My earlier diary Obama's "Avoidance of Ideology" had a multipart argument about E.J. Dionne's rationalization of Obama's avoidance of ideology in "Audacity Without Ideology". The discussion was hijacked by a couple of trolls who inadvertantly made one of my points for me--that Obama's "anti-ideological" position was actually quite ideological in and of itself. They made this point by launching a vitrolic ideological attack on me, and a number of other regulars, based on schematized misrepresentations of attitudes, arguments, ideas, you name it. They repeatedly ignored demands for specific examples, evidence, links, etc. Their dogmatic refusal to discuss facts was eventually worn down, only to yield to a scattershot grab-bag approach, which never tied back to the original diary and the arguments presented therein.
"Right now, being empirical is in the progressive interest," since rightwing policies since Reagan "have been based more on faith in their worldview than on empirical tests."
A bit more explanation of Dionne's argument, and Westen's insight into what's wrong with it, on the flip.
But Obama's anti-ideological turn is also a functional one for a progressive, at least for now. Since Ronald Reagan, ideology has been the terrain of the right. Many of the programs that conservatives have pushed have been based more on faith in their worldview than on empirical tests. How else could conservatives claim that cutting taxes would actually increase government revenue, or that trickle-down economic approaches were working when the evidence of middle-class incomes said otherwise?
Thus the second key: Right now, being empirical is in the progressive interest. Note that data show that the parts of the stimulus package most congenial to liberals (increases in unemployment insurance and food stamps; fiscal aid to the states; government spending on public projects) are also the parts with the most economic bang. In other words, progressives don't need ideology to make their case.
In this respect, at least, Obama is rather like Franklin D. Roosevelt, who dismissed the conservative economic doctrines of the 1920s. "We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature," Roosevelt said, directly countering the central premises of orthodox economics. "They are made by human beings." Thus did Roosevelt make pragmatism and experimentation enemies of conservative ideology. Obama, wearing a smile as he stands on a mountain of data, is doing the same.
Forgoing what I've said before about this, I'd like to go directly to Westen [with my emphasis], whose own research tells him clearly that facts are not enough, and whose historical knowledge of FDR is a little more salient than Dionne's:
Despite the dramatic economic downturn of the last four months, the concept of "government as the problem" remains firmly embedded in the minds of most voters. It will take not only an active and effective government that leads us out of the Depression but a consistent narrative over many years to change what most Americans unconsciously hold to be self-evident.
And herein lies one of the great dilemmas facing Obama as the communicator-in-chief. He ran as both the candidate of change and the candidate of pragmatism and bipartisan action. So does he tell the story of our economic collapse and what we need to do about it without mentioning that someone actually caused it? Or does he do what Roosevelt did, and make clear from the start that the Depression we are facing is not a matter of impersonal, natural business cycles that wax and wane but a man-made disaster, and that an actively created disaster requires an actively created response?
Does he reach across the aisle to the people who engineered the problems that bedevil him, who want none of his bipartisan pragmatism and would rather use federal loans to GM and Chrysler as an opportunity to continue the Reagan-Bush policies of union bashing and union busting, blaming failures of management, a crisis of consumer confidence, and a credit crunch that makes the purchase of any new car (including a Toyota) impossible, on greedy union workers? Or does he ask Boehner and Shelby whether they truly believe we should give up American-quality jobs with hard-won American benefits and environmental and safety standards and embrace as our model the wages and benefits of Chinese, Indian, and Mexican workers?
I do not ask these questions because I have the answers. I ask them because they need to be asked. FDR offered a forward-looking message of hope and fortitude and economic experimentation until we had it right, but he ran against Hoover even when Hoover was no longer on the ballot. He understood that the ideology that had led to the Great Depression was a formidable foe that would not go away easily, and he built a new consensus against that foe that lasted 50 years. If Obama wants to stand above the fray (at least as long as the Republicans in Congress will let him), he may do well to anoint a surrogate with enough authority and ability to grab the headlines (e.g., Joe Biden, who has both the gravitas and the sense of humor to respond to the likes of Boehner and McConnell) to remind voters over and over what they need to know and remember: that it took a group of wrong-headed, self-serving ideologues several years to destroy our economy, and that their radical conservative ideology is the problem, not the solution.
This passage from Westen captures both the conceptual argument and the direct political application. What's important to recognize is that up to this point, neither has been directly responded to. All the defenses or apologias for Obama's approach have been more or less canned or formulaic. And I think that Westen does a very good job of putting the question in a way that cries out for something better than that.
Because the answer can prove pivotal for whether Obama is able to prevail as FDR did, I think that Westen's questioning cries out for an answer that all of us should want to hear, sooner, rather than later.
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