| Recapping The Story So Far
Two weeks is a long time in cyberspace, so here's a quick recap of my argument, before momving forward. The thesis of the series "The Political Duality of Rep and Dem" is, in a first approximation: (A) Democrats are reality-based when it comes to policies, and totally out to lunch when it comes to winning elections, and politicking in general.
(B) But Republicans are totally out to lunch when it comes to policies, and as reality-based as it gets when it comes to winning elections, and politicking in general.
What takes my thesis beyond this first approximation is casting it in terms of cognitive development. As I've argued in earlies diaries, conservatism is consistent with a level of cognitive development (level 3) in which the self is defined in terms of the roles, relationships and structures of the social surround, which is consistent with the level of adult cognition in a traditional society, although movement conservatism frequently functions at a more primative level, corresponding more to a pre-adolescent mindset, or adulthood in a cultic or possibly tribal setting.
Liberalism, in contrast, is consistent with a higher level of development (level4), in which the self critically reflects on the roles, relationships and structures of the social surround, taking them as objects that can be consciously manipulated and re-arranged to reflect changing circumstances. This capacity to critically reflect and alter became a practical neceesity in the early modern period, at least among a more elite class of individuals who had to manage a significantly increased tempo of social change. This was part of the rise of court power, on the one hand, and bourgoise urban power, on the other hand, challenging the traditional land-based power of the aristocracy, which characterized the emergence of the modern state system. Conservatives have long failed to be reality-based in their policies precisely because they have not been capable of conceptualizing and critically reflecting on changes that have swept away the traditional world that their mindsets were suited to.
However, the argument of this series is that just as liberals are more reality-based in their policies, while conservatives cling to inadequate formulations, the reverse is true when one looks at politics--at the art of positioning and maneuver, be it in running elections, or in translating policy ideas into reality. Two things stand behind this thesis:
First is the recent historical fact that conservatives have been remarkably effective at moving a political agenda that is largely at odds with what most Americans want.
Second is the simple fact that there is only an elective affinity and a statistical relationship between levels of development and political orientation. Although movement conservatives routinely use language and forms of political persuasion that reflect quite primative forms of thinking, this does not mean that they all function at that level normally in their everyday lives. Many most clearly do not. Likewise, many liberals cling to notions that spring naturally from a level of cognitive complexity that is beyond their normal level of cognitive functioning.
Thus, there is good reason to conclude that liberals pour the vast majority of their higher-level cognitive functioning into policy content, while a small number of conservatives who function at similar levels pour the vast majority of their higher-level cognitive funcitoning into manipulating and controlling policy context, which is to say, the political process.
What My Model Means For Governance
My model argues that Republicans manipulate the (level 3) system while the Democrats act in unquestioning accord with it. The evidence for this is overwhelming. In fact, two years ago, in October 2005, political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson published a brilliant analysis, Off Center: The Republican Revolution & the Erosion of American Democracy , in which they presented a detailed argument about how the GOP had managed to re-engineer the structures of American politics to create a stable governing Congressional majority that only represented a numerical minority of the American people.
Of course that majority crumbled in one sense in November 2006, althoug it remains very much with us in other ways. But none of that invalidates the argument in Off-Center. No political order lasts forever, all that one can ask of such a work is how good a job is does of illuminating its subject matter, and in this task, Hacker and Pierson were superb. Among other things, they explained how safe districts were used to defange Democratic challenges, while making moderates vulnerable to primary challenges from the right-challenges that could be driven by national groups such as the Club for Growth. They explained how the GOP leadership allowed meaningless shows of independence, just in case those districts weren't quite safe enough. And they explained how the GOP's "K-Street Project" was not simply aimed at grabbing an outsized chunk of lobbyists money, but at turning industry lobbyists into GOP lobbyists, requiring their help on the GOP agenda as a price of getting their legislation passed.
Taken all together, all these things strategies and more provided the structural backdrop for the more fleeting phenomena, such as holding House floor votes open indefinitely, which departed from long-standing Congressional tradition. The daily shennanigans could have never endured without the structural muscle to force compliance. And the structural muscle was all about a level 4 attempt to utterly remake culture of Congress, which includes the defining set of relationships that constitute the subject of the level 3 self.
While the basic policy logic of liberal governance is level 4, their long history of controlling Congress (almost without break from 1933 to 1994) and their deep commitment to the idea of government as a force for good combine to produce intense pressures to adopt a level 3 view of the act of governance itself. This is not limited to what goes on within the halls of Congress, since it affects them by defining their level of cognitive complexity in dealing with the political process. But since Congress is the primary locus of their activity, how they act there tends to have a powerful-even a defining-impact on how they act everywhere.
The Reid/Dodd Case Fits My Model
At first glance, the Reid/Dodd case is extraordinary, as Jane noted, precisely because it violates the level 3 norms of Senate conduct. But the reason for this is not hard to discern, as seen in the charts, from Ryan Singel on Wired's 27bstroke6 blog that top this diary. Rockefeller is the committee chair, and he's newly beholden to the telcos.
Furthermore, Ryan notes:
UPDATE: Reader Theo writes in to say why the money, though tiny in comparison to Rockefeller's fortune, is not negligible. Rockefeller is believed to have a personal fortune over $100 million. He spent $12 million of personal funds on his first Senate campaign. (http://www.encyclope...) However "in recent campaigns, he has downplayed his personal wealth in one of the nation's poorest states. 'I will not spend one single dime of any money that I have,' he said in 2002. 'So that I if I don't raise money, I won't spend money. I am on exactly the same playing field, so to speak, with anybody else who runs for office.'" AP He's up for election in 2008. The cost of Senate races has increased several times over the last two decades. With a serious Republican challenger in WV, which Bush won twice, such as Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, he could be forced to raise tens of millions of dollars. That, or break his promise not to use his personal fortune, which wouldn't play very well in one of the country's poorest states. So yes, even a Rockefeller has to raise money. And in West Virginia, $50,000 is a lot of money. It's about 2% of all the money he raised last year. (But I'll bet he's slightly more worried about being red-baited for suppurtin' terrists.)
It's worth noting, of course, that Republicans such as Arnold Schwarzenegger can make a big deal out of spending their own money so as not to be beholden to "special interests" (and then, of course, turn around and raise more special interest money than God), but Democrats generally have a much harder time playing that game. This is yet another example of how Democrats play inside the set of preset rules-like good little level 3 social conformists-while Republicans make their own rules.
Thus, although Reid is clearly intent on violating Senate tradition by ignoring Dodd's hold, the reasons he is doing it are themselves traditional--but conditioned by how the Republicans have altered the playing field. Thus, this becomes a case of an exception that proves (i.e. tests the parameters of) the rule.
Note that the GOP demanded that that lobbyists not just steer money their way, but that they support the GOP agenda in order to get what they wanted. Here, Rockefeller and Reid are making no such demands. In fact, the Democrats don't even have an agenda to demand support for. This is just an indication of how utterly, totally lost the party is-at least inside the Senate. It is a vivid illustration of the potentially enduring power of the changes to the level 3 culture of Washington made by the GOP's level 4 changes discussed by Hacker and Pierson in Off-Center.
Progressive Economic Policy In Peril
In his column Friday, Paul Krugman warned that this problem could prove fatal to chances for progressive economic reform. First he notes have fortunes have changed:
I have a whole bookshelf of volumes with titles like "One Party Nation" and "Building Red America" - depended crucially on the assumption that the G.O.P. would have vastly more money than its opponents. It might even, some thought, match the 10-to-1 advantage Hanna gave William McKinley when he ran against William Jennings Bryan.
Oops. According to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics, in the current election cycle every one of the top 10 industries making political donations is giving more money to Democrats. Even industries that have in the past been overwhelmingly Republican, like insurance and pharmaceuticals, are now splitting their donations more or less evenly. Oil and gas is the only major industry that the G.O.P. can still call its own.
He then spends a little time talking about why such things have happened, including the following:
In a classic 2003 article in The Washington Monthly, Nicholas Confessore (now at The New York Times) described the efforts of people like former Senator Rick Santorum to turn K Street into an appendage of the Republican Party - not the other way around. "The corporate lobbyists who once ran the show, loyal only to the parochial interests of their employer," wrote Mr. Confessore, "are being replaced by party activists who are loyal first and foremost to the G.O.P."
But corporations weren't happy. According to The Politico, "many C.E.O.'s" used the term "extortion" to describe "the annual shakedowns by committee chairmen with jurisdiction over their industries." And now that Mr. Santorum is out of office, heading the America's Enemies program at a right-wing think tank, the faint sound you hear from K Street is that of lobbyists singing: "Ding, dong, the witch is dead."
This is, as already mentioned, one of the key points that Hacker and Pierson developed in Off-Center.
Here is how Krugrman concludes:
Right now all the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination are running on strongly progressive platforms - especially on health care. But there remain real concerns about what they would actually do in office.
Here's an example of the sort of thing that makes you wonder: yesterday ABC News reported on its Web site that the Clinton campaign is holding a "Rural Americans for Hillary" lunch and campaign briefing - at the offices of the Troutman Sanders Public Affairs Group, which lobbies for the agribusiness and biotech giant Monsanto. You don't have to be a Naderite to feel uncomfortable about the implied closeness.
I'd put it this way: many progressives, myself included, hope that the next president will be another F.D.R. But we worry that he or she will turn out to be another Grover Cleveland instead - better-intentioned and much more competent than the current occupant of the White House, but too dependent on lobbyists' money to seriously confront the excesses of our new Gilded Age.
Linking to Krugman at TPM Cafe, , in a piece titled "Obituary: Conservative Economic Policy EPI economist Jared Bernstein writes:
And, as Krugman stresses this morning, the death of conservative economic policy by no means ensures the life of progressive policy. On that point, let me be very clear: we've got a great agenda. Compare the Romney economic agenda with that of Edwards. Compare the R's health plans to the D's. Spend a few minute on EPI's website with our Agenda for Shared Prosperity. Check out Bob Rubin and Jason Furman's Hamilton Project. In my decades of life as a progressive economist, I've never seen such an outpouring of good ideas.
But good policy solutions by themselves won't win the day. I remain deeply nervous that progressives will fail to tap this uniquely clear moment of the failure of conservative policy. And the stakes are very high. If we squander this opportunity-if we fail to get the majority of the electorate behind the progressive ideas touted above, or we fail to push wavering centrist democrats toward these ideas-we may not be able to repair the damage. I don't mean to be alarmist, but we must stop the zombies before it's too late.
Bernstein's whole piece is a perfect example of the point I am making here, and I urge you to read it in its entirety. Conservative economic policy is an utter failure, he argues, and yet we have no guarantee that Democrats will take up any of the abundant alternatives out there and fight for them. The reasons--and there are many of them--are strongly reinforced by the political duality that is the subject of this diary series, that is, by the Democrats' failure to act politically in a level 4 manner commensurate with the content of their policy ideas.
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