Paul Krugman: Centrism Is for Suckers

Paul Krugman has a warning for centrists "like Joe Lieberman and many members of the punditocracy":

Centrism Is for Suckers, Partisanship, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: If you want to understand the state of America today, a good place to start is with the contrast between the political strategies of conservative business advocacy groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and those of more or less liberal advocacy groups like the Sierra Club.

The chamber recently got into trouble because of ads it ran praising Republican[s] ... who, it said, voted for the Medicare prescription drug program. It turned out that one of the congressmen ... actually voted against the program, while two others weren’t even in Congress when the vote took place.

Oops. But the bigger question is, aren’t business groups supposed to favor fiscal responsibility and reducing the size of government? So why is the chamber praising a program that substantially increases the size of government and has no visible means of financial support?

The answer is obvious: the ... chamber, like many conservative organizations these days, believes that its interests are best served by helping Republicans win elections. ...

If you want an even starker example, consider ... that the National Federation of Independent Business, the small-business lobby, is supporting the bizarre, hybrid ... legislation... rais[ing] the minimum wage while sharply cutting taxes on very large estates.

From a small-business owner’s point of view, this ... makes no sense. Many ... small businesses believe, rightly or wrongly, that they would be hurt by a rise in the minimum wage. Meanwhile, ... if current law had applied in 2000, only 135 small business estates would have paid any tax... But ..., like the chamber, the federation believes that its interests are best served by acting as a loyal servant of the Republican electoral effort...

Now compare this with the behavior of ... the Sierra Club, the environmental organization, and Naral, the abortion-rights group... [B]oth ... have endorsed Senator Lincoln Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, for re-election. The Sierra Club ... defended the Chafee endorsement by saying, “We choose people, not parties.” ...

But while this principle might once have made sense, it’s just naïve today. Given both the radicalism of the majority party’s leadership and the ruthlessness ...[of] its control of the Senate, Mr. Chafee’s personal environmentalism is nearly irrelevant...; the only thing that really matters for the issues the Sierra Club cares about is the “R” after his name.

Put it this way: If the Democrats gain only five rather than six Senate seats this November, Senator James Inhofe, who says that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” will remain ... as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. And if that happens, the Sierra Club may well bear some of the responsibility.

The point is that those who cling to the belief that politics can be conducted in terms of people rather than parties — a group that also includes would-be centrist Democrats like Joe Lieberman and many members of the punditocracy — are kidding themselves.

The fact is that in 1994, the year when radical Republicans took control both of Congress and of their own party, things fell apart, and the center did not hold. Now we’re living in an age of one-letter politics, in which a politician’s partisan affiliation is almost always far more important than his or her personal beliefs. And those who refuse to recognize this reality end up being useful idiots for those, like President Bush, who have been consistently ruthless in their partisanship.

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Previous (7/31) column: Paul Krugman: Shock and Awe
Next (8/7) column: Paul Krugman: Intimations of Recession

Comments

[dryfly]

Dick Armey (ex-rep, GOP, Texas) once said...

"The only thing you find in the middle of the road are yellow lines and dead armadillos."

Yep.

[Bruce Wilder]

After contemplating the Schumer interview in the American Prospect which Prof. Thoma kindly linked to, the other day, and a post by Digby at Hullabaloo, about "the fear of hippies", I was thinking about how odd it seemed that anyone would confuse the Kos of DailyKos or Lamont in Connecticut with 60's radicalism. Chuck Schumer, clearly, is still disturbed by the fact that Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew (now there was a piece of work) mobilized the dismemberment of the New Deal coalition around resentment of a caricature of 60's radicalism. Digby was taking a swipe at several pundits, who, evidently, have taken one look at millionarire businessman Lamont and started having acid flashbacks.

It is weird, and, yet, I could kind of understand. Nixon took the resentments of ex-ethnics in the north and west, and combined it with the racism of white southerners, and created the beginning of a Republican majority. Reagan took up where Nixon left off. The division of the electorate between the parties has depended on those barely suppressed resentments, and the obliviousness of idealistic liberals, of course, who played along unknowingly. Clinton and the DLC introduced a back and fill defense, a move toward the center, which involved Sister Soujah moments and frequent verbal assaults on liberals (soon a dirty word in American politics). Clinton got two terms, and the Democratic Party was further weakened by intraparty hostility.

There was time in American politics, when ideology and partisan affiliation were tangential at best. At the mid-19th century, with Civil War looming, neither Party was willing to take a stand on two of the biggest issues of the day: temperance and immigration. The Republicans took a stand, not on slavery, but on slavery expansion, and look what that got them. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson both claimed the Progressive banner, which party regulars eschewed. FDR led a partisan coalition, which included Henry Wallace (a socialist by any other name) and Theodore Bilbo (a white supremacist ripe bastard).

The trick in any politics is to, somehow, form a successful coalition of the sane against the insane. In the post-WWII period, that coalition was bipartisanship. The sane, rational and pragmatic leaders of both parties used members of the other party to enact legislation and to, in effect, tame the crazies in their own party. Foreign policy was famously bipartisan from the moment FDR manuvered Wendall Willkie into the 1940 Republican nomination and then into diplomacy instead of campaigning, containing and neutralizing the insane isolationists led by Mr. Republican, Bob Taft. LBJ cooperated with and coopted Everett Dirksen; Reagan negotiated with Tip O'Neill.

At the same time, the idealistic and/or radical leaders took potshots from the sidelines at their moderate and compromising colleagues. Hubert Humphrey inspired liberals; LBJ enacted legislation. Goldwater inspired reactionaries, and scared every sane person in the room.

Those days are over. The Republican Party has been taken over completely by the crazies. George Herbert Walker Bush talking about "voodoo economics" was the death knell, and the last hurrah we now appreciate, was the prudent self-restrain shown in not forcibly toppline Saddam Hussein. The Republican Party, today, favors torture, national bankruptcy, corporate corruption, reverse Robin Hood tax and social policy, and seeks to repeal the Enlightenment in science, education and politics.

The success of the coalition of the sane hangs entirely on the success of a single Party, the Democratic Party, for the first time since the Whigs tried to rescue the country from the follies of Andrew Jackson. (Nota Bene: Henry Clay failed; his President, William Henry Harrison died, and V-P Tyler was certifiable.)

The Democratic Party is trying to expand to take in the sane refugees from the Republican Party, who are fleeing that now repulsive and thoroughly destructive organization.

Many of the emerging Democratic leaders and candidates are, or have become, highly partisan, without becoming "far-left". Howard Dean is pro-gun rights! Webb, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Virginia held subcabinet office under Reagan! Lamont is a millionaire businessman. Kos, founder of DailyKos, is a self-confessed former Republican and "libertarian Democrat".

Bipartisanship, as a coalition of the sane, is dead, dead, dead. Joe Lieberman, favorite of the Republicans, must exit, as no longer useful to Democrats.

Going forward the Democratic Party must reorganize itself in a much more coherent way. If the Democrats take power, they will no more be able to compromise with the crazy Republicans, in order to govern, than they will be able to milk Rudabegas for McDonald's special sauce. All the compromise necessary to govern will have to take place, intra-party. The Democrats will become, in essence, much more like the Parliamentary Parties in Europe. It will be not just a realignment, but a complete shift in how politics in the U.S. is organized.

[Bruce Wilder]

The dethroning of Lieberman seems to have compelled a lot of people to rethink partisanship. It is a development that has been a long time coming, but that contest seems to have crystallized the thinking. But, it is interesting that there is still such a divergence between the blogosphere and the mainstream pundits; I wonder, though, if the lag is not more than a few weeks. This fall's elections may be the most partisan since the 19th century.

I see Krugman as expressing a critically important meme, for the Democratic Party's self-assessment.

[hj]

The Democrats crippled themselves---how badly remains to be seen---by going along en masse with the stupid invasion of Iraq. If they didn't have that around their necks they would have a far easier time, IMO, this fall.

[slink]

bruce --i think correctly sees the real point

to become a progressive force
not just an occasional national majority
as the symbiotic "time out" party
the dems need to"krug radicalize"
and tighten up too

that means going into these issue movements
on their side of the policy divide
and saying
you say we are your party
prove it

ie
the party controls the groups not the group controls the party
this is not done by delivering
an issue by issue working control of the system

that collapses into clinton
speciak intrest pluralism
remember his laundry list speeches

but to be convincing
to groups
the national party has to tighten up
ie
the repug lite types must be purged

btw i buy the bad guys
party label party whip line
and add the k street norquist whip line too
obviously
thats how the party can produce these wonders
like the small business group
essentially lobbying against its on mission

on the other front
the repugs cover machine
needs to be disabled

end the effective fig leaf
log rolling
chaffe only has to come through z% of the time
for the party
because
of the donkey cross overs
a working majority on all these repug issues
comes from a slice of blue dog democrats
and other centrist finks like ..yes
the duke of fink county joe lieberman

[Movie Guy]

Bruce Wilder - "The Democrats will become, in essence, much more like the Parliamentary Parties in Europe. It will be not just a realignment, but a complete shift in how politics in the U.S. is organized."

I would like for you to continue this discussion point if you will, Bruce.

[billy]

'Centrism Is for Suckers'

"The only thing that really matters for the issues ..... cares about is the “R” after his name."

"The point is that those who cling to the belief that politics can be conducted in terms of people rather than parties — a group that also includes would-be centrist ... — are kidding themselves.
- Paul Krugman

Wen are liberal economists going to stop engaging Republican apologists like Bartlett, Mankiw etc in polite debate?

If it's really about economics, then why not more or like Bruce's "All the compromise necessary to govern will have to take place, intra-party" ?

There is Delong to Dean Baker on this side - enough of a spectrum for debate. Stop giving comfort to the enemy. Attack.

[anne]

Billy:

"When are liberal economists going to stop engaging Republican apologists like Bartlett, Mankiw, etc. in polite debate?"

Nice :)

[donna]

Yeah, the sane against the insane. I'll buy that. Right now most Dems are somewhat sane and most Republicans are somewhat insane. I say we vote Dems (excepting the insane ones) to have any hope of the country regaining sanity.

And for the record, I'm still a registered libertarian, so that tells you how far across the spectrum I've come. But I'm a libertarian who has realized that unfortunately, most people aren't sane enough for a libertarian government. They won't play nicely with each other. And the libertarian name has been turned into an excuse for selfishness instead of a protector of people's rights.

So these days I'm working with the progressives, the sanest people around. Those are the voices that most need to be heard now, and hopefuly, heeded, for us to have any chance of surviving as a nation at all.

Although emigrating to Canada or Europe is looking better and better....

[David Willett]

Carl Pope has a response to Krugman's piece here:

http://www.sierraclub.org/carlpope/2006/08/response-to-paul-krugman.asp

[Bruce Webb]

"When are liberal economists going to stop engaging Republican apologists like Bartlett, Mankiw, etc. in polite debate?"

Billy if they didn't exist Krugman would have to invent replacements. The question is whether the damage they are doing to the wider audience offset enough by the pounding they get from Krugman and on the Econoblogs and so the subsequent education we all get.

The benefit of having highly credentialled opponents is that you can be pretty sure these guys know they're are trying to spin dirty straw into gold. With guys like Lowry and Brooks you can never be sure if they are consumers or producers of the bullshit they print, but Bartlett knows the score. When Krugman or other recognized economist stops Bartlett in his tracks, the silence is damning.

I thought it was great that they tapped Andrew Samwick to post at Angry Bear, until it was clear he had no intention of responding to any of the comments. But just the fact that he didn't respond means something or could. Was it just not worth his time? Or did he just not have a counter argument?

[Holly W.]

I'd like to second Movie Guy's request -- I came in here today hoping to see Bruce Wilder expanding on his last comment about the Democrats having to become a parliamentary-style party and completely shifting politics in the US -- but no such luck. I'm looking forward to seeing further discussion of this idea, too.

[lonesome moderate]

Well, this whole line of discussion is of course pretty depressing to me. No, John McCain is not crazy, and it looks like the Republicans will be his party going forward. They deserve the chance to make their case. I even believe, still, that there was something good and admirable in George Bush. He is a corrupt, arrogant, and lazy man, but I still believe that he is a patriotic American who genuinely wanted to do the right thing for the country, even if that was the only genuine thing about him.

Of course, none of this matters right now, both parties are being swept up by events. Over the next three months we will most likely continue to get bad news about the economy and horrible news about the Middle East, with more clueless incompetence from the White House and paralysis in Congress. The Democrats don't really have to offer very much constructive to win by a landslide in these conditions (at least in the House), which is fortunate for them since they haven't and probably won't.

I can't imagine how this will be good for the country. I mean, come on, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi may be accomplished legislative fighters, but does anyone really think that either or both can offer visionary leadership that will unite the country (or even 51% of the country) and clean up this mess? No, they'll get us out of Iraq and probably raise the minimum wage and that will be about it. I hope I'm wrong, but I expect this to lead to two more years of drift and gotcha politics.

[Bruce Wilder]

I'd like to second Movie Guy's request -- I came in here today hoping to see Bruce Wilder expanding on his last comment about the Democrats having to become a parliamentary-style party and completely shifting politics in the US

I have a house to clean, a spreadsheet to design and bills to pay, but what the heck.

I was one of many caught up in the zeitgeist of the Fall of Lieberman last week. Like a lot of politically aware people of a liberal persuasion, I have waited since 2000 -- really since 1980 -- for some sign that the tide of putrid conservatism might be turned back. More than most people, I tend to see the political struggle as one involving the fundmantal "structure" of politics -- the small "c" constitution, if you will. Conjuring up an analytic vision of politics in a blog comment of finite length is not easy, but somehow the prospect that the reaction against the politics of Democratic accomodation might, finally, draw blood, seemed to make it possible.

The trigger for me -- and I think for a lot of others -- was the implausibility of the MSM narrative, which made Lamont out to be some kind of reincarnation of 60's antiwar activism. I can remember the late 1960's, as well as the whole of the 1970's, and antiwar leftism made little impression on me. Technically, I think I was subject to the draft; I remember being interested in my draft "number" -- where I stood in the rank order to be used to call people up, should efforts to form a purely voluntary force fall short. Those ahead of me in school were a generation, which did not want to serve; the "Left" consisted of those public-spirited enough to translate their personal preferences into opposition to the war in Vietnam; the "Right" -- including Bush and Cheney -- consisted of those whose personal preference to not serve translated into a desire to have others fight and die. Neither group's politics seemed particularly admirable to me, but of the two, I find the the 60's Left's selfishness and cowardice somehow less repugnant. Left or Right, the dominating ethos of the Boomers was selfishness, and a certain cynical view of for potential of government to do good, and therefore politics, for the shape of their lives. It is an outlook, which gave great scope to libertarianism, for good and ill, in my view.

My parents, children of the Depression and World War II, were terribly confused by the politics of the 1960's. They did not like the theatrics of protest. My grandparents, who thought Herbert Hoover a tool of the devil, had little difficulty seeing Nixon as a pretender, but I doubt my parents saw much difference between Nixon and Humphrey in 1968: that was the conventional wisdom -- there was no longer a significant difference between the political parties. Nixon sold himself as a hard-headed "tough" liberal, as against Humphrey's soft-headed, soft-hearted (or bleeding heart) liberalism. I, myself, voted for Nixon in 1972 -- may God have mercy on my soul -- because I regarded McGovern as a dangerous fool; McGovern certainly acted like one.

I knew Nixon was a crook in 1972, but I felt about Nixon like Lonesome Moderate does about Bush: I figured that Nixon was a crook, but a patriotic crook, who, when push came to shove, would choose the interests of the country. I actually felt Watergate vindicated my faith in Nixon's redeeming patriotism: when push came to shove, Nixon cooperated with his enemies to quietly and quickly dump Spiro Agnew (who really, literally was a crook, it turned out) and replace him with Ford. Nixon had to know then that Congress would never act to make Agnew, President, but that once Ford was in place, his days were numbered short. It remains a redeeming act in my view, even though it does not weigh against the butcher's bill of Vietnam, the premature evisceration of the War on Poverty, or the destruction of the economy.

I bring up all of this, to me, ancient history, because I suddenly realized this week the degree to which political identity is anchored for many people in the imagined divisions of that time. I say "imagined divisions" because what mattered in electoral numbers circa 1970 was the WWII generation; Nixon's silent majority were the people, who grew up with the idealism and conformity of the Great Depression and WWII, and could not understand the cynicism, with which the Boomers rejected government. For the WWII generation -- really a double generation -- government's goodness had literally saved them, first from starvation and then from world holocaust: world peace (precarious and spotty though it might be), prosperity, the Interstate Highway System, Social Security, a trustworthy Stock Market, safe medicines, safe and plentiful food, etc. were all products of government. The Boomers took just the opposite view; government was the problem, not the solution. The Boomers had no memory of a predatory, reactionary business establishment fighting titanic battles against the welfare of ordinary workers and consumers; big business circa 1970 was the trustworthy fount of middle class lives.

Two World Wars, a Great Depression and 60 years of Jim Crow -- all the products of reactionary conservatism -- ushered in a the liberal consensus of the 1950's. People, who had seen the Federal government of United States simultaneously defeat the world-threatening Empires of Japan and Nazi Germany in less time than it has taken George W. Bush to NOT find Osama Bin Laden, and then watched those countries rebuilt as staunch allies and the number 2 and number 3 economic powers in the World would have been amazed at the low bar we set for Barbara Bush's learning-challenged son.

When Reagan orchestrated a second implementation of Nixon's silent majority/Southern strategy for transferring white, middle-class voters from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, the Boomers were displacing the WWII generations in electoral importance. Nixon's "silent majority" was partially replaced by the "Moral Majority" of the emerging Christian Right, and libertarianism was brought in as a cover story for a largely silenced racism. The idea of government as inherently inept and incompetent had a plausibility for the Boomers, which it didn't for the parents.

I should explain that I don't take libertarianism seriously as a political philosophy or affiliation. As a set of ideas, it is, at best, a passing phase for college students -- literally sophomoric. (It is not an accident that a signficant part of Republican electoral support consists of white males, who did NOT finish college.) Rather, I see it as a form of political psychopathology, a way of reconciling self-esteem with reprehensible impulses, desires and anxities; a libertarian can mouth praise of individual freedom, while advocating functional authoritarianism or racism, very easily. Even better, a libertarian enjoys being always right, and of being able to propose to solve any problem by the simple, costless expedient of doing less (since the problem was caused by government in the first place). Libertarianism can only arise in a society, which has had in place a well-functioning government, for a long time. If you want to see the way you have coasted thru a life, handed to you by your parents and the achievements of previous generations in building a fair society and an effective, democratic government, as an heroic achievement of hard work without assistance from anyone, libertarianism is a flattering self-delusion.

Identity politics is key in a representative democracy. Sometimes, individual issues matter, but a two-party system tends to suppress the importance of individual issues. In the French Fourth Republic, there were three important issues -- clericalism, colonialism and I forget the third . . . socialism??? it doesn't matter -- and with 8 logically possible combinations of positions on those three issues, six major parties formed, each representing a unique combination.

In a two-party system, somehow, most people adopt a political identity or loyalty or leaning. As some wag had it, every baby knows instinctively whether he or she is a little Tory or a little Whig. Historians think party identification tends to be stable over time; political pollsters -- especially recently, which may indicate something important about our time -- tend to question this assumption.

Party identification is about personal identity, and not about individual issues, except to the extent that an individual issue has implications for personal identity. It can be, and often is, more tribal than philosophical, more about perceived class interests than personal interests. Such tribal identifications are defined oppositionally; it is all about who is out to get you and yours. Catholic becomes a tribal identity, only if the Protestants are out to get you.

FDR built Democratic political identity around pre-existing affiliations and identities: poor white Southerners, urban Catholics and immigrants, Jews, union members, northern blacks, grange Farmers, secular idealists, college-educated liberals -- these were Democrats. In every case, there was a sense of being tribally opposed to some other group: employers and businessmen, the Protestant upper class, etc. Often, this defining opposition -- my tribe against your tribe -- was local, rather than national, which is how FDR could get northern blacks and liberals into the same coalition with conservative Southern racists. Reagan became President at a time, when people did not have many affiliations. The fierce opposition between Northeastern urban Catholics and Northeastern rural Yankee Protestants (not to mention anti-Papist Temperance advocates in the South and West), which had made Catholics a reliable Democratic constiuency since before the Civil War, had faded from memory. Racism lived on, muted but real, but anti-semitism, in the South and among the northern upper classes was faded as well. The G.I. Bill and the perverse consequences of the success of industrial unionism meant a decline in class consciousness.

One thing that came to me, as the punditocracy and Democratic establishment reacted to Lieberman's demise, is the extent to which political identity built by Republicans around psychological resentments has been echoed by Democrats. I am talking about resentment of minorities, resentment of the arrogance of the better educated technocrats, resentment of "morally superior" liberals. Republicans have lengthy narratives about how whites are the "victims" of affirmative action, and Christians are the "victims" of store greeters saying, "Happy Holidays" and so on.

Moderate and conservative Democrats have fought to retain the votes of the Reagan Democrats partially by fighting fire with fire, partially imitating the tactics and narratives of the Republicans, to reassert a tribal common identity: "See, I am opposed to welfare and those "morally superior" liberals, too." I'm sorry I can't quite get the voice right, but I think people know the gist.

The thing about Reagan Republicanism and political identity is that it was much more successful in taking apart the Democratic New Deal coalition than in building a Republican one. Democratic party identification declined precipitously in the 1980's from roughly 40% to 25-30% of the electorate, while Republican party identification rose from the low 20's to rough parity with the Democrats at 30%. The abstract almost philosophical nature of Reagan Republicans' use of resentment to motivate political identity meant that it was much, much more successful at promoting ideological political identity than partisan political identity. Liberal became a dirty word; the number of people identifying themselves as liberals held fairly steady, but other people no longer wanted to be associated with the heroes of the 1950's, while those identifying themselves as conservatives, rose a bit to around 35+% of the electorate, forming a remarkably large ideological tribe, for whom their man Bush, apparently, can do no harm.

Ideological tribalism is inherently weird -- I want to draw attention to that -- but politically useful in the conquest of institutions. "Bias" in the Media or Academia is now a matter of not having enough representatives of the conservative tribe. And, the roles of journalist or "expert" or academic are subtly altered, by this strange merger of personal identity with ideology and worldview. A conservative journalist or academic, who would have been dismissed as an incompetent boob a generation ago, now claims unfair discrimination, like he was a member of a religious sect, which he kind of is.

Racism is still with us, of course. Racism puts blacks and native Americans, and, to a lesser extent, hispanics, in the Democratic Party. And, it puts tragically large numbers of whites into the Republican Party. It hardly affects Catholics and Jews, though. Conservative, evangelical Christians and Mormons are Republicans. (Indeed, Mormon Utah and Idaho are about the only places where Bush has majority approval ratings.) But, mostly the Parties, today, divide on ideology.

It is not a fully elaborated ideology, like European ideologies of the 19th and 20th centuries, where people were Liberals or Communists or Socialists or Monarchists or Anarchists. But, a question like, "Do you think your economic success in life is mostly a matter of hard work or good luck?" will get you answers that make it really easy to predict political identification. In 2004, if you entered the voting booth and asked yourself, "what's in it for me?, am I doing OK?" you voted Republican; if you asked, "what would be best for the country?" you voted Democratic.

That's really strange, but shifting political ideology and identification is only background for changes in institutions.

[Bruce Wilder]

That last post didn't bring typepad to its knees. I'm amazed.

The U.S. has an unwritten constitution, just as Britain does. A lot of people do not appreciate that, but it's true. The small "c" constitution is as important to the shape of the country's politics as the big "C" one.

Political parties and regulatory agencies are two features of the small "c" constitution, which are critically important to the institutional structure for how political choices get made.

The regulatory agencies were largely a product of the Progressive Era and FDR's New Deal, though LBJ and Nixon gave us a few, including the EPA. They are monuments to technocracy, to a non-ideological ideology of expertise and a progressive faith in the ability of professionals to resist corruption.

For a long time, the regulatory agencies thrived in a symbiotic relationship with bipartisanship and a slightly corrupt Democratic Congress. There's a whole literature, of course, on how regulatoryy agencies can be captured by the interests they are meant to regulate. It is not entirely true, since the agencies are also in danger of being captured either by idealists, who don't mind being underpaid, or by bored and demoralized civil servants, who just want to get along.

Real policy-making is complicated and uncertain. The best you can hope for is some kind of pragmatic balance between contending interests, married to intelligent and enlightened monitoring and adjudication. And, for a long time, from the 1950's through to Reagan, a rough balance was achieved most of the time.

It helped that, with solidly Democratic control of Congress, it didn't pay to bribe a Republican. That kept the Republicans relatively pure and principled. A Democrat could be induced to carry water for a business interest, but a Democrat was embarrassed by the hypocrisy involved. Because Democratic control was not in danger, business interests could be pandered to, without actually passing destructive legislation. (A Democratic Congresswoman I worked for in the 1970's regularly introduced legislation repealing Glass-Steagall on behalf of the American Bankers Association in a tacit quid pro quo for campaign donations, but she did so secure in the knowledge that, since she never went to committee meetings and could care less about banking, nothing she did would get past the Chairman.)

The Congress of the 1970's was also involved in an arms race with the regulatory agencies, whose expertise was in the hands of Republican Administrations. So, there were lots of hearings, and lots of resources went to new or expanded Congressional creatures, like the Congressional Research Service, the Office of Technology Assessment, the General Accounting Office, etc.

Business lobbyists, who were perfectly aware that their bribes were not getting them diddly-squat, also turned to the expertise game. Because of pay scales and the difficulty of creating a career path through political or regulatory agencies, business could do quite well in a contest among experts vis a vis many of the regulatory agencies and expert arms of Congress, assuming that at least some facts were on the side of business, and the credibility of business could be scrupulously maintained. It was kind of a golden era for technocracy, and for the reputation of Republicans as uncorrupted advocates of principle.

Not much out of routine got done in the 1970's, though some things set in motion earlier went forward. (The air got a lot cleaner through the rest of the century, because of the Clean Air Act; automobile safety improved steadily, etc.)

Reagan assaulted this whole system. He lied with impunity, which, all by itself, was an assault on this system. He proved that you could do very nicely in politics with fake facts and convenient "ideas", and resentment of experts, who tried to defend their power with "but it's complicated." There may not be simple problems, Reagan declared, but there are simple solutions. Deregulation became a watchword.

The Democratic majorities in Congress remained, but domination of those majorities by ideologically committed populists and liberals was faded and flaccid.

More than anything, Reagan awakened the pecuniary interest in politics, by delivering the bucks. A botched deregulation of the savings & loans, which would never have passed muster with a professionally competent economist within a hundred miles, was a huge wealth transfer to the very rich. A huge taxcut for the rich, with the barest ideological figleaf, undermined technocratic standards for controlling the budget, and delivered big rewards for a politically alert and, after that, intensely politically active, class of corporate executives and wealthy families.

The politics of resentment furthered the Republican cause, eroding Democratic allegiances, as well as deference to expertise and professional discretion. The promotion of "conservatism" as an ideological identity was of a piece with assaults on judicial activism, on scientific expertise. It was of a piece with the creation of fake "think tanks" and the insistence that, say, Brookings is a "liberal" institution equivalent to any number of PO-Boxes-cum-fax-machines with high-falutin' names.

The Gingrich Revolution, based on the history of Republican incorruptibility (it was never worth buying a Republican vote when they were in the minority), quickly made bribery through campaign contributions the way of the Congress on an unprecedented scale. The technocratic arms of Congress were cut way back; the Office of Technology Assessment axed altogether.

George H. W. Bush, who believed in expertise, having based his career in the semi-technocratic, bipartisan foreign policy establishment, and Clinton and the remnant of liberal Republicans slowed the transformation, but the advent of George W. Bush, supported by Republican control of Congress was the capper.

I sometimes complain that the Republican Party has gone insane. I mean that as more than a declaration of alarm or insult. The tribal identity of Republicans is ideological and narcissistic and, fundamentally, irrational. It is organized around ideological "faith" in an unrealistic and uninformed view of the world. Some leading Republicans say and do things, which are just amazing, in their detachment from reality. The ideology, which is really more of a tribal identity, is so thin, that, even on key issues on which they are supposed to be passionate -- like gay marriage, or flag-burning, or terrorism, or deficits -- they are just a gaffe or an unanswered question away from total incoherance.

So, this is where the Fall of Lieberman and the transformation of our politics comes in.

The whole progression since Reagan has been one of increasing corruption, financial and ideological. The undermining of the competence of government as a technocratic organization has been a central project.

Political identity is defined oppositionally. The Democrats, through no fault of their own, have become the party of competence, realism, rationality. "The facts [now] have a well-known liberal bias."

The Republicans would love it, if their conservatism had awakened some variation of the 60's semi-socialist, impractical-idealist that they have railed against. (Hell, if I thought Feingold was going to typify the Democratic Party, I'd be worried.) What it has awakened instead, in my view, are people, who want a practical, competent, fair, non-ideological government. Not radical leftists, but radical moderates -- exactly the kind of people capable of bringing about almost-revolutionary changes of direction.

Lieberman played the bipartisan game long after it was safe to do so. He played to the middle, after the middle pretty much disappeared. Worst of all, he "lost the plot" in Iraq, demonstrating that he was lost in la-la land with the Republicans.

Activist democrats base their Democratic allegiance and identification, increasingly, on an illusionless acknowledgement of reality; they are the "reality-based community" by self-definition, and that rather odd basis of party identification is spreading. Pragmatic, moderate and adaptible to circumstance by definition, it has a particularly sharp edge in the South and West, where resentment against imaginary northeastern liberals was previously used to build Republican identification. The Democratic Party is going to be gaining locally against Republicans in some of the most conservative States in the Union, including such unlikely States as Mississippi and Oklahoma, because reality is everywhere.

The Democratic Party is growing, taking in rational refugees from the Republican Party, and gaining some credibility with well-informed independents (both very small groups, but significant, perhaps, in the balance).

In terms of the traditional ideological spectrum, the Democratic Party will become signicantly more "centrist" as a result, but, at the same time, significantly more partisan and less inclined to compromise. You cannot compromise with people (i.e. Republicans) you see as basically dishonest or insane. (When those people identify themselves in terms that make them seem committed to insanity, that goes double.)

My expectation is that the Democrats will gain control of one or both houses of Congress by small margins, and Congressional investigations will expose the full extent of Republican corruption and the erosion of government competence. An agenda of technocratic "practical" reforms will be assembled, and pressed against the Republicans in 2008.

The Democratic Party will become more like a European Party, in the sense that its policy compromises will be made almost entirely within the Party. Bipartisanship will be dead, for at least two to three years. If the Democrats achieve even razor thin majorities in Congress, I would expect party discipline to match that exhibited in recent years by the Republicans. Poaching members from the other side, and even expulsions might occur, as the majority arrogates all policy-making authority to itself. Partisan discipline in the next Congress will be a thing to behold, whoever is in charge. Even if in charge, I would expect the Democrats, fully aware of a partisan Justice Dept, to use their partisan discipline to enforce an unusual degree of purity, which will only increase their identification with rationality.

And, like European Parties, I would expect the Democrats to rely less on the tradition of party self-identification to find and promote candidates, especially in hostile Southern, Mountain and Plains States.

I am not all that optimistic in the long run, because I don't see the Democrats addressing the two main problems with the American political landscape: campaign financing and Media Consolidation.

The internet is a partial solution to the campaign financing problem only as long as people are really, really angry at the Republicans. That's got two more years to run, at the outside.

The Democrats need to gain editorial control of some major Media properties, in order to break the monopoly of the corporate right-wing propaganda machine. Party identification of major newspapers is something that continues in Europe, but ended in the U.S. in the 1950's. Some diversity in Media financing and philosophy is necessary for democracy to survive, but no politician is going to want to get on the bad side of the Media.

And, then there's the Vision thing. The big shifts in American politics, in 1860 and 1932, came when the People changed their mind, profoundly, about who they trusted to find a way forward. In 1860, it wasn't really a hard choice: the Southern Slavepower managed to get itself associated with opposition to western expansion and development (and such popular projects as a trans-continental railroad, free homesteading, and land-grant colleges), and the North went the other way, willingly paying the cost of large-scale war to do so. Ditto, in 1932; staying the course, when unemployment is above 25%, and the banks are failing, is really not an option; FDR's vision was not all that clear in 1932, but people were ready for a try-anything, go-with-what-works-philosophy.

The U.S. is definitely at a cross-roads. We can fight an endless war in the Middle East, for control of Iraqi/Iranian/Saudi Persian Gulf oil, and make the planet uninhabitable in the bargain. Or, we can change course.

Three times before, with Nixon and with Carter/Reagan, and with Clinton-Gore's carbon tax proposals, we've faced this choice, and we chosen to keep cheap gas. Right now, Bush's unpopularity correlates very closely with the price of gas. If his war could deliver cheap gas, he'd be popular. I think it is possible, that, if his war continues to grow out of control, and it causes the price of gas to rise still further, people might . . . might be willing to choose an alternative course.

I am not convinced that they would not choose cheap gas via war if that path could get them there.

I do not think war is really a path forward. (I know I am really going out on limb on that one! But, clearly, lots of People on the Right think land war in Asia is the path to another American Century. Never saw the Princess Bride, I guess.)

Faith-based Republicanism is not going to take adequate notice of global warming, no matter how hot it gets, and if war fails, I would expect equal irrational schemes for strip-mining the soil to produce switchgrass and bio-gas or ethanol or whatever, might take over, on the Republican side -- the more productive of subsidies to business the better, of course.

But, I don't see the Democrats >leading< the American People toward a $3+/gal tax on gasoline. Some scary things will have to happen before the American People are fully ready for a rational vision, a rational way forward.

[Holly W.]

Wow, Bruce! Thanks so much. I've read every word every word of your posts (I'm surprised TypePad didn't just toss you out of that first one, too), and I'm printing them out for further consideration. Thansk again!

[lonesome moderate]

Let me second that, it was very interesting and insightful even if I don't agree with absolutely everything. Bruce's summation of the past twenty-five years of American political history was terrific, one of the best I've seen. I've always thought that Reagan got too much of a free ride, too many people want to believe that, because things mostly seemed to go OK while he was president and for a few years afterward, that he was a good president. His mention of the abolition of the Office of Technology Assessment gave me a bit of a start start--I had forgotten that that agency existed, but we need something very much like it today, which is no doubt why the GOP wanted to get rid of it.

It's still hard for me to swallow the idea of the Democrats becoming the party of honesty and sanity and "technocratic reforms", even for a short time. Not that I think it's impossible that it could ever happen, but I just don't see the political forces that are pushing them in that direction. Hope I'm wrong.

[Movie Guy]

Bruce Wilder,

Kind thanks for following up and doing such a fine job.

Next weekend, we'll send some guys over to help you do whatever needs to be done around the house.

Well done, Bruce.

[lessthanamused]

Enjoyed that very excellent post. I live in Northern Florida and the remarks about Democrats needing to get some editorial traction certainly apply in these parts. The monopoly of largely uncontested Republican talking points in some markets, such as locally, is a huge issue.