Circling the Drain

Michael Gerson recently published an editorial in the Washington Post, The High Cost of America's Cheap Populism, which I find interesting for a number of reasons.  It begins with the premise that defeat is "now the likely outcome for the Republican presidential nominee," and so "the blame shifting has begun early and in earnest."  He first takes a swipe at Sean Hannity, a relatively easy target, but one with an bullhorn.  Hannity claims the "never Trump people will be responsible for Hillary Clinton's supreme court picks" as well as the hoards of "unvetted immigrants" entering the country.  The former is a legitimate political concern, the latter so much bread and circus distraction, particularly when the claim that immigrants are "unvetted" has been debunked so many times and in so many ways as to be ludicrous.  

Whoops, see, immigration, I'm already distracted from the central claim that the "never Trump republicans" will be to blame for Trump's defeat.  Gerson debunks this claim rather handily, pointing out there may be a simpler explanation:

Isn’t it more likely that Republicans are losing because their candidate has committed enough gaffes to torpedo 10 campaigns? Because he has premised his appeal on prejudice? Because he displays no appreciation of constitutional values and offers himself as a strongman? Because he has no knowledge of, or interest in, public policy? Because he is an erratic narcissist with a compulsive need to crush and humiliate his critics? Holding Never Trump forces responsible for all this is akin to blaming the spectators in Lakehurst, N.J., for the Hindenburg disaster. The pointing and gawking did not cause the flames.

Yes, that might be it.  While there might be some fascination, not so much in figuring out Trump.  He is exactly what he appears to be, an opportunistic narcissist created by extreme privilege.  His latest "pivot," his belated embrace of the black voter, being a case in point.  As it turns out, there is no interesting complexity in Trump himself -- but there is perhaps in figuring out what exactly he means and what he has unmasked in a larger American context (and mostly, for me at least, it's frightening).  Along this line, it bears pausing for a moment on Hannity's claim, however, insofar as it unmasks a presupposition that has shaped republican politicians at least since the embrace of the evangelicals.  On the one hand, it's a sort of frustrated incredulousness that their "agenda" doesn't have the universal mass appeal that it has for them personally.  It's akin to the frustrated incredulousness among evangelical missionaries when they engage with those who don't find their "personal testimony" particularly compelling.  On the other hand, because they simply can't believe their agenda doesn't have universal appeal, there must be nefarious forces at work leading the flock away from the true path, in the particular instance at hand, it's the apostate republicans.   As I've suggested before, they have become less a political movement, with all the inherent compromise that "politics" suggests, and more a fundamentalist religious movement. 

Again, distracted.  Gerson goes on to say that there is "a more sophisticated form of blame by other conservatives."  He lays it out like this:

Yes, Trump is a poor vehicle for the blue-collar, populist revolt, but that uprising was invited by the arrogance and indifference of globalized elites, including Republican elites. Chief executives, politicians and Wall Street types live in a bubble of affluence, caring little for American interests and lacking sympathy for their fellow citizens who are sinking into despair, addiction and the floodwaters of Louisiana. 

Personally, I like blaming things on the globalized elites myself.  The more globalized the corporation, it follows a sort of prima facia logic that they would care about their global interests over any particular national interest.  If they are a "US corporation," it follows the same prima facia logic that any concerns for the US would be filtered through their corporate interests.  These interests are not altogether malignant, and for those corporate entities who have mass markets, the same sort of prima facia logic would suggest that they have some concern with the well-being of the masses, at least to the extent that the masses maintain enough affluence to continue consuming their products. Clearly though, they are not altogether benign either.  As Chomsky might put it, "profits will always trump people," and despite the uplifting PR campaigns of business too big to fail, there has been example, after example, after example of businesses putting profit before people, ranging from Volkswagon's fraudulent emissions reporting to the cynical manipulations of the mortgage industry that led to the 2008 crises.  Insofar as the corporate leadership also represents the so-called "donor class," they are in a position of sufficient influence to insure their interests are served before the interests of the so-called "voting class."  

Having said that, however, so far as globalization is concerned, I do tend to agree with Gerson that there really is no retreat from a global economy.  As he put it, "those on the left and right who promise to reverse the process of globalization are economic charlatans. Their main policy response — tariffs and other forms of protectionism — is a proven path to trade wars and global recession, which hurt the vulnerable most."  I'll concede the main point with a few qualifications.  First and foremost, there is an implicit either/or fallacy in his argument -- that is to say, it is either a "free market" or "tariffs and protectionism."  I have suggested before, and will suggest again, that there is no such thing as an actual "free market." The market is, so to speak, a "game" defined by and within legal and regulatory restrictions.  At any given point in time, if one were able to take such a snapshot, there is a "status quo" of legal and regulatory restrictions enforced by the "government."  I use the term "government" generically.  If one thinks of the "housing market," for example, their legal and regulatory restrictions range from local zoning restrictions to federal treaty obligations, and a lot in between.  Just as the rules of basketball tend to privilege height, the legal and regulatory restrictions tend to privilege some over others, and as a consequence, there is much political wrangling to "tweak" the "status quo" to shift who gets privileged and how.  Those on the left tend to want to shift the privilege to the populace, those on the right tend to want to shift the privilege to the "owners," itself a complicated picture when the "owners" include shareholders.  NAFTA and TPP, the villains de jure, are simply "negotiated" tweaks to the existing legal and regulatory "status quo," and the question to be asked is simply this: who will benefit and how?

There is, however, no quick and easy way to answer that question, or at least nothing that can be reduced to the bird seed of twitter.  Perhaps the most "populist" response would entail simply asking who attended to and advised on the negotiation?  A sort of prima facia logic would again suggest that the resulting treaty obligations would reflect the interests of whoever attended to and advised on the negotiation.   Having said that, a simple minded approach prevails.  Allow me a brief anecdote.  As a sideline, my wife re-sells craft supplies and gift items that, like Susanne's tea and oranges, come all the way from China.  One of the "board" members of the small re-sale shop objected to "cheap crap from China," wanting only things "made in the US."  As a result they decided to "jury" items that came into the shop -- imposing a restriction on what my wife could and could not bring in to sell -- and as a result, she said, "thank you very much," withdrew ALL her items and set up shop elsewhere. This, in microcosm, is the sort of "trade war" that Gerson references.  The beads, findings, and gifts  my wife sells are simply not made in the US.  If they are, one can't find them anywhere.  Similar items for sale at Walmart in town or at Hobby Lobby in Boise were all made in China.  What to make of this?  On the one hand, one could argue that the manufacture of beads and findings in China has displaced American jobs, dumping inexpensive manufactured goods into US markets.  This may be true, but it is also difficult to imagine most Americans actually doing such jobs, and it is also difficult to imagine most American communities actually welcoming the environmental concerns that such manufacturing in plastics would entail, especially when the result is an owl shaped trinket for a charm bracket.  On the other hand, one could argue that US firms, like Walmart, Hobby Lobby, Craft Warehouse and others across the retail sector exploit cheap Chinese labor and their horribly lax environmental regulations so Americans can "Save Money" and "Live Better."  My wife, for her part, was simply selling things that people in economically depressed Mountain Home could afford at a place other than Walmart.

Again, distracted.  Back to the point.  Second, as Gerson points out, "all these fat cats at Coca-Cola, Monsanto, Pfizer and Microsoft deserve at least a bleat in response. They are leading participants in an economic system — with its global supply chains, freely moving capital and rapid innovation — that, during the past 20 years, has taken about a billion people out of extreme poverty around the world."  Such a claim deserves to be fact checked, but here again, I'm willing to concede the point.  In fairness, it's an editorial, so one wouldn't expect mountains of evidence, but he does reference improvements in life expectancy, pointing out that, "with this economic growth have come miracle drugs, vaccines, improved sanitation and better agricultural technology. Global life expectancy in 1960 was 52.5 years; today it is 71.4.  In the early 1930s, American life expectancy was about 60 — what it currently is in Malawi.  Now American life expectancy is nearly 80."  This is, of course, good news, though I doubt it was an intended effect.  The intended effect of "global supply chains" with their "freely moving capital" was profit for the likes of Coca-Cola, Monsanto, or Pfizer.  So it is that, despite the good news around the world, it's difficult to call it, even "arguably, arguably the greatest humanitarian achievement in history" when back at the farm and factory, as Gerson also notes, "rapid economic change has also laid waste to whole industries and the communities sustained by them, resulting in toxic stress and terrible suffering."  If Global life expectancy rose, there are countervailing trends in American life expectancy.  As the Washington Post reports, "the statistics show decaying health for all white women since 2000. The trend was most dramatic for women in the more rural areas. There, for every 100,000 women in their late 40s, 228 died at the turn of this century. Today, 296 are dying. And in rural areas, the uptick in mortality was noticeable even earlier, as far back as 1990. Since then, death rates for rural white women in midlife have risen by nearly 50 percent."   Those "miracle drugs, vaccines, improved sanitation and better agricultural technology" are, as the Post notes, "now being overwhelmed by things that elevate it, including opioid abuse, heavy drinking, smoking and other self-destructive behaviors."  It's also useful to note that small caveat "rural."  As I have noted elsewhere, the great political divide in this country is the red rural and blue urban, and "the Post last month found a correlation between places with high white death rates and support for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump." 

That last note tempts me to go off on a tangent here, and point out that those same rural and red areas of the country, distracted by abortion, are less likely to support a planned parenthood chapter with it's broad range of women's health services -- they would likely be adamantly against socialized medicine and a "public option" that would provide access to health care in rural areas -- and generally speaking, they are likely to be the victim of economic changes that have them doing "service work" outside the home for low wages while their unemployed husbands sit around the house, watching duck dynasty reruns, waiting for her to come home, take care of the kids, and fix his dinner.   OK, the last statement is perhaps a bit unfair, but I'm simply suggesting that women have borne the brunt of economic changes that have not been accommodated by corresponding social policy changes, like paid maternity leave, in part because they have been opposed by their red state politicians, those same red state politicians that have supported the legislative and regulatory policies that have prompted the economic changes.  If Gerson "is in favor of the [fat cats of the] Davos set becoming more sensitive to the struggles of their countrymen," if he really believes that "our political system has been negligent in helping millions of Americans adapt during a period of rapid economic change," he and the red state politicians could demand, along with the economic changes, support for needed social policy changes.  Inevitably, however, that support would take the form of an entitlement program, which would entail tax monies, and who could favor tax increases to pay for it.  If they were honest with themselves, the only "under taxed" segments of the American population are the very wealthy, but again those same red state politicians, deferring to their political interests, would most assuredly resist any increase in the taxes of the donor class.  So round we go round we go round circling the drain and along comes Trump.  

Wait, Gerson probably does support some (if not all) of the social changes necessary to accommodate the rapid economic changes.  As he put it, "conservative economics offers three positive alternatives: Provide a growth-oriented economic environment (including opportunities to sell overseas). Give workers the education and skills to succeed in a modern economy. And subsidize the wages of lower-skilled jobs to provide a decent living."  Of course that doesn't sound like "conservative economics" so much as "liberal economics,"  particularly the latter two suggestions.  The notion that we would "give" workers education and skills more or less begs the question of what we might mean by "give."  Increasingly, across all education sectors, there has been a "conservative" push to "privatize" public education.  The effects are most visible in public higher education, where decreased state tax support has led to corresponding and often dramatic tuition increases even at the ostensibly more affordable community colleges, effectively pricing higher education, where workers get the education and skills necessary to succeed in a modern economy, out of reach for an increasing number of Americans.  If "give" is a euphemism for "market" then it is not likely to have much effect -- you can market the hell out of something, but like Matthew McConaughey's Cadillac, it will still be out of reach for an increasing number of Americans -- but if "give" really means "give," then we are back to the populist programs of Bernie Sanders and someone will need to "pay" for the gift.  Likewise, god forbid, who will pay for the "subsidy" on lower skilled jobs?  As Gerson notes, "who are the obstacles in pursuing such policies? On the latter two, they are not globalized elites; they are more likely to be conservative ideologues."   Quite quickly we are back to circling the drain.  

Gerson is correct, I think, when he says "Thirty American CEOs at Davos would come up with several ideas to improve, say, educational standards. Thirty members of the House Freedom Caucus would oppose all of them on principle."  The work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a case in point.  Though there is always room to quibble,  and their vision of the future IS rather tech-centric (what a surprise!) I nevertheless believe that, for the most part, they act on their principle that "the path out of poverty begins when the next generation can access quality healthcare and a great education."  The real question is this: will the political circling of the drain remain unbroken?   It does little good to blame "conservative elites, who are embracing the cheapest form of populism, involving no intellectual energy, no policy innovation and no actual help for those in need."  The ultimate solution -- dare I say it -- might be Hillary Clinton.  As the Sanders' supporters were quick to point out during the primary season, those thirty American CEOs are not particularly averse to her, nor she to them, and if the survey from the National Association for Business Economics of over 400 experts is any indicator, she ultimately has the support of the business economists as well.  As CNN points out, Trump comes in third, behind the libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.  The president, of course, is only part of the picture, unless her election points to a new sort of alignment, pulling the business community away from the authoritarian, racially-baited, misogynistic populism of Donald Trump that now dominates the republican party toward a more centrist and ultimately realistic approach -- away from a evangelical, all-or-nothing, movement approach to conservatism, toward a more inclusive and ultimately more politically pragmatic "conservatism" that could hammer out support for "access to quality healthcare and a great education" of the sort that won't bankrupt either the nation or the corporate superstructure, but nevertheless REALLY will insure our children's and grandchildren's future. We should, in other words, vote for the sort of "progressive conservatism" represented by Hillary Clinton and quit obsessing about her fracking email on the one side and her connections to big money on the other.  So say we all.