More Krugman
Actually, Krugman has given me exactly the material I need. I suspect he opposes Obama because of sentiments along these lines, from a piece in Slate he published on December 26. Then, today his column does a good job illustrating why I think Krugman is so wrong in his general approach.
Krugman's theme is that Obama is insufficiently partisan to get things done. The obvious objection to this is that Krugman is judging Obama largely on the basis of his rhetoric, along with a few minor policy judgments. On almost every policy issue, Obama is to the left of Senator Clinton and to the left of former President Clinton, a man whose administration Krugman admires (more on that later). Note too that President Bush, who cannot be criticized as insufficiently partisan, uses bipartisan rhetoric when it suits him. The distinction is so obvious that it barely needs to be stated - it's one thing to use the language of bipartisanship, and another thing to naively practice it. Krugman has no good evidence that Obama will play nice with the Republicans once he's elected.
I think Krugman's antipathy toward Obama comes down to the fact that Krugman envies the conservative movement. In a sense, there's a lot to envy: the movement has achieved a lot (in a sense) and has proven remarkably resilient in the face of deep unpopularity and the evident damage done by conservative policies in almost all aspects of American life.
But wait a minute - two things about that last sentence are not at all enviable. First, the conservative movement has become quite brittle and maladapted to the modern world, despite its supposed vibrancy. Krugman notes this when he describes the unpopular, out-of-step policy positions of the GOP presidential candidates, all of whom have humiliated themselves in their quest for the conservative mantle ("double Guantanamo" is my own favorite moment, but there are dozens, if not hundreds, to choose from). I don't think this is a coincidence, either; the conservative movement's strengths have become its apparently fatal weaknesses.
What's driving this, I suspect, is group polarization. The conservative movement is just that - a movement - and it prizes loyalty and internal solidarity more than truth or accountability. This has been well documented over the last decade or so, I won't go into details here. The problem is that when you organize yourself that way, as a monoculture instead of a balanced equilibrium, you have this runaway tendency toward extremism and lack of self-criticism. You end up with Fox News and Ann Coulter instead of NPR and Cass Sunstein.
And Krugman envies this. He looks at academia and NPR and he sees weak dishwater liberals, riven by internal nit-picking while Sauron gathers his forces in Mordor. He looks at the conservative movement and he sees something that can get things done. Krugman has a lot he wants to get done - this is how he defines a progressive, as someone who wants to achieve liberal goals - and so he has no patience with the liberal institutions in their current form.
There's something the matter here, though, and it brings us back to the second striking thing about the conservative movement: it has a perverse Midas touch, turning everything it touches into shit. Where conservatives have arguably been successful, it has mostly been through incorporating their ideas into mainstream liberalism (an example would be pollution trading, though whether conservatives get credit for that is debatable). Where conservatives have fucked up the most, it's been where they have most delusionally turned inward and sheltered themselves from all criticism.
All of this is to say that conservative institutions - megachurches, Fox News, the WSJ op-ed page - are deeply dysfunctional and incapable of getting almost anything right. They are also corrupt to their core, in one sense or another. It is impossible for me to envy conservatives - the most prominent conservatives are all assholes or idiots or both. This is a function of the lack of self-criticism among conservatives, of group polarization, of institutional failure on a massive scale. Ironically, the smartest conservatives have had to disengage from the movement almost entirely. The U of C law school faculty has plenty of conservatives, but very few who are at all comfortable in today's GOP. The liberal faculty members - such as, until a few years ago, Barack Obama - are much more comfortable in the Democratic Party and in the liberal movement as a whole.
Contrast the insanely destructive failures of modern conservatism with the Clinton administration which, while mildly liberal, was not really progressive at all. Clinton had his flaws, but in terms of policy he went from success to success. It is true that he failed to advance certain key aspects of the liberal agenda, a point to which I'll return shortly.
I'd like to think that liberals are inherently immune to the kind of group polarization that conservatives have fallen prey to. Liberals are defined in part by open-mindedness, nonconformity, and a tolerance for dissent. Lately, though, we've seen progressives become more thuggish, more consensus-enforcing, more tolerant of bullshit when it supports their side in an argument. The end result of all this is bad policy and rage. Tune in to the GOP debates and you'll see the conservative movement, hopefully in its death throes, but still anchoring a major political party in nonsense and hatred.
The big tradeoff is that conservatives are supposed to be ruthlessly effective at getting their way in Washington. This is a bit of a joke - conservatives are good at serving their paymasters, but conservatism as an ideology hasn't accomplished a lot to be proud of. In a sense, though, it has been effective, at least in shutting down liberal initiatives, and I'm all for liberals standing up and fighting for what they believe in. The question is whether it's worth forging a unified movement to carry this out. I strongly believe not, Krugman strongly believes so. In a sense, this comes down to how quickly you want universal health care, versus how much value you put on traditional liberal values that undercut political effectiveness. It's also a fight about whether unilateral disarmament makes sense - in the face of a massive, well-funded, and truly insane conservative movement, maybe the only way out is to have a progressive movement as well.
In a bigger sense, though, I think all of this ignores the basic division of labor that characterizes a mature political movement. You have your academics, who mull over ideas, come up with creative solutions, weed out bullshit, and prize intellectual honesty. You have your politicians, who get elected and implement the ideas, while maintaining a certain intellectual... "flexibility" that would reflect poorly on an academic. You have your partisan hacks, who press your party's advantages and deploy rhetoric to fire up the public. In Krugman's world, the progressive movement will mush these things together the same way the conservatives have, destroying the creativity and intellectual honesty that created the ideology in the first place. So, no criticizing unions! Don't you know they're on our side? No criticizing protectionists! etc. etc.
Well, I've rambled on way too long, so I'll just sign off by saying that I don't think Krugman will be very happy if the progressive movement does emulate the conservative movement. At some point, Krugman will choke on the bullshit, and disengage from the progressive movement, and then he'll be Krugman again - the guy who got it right about almost everything because he didn't give a shit about playing nice with anyone.
Krugman's theme is that Obama is insufficiently partisan to get things done. The obvious objection to this is that Krugman is judging Obama largely on the basis of his rhetoric, along with a few minor policy judgments. On almost every policy issue, Obama is to the left of Senator Clinton and to the left of former President Clinton, a man whose administration Krugman admires (more on that later). Note too that President Bush, who cannot be criticized as insufficiently partisan, uses bipartisan rhetoric when it suits him. The distinction is so obvious that it barely needs to be stated - it's one thing to use the language of bipartisanship, and another thing to naively practice it. Krugman has no good evidence that Obama will play nice with the Republicans once he's elected.
I think Krugman's antipathy toward Obama comes down to the fact that Krugman envies the conservative movement. In a sense, there's a lot to envy: the movement has achieved a lot (in a sense) and has proven remarkably resilient in the face of deep unpopularity and the evident damage done by conservative policies in almost all aspects of American life.
But wait a minute - two things about that last sentence are not at all enviable. First, the conservative movement has become quite brittle and maladapted to the modern world, despite its supposed vibrancy. Krugman notes this when he describes the unpopular, out-of-step policy positions of the GOP presidential candidates, all of whom have humiliated themselves in their quest for the conservative mantle ("double Guantanamo" is my own favorite moment, but there are dozens, if not hundreds, to choose from). I don't think this is a coincidence, either; the conservative movement's strengths have become its apparently fatal weaknesses.
What's driving this, I suspect, is group polarization. The conservative movement is just that - a movement - and it prizes loyalty and internal solidarity more than truth or accountability. This has been well documented over the last decade or so, I won't go into details here. The problem is that when you organize yourself that way, as a monoculture instead of a balanced equilibrium, you have this runaway tendency toward extremism and lack of self-criticism. You end up with Fox News and Ann Coulter instead of NPR and Cass Sunstein.
And Krugman envies this. He looks at academia and NPR and he sees weak dishwater liberals, riven by internal nit-picking while Sauron gathers his forces in Mordor. He looks at the conservative movement and he sees something that can get things done. Krugman has a lot he wants to get done - this is how he defines a progressive, as someone who wants to achieve liberal goals - and so he has no patience with the liberal institutions in their current form.
There's something the matter here, though, and it brings us back to the second striking thing about the conservative movement: it has a perverse Midas touch, turning everything it touches into shit. Where conservatives have arguably been successful, it has mostly been through incorporating their ideas into mainstream liberalism (an example would be pollution trading, though whether conservatives get credit for that is debatable). Where conservatives have fucked up the most, it's been where they have most delusionally turned inward and sheltered themselves from all criticism.
All of this is to say that conservative institutions - megachurches, Fox News, the WSJ op-ed page - are deeply dysfunctional and incapable of getting almost anything right. They are also corrupt to their core, in one sense or another. It is impossible for me to envy conservatives - the most prominent conservatives are all assholes or idiots or both. This is a function of the lack of self-criticism among conservatives, of group polarization, of institutional failure on a massive scale. Ironically, the smartest conservatives have had to disengage from the movement almost entirely. The U of C law school faculty has plenty of conservatives, but very few who are at all comfortable in today's GOP. The liberal faculty members - such as, until a few years ago, Barack Obama - are much more comfortable in the Democratic Party and in the liberal movement as a whole.
Contrast the insanely destructive failures of modern conservatism with the Clinton administration which, while mildly liberal, was not really progressive at all. Clinton had his flaws, but in terms of policy he went from success to success. It is true that he failed to advance certain key aspects of the liberal agenda, a point to which I'll return shortly.
I'd like to think that liberals are inherently immune to the kind of group polarization that conservatives have fallen prey to. Liberals are defined in part by open-mindedness, nonconformity, and a tolerance for dissent. Lately, though, we've seen progressives become more thuggish, more consensus-enforcing, more tolerant of bullshit when it supports their side in an argument. The end result of all this is bad policy and rage. Tune in to the GOP debates and you'll see the conservative movement, hopefully in its death throes, but still anchoring a major political party in nonsense and hatred.
The big tradeoff is that conservatives are supposed to be ruthlessly effective at getting their way in Washington. This is a bit of a joke - conservatives are good at serving their paymasters, but conservatism as an ideology hasn't accomplished a lot to be proud of. In a sense, though, it has been effective, at least in shutting down liberal initiatives, and I'm all for liberals standing up and fighting for what they believe in. The question is whether it's worth forging a unified movement to carry this out. I strongly believe not, Krugman strongly believes so. In a sense, this comes down to how quickly you want universal health care, versus how much value you put on traditional liberal values that undercut political effectiveness. It's also a fight about whether unilateral disarmament makes sense - in the face of a massive, well-funded, and truly insane conservative movement, maybe the only way out is to have a progressive movement as well.
In a bigger sense, though, I think all of this ignores the basic division of labor that characterizes a mature political movement. You have your academics, who mull over ideas, come up with creative solutions, weed out bullshit, and prize intellectual honesty. You have your politicians, who get elected and implement the ideas, while maintaining a certain intellectual... "flexibility" that would reflect poorly on an academic. You have your partisan hacks, who press your party's advantages and deploy rhetoric to fire up the public. In Krugman's world, the progressive movement will mush these things together the same way the conservatives have, destroying the creativity and intellectual honesty that created the ideology in the first place. So, no criticizing unions! Don't you know they're on our side? No criticizing protectionists! etc. etc.
Well, I've rambled on way too long, so I'll just sign off by saying that I don't think Krugman will be very happy if the progressive movement does emulate the conservative movement. At some point, Krugman will choke on the bullshit, and disengage from the progressive movement, and then he'll be Krugman again - the guy who got it right about almost everything because he didn't give a shit about playing nice with anyone.
posted by James | 12:43 AM
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