Thursday, October 4. 2012
Update: linked in, then removed, New Yorker
cover.
Clever, too big, not really the point I wanted to make.
I didn't watch the Obama-Romney debate last night. I've reached
the point where I find both candidates hopelessly irritating, and
I've never had much stomach for political cant. Also, from past
experiences, I can't say that I've ever learned much from debates --
except not to trust impressions based on personal style or quirks.
Judging from reports, had I watched I would have come away even
more irritated, especially at Obama. Ever since his election in
2008, what's bothered me about Obama hasn't been his policies or
programs -- inadequate, unimaginative, and often misguided as they
are -- but his inability or unwillingness to speak up for anything
better, or indeed even to articulate why his own programs matter.
The debate just provides more examples of his failing.
The front page article itself, from McClatchy, was formally neutral,
the headline: "Candidates Cordial, but Pull No Punches." Below I'll
argue that Obama did little but pull his punches. (Krugman called
him Capillary Man: "his instinct, as people said, was apparently to
go for the capillaries.") Consider the four quotes that the Wichita
Eagle spotlighted on the front page today, the first sense readers
in these parts got of the substance of the debates:
Romney, on Economic Revival: "The path that we're on has
been unsuccessful. Trickle down government will not work."
"Unsuccessful" is a fair argument, although one could counter that
Obama did basically right things both to halt the fall into a major
depression -- bailing out the banks and auto industry, unfreezing credit
lines -- and to start the recovery -- stimulus spending, extending
unemployment benefits, cutting payroll taxes -- but that he didn't
do enough of the right things, mostly due to the political obstruction
of Republicans in Congress and the state houses, which forced the US
to endure an austerity program that was not part of Obama's program.
Not that Obama did everything right: his own preference for balanced
budgets and his aloofness during the disastrous 2010 elections aided
and abetted the Republicans immensely; also his reappointment of Ben
Bernanke as Fed Chairman left him with little help from that quarter.
The second line about "trickle down government" means, well, what?
The phrase "trickle down" usually applies to the flow of money: give
zillionaires more money and they'll spend some of it on gardeners
who will buy groceries so the money will flow through the economy,
but since rich people are more likely to save than spend their extra
income the effect really is a trickle. Stimulus spending flows the
same way, which results in a multiplier effect on the economy: for
each dollar the government spends, substantially more than a dollar's
worth of economic activity is generated. But if that's what Romney's
referring to, he's simply wrong, because stimulus spending works.
What doesn't flow is government, or his cute phrasing. Obama, on Economic Revival: "Governor Romney has a
perspective that says if we cut taxes skewed toward the wealthy
and cut regulations, we'll be better off. I have a different
view."
Most likely this is pulled out of context, and Obama eventually
gets around to explaining what his "different view" is and why he
has it, but he's already done one stupid thing here: he's generously
restated Romney's position, in more favorable terms than were called
for[*], and further dignified the position by calling it a "view,"
respecting it like his own. Even if he did manage to say what he
wanted to say, he blew his opportunity to get his statement on the
front page of the Eagle, and he probably lost listeners along the
way.
Not that Obama really has much to say on the subject. He could
have argued that raising tax rates on the rich would put that money
to better use than it's going to now. He could have pointed out
that the Republican agenda of cutting taxes for the very rich has
resulted in them making out like bandits while everyone else has
suffered stagnant wages and declining benefits for thirty years
now -- despite steady growth in labor productivity. He could have
noted that as America's wealth has become ever more concentrated
in the hands of a tiny fraction of the populace -- the 1% is an
especially striking example, the top tenth of that even more so --
the political and economic climate for everyone else has become
increasingly bitter. He could have given the example of Romney
telling his donors that he doesn't care about 47% of the American
people, and he could have pointed out that based on his actions
and proposed policies that number is far below Romney's true
interests.
None of this has much to do with "economic revival" but it
does have everything to do with the nature of that revival. All
that is needed for the economy to revive is for money to flow,
and the most straightforward way for that to happen is for the
government to spend more, both to buy things like badly needed
infrastructure improvements and to redistribute money to those
who will spend it -- money which, by the way, has for thirty
years now been systematically shifted to the rich due to their
superior ability to game the American political system. So the
short-term plan should be to force the economy back toward its
potential growth line by using public spending to make up for
the shortfall in private spending. Longer-term, the plan should
be to force a more equitable distribution of wealth, both to
increase demand -- which has been suppressed by thirty years
of redistribution in favor of the wealthy, although the effect
was long masked by increased work hours (mostly by wives) and
easy consumer credit, solutions no longer sustainable -- and
because it's the right thing to do. There are lots of ways to
do this, and no single one is satisfactory: raise the minimum
wage, make it easy to form unions, shift benefit costs to the
public, improve education and make it more accessible, etc.
Needless to say, the right hates this plan. Unfortunately,
Obama doesn't care much for it either. I won't argue that Obama
isn't a liberal, at least in the traditional (i.e., non-leftist)
sense of the term, but he's also profoundly conservative. He
doesn't want to change anything in the social and economic order
he grew up in -- one which, needless to say, has favored him
lavishly. He can't imagine a world without General Motors, which
is basically a good thing. He can't imagine a world without Jamie
Dimon in charge of JPMorgan Chase, which is something else. The
fact that such perversions of finance capitalism are so much part
of his world is one reason why he's so ineffective at criticizing
Mitt Romney.
Romney's a conservative too, but he's less committed to the
details of the status quo, and more to sustaining the trend line
of right-wing dominance. He know, for instance, that investors
always expect (or at least seek) returns greater than GDP growth,
so they're never satisfied with sustaining their share: they need
more, which means someone else has to lose. For a long time, most
of that more came out of asset inflation, but those bubbles have
a nasty tendency to burst, leaving the poor poorer and the rich
ever more desperate to make up lost ground. Capturing government
not only keeps and extends their legal perks, it opens up large
treasures to plunder. You got a taste of that under Reagan and
Bush, and there's still lots more in store. When you get down to
specifics, Romney's just Bush redux. If you doubt me, take a look
at his advisers and check their resumes for 2001-09.
Of course, that's not Romney's published plan for growing the
economy: there are some things that even Republicans shy away from
spelling out. But consider what he does say: that the economy will
start turning around the moment he is elected, because the driving
force behind the economy is the class of job creators, and the
reason they haven't been job creating these last four years is
that they were bummed out worrying over what Obama might do to
their taxes and regulations, but once they know that Romney will
save them, they'll rally forth and fix everything. In other words,
Romney's public plan for fixing the economy is magic. His private
plan is to rape it. There's hardly any other way to put it.
Again, this is something Obama could point out, in pretty graphic
terms. One reason is that he's spent so much time romancing the
Confidence Fairy himself: he fell into an ego trap early on,
believing that since confidence is contagious in an economy, as
president he could help boost the economy just by believing in
it. (Ron Suskind memorialized this by calling his book on Obama's
economic team The Confidence Men.)
[*] Presumably by "cut taxes skewed toward the wealthy" he means
"skew tax cuts in favor of the wealthy," which really means use the
tax system to help the rich get richer, undermining the American
ideal of an egalitarian society; by "cut regulations" he means "give
businesses a free pass to do whatever they want, regardless of the
harm they may cause the public." Romney, on Jobs: "Under the president's policies,
middle-income Americans have been buried. They're just getting
crushed."
So true. Of course, it's not just the president's policies. It's
mostly the recession, the result of the previous president's policies
(with a lot of help from Alan Greenspan, and an assist from Clinton's
treasury team, which -- oops! -- bears an awfully close resemblance to
Obama's). And a fair share of the blame can be placed on private equity
firms like Bain Capital that drive companies deep into debt, then pound
their employees to restore a semblance of profitability. But it's
also because the safety net which would keep out-of-luck workers
from being crushed is being dismembered by the austerity policies
of the Republicans (often aided by the budget-balancing fetish of
the Democrats). And once again you can dig up the entire 30-year
ascendancy of the right, with its attack on unions, and favoritism
shown the ultra-rich. Obama, on Jobs: "We've begun to fight our way back.
We've still got a lot of work to do."
True enough, but a concession and an apology. Again, this might
have been taken out of context. Obama needed to go on and explain
all that work, how that work has been obstructed by Republicans,
and how that work won't get done if Romney is elected. Maybe he did,
and just didn't get quoted, but he certainly didn't take the gloves
off and present Romney and his ilk as they truly are. Wouldn't have
been difficult. After all, Obama's running against Gordon Gekko,
John Galt, Simon Legree, pick your villain.
Romney's two statements were direct, mostly true (albeit cynical
and at least partly nonsensical). Obama's were evasive and incomplete,
offering little reason to trust or even understand him. Romney was
shameless, while Obama would prefer that we overlook what he has to
be ashamed of. Whether you believe one or the other depends on how
much you know about the matter. If you know nothing, you might be
taken in by Romney's confidence, faux concern, and pat answers. If
you know anything, you already know that Romney is a fraud, and in
his debate answers and points you'll find nothing but more evidence.
You will also know that Obama has struggled with huge problems in
a political climate that has confused and confounded him. Part of
his problem is that he is too invested in that climate. Part is
that he's unclear on who voted for him and why, and all of that
came through in his lackluster performance. No doubt we would
be happier to have a smarter, more earnest, more dedicated, more
trustworthy candidate, but we have no such option.
What we've gotten instead is another embarrassing moment in our
democracy. Unfortunately, there will be more before this election
is settled. In particular, next debate is supposed to be about
"foreign policy" -- basically a contest to see which candidate
can most convincingly project himself as a killer. There, at least,
Obama will have the advantage of four years of practice. Expect
to hear a lot about Bin Laden, but he's only one of thousands of
people the US has killed on his watch, under his direction, and
sometimes in direct response to his orders. In contrast, the worst
Romney can claim is torturing his dog, but rest assured that he
will do his best to convince us that he's badder than Obama could
ever be. He's committed to more military, more war. He's committed
to letting Netanyahu dictate US policy in the middle east. Most of
all, he's committed to never backing down, never apologizing,
never second guessing his own brilliance. That sounds to me like
a perfect recipe for disaster.
And no doubt there will be more embarrassments down the road.
Hard to pick a debate winner when everyone involved is such a
loser.
Some post-debate links:
Bonus link:
Matt Taibbi: This Presidential Race Should Never Have Been This Close:
Written well before the debate, but more true than ever:
The mere fact that Mitt Romney is even within striking distance of
winning this election is an incredible testament to two things: a) the
rank incompetence of the Democratic Party, which would have this and
every other election for the next half century sewn up if they were a
little less money-hungry and tried just a little harder to represent
their ostensible constituents, and b) the power of our propaganda
machine, which has conditioned all of us to accept the idea that the
American population, ideologically speaking, is naturally split down
the middle, whereas the real fault lines are a lot closer to the 99-1
ratio the Occupy movement has been talking about since last year.
Think about it. Four years ago, we had an economic crash that wiped
out somewhere between a quarter to 40% of the world's wealth,
depending on whom you believe. The crash was caused by an utterly
disgusting and irresponsible class of Wall Street paper-pushers who
loaded the world up with deadly leverage in pursuit of their own
bonuses, then ran screaming to the government for a handout (and got
it) the instant it all went south.
These people represent everything that ordinarily repels the
American voter. They mostly come from privileged backgrounds. Few of
them have ever worked with their hands, or done anything like hard
work. They not only don't oppose the offshoring of American
manufacturing jobs, they enthusiastically support it, financing the
construction of new factories in places like China and India.
They've relentlessly lobbied the government to give themselves tax
holidays and shelters, and have succeeded at turning the graduated
income tax idea on its head by getting the IRS to accept a sprawling
buffet of absurd semantic precepts, like the notions that "capital
gains" and "carried interest" are somehow not the same as
"income." [ . . . ]
For all this, when it came time to nominate a candidate for the
presidency four years after the crash, the Republicans chose a man who
in almost every respect perfectly represents this class of
people. [ . . . ] He has a $250 million fortune,
but he appears to pay well under half the maximum tax rate, thanks to
those absurd semantic distinctions that even Ronald Reagan dismissed
as meaningless and counterproductive. He has used offshore tax havens
for himself and his wife, and his company, Bain Capital, has both
eliminated jobs in the name of efficiency (often using these cuts to
pay for payments to his own company) and moved American jobs
overseas.
The point is, Mitt Romney's natural constituency should be about 1%
of the population. If you restrict that pool to "likely voters," he
might naturally appeal to 2%. Maybe 3%.
Of course, the reason the election is close is because so few
understand Taibbi's points. Part of that is that the mainstream
(and far right) media keep drubbing you with their "conventional
wisdom." Part is that the Democratic Party leadership doesn't
lead, or inform, or enlighten, or even campaign very much. The
real key to the 2012 elections will be how many people vote --
if the turnout is close to 2008 Obama and the Democrats will win
handily, and if it falls off to 2010 levels the Republicans will
prevail. And the other is how effective unlimited spending by
billionaires turns out to be. The fate of the nation hangs in
the balance. Either we get four more years of the same mediocre
melange we've enjoyed for the last four years, or the country
collapses under the hubris of the superrich and falls off the
deep end. The debates will be forgotten, unless you let yourself
be suckered by them.
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