| While others have criticized this typology, or suggested other additions--such as an Oriental model, or a Mediterranean one, Esping-Andersen's 3-fold typology arguably captures the main divisions, while the Oriental and Mediterranean models can be regarded as variants on the basic conservative idea, which was first realized by Bismarck in Germany. Bismarck introduced national health care as a way to politically undermine the socialists in the Social Democratic Party, who were strong advocates for such a plan. By taking their most popular political demand off the table, he figured to erode their capacity to organize. But he also aimed to support the growth and consolidation of German industry, which was struggling to catch up with Britain, and by taking on a protective role, in the tradition of the Church, he also sought to legitimate state power, as a further defense against liberal and socialist critics of the conservative establishment.
Needless to say, American movement conservatism developed along very different lines, not least because they never controlled the national government the way that most European conservatives had controlled theirs almost continually for centuries on end. The American welfare state was much more modest than the German welfare state, the foundations of which were laid two generations before the New Deal. And yet, American conservative ideologues have longed to destroy even the under-sized, under-developed American welfare state. There are just two problems with this: (1) The American welfare state exists because of naked capitalism's epic fail otherwise known as the Great Depression. It's there as a matter of practical necessity. The same applies to liberal macro-economics, aka Keynesianism, of which more in a minute. (2) Even most self-identified conservatives want no part of such plans. Their conservatism runs much closer to the spirit of European conservatism, the conservatism of conservative welfare states, which is overwhelmingly a combination--ala Bismarck--of socialism and social conservatism.
Because of this reality, movement conservatives had to engage in a deeply duplicitous political strategy over the past several decades. The foundation of this strategy was another factor not mentioned above--or rather, its inverse. The social democratic welfare states are heavily concentrated in Northern Europe: Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands. One thing these countries have going for them is that they are relatively homogeneous ethnically, compared to the rest of Europe. In fact, there is solid research showing that support for welfare state programs is inversely related to racial and ethnic diversity--people show measurably less social solidarity with people of another race or ethnicity.
Such was the foundation of white backlash politics--using racial resentment of the political majority to mobilize attacks on liberal politicians who defended the welfare state. Ronald Reagan rather infamously stoked such resentment with lies about a non-existent Cadillac-driving "welfare queen." But when it came to threatening the real welfare state core, Reagan, who had long inveighed against Social Security, struck a deal with Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neil to preserve Social Security indefinitely. He did so, of course, with a regressive payroll tax increase, coming shortly on the heals of his massive cut of the progressive income tax. But still, it was a telling indication of the sharp limits of how far the American right could go with it's naked ant-welfare-state agenda--not far at all, when minorities stopped being the main focus.
To compensate, movement conservatives depended on basic stratagems: first, to advance their agenda by using traditionally liberal-sounding rhetoric, and second to advance it by using a perversion of liberal methods. The liberal-sounding rhetoric included the reformulation of traditional racism into modern "colorblind racism", with its self-satisfied, and deeply deceptive slogans such as "equal opportunity, not equal results," and its broader attempt to redefine liberalism as the ideology of stodgy, oppressive elites, and conservatism as the ideology of growth, opportunity, and the little guy. The economic theory they advanced was pure gobbledygook, "Voodoo economics," as George H.W. Bush succinctly dubbed it, before joining the cult as Reagan's vice-president. This was re-confirmed in excruciating detail by Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, as recounted by William Greider in The Atlantic, in the "The Education of David Stockman". The article describes the intricate maneuverings of tax and budget policy of the first year of the Reagan Administration, the numbers that never added up, the massive looming deficits that true believers simply wished away, and Stockman's shockingly candid reflections on the process, such as this notable passage:
Stockman himself had been a late convert to supply-side theology, and now he was beginning to leave the church. The theory of "expectations" wasn't working. He could see that. And Stockman's institutional role as budget director forced him to look constantly at aspects of the political economy that the other supply-siders tended to dismiss. Whatever the reason, Stockman was creating some distance between himself and the supply-side purists; eventually, he would become the target of their nasty barbs. For his part, Stockman began to disparage the grand theory as a kind of convenient illusion--new rhetoric to cover old Republican doctrine.
"The hard part of the supply-side tax cut is dropping the top rate from 70 to 50 percent--the rest of it is a secondary matter," Stockman explained. "The original argument was that the top bracket was too high, and that's having the most devastating effect on the economy. Then, the general argument was that, in order to make this palatable as a political matter, you had to bring down all the brackets. But, I mean, Kemp-Roth was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate."
A Trojan horse? This seemed a cynical concession for Stockman to make in private conversation while the Reagan Administration was still selling the supply-side doctrine to Congress. Yet he was conceding what the liberal Keynesian critics had argued from the outset--the supply-side theory was not a new economic theory at all but only new language and argument to conceal a hoary old Republican doctrine: give the tax cuts to the top brackets, the wealthiest individuals and largest enterprises, and let the good effects "trickle down" through the economy to reach everyone else. Yes, Stockman conceded, when one stripped away the new rhetoric emphasizing across-the-board cuts, the supply-side theory was really new clothes for the unpopular doctrine of the old Republican orthodoxy. "It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,'" he explained, "so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory."
There was another, deeper story, however, that only became clear as the budget deficits continued climbing year after year--much, much larger than any of the deficits that conservatives had previously railed against. This story was, quite simply, that the vaunted "Reagan Boom"--anemic though it was compared to the 1945-1973 era--was itself a product of Keynesian economics in perverted form. It was Keynesian in that it used massive government deficits to promote growth. It was perverted in that it wasn't just used to pull the nation out of a recession, after which the budget would return to surplus. No, that would have been sensible fiscal policy. It would have been fiscally responsible--or what once could plausibly have been called "fiscally conservative." But with the coming of "Reaganomics", "fiscally conservative" became an oxymoron.
Tax cuts for the rich and massive spending on the military-industrial complex generated huge deficits, which in turn created growth ala Keynesian analysis. Then, when a Democratic president was finally elected, political pressure shifted, to make him take a leading role in making the politically painful cuts to the domestic programs that Democrats traditionally had championed. Clinton's task was softened by the fact that the Cold War had ended, so he was able to make significant cuts in military spending as well--though nowhere near as deep as were warranted. After Clinton, the Reagan cycle began again--another massive tax cut, primarily benefiting the wealthy--and another massive military buildup, to the point where US military spending is equal to the military spending of all the rest of the world combined. And again, the political pressure is on a Democratic President to cut domestic programs that Democrats have traditionally defended. But two things are different now: now it's the welfare state core that's on the line--Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and we have returned to a state of permanent war.
This long-term dynamic--far more than mere personalities, or even the sorts of details that policy wonks obsess over--is what defines both Clinton and Obama as strikingly political creatures, both liberal by temperament, but conservative in their acceptance of and accommodations to an over-arching political dynamic that amounts to the long-term strangulation of the welfare state, and the middle class it supports. The welfare state cannot be destroyed overnight--that would be political poison. But if Democrats can be gotten to do the heavy lifting dirty work, make the most unpalatable moves themselves (in the name of realism, pragmatism, whatever), then long-term destruction of the welfare state as we know it, and return to the sort of neo-feudalism envisioned by the cyberpunk authors in the early Reagan Era, is not just possible, but almost assured.
This does not, however, mean that welfare state itself goes away. Rather, it means that the welfare state as we know it turns into something quite different--namely, an American version of the conservative welfare state, one that strengthens conservative social institutions, reinforces hierarchical power relations, and benefits economic elites.
In this context, Bush's "faith-based initiatives"--funneling federal dollars through selected religious organizations--takes on a very different complexion. It is not a return to 19th Century American practices, as argued by Marvin Olasky, who initially coined the term, "compassionate conservatism." It is, instead, a return to the very essence of old-style European conservatism from which the vast majority of America's European immigrant population fled. Similarly, Bush's attempted privatization of Social Security promised an enormous boon to Wall Street--another elite power center. Once one realizes the existence of the conservative welfare state tradition--not just in theory, but in more than a century of practice--one has a completely different framework for interpreting the potential meaning and significance of various ideas and policies.
Indeed, the exclusion of single-payer from serious consideration, and the insistence on preserving the wasteful, life-threatening private insurance system constitutes a strikingly obvious rejection of the social democratic welfare state model in favor of the conservative welfare state model--one that preserves, strengthens and enriches a whole array of elite powers. |
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