Reflections on European Elections

What alarms me most about the recent European elections is not that the radical left got 17% of the vote in Greece.  It is not that the radical right got nearly 18% of the vote in France.  It's not that the Netherlands coalition has fallen apart as far-right leader Geert Wilders refuses to continue in the present self-destructive course of austerity.  And it certainly isn't that France just elected a respectable, mainstream leader who thinks that Europe's current course of self-destructive austerity might not be a good idea.

It's that people are reacting to the election of a respectable, mainstream leader who questions Europe's current self-destructive course as if it were the election of a wild-eyed extremist.  Now that's dangerous.

It makes me think of Scott Sumner.  Scott Sumner is a blogging economist and a disciple of Milton Friedman who still likes to cherish the illusion that that makes him a conservative.  These days, being a disciple of Friedman on macro issues makes you a wild-eyed left winger.  He urges conservatives to agree to a more expansionary monetary policy, even if it means a little more inflation, lest the alternative be the "horrible, statist policies" of a Roosevelt or a Kirchner.  As if a Roosevelt or a Kirchner were the worst conservatives had to fear.  I will grant that there is much to criticize in both men.  Both had some authoritarian tendencies and left much to be desired on the civil liberties front.  But both were ultimately democratic politicians.  Anyone who did not like their policies was free to contest them through the democratic process.  The reason that such efforts failed was not that either crushed his opponents by brute force, but that both were extremely popular because the economy flourished under their leadership.

The trouble in Europe right now is that the VSP's (that's Krugman's name for Very Serious People) treat any deviation from the current suicidal course as completely outside all reasonable discussion.  The VSP's will quickly make clear to Francois Hollande that he has two choices -- embrace the current madness, or forfeit all claim to respectability.

So what happens when all respectable players embrace a highly self-destructive course of action, and identify such self-destructiveness as the very defining feature of respectability?  Well, challenges to self-destruction don't go away.  They merely migrate to the fringes.  And the fringes get bigger and bigger.  Proposals to do what has to be done, like reject German demands for austerity and even consider withdrawal from the Euro, start to be coupled with very disturbing xenophobia in-group loyalty. 

Does Sumner fear that the current inflation aversion will lead to a Roosevelt or a Kirchner?  Let him consider some of the worse people depressions have brought to power.  Let him consider Marine LePen winning on an anti-immigrant platform.  Or the radical left attempting to form a coalition in Greece.  Or some very disturbing developments in Hungary.  To say nothing of You Know Who.