Is It Time For Obama-sonian Democracy?

As the Obama ship of state soars and plummets on the turbulent waves of the Restless American Sea, commentators urge the current president to grow a set, offering several presidents as role models. FDR. Truman. JFK. LBJ. Reagan. The commentators see these guys as tough, uncompromising stalwarts who stood firm for their ideas and values. 

(It’s debatable whether those leaders really were so uncompromising as we remember, but that’s for another day. For now, let’s agree that most progressives would like to see the president stand up stronger against the Just Say No opposition.)

In this turbulent, unpredictable era, perhaps Mr. Obama ought to go back further for his “stand and fight” inspiration, to the first Democratic president, AndrewJackson. As with Obama, voters either loved or hated Jackson. There were few truly undecided voters.  And the long-ago Jacksonian era holds surprising lessons for today.

For starters, now as then, most Americans want to reduce the size and scope of government. (Well, in theory, anyhow.  If you try to cut Social Security, Medicare, highway funds, college grants, business loans, defense contracts, or public television, you just might find yourself holding your political head in your hands as voters hurl you out the window.)

So while we’re under no illusions that voters really want to wipe out government altogether, very few want it to endlessly expand, either.  Mostly, both Democrats and Republicans believe in active government but see areas where it could be rolled back.

Their differences over when government should act or back off are the argument progressives need to have with conservatives.  In his day, Jackson brilliantly used the public’s desire for less government to dash his conservative opponents’ fortunes, shrinking their favored government programs while expanding the progressive ideals he favored instead.  Similarly, there are ways for today’s progressives who want robust government regulation and programs to turn the argument around on the supposedly limited government Tea Party folks.

Doing so would allow Obama and progressives in general to change the subject from the false choice of More Government or No Government to vigorous but more honest discussion about what Some Government would do.

I suspect progressives can win this debate over Some Government.  Unfortunately, time and again, we get suckered into the sure-fire loser More Government or No Government debate, which is not even close to reality. But it is devastatingly effective at crushing our chances.

The truth is that a principled liberal position exists on how to shrink the size of government, reduce overall spending, lower the deficit, while pursuing progressive goals in economic, social, and other fields.

Andrew Jackson showed the way.  In his day, as now, conservatives championed plenty of government programs.  Some of these were for taxpayers to fund road building and river navigation programs.  Another was high tariffs to protect America’s new industries.  They even had a national bank, created and guided by the U.S. government.

While Jacksonian liberals supported some of this, they generally felt it had gotten out of control.  They were especially incensed that so many conservative programs had long since been twisted more to suit political and business interests than to serve the people.

So the Jacksonian liberals rolled back the excesses in infrastructure investment. They found ways to protect America’s growing industries while opening up more foreign markets to American products. Above all, they won a huge clash when they successfully killed the National Bank. The monies were spread to banks across the land, gradually expanding economic power to the common people.

By taking on conservative big government, liberals can get citizens to realize that the true argument is over what government should, and should not, do.  Neither party is socialist. Neither party is libertarian.

How do progressives accomplish this? Advocate cuts to conservative big government programs! Only then do we get a fair hearing for the programs we support.

Want to cut wasteful government spending that gets in the way of market competition? Wonderful! We liberals can’t wait to start.  Challenge Tea Partiers and their GOP allies to wipe out their favorite big government programs:

1. Slash taxpayer subsidies for big agriculture giants like Archer Daniels Midland.  We pay, out of our taxpayer pockets, billions of dollars a year to subsidize enormous corporate farming conglomerates. These giants need to make it or fail in the marketplace. No more depending on the taxpayers, fellas.
2. Do the same for mining and timber subsidies. The vast majority of so-called libertarians in the West actually demand enormous amounts of our tax dollars for their millionaire mining and timber operators. It seems to me that any self-respecting free marketer ought to demand these guys sink or swim in the market. If conservatives balk and demand this spending anyway, they will be exposed as frauds regarding fiscal responsibility and free markets.
3. Cut subsidies for ranchers. Unbelievably, even as 15 million out-of-work Americans are told we can no longer afford their unemployment benefits, conservatives defend huge subsidies of tax dollars for millionaire ranchers. In many cases, we’re paying millionaires NOT to grow things on their private property. This is absurd. Once again, this is mostly in supposedly libertarian Western and conservative Southern states. Tell these guys they can pay for any farming they want on their lands. It’s not OUR job to pay them. Especially when we’re pleading empty pockets to those genuinely in need.
4. End school voucher subsidies. As revenues shrink, the last thing our public schools need is for limited public funds to be sucked into private, mostly religious, schools. Yet once again, supposedly libertarian and conservative lawmakers demand that our tax dollars fund their pet private and religious institutions. We must by law fund public schools open to all. We have no such obligation for private ventures, which by definition ought not rely on government largesse.
5. Gut corporate welfare. This is where the libertarian / conservative hypocrisy reaches truly nauseating proportions. After laying off tens of millions of family-supporting Americans and shipping those jobs overseas, then pocketing the savings in huge executive compensation rather than investing in new jobs here, these companies now demand we subsidize their operations, perks, and worse through “economic development” projects. Most of these do not actually produce jobs. They threaten to off-shore our jobs, then reach into our pockets for subsidies to stay here.  Tens of billions of dollars a year subsidize these supposedly free-market giants, largely from state and local tax coffers. But small business, which produces most new jobs, gets next to nothing. Unbelievable.

In short, it’s time for liberals including Obama to take on these conservative myths once and for all. No more debating more or smaller government. Assure the voters that we have plenty of programs we favor shrinking, and in some cases eliminating altogether.

Then, once conservatives howl and defend these programs, we can have an honest debate.

In the end, citizens would see that liberals simply want government investments and regulations that promote opportunity for all, while conservatives generally want government activism on behalf of the already successful.

In our country where the middle class has been eroding slowly for the past three decades, while subsidizing wealthy conservative pipe dreams, this is an argument we cannot lose.

On Switching Recession Treatments In Mid-Course

Last year I spent a week in the hospital, fighting off a nasty cellulitis infection in my left leg.

It was swollen, looked a grotesque purple, and was as painful as anything I ever experienced.

Being someone who trusts doctors and the medical profession generally, I went in with the expectation that it would get better. Yet for the next three days, the pain intensified, the infection spread, and all the things the staff tried just weren’t moving quickly enough.

Believe me, I was tempted to walk out. (Rather, to hobble out, since only my right leg could sustain any pressure at all.) All their expertise, their confidence, their expensive drugs, and I was not getting better.

Late in the afternoon of the second day, the docs started me on a course of the strongest possible antibiotic.  So powerful that I was warned it could literally burn through my skin, causing awful scars. Yikes!

By the next day, the infection stopped spreading. Gradually over the next several hours, the temperature came down, the blood work showed reduced infection levels, and the purple began to soften to a dark pink and red.

Even though I knew I was getting better, and that recovery was underway, I deeply resented that the doctors and nurses took so long to get it right. Already I felt as though I should just tell them I was doing better, didn’t need them anymore, and thus I was leaving.

Dumping them, I was sorely tempted. Figured I might just get by on common sense and street smarts. But deep inside, I knew better. Frustrating as it was, the best course was to continue working with them at the hospital, until I was truly ready to go home.

By the end of the week, I was indeed healthy enough to leave. It took several weeks of therapy and rest at home, but eventually I was back, walking and enjoying two normal legs again.

Our national temper tantrum of the past year, culminating in the disastrous elections, has been a lot like my cellulitis experience, except that we collectively have decided to ignore the doctors, and just walk out and hope for the best.

It’s enormously frightening to experience nearly 10% unemployment, shaky prospects if we do have a job, and more.   The temptation to constantly fire one doctor and move to the next is understandable, from an emotional point of view.

Just as in medicine though, it rarely pays to react with fiery anger.  The truth is that while our economic recovery is just getting under way, we might well have chosen a course that brings the disease back, only worse.

Instead of allowing the medicine to work its course, and possibly agree to another dose of stimulus, we have decided we don’t need any more help. We just hired Dr. Let the Chips Fall Where They May.

Walking out on treatment mid-course and deciding it will work itself out rarely succeeds, in medicine or in economics. Experience and true common sense show that it usually leads to things becoming much worse.

I hope this is wrong. Unfortunately, I suspect not.  If we try slashing our way back to economic growth, as the new team of doctors we hired last week suggest, I suspect we’ll have such a high unemployment rate that 10% unemployment will be seen as the good old days.

State of the Nation in the Days After

And so it was that the people spoke on Tuesday, November 2, 2010.

The U.S. House went from hugely Democratic to hugely Republican.

The U.S. Senate remained in the hands of a much smaller Democratic majority.

The new Pennsylvania governor will be Republican, as will both houses of the state legislature.

Now, on to the Tea leaves!

Forthwith, some thoughts and observations on the days after:

In Washington:

Unrelenting, restless anxiety whipsaws the nation yet again

For the fifth time in just ten years, control of a Congressional chamber has switched hands. By contrast, between 1956 and 1979, neither changed hands once.

Truly enormous uncertainty, dread, confusion, indirection, and general anxiety dominate our times.  This produces massive rejection of whoever is in power. (2006 GOP majority thrown out of House and Senate; 2008 GOP thrown out of White House; 2010 Dem majority thrown out of House.) 2012? Stay tuned….

New Record For Fastest Broken Promises: 

What lessons will all this bring for the new GOP House majority? Well, the early tea leaf readings, leave much to be desired, at least for the hot-to-trot Tea Party voters.

GOP leaders already say that tax cuts do not need to be offset by spending cuts. In other words, kiss those balanced budget promises goodbye! 

Also, the Tea Party’s newly elected heroes responded to this treachery by rising up and firing their new leaders. Whoops! My mistake!

Actually, they responded by agreeing to keep the same old, same old GOP bosses.

Broken promises and status quo leadership! The Tea Party is off to quite a start.

In Harrisburg:

Change is the New Normal

As expected, Pennsylvanians changed the party in the governor’s residence after eight years. This has been going on without exception since the end of World War II. So strong is this tendency that it occurred even when governors could not seek re-election. In this regard, Tom Corbett’s victory is not surprising or a sign of massive rejection of Harrisburg.

In fact, the new GOP majority in the State House is also to be expected. Despite winning majorities in 2006 and 2008, Democrats almost immediately plunged into intra-caucus fights, leadership squabbles, and worse. Then it got ugly, as Bonusgate tore them apart.

With the legislature changing hands for the second time in four years, the GOP will have two years to bring some order amidst the chaos. In two years, my guess is that angry Democratic voters will vote with much greater numbers and intensity, primarily for the national elections. Nonetheless, the trickle-down effect should help Dems to gain back at least some state house seats, possibly humbling or erasing the GOP’s 2010-won control. 

What the elections mean for the next few years

In Washington

Tea Partiers voted GOP, primarily to repeal health care reform. Not to try. Not to give a good ol’ effort and fall short. No. The GOPers promised, explicitly, that they will repeal health care. This will sorely test the GOP’s ability to keep Tea Partiers fired up for the 2012 elections, as follows:

With the Senate remaining in Dem hands, repeal efforts will probably never make it to a vote in that chamber. If they do, there will not be close to 60 votes to shut off debate and allow a repeal to pass. Even if that highly unlikely event occurres, 67 votes would be needed to override a certain veto by President Obama. Don’t hold your tea breath!

Similarly, the Tea Party actually cost the GOP its chance to take the senate by running so many candidates who scared voters by calling for privatization of Social Security (this also will go nowhere), repealing minimum wage, and possibly reversing all American progress since before the Civil War.

Either the GOP further disappoints Tea Partiers by dropping this stuff, or it loses the middle and therefore the next elections by promoting this nonsense. 

In Harrisburg

The results in Harrisburg will be more along the usual lines. Corporations will have a field day for at least the next 2 years. Pennsylvania will continue as the only state in the Union not to tax natural gas extraction.

Public schools that saw major funding increases during the Governor Ed Rendell years can now count on being lucky to hold onto the funding they currently have.  The long unemployed will soon be out of luck, as “we can’t afford to help them.” But we apparently will be able to afford more for corporations and business generally.

Less clear is whether the reform agenda of Corbett really will stretch to reducing the size of the legislature, term limits, etc. An all-GOP majority probably won’t be so keen on risking their power and privileges now. 

Will the Facts Ever Matter Again?

Most dispiriting for all Americans desiring to see somebody, somehow, bring reason and compromise to our governance:

The new congressional majority is built on hard core supporters, the vast majority of whom believe the President is not a citizen, health care purchased through the private sector is socialism, death panels await the chance to kill through health care reform, global warming does not exist, and that we can prevent another economic meltdown by returning to exactly the same deregulation and anything-goes Wall Street mentality that got us into this mess to begin with.

So there you have it. The State of the Nation, in the days after.

Enjoy!