The Op-Ed columns won't shut up about race and the "historic" nature of this election. On the flipside, there are others who also think this is about race: white liberal guilt. Both groups are missing the point. We elected the guy who taught Constitutional Law at Harvard for four years, who happens to have an ethnically mixed geneology. Ultimately, it means that the incumbent party has been defeated, ending eight years of corruption, torture, cronyism, and constitutional usurpations. Those things are not inherent in the Republican Party, only in how it came to define itself under a Bush Presidency--and thanks, in no small part, to the elusive Dick Cheney.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in the candidacy of Senator John McCain. The primary candidate who won nomination by exciting the middle became convinced that he could not win without securing the base; the Bush base. We kept seeing the real maverick peering out over the arcane machinery installed by Karl Rove, which has, unfortunately, come to define the Republican Party. The galant concession of our noble warrior was eclipsed by the bitterness of his "supporters," who offered their candidate only muted applause, heckled him and booed every mention of the Democratic contender, while cheering McCain's running mate as though she had won. It was evidence of a bitter divide--not between white and black, but between two sides of a social construct: left and right, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican.
Remembering Senator McCain's RNC acceptance speech, he admonished his party toward their better instincts, saying, "I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party: we were elected to change Washington and we let Washington change us. . . . We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave into the temptation of corruption. . . . We lost their trust when we valued our party over our principles. We're going to change that." This was the maverick we'd heard about. We saw him again at a rally, battling the the lies propagated by his own campaign, correcting a woman who blurted out, "He's [Obama] a Arab." Sadly, it was those rare glimpses when we saw McCain, the reformer, that we also saw his attempts at reform summarily rejected by the Republican base, a base whose identity has them locked in to the ideological struggles of the past, which occurs in the social construct of dichotomy, where every issue can somehow be categorized as liberal or conservative.
Are Newton's Laws of Motion liberal or conservative laws? It's a silly question, since laws of physics aren't filtered through a paradigm, they simply are. So why should existing solutions be any different? If we break a steel rod in half, do we reconnect it with a conservative or a liberal weld? So how do we fix our broken economy? What if "conservative" ideas won't work right now? If a liberal idea does work, does it mean that all conservative ideas are wrong forever?
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3 comments:
Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.
For those of us opposed to Obama, this has been a depressing week. With huge majorities in congress, Obama will truly be able to ram through comprehensive "change". How ironic the pundits are all wondering exactly what "change" he'll pursue. After 18 months we STILL don't know just how far Left the man really is.
But, there's a silver lining to the dark cloud after all:
1. Had McCain won, it could have been the end of the Rep party. After four years in power, with a Dem Congress and in a painful recession, the Rep brand would have been even more tainted than it is today.
2. McCain was never a conservative and would have governed in such a way that it would have demoralized the Rep Base, further fragmenting the Party.
So...the Left won, but the next four years may be very painful for them. The expectations for The One are so unrealistically high and the economy so bad, many of the Obama faithful are bound to be disappointed.
For me, the key question now becomes whether Obama will govern from the Left or from the Center. If he governs from the Left he runs the risk of alienating many moderates who voted for him. If he governs from the Center he'll have a never-ending fight with the radicals in his Party. I'll be watching to see which issues Obama tackles first, and also his positions on A. The Fairness Doctrine, B. Card Check, C. the composition of his Staff and Cabinet.
IMO this election was a referendum against Bush...not an endorsement of socialism. The Dems would have won if they had run Gilligan. The next four years will be interesting...
John
I think that there's a great deal of ignorance with regard to "socialism." Socialist philosophers include Charles Fourier, Robert Owen, and Louis Blanc. The suggestion has not been "Socialism" but a Keynesian solution. This was how we worked our way out of the Great Depression--which Thomas Malthus, and by extension, John Maynard Keynes, predicted. Basically, the Keynesian economic model simply requires a constant rate of government investment into the economy, and it was this model that got us out of the Great Depression.
Savings accounts were what drove the Post-War economy. People received a higher rate of interest because savings accounts were how banks funded home loans. And we could fuel our savings accounts, because we had manufacturing jobs, which generated real wealth, both in terms of tactile products and in terms of real wages. In other words, you could get a loan to buy a home, not only because you were doing well, but because your friends and neighbors were doing well enough that they could put money into savings.
Stay with me on this: you might have noticed when the production jobs started disappearing that credit became increasingly important. A house, which cost around $10,000 during the Post-war boom, now costs $80,000 (the same house). Most homes cost over $250,000. Worst of all, state budgets--based on revenue forecasts, which were, in turn, based on predictions of property values--fell short when property values plummeted. I should know--I worked in a County assessor's office when the boom went bust; a lot of us got laid off. The dominoes started to fall when the revenue machine of government failed; this severed the investment link that had supported the economy, causing the economy to spiral down. Now the dominoes are falling: employers are laying off, spending has stopped, and no one can get credit. The key is in production jobs, created through government investment. This is not socialism, it is Keynesianism.
You are entirely correct about the expectations on the left, and frankly, I have my doubts that they can pull it off myself. That's why I started this blog: ideologies don't solve problems, solutions do.
Technically, I cannot call Obama & Co. socialists at this point. IMO socialism is a spectrum; all democracies with market economies have some socialism. For example, Sweden has a lot of it, with some industries nationalized (at least temporarily). Others have a middling amount, like England with relatively high tax rates and a larger social safety net. And some have less, like the US (social security, medicaire, etc.).
Obama has not indicated a desire to permanantly nationalize anything, nor have his tax hike proposals reached european levels (except for the tax on businesses). So...he isn't a socialist. But, the key is fixing the economy (high GDP growth, low unemployment/inflation) and I'm willing to give him some latitude on how he approaches the problem. I'm interested in solutions...not ideological purity.
I'm not convinced personal savings is as much a boon as you indicate, but in general I think we need to do more to encourage savings and get off the credit card. Maybe tighter govt restrictions on credit? This would hurt consumer spending (and probably economic recovery), but it should be considered.
Also, I'm not convinced draconian tax hikes or vast deficits (some have theorized Obama's 2009 deficit will be $1 Trillion) are the answer. Last year's budget was $2.4 Trillion in spending on $2.1 Trillion in tax revenues ($300B deficit). Isn't $2.1 Trillion enough to do the essentials and invest as well? Apparently not. At least not unless we can muster the political will to reform/reduce entitlements and cut some govt spending (Defense, ineffective agencies, etc.). Particularly hard to do when Obama is actually proposing a spate of new entitlements (health care, tuition assistance). IMO it would be responsible to have a combination of these methods: entitlement reform, cuts in selected govt spending, targeted tax hikes, govt investment in infrastructure, etc. If Obama chooses only those methods palatable to the Left, I'll know he's putting ideology/politics ahead of solutions.
You cite events (loss of manufacturing jobs/drop in home values) that impacted the revenue/tax base and claim the reduced base impacted govt investment/spending. But...govt budgets have never declined; haven't they actually outpaced inflation each year? So...govt spending is larger than ever (we've just been running big deficits). Isn't the actual problem that too much of govt spending is on things that have nothing to do with investment (overly generous entitlements, wasteful unproductive agencies, etc.)? I can support targeted tax increases (those that won't impact GDP growth) as well as continued deficit spending (as long as the percentage increase is below that of GDP growth)...so long as it's combined with reform of existing govt spending/programs.
BTW, a minor point of correction. FDR's Keynsian spending during the Great Depression was necessary to keep the wolves at bay, but it was WWII that actually brought us out of the depression...not deficit spending alone.
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