Politics

From the Washington Post:

“A dozen high-ranking retired military officers took the unusual step yesterday of signing a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee expressing “deep concern” over the nomination of White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales as attorney general, marking a rare military foray into the debate over a civilian post.

The group includes retired Army Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The officers are one of several groups to separately urge the Senate to sharply question Gonzales during a confirmation hearing Thursday about his role in shaping legal policies on torture and interrogation methods.”

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While in vacation mode, I’m still reading.  Today’s entry is about my airplane book, The Future and Its Enemies:  The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise and Progress by Virginia Postrel.  I know I’m about two years late to this book.  I’ve been meaning to read it for some time, and ran across it in a bargain bin near my sister’s house in Colorado. 

Virginia has a key idea which clarifies some of the difficulties we have in analyzing  polticial cleavages along a left-right split.  She speaks of dynamists and stasists.  In her description, dynamists are willing to embrace the messy nature of unguided social and technological change, while stasists do not.  In her terminology stasists come in two major varieties–reactionaries and technocrats.  Reactionaries wish to control change by reversing it and returning to a previous (and quite possibly mythical) golden age.  Patrick Buchanan is used throughout the book to give examples of reactionary thinking.  I think the choice of ‘stasist’ is revealed to be a bit poor when Virginia goes on to describe technocrats.  Technocrats attempt to tightly control change, often with the idea that an elite number of top-down experts can efficiently control and direct the important changes in society. 

Our new awareness of how dynamic the world really is has united two types of stasists who would have once been bitter enemies:  reactionaries, whose central value is stability, and technocrats, whose central value is control.  Reactionaries seek to reverse change, restoring the literal or imagined past and holding it in place.  A few decades ago, they aimed their criticism at Galbraithean technocracy.  Today they attack dynamism, often in alliance with their formier adversaries.  Technocrats, for their part, promise to manage change, centrally directing "progress" according to a predictable plan.  (That plan may be informed by reactionary values, making the categories soewhat blurry;  although they are more technocrats than true reactionaries, (William) Bennett and Galston inhabit the border regions).

I think this concept is useful to think about, but I suspect it is more distracting to describe both concepts as adhering to stasis than it would be if she called it something else.  The choice is made somewhat more understandable because many technocrats are utopian–they desire a beautiful endpoint.  Both technocrats and reactionaries believe that they know or can find the one best way to do things.  They then attempt to use the government to enforce that way of doing things.  Thinking about this helps me to clarify some of the strange twists that modern American politics takes.  The bulk of conservatives are dynamist with respect to economic thinking.  They have a split with respect to social issues.  Some of them are dynamist, a few are technocratic, and many are reactionary.  Some of those who are reactionary are also reactionary with respect to economic issues (e.g. Buchanan).  Liberals tend to by dynamist with respect to social organization.  They have a split in the economic sphere.  Many are technocratic, many are reactionary, and a few are dynamist in orientation. 

This post is about to get rather long because I intend to use extensive quotes.  So I am hiding it below the extended body.

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NOTE: I’d like to preface this post by noting that I’ve been highly impressed with the quality of the debate about Social Security reform on this blog. I credit von, Sebastian, hilzoy and countless readers with offering what I’ve been tempted to edit and send to Congress as "Highly Recommended Reading" as they prepare to hash out the details themselves. Truly, regardless of what you think of his plan, it’s a testament to the value of Bush’s suggestion that we have a national debate on the topic. I hope our elected officials are as thoughtful when it’s their turn.

Having said that…

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I’ve been following Marshall’s argument that the Bush administration is using the same formula to get buy-in for their Social Security overhaul that they used to win support for the Iraq invasion, but now the meme is gaining wider attention. First, Marshall’s observation:

The president and the White House have now compared their build-up to the Iraq war with their push to phase out Social Security enough times that it seems worth creating a detailed taxonomy of the Bush White House approach to major policy initiatives in order to predict their efforts over the next two years. The Journal said last week …

The president has yet to lay out specific ideas for changing the entitlement program; he and his aides are focused first on selling the idea of change. "For a while, I think it’s important for me to continue to work with members of both parties to explain the problem," he said in a Monday news conference. This would suggest that we’re now in the lying and fear-mongering phase of the campaign, which would be followed of course by a later phase in which a specific policy remedy is brought forward, nominally meant to address the fake problem.

Perhaps if folks could note beginning and end points of various phases of the Iraq war mumbojumbo that could help us pinpoint signs to look for in the unfolding Social Security debate.

Now, as Marshall notes, the Boston Globe "gets it":

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DeLong makes part of my point (see below, including comments) regarding the benefits of Social Security reform, and makes it better that I did (or could).  Discussing Martin Feldstein’s perceived views on Social Security privatization, DeLong writes:

These days [Feldstein] is more likely to stress not the reduction in personal savings that may be generated by expectations of the continuation of the pay-as-you-go Social Security system, but the gap between stock and bond returns. Marty’s argument these days is much more likely to be the claim (with which I have a lot of sympathy) that the stock market does a lousy job of mobilizing society’s risk-bearing resources. Stocks appear to be priced as though the marginal investor is a rich 62-year old with some clogged arteries and a fifteen-year life expectancy who is not expecting to leave a fortune to his descendants. But if the stock market were working well, the marginal investor would be a 40-year old in his or her peak earning years looking out to retirement spending 40 years in the future–an investor much less averse to risk than the 62-year old.

Turning Social Security into a forced-equity-savings program would, Marty believes, not only produce huge profits for the system but also materially improve the efficiency of U.S. financial markets.

(Emphasis mine.)

Kevin Drum wonders if this means that the stock market is underperforming (his phase is a "massive, persistent, and inexplicable market failure").  The short answer is, probably.  For whatever reason, folks tend to be more conservative in their investments than they should be.  That is, most folks should be holding riskier investments than they currently are because, over time, they are likely to be rewarded by their risk taking.  (Or, to bastardize DeLong, forty-year olds are holding the portfolios of sixty-two year olds when they should be holding the portfolios of forty-year olds.)   

Thus, one argument in favor of privatizing part of Social Security is that it will force more money into the market and capture the "equity premium" — the money that is being lost because folks ain’t investing the way that they should.  I say "one argument" because, as Tyler Cowen has noted, this is not the only or best argument in favor of Social Security.  A better argument is that Social Security privatization will increase the national savings rate and make investors and owners out of a whole buncha folks who don’t have the opportunity under the present system.  To create an ownership society, wherein everyone has a stake in the corporate world.

By the bye, DeLong is absolutely right to call privatized social security accounts "forced equity savings."  The goal of privatizing Social Security is to replace the current generational transfer system with a national savings and investment system.

Now DeLong and I part company with respect to who should control the investment portfolio.  DeLong "would rather see this forced equity savings done not through private accounts but through allowing the Secretary of the Treasury to invest the Trust Fund in equities."  I’d prefer that the investors themselves control their own retirement portfolios, choosing from among a series of (no load) index and other funds.  But I hope to take up this debate a bit later.

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As a Democrat, I watched in horror, but with a grudging respect, the impressive degree of discipline the GOP displayed during the last election. They were in step, they were on message, and they were, obviously, unbeatable. The extreme right held its tongue as a parade of moderates got prime time slots during the convention. The moderates parroted without choking that it wasn’t important that those in the GOP had ideology differences, that the tent was big enough for all of them.

Well, now, it seems those tent flaps may just blow wide open and release a stampede of angry pachyderms charging off in all directions:

President Bush’s second-term plans to reshape Social Security, immigration laws and other domestic programs are facing a stiff challenge from a group that was reliably accommodating in the president’s first four years: congressional Republicans.

After essentially rubber-stamping much of Bush’s first-term agenda, many House and Senate Republicans plan to assert themselves more forcefully to put their mark on domestic policy in the new year, according to several lawmakers.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) has privately criticized White House handling of the recent intelligence bill and Bush’s plan to postpone tax reform until 2006 or later. Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) and others have publicly complained about the political and fiscal hazards of overhauling Social Security. Several senators, including a few 2008 presidential contenders, are rushing to promote their own Social Security plans to compete with Bush’s.

And a number of conservative Republicans such as Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), who are concerned about states’ rights, are threatening to derail the White House plan to impose federal limits on medical lawsuits. "It’s one of the worst bills going," Graham said.

But the first big dispute is predicted to be immigration reform

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When I wrote about Peter Beinart’s ‘A Fighting Faith’, I took it to be a proposal about what Democrats should do now, and criticized it in that light. I did not read it as a call for Democrats to purge the party of anyone who stood in the way of our presenting ourselves as somewhere to Bush’s right in the War on Terror. This was wrong — that element of it is clearly there, and I suspect I didn’t spot it because I am just allergic to that sort of thing. The idea that we should ‘disown’ people, or ‘ban’ them, except maybe when they have done something, like, oh, raping children, makes my skin crawl: if I wanted to be in the business of excommunication, I’d have a sex change operation and join the priesthood. The idea of banning people in order to make some political point is worse: it’s just wrong to treat people that way. Possibly if I were running for office I might take a different view, but since I’m not, I have no interest in trying out for the circular firing squad.

Digby at Hullabaloo did not miss this point, and he has what I think is the definitive response to it.

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Left2Right’s Elizabeth Anderson offers a justification for patriotism that is designed to appeal to the thinking person on either side of the Left/Right divide. She uses New York City as the base of her metaphors for liberal and conservative ideas and ideals. Although I find her tribute to NYC heartwarming, I find her arguments a bit less than convincing. Being on the left, myself, I’ll focus on her advice to me:

To the Left: Chinatown shows how free trade in goods and free movement of people are inextricable from the free exchange of ideas and willingness to learn from and welcome them, no matter their origin–attitudes that lie at the core of the cosmopolitan ideal. It also forces us to acknowledge the special cultural conditions needed to foster "diversity" at its best. Not every national culture is as good as the U.S. at opening itself up to immigrants from so many lands and enabling them to become fully "us" (and this is not to say that we are all that great in other regions of the U.S., or with respect to certain immigrant groups). To promote the cosmopolitanism we love, we need to treasure the local conditions for its flourishing, and this requires robust support for and love of America itself. We also have to acknowledge that former Mayor Giuliani brought spectacular benefits to the city by insisting not just on a crackdown on crime, but on restoring order and civility to the streets, without which people cannot raise families in the city, nor enjoy the great diversity it offers, but will rather retreat behind closed doors and ethnic enclaves hostile to outsiders. (This is not to deny the costs of Giuliani’s crackdown.) Cosmopolitanism needs patriotism to survive.

Here I think Anderson makes mistakes in her logic based on an overly romantic view of the city and a misperception about immigrants’ attitudes.

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In his 1995 book Banal Nationalism, Michael Billig explains how a constant stream of banal, subtle nationalistic messages in Western media quietly encourages citizens to obey the law and be nice to one another in ways they might not otherwise be. As long as there’s a political spectrum of sources balancing each other out, though, this isn’t so bad.

[I]n the established nations, there is a continual ‘flagging’, or reminding, of nationhood. The established nations are those states that have confidence in their own continuity, and that, particularly, are part of what is conventionally described as ‘the West’. The political leaders of such nations – whether France, the USA, the United Kingdom or New Zealand – are not typically termed ‘nationalists’. However…nationhood provides a continual background for their political discourses, for cultural products, and even for the structuring of newspapers. In so many little ways, the citizenry are daily reminded of their national place in a world of nations. However, this reminding is so familiar, so continual, that it is not consciously registered as reminding. The metonymic image of banal nationalism is not a flag which is being consciously waved with fervent passion; it is the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building.

You can test this yourself if you travel. The Italian flag strikes you in Italy. The Union Jack in London. Or, more dramatically, read the press there and you’ll immediately notice a surprising number of stories that strike you as "nationalistic" for that place. Spend long enough abroad, and then return to the States, and you’ll notice it here as well. Eventually, however, as you begin to follow the press regularly (here or abroad) your awareness of this fades. I’ve had this happen several times when I lived in various countries abroad. Coming home to the US, it stuns me…and then, again, fades.

Flying down and then back from Miami this past weekend, I watched the FOX News channel on the plane. I don’t have cable at home and so almost never have the, er, pleasure of the incessant nationalistic message it broadcasts. It hit me like a ton of bricks.

But why?

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I’ve noticed an odd disconnect among bloggers I argue with about what they so derisively call "entitlement" programs. They’ll agree with me that there are "maintenance" costs associated with a capitalist/democracy—that some re-distribution of wealth (as Revolution protection, if not philanthropy) makes sense, but when they think about the details—the fact that some of their taxes end up in the pockets of other citizens—they begin to see red. It’s not rational, in my opinion, this disconnect: agreeing these programs ensure that our way of life is possible but refusing to accept that this means others may momentarily benefit from their hard work. In addition to irrational and horribly short-sighted, I have to admit it, it sometimes seems mean and greedy to me too.

I’m totally convinced this irrational greed is driving the desire to privatize Social Security.

Enter Paul Krugman, whose column today is as insightful as it is clear in explaining why this issue has been poorly framed and when examined more closely reveals a political agenda, not a need.

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Reader JWO writes: “Has anyone read the article “A Fighting Faith,” by Peter Beinart, in today’s New Republic? I would love to see this discussed on this blog.” We at ObWi live to serve, so here’s a post on it. Since it’s behind a subscription wall, I’ll excerpt below the fold.

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hat tip to constant reader wilfred for this item
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In our house, when money’s tight, we consider which luxuries we normally enjoy that we can do without. We eat out less often. We take a cheaper vacation than the one we had hoped for. We keep on walking past Century 21*, pretending it’s not there.

When the Federal government finds itself in the same position, however, it decides it’s time for the taxpayers to buy the president a yacht.

The Senate voted 65-30 for the legislation late on Saturday that sets aside funds for a range of priorities including a presidential yacht, foreign aid and energy.

OK, so it’s only $2 million dollars to buy back the U.S.S. Sequoia which was sold three decades ago. (A price distressing the current owners, who are claiming it’s now worth $9.8 million.) But, come on, what else would we spend that $2 million on, if not a boat for the Bushes. I mean how else do we expect them to live in the style they’re accustomed to, if we deny them this basic necessity? But that’s not the ultimate insult. The ultimate insult is that this pork-ladden monster** is something these jokers are proud of.

"I’m very proud of the fact that we held the line and made Congress make choices and set priorities, because it follows our philosophy," Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said in House debate.

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From around the blogosphere, here’s a round up of how folks feel Dr. Rice will perform as Secretary of State.

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