Super Tuesday approaches in this ridiculously front-loaded Presidential campaign. Since I’m not with the bastards or the other bastards, I don’t have a horse in this race, and here on Room Eight I try to refrain from making personal judgments about people I know nothing about. For those of you pondering decisions, however, there is something I’d like to point out. The President is just one actor in the federal government, since the Congress — which also has an election that no one is talking about — is equally important. The federal government is just part of the government in the United States; as I explained last August, it controls much of the money but, aside from national defense and the Post Office, actually does very little of the work. The government is just one part of American society, arguably less important than families or businesses and other private organizations. And the United States has problems, both internally and with the rest of the world, that are affecting government, business, other organizations and families alike.
The President, however, isn’t just the CEO of the federal government, he is the leader of and, for other countries, the symbol of the United States. His or her ability to improve the United States and the world rests not only on their ability to have the federal government force people to do things, but their ability to influence people to do things, or not do things, on their own, through their arguments and personal example. Of the remaining candidates, which one is capable of exercising that kind of leadership in your life, in a direction you believe to be the right one?
In my view, many of the problems of the United States stem from the cultural domination of “I want for me now” thinking in every aspect of life, from families to businesses to politics. This is not to say that the United States is a bad place or Americans are bad people; we are more open and tolerant than any people every on earth, and generally have good intentions. These good intentions, however, have been undermined by irresponsibility. Even among those who aren’t irresponsible, there is unwillingness to make any sacrifices, or even suffer any inconvenience, for the benefit of our common future, or even one’s own future, because there is an assumption that those who make such sacrifices and suffer such inconveniences are suckers, losers, and failures. And not without reason.
As I wrote when I was a candidate for state assembly, politics appears to be driven by two different concepts of the word “freedom” that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, one good and the other (for lack of a better word) evil. The good freedom might be called freedom of identity, or of lifestyle. For a brief period after World War II, many Americans believed that if you didn't look like, act like, think like, and live like everyone else, then you shouldn't be accepted. The idea of America as a land of social conformity is mostly gone, but politicians can still get elected by manipulating 35 year old resentments with tribal appeals to groups of people, and the invocation of "values" issues on which they have no intention of changing anything. Sadly, tribal politics determines how many people vote, among those who vote at all. They are suckers.
The evil idea of freedom is freedom from responsibility, which has both a "liberal" and a "conservative" version, depending on which responsibilities one does not want to meet. Liberal Democrats have sought to attract votes by telling the poor and not so poor, the old and not so old, the sick and not so sick, and others that they do not have personal responsibilities to work and earn their own living, or to take care of their family members. To knowledgeable critics, their excuse for irresponsibility has been “social realism,” the assertion that this is the way people live today (because they are free to live that way) and government programs, paid for by someone else, must limit the damage. And they have cultivated a sense of entitlement to assistance, causing recipients of public benefits to feel anger at anyone who dares to make demands on them in exchange.
Conservatives and Republicans have sought to attract votes by telling the better off that they do not have social responsibilities to their communities, to the less well off, to the rest of the world, and to the future, particularly with regard to taxes and debt, but also with regard to the environment. To knowledgeable critics, their excuse for irresponsibility has been “economic realism,” the assertion that the affluent are self interested and mobile, and if you make demands on them for the benefit of others, or for the benefit of the future, they will take their assets and go elsewhere, leaving you worse off than before. They also cultivate a sense of entitlement, telling the affluent that their position of privilege is the result of their own moral superiority, not social advantages or luck or (as the business scandals and now mortgage scandals show) worse, and that they do not owe anything to anyone in exchange for it.
Yes I have my own principles and priorities. Those who have been reading along for the past nearly two years mght have an idea what they are. But in the face of all this grasping for advantage, and pandering to selfishness, I have trouble identifying any politician who believes in anything, whether I agree with it or not. Rather than two sets of beliefs, the Republicans and Democrats to me represent two sets of special interests. The problem isn’t ideology — different views of what is best of everyone. The problem is that there is no concept of “everyone” at all, or at least none that includes future Americans as well as those on the inside today. So my view of government has shifted to hostility and self preservation for myself and my local community. How can I stop it from wrecking my city, and my children’s future, to benefit those who matter more?
Which candidate can shake that way of thinking, and convince those who meet their personal and social responsibilities that they are now on the inside instead of cows to be milked? Which candidate could make you believe that their decisions would be guided by what they believe is right, rather than who contributed to their campaigns? Which candidates would you trust enough to accept changes in your own life, believing that doing so would make everyone better off rather than allowing insiders to take advantage of you? Because trust matters, whether the President will be trying to convince Americans to use less energy, or Israelis and Palestinians to make peace in the Middle East.
Aside from trust, there is the exercise of power, in which the President convinces the Congress to use the power of the federal government to force or bribe Americans and others to do things differently. Under our federal system, the ability of the federal government to force Americans to do things is limited. As a matter of political reality, moreover, Americans don’t like to be forced to do things they do not wish to do for the benefit of others, or even for what others believe to be their own benefit. Every time an elected official tries to push people in one direction or the other, some other elected official, or some other party, will come out against and score political points by trying to frustrate that attempt. Environmental rules? The government wants to force people to cram into small, uncool, unsafe cars they do not want! Abortion restrictions? The government is trying to control women’s bodies and limit people’s sexual freedom! Actually, from a constitutional point of view the federal government ought to have limited ability to control people’s personal choices, only the ability to control interstate organizations via the commerce clause, but hey, I’m not a lawyer.
Bribery — or to put it more neutrally economic incentives — has a mixed record. As I discussed here there has been a big shift in federal spending on the poor over the past 15 years, from those who do not work to those who do. Under President Clinton, spending on “welfare” as it is generally understood fell 20% as a share of GDP, even as it was transformed from a cash grant without reciprocal obligations to a “workfare” job for those unable to find work in the private sector. This was supplemented by substantial increases in funding, generally via the tax code, for those in low-wage regular jobs, via Earned Income Tax Credit, which doubled as a share of GDP under Clinton, and daycare for low wage workers, which increased five-fold. This policy of supporting low-wage work was expanded under President George W. Bush, with a reversible tax credit (you get cash if you own no taxes) for children. The cost of the EITC, daycare assistance, and child tax credit to those who owe no taxes together were more than the cost of “welfare” as we used to know it in FY 2006, and welfare as we used to know it is now much like the EITC and child tax credit.
One might say the policy has been a success. The number of people on public assistance has plunged. With government help, the number of poor people who are working has increased. And, the living conditions of children have improved.
On the other hand, the concerted effort, beginning with the Reagan Administration, to convince Americans to save for the future rather than just spending today, has been a failure. Interest on consumer debt, which had been tax deductible, was made taxable. With the advent of IRAs, 401Ks, 529s, and similar programs most working people, middle class people, and even many affluent people pay no taxes on the investment returns on their savings. With lower tax rates for capital gains and dividends, even the wealthy are better off if they save rather than spend. Economic trends have worked in the same direction as public policy. Lower inflation means investment returns are less likely to be wiped away by rising prices, and so are debts. Yet despite this, American’s personal savings rate fell from about 8 percent in 1980, when Ronald Reagan made an issue of the need for “savings and investment,” to less than zero in recent years, as America has gone deep into hock to the rest of the world to keep spending.
In the end, our “I want it all and I want it now” culture overwhelmed all those incentives. And that’s why our future President’s ability to influence our culture is so important. Perhaps it is easy to order the poor around, or make them respond to bribes, because they are in no position to resist. But — wonk’s be damned — public policy has less of an influence on everyone else. Culture has to work with public policy for it to be effective, with the majority wanting to do something and only a minority pushed a long by the social, economic, and legal tide.
Speaking of the ability to influence culture, I have a theory that no one is really willing to learn or be convinced of anything. They can only be reminded of what they already believe, or helped to organize what is merely a hazy idea of what is going on that is based on their own experience. No one is going to cast a vote based on my say endorsement. No one at all. So I’m not going to tell the reader who I would trust, because you won’t listen anyway, even if you have bothered to read this far. But I will say this — one party has someone I might trust, and the other party has someone I probably would trust, but the rest of the candidates I wouldn’t trust much at all. So based on your own experience and hazy sense of what you believe, who do you think they are?