Topic: For policy wonks...
MIA: Say, What Ever Happened to Compassionate Conservatism?
Back in the days when wars were metaphoric - the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs, for example - they weren't any easier to win. Like the War on Terror, these were wars on abstractions. Still there were those who thought one of them, Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, was a rather fine idea, even if a bit more conceptual than real. Johnson may have launched the thing to divert attention from the Vietnam mess, but doing something to get people who were in trouble working and fed and housed and educated seemed like that might do the country some good.
The push back from the right was the usual. These people had to take personal responsibility, not handouts, and what they needed was to be forced to work for what might sustain them and eventually get them into the mainstream. The day of handouts was over - as it wasn't fair that those who worked hard then were being forced by the evil government to chip in to keep those who had bad luck or dark skin and made the mistake of being born in the wrong place from dying in the streets. These losers needed to be forced to do for themselves, like everyone else. This was called compassionate conservatism, or tough love, or the American Way, or something, and thus we got welfare reform, where you got the food stamps and other aid, if you put in forty hours a week doing something, anything at all. There would be no more lazy "takers" - whining people playing victim and taking the money of those who worked hard and did useful things. To just give them help was wrong - it was "soft bigotry of low expectations" and the conservatives were not bigots. They knew these people were capable of becoming rich, or something.
Oddly the real welfare reform came in the Clinton administration, as he was doing that triangulation or "third way" thing, mixing liberal stuff with conservative stuff in an attempt to pull the country together. Unfortunately, there was the Monica lass.
With the conservatives taking control of the government - first with the Newt Gingrich revolution of 1994, where congress was convincingly won be the conservatives, to the present situation where both hoses, the executive branch, and most of the judiciary are in the hands of the conservatives - things might have been even harsher. But as there is a baseline of people in the country disturbed by the thought of millions of homeless dying in the streets and children starving and all that, the line became "sure we're conservative and think people should take care of themselves and the government has no business in helping people with anything, but we're not heartless." Thus Republicans ran on the platform of "compassionate conservatism" - no one deserves anything from the government, but we'll make a few exceptions here and there. George Bush ran on that idea, and got the votes of those who were resentful any of their tax dollars went to someone not working when they were, but felt a little guilty when each winter another homeless woman or two froze to death under the bridge down the street. Those who felt no guilt at all - serves 'em right for being so lazy - knew the whole thing was a ploy. There are things you have to say to get elected, and they understood.
And the have been right. In the Washington Post, in the pages not devoted to the wars, there was this, a discussion of how the administration has said nothing at all about poverty in America since the president gave that amazing speech in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina - we would do something about the poverty that led to all these deaths, of the people who didn't have the means to get out of the path of the storm, and yes it was a racial thing too, and we'd fix that too. Enough was enough. The post notes that was it. It was a one-shot. Not only were the issues never mentioned again, anywhere or at any time, the speech was never referred to again, and no actions of any sort were taken of any sort to even vaguely related to the issues of poverty or race. It seems other things came up. And even if they had not come up, one wonders if anything would be different.
Poverty? Never heard of it. The New Orleans speech stands out as an anomaly - something from an alternative universe, the Universe of Compassionate Conservatism. It's the stuff of Marvel Comics - a place where everything is reversed, and Superman is a bad, and dumb.
Ezra Klein explains -
Maybe because it was a joke to begin with? Just as the evangelical Christians tell us you have to understand when Jesus was just kidding - like that turn the other cheek business and that love everyone stuff - so you need to understand the New Orleans anomaly the same way.... the roots of the Bush administration's betrayal on poverty reach far beyond Katrina. Compassionate conservatism, after all, was once more than an empty catch phrase; it described a policy philosophy that sought economic uplift through government incentives. Myron Magnet, author of the foundational compassionate conservative work The Dream and the Nightmare, met with Bush repeatedly during the campaign, and visitors to Karl Rove's office used to leave with a copy of the book in hand - according to Rove, it laid out the campaign's roadmap. So when Magnet assured us that "At [Bush's compassionate conservatism's] core is concern for the poor - not a traditional Republican preoccupation - and an explicit belief that government has a responsibility for poor Americans," it was safe to assume he knew what he was talking about.
Only he didn't. Compassionate conservatism retained only its disinterest in small government conservatism. As the years ground excruciatingly onward and the Bush administration's domestic policy priorities crystallized, it became abundantly clear that this administration was corporatist, not conservative in nature - theirs was a philosophy of industrialist, not indigent, uplift. It didn't have to be that way: Bush's early moves were promising, with No Child Left Behind a flawed but supportable attempt at codifying equality in our schools. After 9-11, though, the war president killed the poor's president, and Bush turned his already meager interest in the mechanics of governing entirely away from domestic issues.
I've never been entirely convinced by the explanations for why that happened. Bush's record in Texas and his rhetoric on the campaign trail never suggested the sort of leader that would emerge. September 11 changed him, but it's not precisely clear why it enabled such an abandonment of the domestic realm.
Or as Digby at Hullabaloo puts it -
Poverty just didn't matter.I would argue that there never was a "compassionate conservative" Bush, but a political slogan that was adopted when the face of the party was the slavering beasts of the Gingrich years who shut down the government and impeached a popular president against the will of the people. The game plan was to run Bush as a Republican Clinton without the woody.
And to the extent that they actually believed any of their campaign blather about "soft bigotry of low expectations" and prescription drug coverage, it was only to massage certain constituencies they needed to cobble together a majority - which they didn't actually manage to do in 2000. Karl was just buying votes like any smart pol does.
... They failed on social security, the big ticket domestic item of the second term, but the reason was that they always overestimated the amount of political capital a "war president" who only won a second term by 51% of the vote actually has. He had plenty of juice after 9/11 but he used it all up on Iraq - and when the WMD didn't show, most of that evaporated over time.
But the tax cuts, the indiscriminate deregulation, the expansion of executive power (not only through the programs like the illegal wiretapping but through the passage of the Patriot Act as well) can only be considered great successes by the standard he set forth. The reason his "compassionate conservative" agenda wasn't part of that package is because it was just a campaign ploy to begin with. After 9/11 they made the calculation that he could win by running solely on national security with a smattering of homo-hating. And he did.
But now it may, as those in the middle start the slow descent to the levels below. The economy is booming, a wages for most are falling, and have been for several years. This would be no problem if only CEO's were allowed to vote, and those who have large portfolios (those who own the capital). The problem is we allow those who live off their labor alone, their work, to vote. The problem is so obvious that even John Derbyshire at the old-line conservative National Review sees it -
Amd even the folks over at the Wall Street Journal, of all places, see the problem, as Steven Rattner notes here -If the rich get richer while the middle class thrives, and some decent provision is made for the poor, I'm a happy man, living in a society I consider healthy and am proud of. If, however, the rich get richer while the middle class is struggling, or actually declining, I am not a happy man. There are some reasons to think that is happening, and you don't have to be a socialist to worry about this.
No amount of "but the economy is booming talk" can override the fact of the empty wallet at the gas pump. Interestingly he uses the word chaff, the foil that used to be dropped from bombers to befuddle the guys on the ground at their radar screens. The working man's radar may be able to see through it, even if the Democrats screw up this issue too. Rattner seems more worried about those who work for a living than any Democrat.After months without a domestic agenda to capitalize on Bush administration unpopularity, Democrats are moving - haltingly, disjointedly, belatedly - toward embracing the mother of all electoral issues: the failure of robust top-line growth in the U.S. economy to filter into the wallets of Americans below the top of the pyramid.
... No amount of chaff can hide the failure of our remarkable productivity surge (and the accompanying robust growth of the overall economy) to meaningfully boost average wages, which have barely grown with inflation. Separated by income level, the picture is more dismal. From 2000 to 2005, for example, average weekly wages for the bottom 10% dropped by 2.7% (after adjustment for inflation), while those of the top 10% rose by 5.3%.
Is the day of reckoning at hand? If you're told you're really doing well, and you've dropped your health insurance and are skipping meals, and you can't pay even the monthly minimum on your credit cards, are you going to believe that? Who needs the Democrats? You may just feel these guys have screwed you.
Well, they always said government doesn't solve problems, government is the problem. That was one of Ronald Reagan's favorite lines, and he's said to be the father of all the concepts at play.
That leads to this rant, on the underlying issues, presented here in full, as the writer no doubt wants this widely disseminated -
Enough said. But logic seldom works.What Did You Expect, America?
by SusanG
Sat Jul 22, 2006 at 03:16:59 PM PDT
Would you hire a babysitter who hates children and thinks they should be eliminated? Or who declares for years in your hearing that children are irritants who should be starved to be small, unseen and mute?
Would you hire cops who think laws are stupid and useless and should be abolished?
Would you hire a conductor for your orchestra who believes music itself an abomination?
Then why would you hire - and you did hire them, America; they are your employees, after all, not your rulers, despite their grandiose pretensions - members of a political party who think government is useless, ineffective, bloated and untrustworthy?
You've hired for your kitchen the chef who spits in your food because he despises preparing meals.
You've hired for your yardwork the gardener who sets out to kill your roses to demonstrate his assertion that they will die in your climate.
You've hired for your office the accountant who's staked his career on proving no accurate books can be kept.
In electing Republicans, America, you put people in charge of institutions they overtly, caustically loathe and proudly proclaim should not exist. Good thinking, USA, and stellar results: Katrina, Iraq, Medicare D, trade and budget deficits, mine disasters and on and on and on and ...
Conservatives have declared officially for decades that they hate public programs and love private business. Why then, do Americans profess shock when these same people run the public credit card up to bunker-busting levels to line the pockets of friendly corporations, leaving taxpayers - current and the as-yet unborn - the bill? It's the dine and ditch mentality writ large, and American citizens are the unfortunate waiters having their lowly pay docked to cover the deadbeat loss - and their future grandchildren's pay docked as well.
We are witnessing an orchestrated, unprecedented transfer of public wealth to private pockets, a national one-party feeding frenzy that's making beggars and beseechers of us all, and yet many Americans stand around muttering in a daze of semi-apathetic befuddlement about gosh darn how did all this come to be and how sure as shit, uh-huh, those Republicans shore were right, government doesn't do a the little guy a damn bit of good, no sirree bob. Better drown it some more. Cut them taxes, privatize something, anything, pronto!
Kee-rist on a pogo stick.
If you put people in charge of running a project they are ideologically committed to proving a failure, it will fail.
Seems pretty straightforward to me. But hey, I'm a Democrat. You know, one of those people who think universal quality public education is a massive good to society, that maintaining our highways and levees and bridges and dams is part of what makes this country great, that paying first-responders and nurses what they're worth helps guarantee our public health and safety, that providing for fellow citizens who fall on hard times is not only the ethical thing to do, but the pragmatic one, ensuring that this country does not incubate a permanently inflamed and disgruntled underclass ready to drop a match on a pool of social gasoline.
Here's a thought - just a thought, mind you, beloved America: Perhaps it's time to return to government the party that has an ideological stake in making it ... you know ... succeed. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to raise our sights a wee bit and elect people who think public service is more than an opportunity for the "Biggest! Fire Sale! Ever!" for their friends and loved ones. Perhaps it's time to insist on greater - if not great - expectations from the employees we decide to hire or fire every two years to carry out our will under the constitution.
As one-party Republican rule has clearly shown, when you expect incompetence, corruption and deceit from your government, you get exactly what you vote for. In spades.
Posted by Alan at 18:54 PDT
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Updated: Saturday, 22 July 2006 18:58 PDT
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