Written by "Rotwang" at Talking Points Memo - One of his best commentaries
Hate to say it, but it's all your fault. America is ungovernable because we are a nation of pinheads. It's not just the Loons of the Right. It's the Obamaniacs and the NutRoots too.
The sad reality is that to achieve political power in America, you have to master the delusions of the public. If people think the moon is made of green cheese, you have to explicate this better than the other guy. Barack Obama did it better, now he must govern on the basis of a catalog of canards. "WE HAVE NEVER BEEN A NATION OF RED STATES AND BLUE STATES . . . WE ARE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!" Sheesh.
He is aided in this bankrupt enterprise by a squadron of brilliant people. It is not enough to be brilliant to exert influence in the corridors of power. One must also embrace the conventional wisdom, articulate it better than anyone else, invent brilliant extensions of the conventional wisdom that provide new reasons why we all have to eat shit.
Do I exaggerate? I think not. I give you the example of Phillip Mirowski. Who the devil is he, you will ask. You have not seen him on the teevee because he uses big words. He is a professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame. He has written about the deep flaws of conventional economic theory, the theory that tells you that markets are efficient and bountiful. You know . . . bullshit.
Mirowski and his like-minded colleagues were segregated into a separate ghetto economics department so the university could create a second, new and improved economics department, which Nobel Leaureate Robert Solow predicted would end up a "third rate MIT." Now Mirowski's department of the economically incorrect is to be phased out, its eminent professors scattered to the four corners of the university, sparing budding economics majors of Notre Dame the burden of incorrect thoughts. The genius behind this idea is John T. McGreevy, dean of Notre Dame's College of Arts and Letters and Bullshit.
The new department has been coached to avow, "Guided by the University's long-standing commitment to the Catholic social tradition, we stress policy-relevant research that contributes to important debates on economic, social, and political problems facing humanity." How is this vital work going? An example from Associate Professor Kali Rath that should put a spring in the step of every starving African pastoralist:
"The Dvoretzky-Wald-Wolfowitz Theorem and Purification in Atomless Finite-action Games," International Journal of Game Theory, 34, 91-104, 2006. (Coauthors: M. Ali Khan and Yeneng Sun).
Oh the humanity.
Somebody like Mirowski could never work in the White House because somewhere in his published writings there is a sentence that would make Larry Summers cry. Consequently, public policy in the new age of liberalism will be dominated by double-digit unemployment rates which, don't forget, would have been even worse under other circumstances.
Stop and think for a moment of what five years of very high unemployment -- a very real possibility -- would mean, economically, politically and otherwise.
One popular shibboleth behind this burgeoning policy failure is superstition about public debt, upheld to no small extent by the best and the brightest of the Clinton Administration. The Obamanians carried on this tradition by suggesting that the deficit rampage of the Bush Administration "got us into this mess," which is rubbish. If anything got us into this, it was a deregulatory movement that began under Jimmy Carter (hello, trucking deregulation) and was embraced by the Clintonoids (hello, Larry). But what really "got us into this" is what we have always been in -- capitalism, which doesn't work so good. Of course, you can't get the White House by talking about that.
Congress is evidently spooked by the prospect of further borrowing, notwithstanding the completely inadequate level of its response thus far. Little concern is evident from the White House. To protest is to admit that what you signed off on in February was inadequate, just like your economic forecast.
Funny thing is, the most vulnerable Members of Congress -- the ones who will get massacred at the polls if the labor market remains in a rut -- will be those "centrists" (you know, idiots) in the most marginal districts who babble the most about the impending burden on future generations. In actuality, the burden follows from failure to borrow and lift employment.
Somewhat fewer dumb Democrats in Congress would not be the worst thing in the world. In particular, any Democrat who fails to adhere to a modicum of party discipline in matters such as breaking filibusters is dispensable. From this standpoint, there is no benefit to 60 Democratic senators as opposed to 51. You can control the Senate with either, if you call what Harry Reid does "control."
A very special millstone is one Max Baucus of Montana, the land of big sky and very few people. As head of the Senate Finance Committee, he played a major role in the Bush tax cuts and presently in the crappy-is-the-enemy-of-the-good health care reform. Senator Glenn Beck (R-MT) would be a marked advance. Maybe somebody can start a draft committee.
The problem with playing the game better than the other guy is that you end up invested in the rules, the rules in this context being commitments to principles and policies that are untenable, that render America ungovernable. We have already touched upon two: a) you employ the most brilliant avatars of the conventional wisdom -- a process rule; and b) you commit to reducing the public debt.
The other one much on my mind these days is the premise that Iran must not acquire nuclear capability. On top of shifting from the wrong war -- Iraq -- to the right war (sic) -- Afghanistan, this embodies goals that can only give rise to unsuccessful and disastrous measures. The usual liberal suspects have been notably soft on these moves towards the deeper end of the Big Muddy.
Perhaps the president could not be expected to cope because the mess we are in is just too genuinely overwhelming. Perhaps he isn't that great, not transformative, just a good man confronted with an impossible array of dilemmas. Deliverance will have to come some other way.
Rather than looking up, awaiting redemption, the answer if there is one is to look in the other direction, to mobilization. This can begin to happen if the constituents of the big progressive institutions -- Moveon.org, DailyKos, ActBlue, etc. -- demand greater focus on progressive objectives and less on pragmatic compromises. In this vein, I think Rachel Maddow is right that the attack on ACORN is a prelude to further shots at the progressive grass roots. ACORN should be defended and allowed to clean up its act. Moves to dump a few errant office-holders should go forward, starting with Mr. Baucus.
Somebody think of a way to twitter this.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/03/in_the_long_run_we_are_all_dead_in_the_short_run_w/
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