My Only Problem with Romney is that He is a Republican

Unlike some people, I am not yet ready to call the election for Romney.  Nonetheless he gets stronger every day, so it is time to consider what a Romney Presidency would look like.  The problem is, it is hard to tell.  After going out of his way to show what a good plutocrat he was during the primary, he shook his etch-a-sketch for the debates and emerged only a few degrees off from Obama.  So, assuming Romney wins an election, what would we expect a Romney Presidency to look like?

I discussed the subject in an earlier post.  At that time, I saw two possibilities for a Romney Presidency -- Romney as hard right, or Romney as Eisenhower, i.e., making Obama's policies unobjectionable because a Republican is supporting them.  At the time, Romney as hard right seemed plausible because a Republican blow-out looked like a real possibility.  Today, that is seeming increasingly unlikely.  Although Romney's chances improve every day, the Senate seems most likely to remain in Democratic hands.  Jonathan Chait believes that enough Senate Democrats will defect to give Romney whatever he wants, for fear of seeming too liberal.  Color me unconvinced.  Senators, particularly in red states, may fear seeming too liberal, but it does not logically follow that they want to be on record voting for huge tax cuts at the top, or for turning Medicare into a voucher system.  Neither of those are popular by themselves; the combination is deadly.  A Republican might be forced to support these very unpopular positions by the threat of a primary challenge, but a Democrat should be able to defy them with impunity.  So I think Romney governing from the hard Right is unlikely, given the likely composition of Congress.

Roughly speaking, I now see two possibilities:  Romney as Bush Junior, and Romney as Eisenhower.

Romney as Bush, Junior:  George W. Bush managed to get bipartisan support for a lot of what he did, by two main tactics.  One was to adopt a superficially Democratic goal but pursue it in a Republican fashion.  Examples include Medicare D and No Child Left Behind.  Republicans distrust federal involvement in education and any expansion of the federal role in healthcare, but were unable to say no to a Republican President.  Democrats favor those things, but were skeptical about how Bush went about them.  (NCLB imposed immense costs on schools, without offering any additional resources; Medicare D was unfunded).  The other approach was to propose measures no one dared oppose for fear of having their patriotism impugned.  The PATRIOT Act and the Iraq war are the most obvious examples.  Tax increases are always hard to say no to, although many Democrats managed.

So, would that work this time around?  Presumably what Romney would propose would be some sort of tax cut, primarily but not exclusively at the top, a move to "save" Medicare or make it more "sustainable" by going to a voucher system, and a block grant of Medicaid, Food Stamps, and perhaps other programs for the poor, combined with deep cuts.  Throw in a war with Iran and the question is, could he bully Democrats into going along?  It's hard to say, but my guess would be it would be more difficult this time around.  For one thing, the 60-vote threshold is by now so well established that getting rid of it would be very difficult with Democrats in the majority.  Romney might be able to peal off a few Democrats on purely budgetary matters, but they would be much more willing to follow the Republican precedent and filibuster any major structural changes in Medicare, Medicaid or Food Stamps.  Posing as champions of Medicare is always a winning tactic.  Championing programs for the poor is less so, but "balance the budget on the backs of the poor" (which is certainly what the Ryan Plan proposes) is a slogan with emotional resonance.  Finally, there is not much appetite for war right now.  Alas, it is unlikely that Democrats will do much to stop the use of torture by a Romney Administration.

In short, I do not think the Democrats will be as easy to bully as in the past.

Romney as Eisenhower:   Alternately, Romney switched to a moderate tone in the debate that has pushed him so far ahead.  He could agree to work with a Democratic Senate to achieve genuinely bipartisan goals.  He might agree to reform, rather than repeal, Obamacare and Frank-Dodd banking reform, in ways that reduce red tape while keeping the basic goals (universal coverage, keeping banks from taking too many risks) in place.  He could propose an eminently sensible economic program of short-term stimulus combined with long-term cuts.  He could scare the bejesus out of people about the future of Social Security and Medicare and reach some bipartisan deal combining Republican goals (spend less) and Democratic goals (protect the vulnerable).  He could get Republicans to go along by cracking the whip and demanding they obey a Republican President, and also by assuring them that it is okay for the government to spend money so long as a Republican is doing the spending.  Would this work?

It's really hard for me to say.  I will say, that the residual resentments over Bush, Jr. and Obama make it a lot harder than it once would have been.  Republicans have so strongly identified themselves with certain ideological positions that it will be hard for them to back down, regardless of who is in the White House.  (Not long ago, they were arguing that it didn't matter if Romney was a moderate, he would sign whatever Congress passed.  But back then Republicans could largely assume that they would hold the Senate.  That is seeming less and less likely).  And besides, much as the Democrats would like to get something constructive done, they really can't afford to come across as pushovers, considering how obstructionist Republicans have been.

And that is why ultimately, I remain dead-set against Romney, even if he turns out to be the second coming of Dwight David Eisenhower.  I would probably support most of an Eisenhower Romney's policies, but in today's climate, politics have to trump policy.  If Romney is able to work with Democrats and achieve much of what Democrats want, the result will still be to reward Republican obstructionism.  It will be to show that Republicans can deliver and Democrats can't; that Republicans can govern and Democrats can't.  It will realistically convince a lot of people that our partisan deadlock was all Obama's or the Democrats' fault.  And it will allow Republicans to succeed in their blackmail -- elect us, or we will make the country ungovernable.

Business: The New Military?

I used Jessup's rant in my last post because I consider it emblematic of a certain attitude I have been seeing these last few years among Republicans.

Jessup's error is clear enough.  He starts with a perfectly reasonable premise -- the military is necessary, it protects us, and the front line troops should be honored for it.  But he leaps from that to an utterly different conclusion -- that the military should therefore be unaccountable and not bound by laws other than its own.  His call for a lawless and unaccountable military assumes that military men are morally superior to civilians, and front line troops to support forces.  It also assumes that this superiority is great enough to make front-line troops immune to the normal failings of human nature -- the temptations of power, the tendency to confuse one's personal interests with the public good, and so forth.  Taken to its ultimate conclusion, it is the logic of military dictatorship.

I have no doubt that many professional military men agree with Jessup, nor that many right-wing civilians also do.  Certainly, in times past (say, when Dole or the senior Bush ran for President against Dukakis or Clinton), many right wingers were quick to hold up military service as proof of moral superiority and treat anyone who had not served as morally unqualified to hold office.

That approach is no longer viable.  Since the Vietnam war, our elite of both parties have usually been able to avoid military service, and besides, our military has shrunk enough that large portions of the population never serve.  And there was a long gap for anyone to young to have fought in Vietnam and too old for Iraq when the opportunity to fight in a major war just wasn't there.*

But it is sort of startling the way that attitude has now been shifted over from military service to running a business.  Part of it is no doubt the fact that the Republicans have nominated a former CEO as their candidate and want to play up that part of his biography.  But one heard that sort of talk, the general attitude that anyone who had not run a business did not really contribute, well before Romney was nominated, before primary season even began.  The basic view that businessmen are "job creators," that wealth is created only at the top, and that income is a reasonable surrogate for contribution to society.  Romney is pitched as the ideal President in an economic crisis because his private sector experience, just as a retired military man (think McClellan, Eisenhower) was pitched as the ideal candidate to win a war.  But the attitude has moved beyond that.  Just as many people used to regard anyone who had not served in the military as not morally worthy to hold office, today's Republicans seem to regard anyone who as not run a business as not morally worthy to hold office.*

There are some obvious problems to treating running a business as the equivalent of military service.  Business management and the military are both specialties that are not for everyone.  No society could possibly function in which everyone is a soldier, and no modern industrial society is possible with everyone running a business.  Nonetheless, in certain military emergencies, extremely broad drafts have been instituted.  Some societies, now and in the past, have had systems of universal military service, so that everyone with a few exceptions does have military experience.  Claims that lack of military service disqualifies a candidate from office have usually been made in societies in which service is the norm and failure to serve is the exception.**

But there is no equivalent system of requiring everyone to run a business.  Extreme economic emergencies have sometimes forced people to become entrepreneurs in the sense of selling apples and the like, but hardly in the sense of knowing what it is to run a business and make payroll.  And while organizations like Junior Achievement may encourage people to have the simulated experience of running a business, the thought of any system of universal conscription is simply absurd.  In short, think of not running a business as morally disqualifying for holding office, and you exclude the majority of population.

Add to that the view that businessmen should be held to no laws except the law of supply and demand, and accountable to no one except the market, and certainly the view that no lesser mortal may criticize them, and you get the businessman version of Colonel Jessup.  The ultimate logic of such a view is not military dictatorship, but plutocracy.

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*Ironically, A Few Good Men and Colonel Jessup were products of this era.  For all his ranting about lives being on the line, Jessup was not actually fighting a war.
**Both Dole and the senior Bush fought in WWII, a war that caught up most able-bodied men of their generation.

The Rage of a Privileged Class

The New Yorker did a recent piece on why the super-rich feel victimized by Obama, even though they are economically doing quite well.  Their basic answer is that Obama criticizes them instead of praising them as "job creators,"  and that speaking ill of the rich and powerful is divisive and amounts to class warfare.  Needless to say, they don't see anything divisive or class warfare in dividing the country into "makers and takers," "people who work for a living and people who vote for a living," or Romney saying of 47% of the country, "I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Felix Salmon commenting on the article, is unconvinced.  He is unconvinced that it is anything as superficial that the super-rich can't bear to be criticized. After all, the worst Obama has said about them pales in comparison to what they have said about him.  (One financier compared Obama's attempt to eliminate their preferential taxation to Hitler's invasion of Poland).  

Instead, Salmon sees three main reasons so many billionaires are outraged at Obama.  One is that the outrage is largely confined to the financial sector.  Another is that they really, really like Romney who is, after all, one of their own, and that they have to justify their passion for Romney with a countervaling hatred toward Obama.  I am less convinced on that one.  After all, this hatred began well before Romney had locked up the Republican nomination.

More plausible and appalling is the final answer.  Salmon points out that Wall Street strongly supported Obama in 2008.  Various reasons have been suggested why this was so -- that Obama resembled Wall Street's financiers in background and education, or that Wall Street is socially liberal and therefore dislikes Republicans.  But Salmon believes that hard self-interest was at work.  Obama, far more than McCain, recognized just how serious the financial crisis was, and financiers were confident his team would do whatever was necessary to prevent the financial system from collapsing.  McCain inspired no such confidence.  But once the financial crisis was over and profits came back, they saw no reason for anything to change from before the crisis.  They certainly didn't see themselves as bearing any blame for the crisis, or the crisis as grounds for stronger regulations.  That's crazy talk!

In other words, the two political parties hold two ideologically consistent views about finance.  Democrats fear financial crashes and will bail out the banking system, but in return want tougher regulations to prevent a repeat performance.  Republicans want to leave things to the free market -- let banks do as they please and if they fail, so be it.  (Presumably they think that a serious financial crisis will scare enough sense into the surviving banks to prevent a repeat performance).  So financiers respond to this in the most economically rational way possible -- support Republicans in good times and Democrats in bad times.  Then they can run riot all they want and be bailed out if they run into trouble.  This is a great deal for banks, but understandably unpopular with everyone else.

This is possible, but maybe we should be taking bankers at their word, that they hate Obama because they resent being criticized.  Quite simply, they are economic royalists.  They believe that, as agents of the free market, they must be treated for all intents and purposes as infallible, and that no lesser mortals have the right to criticize them. Obama is a lesser mortal.  One of the bankers said that he had never worked a day in his life.  When called on it, it turned out that he meant Obama "never made payroll.  He's never built anything."  In other words, if you do not run a business, you are not really "working" and certainly don't have the right to criticize people who do.  Or, to paraphrase Colonel Jessup's rant, "I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who walks and sleeps under the blanket of the very wealth I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.  I'd rather you just said thank you."  That, I suspect, is what really lies at the root of it all.

Despair?

Andrew Sullivan is all but calling the election for Romney.  Time will tell, I guess.  At the very least, the debate stands as a warning not to do electoral post-mortums on a live election.  Of course, I was calling the election for the Republicans way back in May.  I could yet turn out to be right.  I hope I turn out to be wrong.

I will now return to my regularly scheduled blogging and hope not to despair too much.

Economic Royalism, Not Fascism

I want to do a series of posts on the increasingly open identification of the Republican Party as the plutocratic party.  I realize that the reason Democrats have found it so frustrating the the white working class votes Republican is the view that the Republican Party is the party of plutocrats.  But since the Republican takeover of the House in 2010, and especially with the Romney-Ryan ticket, the tendency is becoming increasingly open.

The Republican Party is more or less openly positioning itself in favor of the unrestricted power of big money interests.  Some people on the left refer to this as fascism, but that is not accurate.  Fascism was a populist movement that often expressed resentment of big money elites.  Fascist paramilitaries were not hired guns for the elite, but popular organizations outside their control.  Granted, big money elites ultimately cut a deal with the fascists in Italy and Germany because they feared left-wing revolution from below, but it was always an uneasy alliance.

Romney-Ryan Republicans, by contrast, are advocates of big money interests plain pure and simple. Plutocracy would be an accurate description of what they advocate.  But I prefer the term economic royalism.  (I will, nonetheless, often use the term plutocracy because it is shorter).

There are immistakeable similarities between old-style royalism and economic royalism.  Old-style royalists believed that the social order was ordained by God, and that any questioning of it was blasphemy against God's will.  They believed that kings were agents of God and that their actions must be regarded as God's will.  They used the expression, "The king can do no wrong, " but they did not mean it quite literally.  The view that no king ever did anything wrong was impossible to maintain in the face of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  But what they did argue was that the king was answerable to God only, and that no lesser mortal was ever permitted to challenge the king's actions.

Well, then, economic royalists believe that the social order is ordained by the free market and that any attempt at reform is blasphemy against the free market.  They believe that capitalists (both independent entrepeneurs and corporate managers) are agents of the free market and their actions must be seen as the will of the free market.  They do not actually claim that capitalists never make mistakes because the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming.  But they do maintain that capitalists are answerable to the free market only, and that no lesser mortal may legitimately question their actions.  The big difference is that old-style royalists believed that the social order God ordained was immutable and should never change.  Given the disruptiveness of the modern-day free market, economic royalists do not maintain that position today.  Instead, they view any disruptions as the free market may create as part of its will and see any attempt to soften or mitigate them as blasphemy.

Economic royalists often regard themselves as libertarians.   They say that they are not supporters of big money interests, but simply opponents of any government interference with the free market.  Thus they oppose most government regulations interfering with the freedom of private actors.  But in case of conflict between one set of private actors and another, their preferences are revealing.  They oppose unions, for instance, even though unions are private actors.  Ditto homeowner's associations trying to keep out a developer.  Often they say that unions or homeowners' associations are cartels unfairly interfering with the workings of the free market, which should be consumer-driven.  But then libertarians turn out to be advocates of tort reform, seeking to limit consumers' ability to sue for products that harm them.  Alternately, libertarians say that the economy is property shareholder-driven, rather than consumer-driven.  But libertarians are not notably friendly to shareholder derivative suits against corporate management.

In short, economic royalists who call themselves libertarians invariably favor not only private actors over government regulation, but producers over consumers, employers over employees, developers over homeowners, and corporate management over shareholders.  If this is not a presumption of infallibility of the management and championship of its interests, it is a remarkable imitation.  It reached its apotheosis during the 2008 economic crisis when an extraordinary number of conservatives were unwilling to admit that the prospect of widespread failures of banks and the auto industry could possibly have anything to do with mistakes by management, and must be the result of government regulation and unions, respectively.

And now the presumably infallible agents of the free market see their status as threatened and they are mad as hell.  That will be the topic of my next post.

One Thing I Do Understand About the Economy

One thing I do understand is a phenomenon that I have notices and has a plausible explanation.  Weekly reports of unemployment applications are invariably revised upward.  Monthly job creation reports are also invariably revised upward.

The explanation in both cases is that the reports are based on incomplete information.  Most unemployment applications or jobs created have been reported when the announcement comes in, but a few trickle in later, moving the number upward.

And Another Thing I Don't Understand About the Economy

How do you manage to have a household survey that shows an 873,000 job gain in September and an employer survey showing 114,000?  Oh, yes, and how can that possibly add up to a 0.3% decline in unemployment in one month despite more people entering the job market?

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not one of these conspiracy theorists.  It's just really weird.