. Some economists refer to this as the “cleansing effect” of recessions.
As a recent Congressional Budget Office report put it, “Recessions often accelerate the demise or shrinkage of less efficient and less profitable firms, especially those in declining industries and sectors.”
Think glassmaking. Or clerical work. Or, for that matter, newspapers.
...
There are multiple ways to explain why permanent job-losers represent a higher share of the unemployed this time around. Maybe, as others have suggested, many of the jobs gained in the boom years were built on phantom wealth. Or maybe the culprit is a corollary of Moore’s Law, the idea of exponential advances in technology over time. That might suggest that innovation and automation displace more and more workers by the time each recession rolls around.
Whatever the underlying cause, the result is disconcerting: compared with previous recessions, many more of the employment gains in this recovery will have to come from new jobs.
That is much easier said than done.
The diagnosis of a structural versus cyclical recession changes the prescription for how to ease the pain and restore growth. In addition to steps like putting more money into programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps, there's much more of an imperative for government to take what actions it can to accelerate the process of new business development and job creation. That means investment in research and development, financial support for post-secondary education of all kinds and at all levels, and steps to make credit more readily available. Obviously, the Obama administration did a good deal of this through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act passed a year ago in February, but it's now clear that they underestimated just how bad this recession would be and passed a too-small, too-slow measure as a result. (Frustratingly, the truly bright folks like Carnevale didn't--but they weren't "centrist" Republican Senators or "pragmatic" White House insiders, so their views weren't determinative.) And it's arguable that other measures within the ARRA that clearly had a longer-term focus and purpose, while probably justified in and of themselves, exerted an opportunity cost of less "stimulus" per se.
The political problem for the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress is twofold. One, if they don't see economic gains this year, they're going to get wiped out in November and even the president's reelection in 2012 might be at risk; two, the unprecedented lack of faith in government's ability to do pretty much anything both constrains what they can do in response, particularly with fears of the structural budgetary imbalance now well established in the public mind. (That Republicans are approaching all these challenges with utter cynicism--blasting the president on deficits with a straight face, then turning around and voting en bloc against restoration of pay-as-you-go budgeting, because cutting taxes is more important than moving the budget toward balance--doesn't help either; and that they're counting on the cognitive dissonance of the electorate to shield them from paying for this hypocrisy at the ballot box is additionally depressing.) In December, the president described this as "about as difficult an economic play as possible": trying to goose growth while being prepared to slam on the spending brakes as soon as the recovery is deemed secure. This is the signal they're trying to send by mooting the (substantively quite dumb and ineffectual) freeze on discretionary domestic spending.
Long-term, the problem is that the American public isn't ready to come to grips with the fact that our means--the revenue structure we've created for ourselves--are nowhere near sufficient to pay for our desired ends of generous entitlements, super-aggressive (and by any rational standard wildly and wastefully excessive) international/"defense" posture, and expansive safety net. I think Obama gets this, and he probably has a sensible plan to bring the country toward that realization. But unless we pull out of the worst of this downturn by 2012--with unemployment below 8 percent and real wage gains at the median--he probably won't have the chance to try it. For everyone's sake, other than perhaps the Republicans hoping to ride economic misery back into power, let's hope those new jobs show up sooner than later.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Down We Go
As it becomes increasingly likely that the Democrats will suffer a catastrophic loss in the Massachusetts Senate election to fill the remainder of Ted Kennedy's term, I'm not sure that anybody other than perhaps Sullivan fully grasps what's at stake here.
But first a quick word on the race itself. I don't find it "shocking" that Martha Coakley is probably going to lose; by all appearances, she's a mind-blowingly awful candidate. (This gaffe might be the last shovelful of dirt on the coffin of her candidacy; as an unforced error, it's truly hard to believe.) I just don't understand why anyone with no aptitude or appetite for retail politics chooses to run for office; there are certainly enough other routes to ego gratification or "power" in our world. Even in "deep blue" Massachusetts, I don't think it's a shock that a skilled politician, as Scott Brown seems to be, beats an awful one in a special election--which ensures both lower turnout and a closer focus on the personal attributes of the contestants on the part of those who are following the race.
No, the significance is that Brown is going to kill health care reform (for, it should be noted, no evident reason of policy substance--which is not surprising), and when it dies--whatever one thinks of its merits--a lot will go with it.
As I've written here many times, we have huge problems in this country that have festered for a very long time. Health care, complex as it was and is, should have served as a stretching exercise for some of those bigger issues, the most important of which are the country's long-term financial outlook and climate change. We needed the experience of solving a less intractable problem before taking on those tougher ones. Instead, we saw an unprecedentedly nihilist Republican minority solely interested in winning the political fight rather than solving the problem--with one result being that, even if reform still somehow passes, the Republicans kept their own most helpful ideas and priorities, such as tougher cost containment measures and tort reform, on the sideline rather than getting them into the legislation by the accepted path of negotiation. Meanwhile, a Democratic majority first failed to realize the new state of things, wasting months fucking around in the Senate Finance Committee with bad-faith Republicans Grassley and Enzi and Snowe before moving on, and then, at the endgame in December and January, snarled itself in the usual net of venality (the "centrists" in the Senate) and "principled" myopia (historically illiterate House liberals, who will deliver the death blow after Brown's election by accepting the unsustainable status quo over the already-passed Senate version... evidently failing to understand that they can come back to fix some of the problems BEFORE THE BILL GOES INTO EFFECT).
When he set out to do health reform, President Obama had a good idea in isolation--letting Congress, basically castrated during the Bush years, take the lead as it's supposed to do under the Constitution (and as Clinton didn't allow them when Democrats last took this on in 1993-94)--but one that failed to take into full account the realities that we've moved a good ways toward a de facto parliamentary system, or that he was a lot more popular than they were. (Still is, though they're both way down.) First-year presidents make tactical mistakes; as those go, this wasn't an awful one, but it's going to cripple him for the rest of his term.
And it's going to hurt all of us, Democrats and Republicans, in ways we can't yet fully perceive, by striking a potentially mortal blow to public faith in our governance system. That system is complex. It was never supposed to be easy to produce major change. But as the public increasingly expects instant gratification and self-selects into partisan echo chambers, failing to acknowledge that "the other side" might ever have a point--indeed blocks itself off from any information source that might convey a contrary view--frustration with the system's inability to deliver will mount. We already have an incipient proto-fascist movement in this country; I'm beginning to believe that a parallel, though probably smaller, movement will coalesce on the left. With this as backdrop, it might not take more than another terrorist attack, economic crisis, or natural disaster to unleash radical, destabilizing forces that bring us to grief.
As it becomes increasingly likely that the Democrats will suffer a catastrophic loss in the Massachusetts Senate election to fill the remainder of Ted Kennedy's term, I'm not sure that anybody other than perhaps Sullivan fully grasps what's at stake here.
But first a quick word on the race itself. I don't find it "shocking" that Martha Coakley is probably going to lose; by all appearances, she's a mind-blowingly awful candidate. (This gaffe might be the last shovelful of dirt on the coffin of her candidacy; as an unforced error, it's truly hard to believe.) I just don't understand why anyone with no aptitude or appetite for retail politics chooses to run for office; there are certainly enough other routes to ego gratification or "power" in our world. Even in "deep blue" Massachusetts, I don't think it's a shock that a skilled politician, as Scott Brown seems to be, beats an awful one in a special election--which ensures both lower turnout and a closer focus on the personal attributes of the contestants on the part of those who are following the race.
No, the significance is that Brown is going to kill health care reform (for, it should be noted, no evident reason of policy substance--which is not surprising), and when it dies--whatever one thinks of its merits--a lot will go with it.
As I've written here many times, we have huge problems in this country that have festered for a very long time. Health care, complex as it was and is, should have served as a stretching exercise for some of those bigger issues, the most important of which are the country's long-term financial outlook and climate change. We needed the experience of solving a less intractable problem before taking on those tougher ones. Instead, we saw an unprecedentedly nihilist Republican minority solely interested in winning the political fight rather than solving the problem--with one result being that, even if reform still somehow passes, the Republicans kept their own most helpful ideas and priorities, such as tougher cost containment measures and tort reform, on the sideline rather than getting them into the legislation by the accepted path of negotiation. Meanwhile, a Democratic majority first failed to realize the new state of things, wasting months fucking around in the Senate Finance Committee with bad-faith Republicans Grassley and Enzi and Snowe before moving on, and then, at the endgame in December and January, snarled itself in the usual net of venality (the "centrists" in the Senate) and "principled" myopia (historically illiterate House liberals, who will deliver the death blow after Brown's election by accepting the unsustainable status quo over the already-passed Senate version... evidently failing to understand that they can come back to fix some of the problems BEFORE THE BILL GOES INTO EFFECT).
When he set out to do health reform, President Obama had a good idea in isolation--letting Congress, basically castrated during the Bush years, take the lead as it's supposed to do under the Constitution (and as Clinton didn't allow them when Democrats last took this on in 1993-94)--but one that failed to take into full account the realities that we've moved a good ways toward a de facto parliamentary system, or that he was a lot more popular than they were. (Still is, though they're both way down.) First-year presidents make tactical mistakes; as those go, this wasn't an awful one, but it's going to cripple him for the rest of his term.
And it's going to hurt all of us, Democrats and Republicans, in ways we can't yet fully perceive, by striking a potentially mortal blow to public faith in our governance system. That system is complex. It was never supposed to be easy to produce major change. But as the public increasingly expects instant gratification and self-selects into partisan echo chambers, failing to acknowledge that "the other side" might ever have a point--indeed blocks itself off from any information source that might convey a contrary view--frustration with the system's inability to deliver will mount. We already have an incipient proto-fascist movement in this country; I'm beginning to believe that a parallel, though probably smaller, movement will coalesce on the left. With this as backdrop, it might not take more than another terrorist attack, economic crisis, or natural disaster to unleash radical, destabilizing forces that bring us to grief.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
How Did This Happen?
I should never have asked the question: What could be worse than having Kirsten Gillibrand, an unprincipled hack whose one political talent seems to be the ability to raise massive sums money, representing New York as a Democratic Senator? The answer: Harold Ford Jr.! The one-time golden boy of Tennessee politics and Democratic Leadership Council honcho evidently lives here now, and wants to run against Gillibrand for the Senate. His Wall Street friends--Ford is a Vice Chairman at Merrill Lynch, who seems to have avoided interactions with non-rich folks (other than the odd cabdriver, perhaps)for however long he's been here--think it's a swell idea, for reasons that seem pretty obvious: Ford is "a capitalist," except when the big guys fuck up. Then, evidently, his compassion overflows and he transforms into a socialist.
After an in-parts embarrassing interview with the New York Times, deservedly savaged by Gawker.com here, the Ford boomlet might be about to go bust. I hope so. Reading the full Times interview, I'm reminded of my impression of Ford when he ran for Senate in Tennessee four years ago: why the hell is this guy even a Democrat? Back then--his current elisions to the contrary--he actually tried to run to the right of Republican Bob Corker on "God, guns and gays." He's shamelessly flipped on all those--even more so than Gillibrand, who had her own set of conversions after being appointed to fill Hillary Clinton's seat--but if anything he's moved to the right on economic issues. He doesn't explain (and Times reporter Michael Barbaro doesn't push him to explain) why a relentless barrage of tax cuts from 2001-2006 didn't help produce long-term growth or other positive economic outcomes, but would do so now. There isn't a word about poverty, not a word about education, not much about finance reform--certainly no admission that the deregulatory policies of the last decade, which I believe he supported, did so much to create the current downturn. Again, why is he a Democrat? (The answer, of course, is that his daddy was, and Ford Jr. pretty much inherited Ford Sr.'s seat in Congress.)
Again, I'm no fan of Gillibrand. I wanted Carolyn Maloney to run against her. Or Carolyn McCarthy. Or Steve Israel. Hell, I would have supported Bill Thompson if he'd primaried her. The Tracy Flick comparison seems apt, and that she's an unelected senator appointed by an unelected (and thoroughly inept) governor is almost itself enough reason to want to see her challenged. But Ford has all of Gillibrand's flaws--the obnoxious and transparent ambition, the total absence of core beliefs, the evident faith that politics is about money--and a few of his own, notably the carpetbagging and the crony capitalist inclinations. If that's the choice, it's an easy call for me... but more than anything, it's infuriating that in a state with as many good progressives in public life as New York, our options seem to be limited to these two clowns.
I should never have asked the question: What could be worse than having Kirsten Gillibrand, an unprincipled hack whose one political talent seems to be the ability to raise massive sums money, representing New York as a Democratic Senator? The answer: Harold Ford Jr.! The one-time golden boy of Tennessee politics and Democratic Leadership Council honcho evidently lives here now, and wants to run against Gillibrand for the Senate. His Wall Street friends--Ford is a Vice Chairman at Merrill Lynch, who seems to have avoided interactions with non-rich folks (other than the odd cabdriver, perhaps)for however long he's been here--think it's a swell idea, for reasons that seem pretty obvious: Ford is "a capitalist," except when the big guys fuck up. Then, evidently, his compassion overflows and he transforms into a socialist.
After an in-parts embarrassing interview with the New York Times, deservedly savaged by Gawker.com here, the Ford boomlet might be about to go bust. I hope so. Reading the full Times interview, I'm reminded of my impression of Ford when he ran for Senate in Tennessee four years ago: why the hell is this guy even a Democrat? Back then--his current elisions to the contrary--he actually tried to run to the right of Republican Bob Corker on "God, guns and gays." He's shamelessly flipped on all those--even more so than Gillibrand, who had her own set of conversions after being appointed to fill Hillary Clinton's seat--but if anything he's moved to the right on economic issues. He doesn't explain (and Times reporter Michael Barbaro doesn't push him to explain) why a relentless barrage of tax cuts from 2001-2006 didn't help produce long-term growth or other positive economic outcomes, but would do so now. There isn't a word about poverty, not a word about education, not much about finance reform--certainly no admission that the deregulatory policies of the last decade, which I believe he supported, did so much to create the current downturn. Again, why is he a Democrat? (The answer, of course, is that his daddy was, and Ford Jr. pretty much inherited Ford Sr.'s seat in Congress.)
Again, I'm no fan of Gillibrand. I wanted Carolyn Maloney to run against her. Or Carolyn McCarthy. Or Steve Israel. Hell, I would have supported Bill Thompson if he'd primaried her. The Tracy Flick comparison seems apt, and that she's an unelected senator appointed by an unelected (and thoroughly inept) governor is almost itself enough reason to want to see her challenged. But Ford has all of Gillibrand's flaws--the obnoxious and transparent ambition, the total absence of core beliefs, the evident faith that politics is about money--and a few of his own, notably the carpetbagging and the crony capitalist inclinations. If that's the choice, it's an easy call for me... but more than anything, it's infuriating that in a state with as many good progressives in public life as New York, our options seem to be limited to these two clowns.
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