I find that in recent weeks, I've spent more time looking for hope on the right wing than I have from the left. I am, of course, still a proud liberal, and I still get a tingle from saying "President Obama." But his presidency thus far has been less than perfect, and given that the dire circumstances of the present time leave little room for error, we need to be especially deliberate about thinking critically about all of our leaders and their decisions.
Like the President, I back Keynesian policies in the face of an economic crisis like the one we're in: we spent our way into this mess and now we have to bite the bullet and, very strategically, spend our way back out. "Shovel-ready projects" are a good first step, as well as steps to reinforce the social welfare safety net by extending unemployment benefits. I completely back Obama's holy trinity of energy, health care, and education: I think that the first two can provide a valuable short term economic stimulus and the latter will build a foundation for long term viability.
But as we're all so painfully aware, the biggest federal expenditures right now are going to the financial sector which (not single-handedly, mind you) emptied a clip of hollowpoints into the system that made them rich. We're propping up banks far beyond the basic assurances of the FDIC, often taking control of them, and assuming all of their losses while taking none of the gains. Meanwhile, as
Eliot Spitzer has been trying to point out in his Slate articles (which are a must-read), we're also bailing out AIG so that they can make good on their insurance policies by paying huge amounts...
to the very banks we already paid off. Meanwhile, all of this is being financed by the Chinese, who not only have a government inhospitable to the capitalist-democratic way of life, but who could stand some capital injections of their own.* All of this debt is increasing rapidly not only in principle, but every additional dollar we spend is accruing interest. Each year in our budgets we keep current on the interest, meanwhile constantly adding to the amount on which we're paying that interest.
Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany won't go on board for the kind of massive government spending that Obama wants from his counterparts throughout the developed world, and very shrewdly: "Over the next decade we will undergo a massive demographic change, and, therefore, borrowing is a greater burden for the future than in a country with a much more continuously growing population." It's a popular trope to say that we're leveraging our current excesses on the earnings of our children. But what should happen if, like Germany, our population levels off or starts declining... or even worse, if we don't turn around the growing class disparity and the vast majority of American children remain in an impoverished underclass with limited earning potential? What happens with that debt then? What happens to our budget projections? It's one thing to plan for what happens if everything turns out as planned, but what about contingencies? Natural disaster? A large-scale terrorist attack? An oil shortage based on our sabre-rattling with both Venezuela and Iran? We have to face the possibility that our economy will likely not be fixed by the end of the year, and even when it is fixed, it will be some time before it's as strong as it needs to be to pay off the obscene amounts of debt we're accruing.
The cartoonists are lampooning Obama daily for his deference to the needs of Wall Street while playing tough with Detroit (which, mind you, would be well served with three long-due bankruptcies and the creation of incentives for foreign automakers to expand into Detroit and employ UAW labor -- support good products and American labor until American companies make a product worth buying). The shouts of populist rage are audible from sea to shining sea, and many of us are hoping in vain for Obama to let the financial industry tank so we can rebuild it in a responsible model. Indeed, it's often hard to tell the left from the right, when the conservatives are accusing the liberals of socialism for wanting to disassemble astronomically reckless banks and restore broad-based financial autonomy and independent ownership so we can engage in true economic
competition.
Unfortunately, as we all know, that won't happen. Building an economy where there wasn't one before is challenge enough (see Eastern Europe, 1991), but completely restructuring one of the largest and most convoluted financial systems in history is beyond the range of any President, even Barack Obama. Letting Wall Street and Detroit do a faceplant would wreak more havoc in the short-term than America would stand for, and Washington would be forced by that same populist rage to realign their goals and strategies before they had a chance to do any good with the opportunity they had created. No, for as frustrating as it can be to watch, dismantling the financial institutions we've all come to know and loathe is a project that should be saved for when we have another house to live in after we've burned this one down, not when we have an unemployment rate at 8.5% and rising fast.
With so many problems in having free-for-all battle to determine which gets to screw us the hardest, it seems obvious to me that it's necessary for public officials to remember once again that communication is a two-way street. I'm normally one to defend a certain amount of partisan bickering: I think people often vote along a party line because that's what they really believe, and that's why they joined that particular party. But a republic is built upon the principle of debate, and a real debate only exists when each party can acknowledge that they don't have all the answers, and that the other party has some validity to their argument.
And so, though I hate to find myself saying this, I'm keeping my eye on the right wing for glimmers of hope (however small) that a loyal conservative opposition may appear. And slowly but surely, they are starting to emerge.
- Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins. I don't expect them to defer to the Democrats on every issue, but at least they've demonstrated an ability to listen.
- John Feehery, a lobbyist and former staffer for GOP Speaker Dennis Hastert wrote a remarkably mild-mannered (though somewhat naive-sounding) column for CNN encouraging civil debate:
Instead, Republicans should allow themselves to like the president, just as they fight against his policies. And as they fight his policies, they should do all that they can to market their own ideas so that the American people understand that the Republicans have positive alternatives that will make our country stronger, safer and more prosperous in the future.
- John McCain, who I've said plenty of unkind words about over the last year or so, is wrangling with his party and trying to convince them to make a positive contribution and not aim solely to sink the Obama administration. Obama's budget passed on a party-line vote, but during the debate, John McCain was pushing for the GOP to put forward a full alternative budget which would suggest a vision of how they wanted to move forward. The GOP platform seems to be a completely context-free, generic "More tax cuts, less spending, more aggression, fewer earmarks" platform. McCain is absolutely guilty of wearing all of those hats and wearing them until they're threadbare. But a fully fleshed out proposal planning out how those principles would help the country would be a far better contribution to the public discourse than the reflexive nay-saying we're getting now. The GOP leaders opposing McCain suggest that it's "not their job" to make a budget since they're in the minority. I would argue that as elected officials and civic leaders it is absolutely their damn job and even when I'm feeling bipartisan (like right now) I'm not giving them an ounce of respect until they show some sort of comprehension that they have responsibilities to accomplish things. Until then, much to my chagrin, I'll have to look to John McCain to provide principled leadership on the right.
- Charles Krauthammer. No, really. Stop laughing! I cite as evidence that Krauthammer is providing a valuable discourse his column from last Friday. He laughs off the conservative hysteria over Obama's promise to back manufacturer warrantees on all American cars, because he knows that that's a sideshow for Obama.
Obama has far different ambitions. His goal is to rewrite the American social compact, to recast the relationship between government and citizen. He wants government to narrow the nation's income and anxiety gaps. Soak the rich for reasons of revenue and justice. Nationalize health care and federalize education to grant all citizens of all classes the freedom from anxiety about health care and college that the rich enjoy. And fund this vast new social safety net through the cash cow of a disguised carbon tax.
All of this is, as far as I can tell, is completely accurate. As a liberal, I see no problems with this. I think healthcare is a right and I have no problem saying it. I believe in levelling the economic playing field enough that opportunity is equalized (though absolutely not the rewards for utilizing those opportunities), and I have absolutely no problem using taxes on pollution to help do it. I see Krauthammer as so valuable to the debate because I think he is as brilliant analytically as he is amoral. He is interested in strength, intelligence, and success. Human rights are a principle to be fought for in words, as a tool for condemning other countries, but have no meaning to him. Social justice is folly, and weakness. Conciliatory foreign policy is something to be mistrusted. But as I think I've made evident by now, my interest is in generating valuable, considered dissent, which Krauthammer never fails with. Liberals don't trust Goldman Sachs, and they shouldn't. By the same token, Krauthammer doesn't trust Russia, and as far as I can see, he shouldn't. We need men like Barack Obama to create a vision of an America worth living in, who are wary of unregulated markets. And we need people like Charles Krauthammer who are devoted to their cold analysis to remind us that sometimes paranoia is justified, that being nice can't be our only foreign policy, the government won't fix human nature, and who will take the baby out of the bath before we dump the water. When I read his columns, I'm often enraged. But I've found that there are two types of partisan rage: the kind where someone is spouting nonsense and people are paying attention, and the kind where you're furious because someone has made a logical point that contradicts your political dogma. More often than not, Krauthammer incites the latter. Many liberals mourned just as conservatives did over the death of William F. Buckley because he was dedicated to the truth as he saw it, to his idea of a better America, not to his party. I won't go so far as to state that Krauthammer is on the same level as Buckley, but I do believe his loyalty lies in the same place, and he's a better option than Jonah Goldberg, Ramesh Ponnuru, or any of those other goofs at the National Review.
I suppose what I'm trying to get out of this is that I'm gradually starting to have more faith in the "marketplace of ideas" than I have in my lifetime. We have a good president with a nimble intellect who is
willing to listen to his opposition. In addition to a liberal population that got their shouting muscles warmed up during the Bush presidency calling for action on the left, there's valuable analysis and even a (limited) desire to propose alternative solutions on the right. And even if it's only represented by three lonely senators whose party has them on the chopping block, at least
someone in the elected opposition is willing to listen. What I want from Washington is for Barack Obama to push as hard as he can for his position, with rational people making principled arguments that he's wrong. And I want him to hear them out, and adopt their ideas when they're worthwhile. This is the beautiful, foolish idealism -- and the challenge -- laid forth by the founding fathers when they gave us our free speech and our democratic republic. I want to see our country get closer to meeting that challenge, and I think it's possible we might be inching forward.
*Anecdotal evidence: the company I work for has a number of its interests wrapped up in development in China. I was able to write all of this at work, almost entirely in one afternoon.
