Republicanism makes me sick (sorry)
A recent opinion piece by Paul Krugman brought me to despair - and hope.
Krugman (International Herald Tribune, June 30, 2004) makes a case for the extent to which the U.S. administration of post-invasion Iraq has installed right-wing ideologues and nepotist favorites. Paul Bremer, about whom I heard mostly good things at the time of his appointment, was quoted as fervent about privatization of government-run factories. His list of major accomplishments upon leaving included reduced tax rates (!), reduced tariffs and liberalization of foreign investment laws. The column goes on to cite appointments of family of administration supporters. (Would we find it acceptable to appoint such people as colonels in the Air Force?)
The Hollow Men
I fear that the Republican Party, after taking on board the populist racism and religious fundamentalism of the South, has taken the next step to complete cynicism. What else is there to think about a party that works its tail(hook) off to seem like the party of NASCAR racing, but delivers only tax cuts for the rich in the way of results? Of course their appointments to the bench must be given credit for pursuing a broader agenda. They stand up to those who would use the courts to turn social issues into mere matters of just and equitable treatment, as though the legislatures were not competent to weigh the other factors into the decision. And they safeguard our future by properly rewarding winners, as when they carefully weigh the hypothetical potential benefits of Microsoft’s monopoly against its more obvious arrogant repudiation of the agreement to refrain from using its monopoly to extend its monopoly. This is a party who believes in its constituents, to the point of believing that they can use their money to fool millions of ordinary voters into thinking the party stands for them. After all, if George Bush can’t get prayer back in schools and eliminate the teaching of evolution, who can?
What I want to consider here is whether any party that so blatantly conducts business on two levels can maintain any integrity.
Let me say at the outset that I know the search for integrity in politics is more than a touch quixotic. For every example we could find, there are at least two or three smelly compromises they have accepted, and dozens of completely unscrupulous counterparts in their political party. But I am really talking not about moral integrity, but rather the ability to maintain a coherent point of view that informs issues, in the sense of giving a fair share of intelligent predictions that cannot be made solely on the basis of the known facts. If there is no such Take on How the World Works that can be preached and referred to honestly, then power becomes its own justification. At that point the ordinary moral tawdriness of politics becomes a thing of evil. If I can be completely concrete, my question is whether a person like John McCain, who has been physically tormented by men in such a demonic dilemma, will be able to stomach what the Republican Party is turning into?
It is the party of the rich, pretending to be the party of the ordinary. Any resemblance to the ante-bellum South is purely coincidental.
When it was the party out of power, the GOP did not have to worry too much about reconciling its very different positions opposed to activist government. The Reagan Democrat nemesis of social reform, especially if pursued through the courts, looked enough like a justice-based redistribution of wealth to maintain the appearance of coherence in a pinch. And to the racists who worried that redistribution meant loss of what little property and status they had, in favor of those they had made a sacred principle of keeping even further down, the kinship of liberalism to communism was obvious. But now the Republicans are in a position of having to legislate and to provide government services, and they are seriously afraid that voters might figure out the implications of an ideology that can only reject government involvement in society.
This chasm at the core of their beliefs is only the beginning of their problems with coherence between theory and practice. They have deliberately chosen to represent ignorance against understanding, because that is what their largest group of persuaded voters wants. Ronald Reagan went so far as to declare that he wasn’t sure evolution was correct, and thought it was appropriate for creationism to get equal time. This is the sort of thinking you expect from a person who considers himself primarily a performer and mouthpiece, but what does it imply about the party that embraced him?
There is actually an insightful analysis out there about this situation. It says that educated Republicans tend to be “Managers”, who emphasize self-control as the essential virtue in life, while educated Democrats tend to be “Professionals” who emphasize understanding of the world as the essential virtue in life. (Sorry I didn’t clip it, so I can’t cite the source). Try that one as an explanation of the difference in approach to Global Warming, for example, and you see that it makes a lot of sense. The problem is not that educated Republicans deny the facts about science, it is that they don’t want to get carried away with them and make decisions that cost too much based on uncertain evidence. Of course, this creates a strong tension within their leadership ranks, making them want to exaggerate the uncertainty of the evidence for the purpose of securing a larger share of current money and power for the true constituents. They cannot afford to be as fair-minded about the evidence as the people they want to manipulate.
Campaign finance reform, anyone?
And of course, where the tension really gets unbearable is on the subject of the right to collect loads of money and spend it to persuade people. This is resolutely defended as free speech, (by the people who normally hold that the courts should not be using abstract principles of justice and rights to be restricting the powers of the legislature to balance realistic issues), even though the content of the speech has not been the subject of the restriction at any point. Those who take ideas seriously for the party cannot admit, even to themselves, that they depend on the money to maintain their precarious hold on power.
For a long time between Nixon’s Southern Strategy and the accession of Newt Gingrich, the Republicans could muster some will for campaign finance reform based on the (doomed) dominance of the Democrats in Congress. Because incumbents had such an advantage in fund-raising, the normal Republican allegiance to big business did not give them an overwhelming advantage in money. But as their time grew near they discovered term limits, which play better on the anger theme that talk radio thrives on, and their judges stood up for their rights. So they were saved from the embarrassment of legislating against their own advantage only to find, when they became the majority, that they didn’t get any benefit from it except the appearance of integrity. (The appearance is undoubtedly of some value to at least a third of Republicans in Congress - but how much value?)
In 1984 it didn’t seem to matter that they liked rich people. Tip O’Neill and the whole apparatus of liberalism had been routed on the field of electoral battle, and the Republicans appeared to have common sense on their side on nearly every issue. But they have eroded all the investment they made in a winning position by being willing to do anything for tax cuts that go to capital, by sacrificing the values of science for those of the quick buck, and by adopting the rhetoric of one-issue fanatics who scare the hell out of women. During times when looking tough seems really critical (the Iranian hostage crisis, Willie Horton and the crack epidemic, and maybe the Sept. 11 attacks) they can pull together a majority in the suburbs of the Midwest and the more rootless parts of the Northeast, such as New Jersey and, well, New Jersey. But by going beyond common sense to Angry White Male populism, they have probably lost California as completely as New York and Massachusetts, and that is a big hole to start from.
On their way out
I predict with some confidence that their majority in Congress and the Electoral College will both be lost by the 2008 elections, if not sooner. Why? Mostly because the issues are going against them. Crime is falling (due significantly to the end of forcing women to bear children they do not want, and to Bill Clinton’s Big Government approach of paying for more police, though apparently also to the Get Tough approach that put so many young men in prison), alienated governments are less interested in sponsoring terrorism, the Cold War is over (yes, it is), and the crisis in education is not yielding to privatization initiatives.
In the meantime they have lost the high ground on fighting deficits and made it obvious that they are fine with handouts if they go to people (such as retirees) with half a chance of voting Republican. So the sense that they stood for a coherent message is gone. And people are less and less interested in voting the way Big Money tells them to.
They have also lost the anger advantage. When one party in a democracy gets too powerful, then free-floating anger tends to attach itself to them, on whatever pretext it can find. The GOP has just about completely reversed the situation of the 70s, in which the Democrats who swept into actual power (that is, no longer really needing the conservative Southern Wing) in 1974 used their success at state levels to redistrict themselves into more power than they had the votes to maintain. I believe a lot of good was done with that advantage, but the Democrats did not take sufficient care to make sure their changes were sustainable. And so their advantage was lost to local efforts, from tax rollbacks in California to good government in the Midwestern cities that had passed on the heritage of patronage to the latest poor immigrant group - Blacks.
The real Republican priorities
You might think that the Republican party would therefore stand for small government and pragmatism, as its rhetoric would tell us. But in practical terms, those are not its priorities. It continues to impose a heavy burden on the U.S. economy for hyperpower military status, and to believe in making government effective only as long as this can serve as cover for right-wing ideology or as symbolism to satisfy the malleable prejudices of blue-collar whites. Their local advantage has also gone to redistricting, which might be thought to be good enough to keep them in power till the next census results. But it won’t.
Much of that detailed angle figuring is just the kind of calculating approach that I am saying is the real downfall of the Republicans. Like the communists of Russia, or the apologists for the rich in the Mark Hanna wing of the 19th century Republicans, they have reached a degree of cynicism that can only be kept in power by undemocratic means. The practical and sensible members do not believe their own rhetoric. The believers face so much cognitive dissonance that they are having trouble making a coherent argument for anything. Their ideology has become a weapon against itself.
Consider the content of their television commercials. Do they argue for free markets and the superiority of imports over producing at too high a cost domestically? Would you? Do they come right out and say that tolerance for gays will cause America to lose God’s blessing, as those in their camp who care about the issue believe? Of course not. They cannot afford to take their actual positions publicly, except for non-issues like flag desecration. It seemed for a while that the relentless search for wedge issues had gotten a big boost from courts who insisted that marital benefits be provided to gays. But recent polls seem to indicate that even that issue could lose the suburbs for the Republicans.
Can they win by running against affirmative action, when it has been toothless all along and only the most reactionary of chauvinists believes that it has done them out of a job? Can they run against Osama Bin Laden when their (actual) opponent (Kerry) is willing to stay in Iraq longer than they are?
Instead they rely on money to portray their opponents in tired negative terms that once convinced somebody, and hope it works again. (You might think that re-running the race against Al Gore would be good enough for them, as their ads against Kerry’s flip-flopping suggest, but remember this is now the party in power, with its own shifts and hypocrisies to defend against). If only they could get Democrats to believe again that government can solve any problem, and then to run on that platform, they would have a chance. But the Democratic Party did not even come close to nominating Kucinich or Sharpton, and the paid-for accusations find what little success they can because of the lingering suspicion that the Democrats would like to be choosing Dean. Persisting with trying to buy elections depends on people’s willingness to see the other side as lacking integrity.
Why the GOP can’t be trusted as public servants
And the biggest problem for the Republicans in that kind of image contest is that every time they get close to government money, they proceed to scheme, misappropriate, manipulate and cover up. It is as though, by proclaiming the ideology so fervently to themselves, they have obligated themselves to live by it. They keep repeating to themselves that private money only serves the consumer (even if it is Big Tobacco) while government money is appropriated from the many to serve the whim of the few. Remember “They [the Democrats] think they can spend your money better than you can”? Can people who see government as useless and illegitimate be trusted to run it? When they get their hands on government money, they seem incapacitated from using the money responsibly.
Lest you think that is entirely in my imagination, consider the results Robert Frank found for people’s willingness to cooperate in a Prisoner’s Dilemma situation. Exposure to economics courses, and the presumption of selfishness, reduced people’s willingness to cooperate. A set of beliefs constructed and promoted to deny the possibility of unselfish public service will condition those who live by it to think only suckers (like the ones they advertise to get the votes of) would actually act unselfishly around “the public trough.” I still remember how ominous it seemed to me when Ronald Reagan was asked for a justification for a policy and replied, in an exasperated tone, “We won!” In his circles, who now run Washington, rationale is unnecessary - control is what matters. And public money is good for only one thing - to hand out favors so the next election will also be won.
I don’t underestimate the effectiveness that such a ruthless approach can achieve. But it has to be done behind the scenes, in the dark, and kept hidden. And even the “Managers” in the Republican party will not put up with much of that (outside their workplace). The level of education of the American public is now too high to allow a cynical, manipulative approach to work in the long run. I usually restrict my predictions to high-percentage economic calls. But I have spent four years being more and more offended (there is no other way I can put it) by these people’s arrogance. It goes way against my gut to believe they can continue to get away with it. Hence the hope.
Krugman (International Herald Tribune, June 30, 2004) makes a case for the extent to which the U.S. administration of post-invasion Iraq has installed right-wing ideologues and nepotist favorites. Paul Bremer, about whom I heard mostly good things at the time of his appointment, was quoted as fervent about privatization of government-run factories. His list of major accomplishments upon leaving included reduced tax rates (!), reduced tariffs and liberalization of foreign investment laws. The column goes on to cite appointments of family of administration supporters. (Would we find it acceptable to appoint such people as colonels in the Air Force?)
The Hollow Men
I fear that the Republican Party, after taking on board the populist racism and religious fundamentalism of the South, has taken the next step to complete cynicism. What else is there to think about a party that works its tail(hook) off to seem like the party of NASCAR racing, but delivers only tax cuts for the rich in the way of results? Of course their appointments to the bench must be given credit for pursuing a broader agenda. They stand up to those who would use the courts to turn social issues into mere matters of just and equitable treatment, as though the legislatures were not competent to weigh the other factors into the decision. And they safeguard our future by properly rewarding winners, as when they carefully weigh the hypothetical potential benefits of Microsoft’s monopoly against its more obvious arrogant repudiation of the agreement to refrain from using its monopoly to extend its monopoly. This is a party who believes in its constituents, to the point of believing that they can use their money to fool millions of ordinary voters into thinking the party stands for them. After all, if George Bush can’t get prayer back in schools and eliminate the teaching of evolution, who can?
What I want to consider here is whether any party that so blatantly conducts business on two levels can maintain any integrity.
Let me say at the outset that I know the search for integrity in politics is more than a touch quixotic. For every example we could find, there are at least two or three smelly compromises they have accepted, and dozens of completely unscrupulous counterparts in their political party. But I am really talking not about moral integrity, but rather the ability to maintain a coherent point of view that informs issues, in the sense of giving a fair share of intelligent predictions that cannot be made solely on the basis of the known facts. If there is no such Take on How the World Works that can be preached and referred to honestly, then power becomes its own justification. At that point the ordinary moral tawdriness of politics becomes a thing of evil. If I can be completely concrete, my question is whether a person like John McCain, who has been physically tormented by men in such a demonic dilemma, will be able to stomach what the Republican Party is turning into?
It is the party of the rich, pretending to be the party of the ordinary. Any resemblance to the ante-bellum South is purely coincidental.
When it was the party out of power, the GOP did not have to worry too much about reconciling its very different positions opposed to activist government. The Reagan Democrat nemesis of social reform, especially if pursued through the courts, looked enough like a justice-based redistribution of wealth to maintain the appearance of coherence in a pinch. And to the racists who worried that redistribution meant loss of what little property and status they had, in favor of those they had made a sacred principle of keeping even further down, the kinship of liberalism to communism was obvious. But now the Republicans are in a position of having to legislate and to provide government services, and they are seriously afraid that voters might figure out the implications of an ideology that can only reject government involvement in society.
This chasm at the core of their beliefs is only the beginning of their problems with coherence between theory and practice. They have deliberately chosen to represent ignorance against understanding, because that is what their largest group of persuaded voters wants. Ronald Reagan went so far as to declare that he wasn’t sure evolution was correct, and thought it was appropriate for creationism to get equal time. This is the sort of thinking you expect from a person who considers himself primarily a performer and mouthpiece, but what does it imply about the party that embraced him?
There is actually an insightful analysis out there about this situation. It says that educated Republicans tend to be “Managers”, who emphasize self-control as the essential virtue in life, while educated Democrats tend to be “Professionals” who emphasize understanding of the world as the essential virtue in life. (Sorry I didn’t clip it, so I can’t cite the source). Try that one as an explanation of the difference in approach to Global Warming, for example, and you see that it makes a lot of sense. The problem is not that educated Republicans deny the facts about science, it is that they don’t want to get carried away with them and make decisions that cost too much based on uncertain evidence. Of course, this creates a strong tension within their leadership ranks, making them want to exaggerate the uncertainty of the evidence for the purpose of securing a larger share of current money and power for the true constituents. They cannot afford to be as fair-minded about the evidence as the people they want to manipulate.
Campaign finance reform, anyone?
And of course, where the tension really gets unbearable is on the subject of the right to collect loads of money and spend it to persuade people. This is resolutely defended as free speech, (by the people who normally hold that the courts should not be using abstract principles of justice and rights to be restricting the powers of the legislature to balance realistic issues), even though the content of the speech has not been the subject of the restriction at any point. Those who take ideas seriously for the party cannot admit, even to themselves, that they depend on the money to maintain their precarious hold on power.
For a long time between Nixon’s Southern Strategy and the accession of Newt Gingrich, the Republicans could muster some will for campaign finance reform based on the (doomed) dominance of the Democrats in Congress. Because incumbents had such an advantage in fund-raising, the normal Republican allegiance to big business did not give them an overwhelming advantage in money. But as their time grew near they discovered term limits, which play better on the anger theme that talk radio thrives on, and their judges stood up for their rights. So they were saved from the embarrassment of legislating against their own advantage only to find, when they became the majority, that they didn’t get any benefit from it except the appearance of integrity. (The appearance is undoubtedly of some value to at least a third of Republicans in Congress - but how much value?)
In 1984 it didn’t seem to matter that they liked rich people. Tip O’Neill and the whole apparatus of liberalism had been routed on the field of electoral battle, and the Republicans appeared to have common sense on their side on nearly every issue. But they have eroded all the investment they made in a winning position by being willing to do anything for tax cuts that go to capital, by sacrificing the values of science for those of the quick buck, and by adopting the rhetoric of one-issue fanatics who scare the hell out of women. During times when looking tough seems really critical (the Iranian hostage crisis, Willie Horton and the crack epidemic, and maybe the Sept. 11 attacks) they can pull together a majority in the suburbs of the Midwest and the more rootless parts of the Northeast, such as New Jersey and, well, New Jersey. But by going beyond common sense to Angry White Male populism, they have probably lost California as completely as New York and Massachusetts, and that is a big hole to start from.
On their way out
I predict with some confidence that their majority in Congress and the Electoral College will both be lost by the 2008 elections, if not sooner. Why? Mostly because the issues are going against them. Crime is falling (due significantly to the end of forcing women to bear children they do not want, and to Bill Clinton’s Big Government approach of paying for more police, though apparently also to the Get Tough approach that put so many young men in prison), alienated governments are less interested in sponsoring terrorism, the Cold War is over (yes, it is), and the crisis in education is not yielding to privatization initiatives.
In the meantime they have lost the high ground on fighting deficits and made it obvious that they are fine with handouts if they go to people (such as retirees) with half a chance of voting Republican. So the sense that they stood for a coherent message is gone. And people are less and less interested in voting the way Big Money tells them to.
They have also lost the anger advantage. When one party in a democracy gets too powerful, then free-floating anger tends to attach itself to them, on whatever pretext it can find. The GOP has just about completely reversed the situation of the 70s, in which the Democrats who swept into actual power (that is, no longer really needing the conservative Southern Wing) in 1974 used their success at state levels to redistrict themselves into more power than they had the votes to maintain. I believe a lot of good was done with that advantage, but the Democrats did not take sufficient care to make sure their changes were sustainable. And so their advantage was lost to local efforts, from tax rollbacks in California to good government in the Midwestern cities that had passed on the heritage of patronage to the latest poor immigrant group - Blacks.
The real Republican priorities
You might think that the Republican party would therefore stand for small government and pragmatism, as its rhetoric would tell us. But in practical terms, those are not its priorities. It continues to impose a heavy burden on the U.S. economy for hyperpower military status, and to believe in making government effective only as long as this can serve as cover for right-wing ideology or as symbolism to satisfy the malleable prejudices of blue-collar whites. Their local advantage has also gone to redistricting, which might be thought to be good enough to keep them in power till the next census results. But it won’t.
Much of that detailed angle figuring is just the kind of calculating approach that I am saying is the real downfall of the Republicans. Like the communists of Russia, or the apologists for the rich in the Mark Hanna wing of the 19th century Republicans, they have reached a degree of cynicism that can only be kept in power by undemocratic means. The practical and sensible members do not believe their own rhetoric. The believers face so much cognitive dissonance that they are having trouble making a coherent argument for anything. Their ideology has become a weapon against itself.
Consider the content of their television commercials. Do they argue for free markets and the superiority of imports over producing at too high a cost domestically? Would you? Do they come right out and say that tolerance for gays will cause America to lose God’s blessing, as those in their camp who care about the issue believe? Of course not. They cannot afford to take their actual positions publicly, except for non-issues like flag desecration. It seemed for a while that the relentless search for wedge issues had gotten a big boost from courts who insisted that marital benefits be provided to gays. But recent polls seem to indicate that even that issue could lose the suburbs for the Republicans.
Can they win by running against affirmative action, when it has been toothless all along and only the most reactionary of chauvinists believes that it has done them out of a job? Can they run against Osama Bin Laden when their (actual) opponent (Kerry) is willing to stay in Iraq longer than they are?
Instead they rely on money to portray their opponents in tired negative terms that once convinced somebody, and hope it works again. (You might think that re-running the race against Al Gore would be good enough for them, as their ads against Kerry’s flip-flopping suggest, but remember this is now the party in power, with its own shifts and hypocrisies to defend against). If only they could get Democrats to believe again that government can solve any problem, and then to run on that platform, they would have a chance. But the Democratic Party did not even come close to nominating Kucinich or Sharpton, and the paid-for accusations find what little success they can because of the lingering suspicion that the Democrats would like to be choosing Dean. Persisting with trying to buy elections depends on people’s willingness to see the other side as lacking integrity.
Why the GOP can’t be trusted as public servants
And the biggest problem for the Republicans in that kind of image contest is that every time they get close to government money, they proceed to scheme, misappropriate, manipulate and cover up. It is as though, by proclaiming the ideology so fervently to themselves, they have obligated themselves to live by it. They keep repeating to themselves that private money only serves the consumer (even if it is Big Tobacco) while government money is appropriated from the many to serve the whim of the few. Remember “They [the Democrats] think they can spend your money better than you can”? Can people who see government as useless and illegitimate be trusted to run it? When they get their hands on government money, they seem incapacitated from using the money responsibly.
Lest you think that is entirely in my imagination, consider the results Robert Frank found for people’s willingness to cooperate in a Prisoner’s Dilemma situation. Exposure to economics courses, and the presumption of selfishness, reduced people’s willingness to cooperate. A set of beliefs constructed and promoted to deny the possibility of unselfish public service will condition those who live by it to think only suckers (like the ones they advertise to get the votes of) would actually act unselfishly around “the public trough.” I still remember how ominous it seemed to me when Ronald Reagan was asked for a justification for a policy and replied, in an exasperated tone, “We won!” In his circles, who now run Washington, rationale is unnecessary - control is what matters. And public money is good for only one thing - to hand out favors so the next election will also be won.
I don’t underestimate the effectiveness that such a ruthless approach can achieve. But it has to be done behind the scenes, in the dark, and kept hidden. And even the “Managers” in the Republican party will not put up with much of that (outside their workplace). The level of education of the American public is now too high to allow a cynical, manipulative approach to work in the long run. I usually restrict my predictions to high-percentage economic calls. But I have spent four years being more and more offended (there is no other way I can put it) by these people’s arrogance. It goes way against my gut to believe they can continue to get away with it. Hence the hope.