Absence of Vision

Reading the more liberal columnists lately, there seems to be a general consensus that the Republicans have run out of ideas. Not surprising, really. In recent years, the GOP has nailed its colors to the mast, taking any number of irrational positions, such as:

• All taxes are bad; all tax cuts are good.
• Markets can always be trusted; government, never.
• Global climate change probably isn't happening, and it if it is, it's just a cyclical thing.
• A tiny bundle of cells with human DNA is entitled to the same dignity as a living person.
• Gun laws which make sense in the country and in the suburbs also make sense in our large urban areas.

Obviously, a political party which ties itself to this brand of political fundamentalism is bound to come a-cropper. And, though there are signs that less extreme conservatives - like my early prediction for the party's 2012 presidential candidate, Newt Ginrich - are moderating somewhat, there is no feasible way for a Republican nominee to run on a platform which denies the values which have been drubbed for decades into the receptive minds of the Republican "base".

What the liberal pundits - and the generally pro-Obama corporate media - refuse to acknowledge is that the Democratic Party has no more new ideas that the GOP. We live in an "age of faith" - as witness the nation's willingness to hand over the presidency to a man about whom we know next to nothing. Both parties are, in a sense, fundamentalist, ideological, and backward-looking. Even the President, who shows flickers of vision, seems locked into a retrospective mindset.

Thus, the need for an entirely fresh look at the state of the nation, and the world, as we approach the vernal equinox of 2009. Abraham Lincoln said it in words which every American high school student should be required to memorize:

"The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

In posts to come, I will be attempting to set forth some ideas which - in my judgment - might form the basis of a new view of reality.

For today, let's start with one: In this time of economic crisis, we don't need to create millions of new jobs. We need to move toward a society in which fewer Americans have jobs.

When I was teaching History, I used to observe to my students that, to the best of my knowledge, not one of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, or the members of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, had a job. They were planters, farmers, lawyers, doctors, and - in one famous case - a printer; but they were all self-employed. In many cases, they were what we would call entrepreneurs.

They thought of themselves as independent, as indeed they were. They answered to no one, and thus, could think for themselves. Thus, the Founders.

Some forward-looking economists, including Charles Handy, have predicted that the present century will be one in which ever fewer people have actual jobs, in the sense of working for someone else. More and more, people will have small businesses and/or work as independent contractors.

And what's wrong with that? For some time now, the driving forces in America's economy - at least, the productive (as opposed to consuming) side of it - have been the small business owner and the highly-skilled independent contractor. Even in the good times, the big corporations weren't really creating that many jobs. And the jobs they created didn't provide high pay or good benefits.

Yet, even today, we continue to treat our educational system as though its mission were to produce factory workers - cooperative, punctual, unquestioning drones who are very good at memorizing trivia and very reluctant to take risks.

We need just the opposite.

Similarly, even as President Obama pours billions into sinking corporations in hopes of creating jobs, he is pursuing health care options based on the overall model of employer-provided benefits.

What if he truly "thought anew"? What if he envisioned a health care system which had, at its core, the liberation of Americans' entrepreneurial genius?

For some time - even before the recession - I have been arguing that there must be at least a million "dilberts" out there who have a dream of starting a business of their own, but who are held back by the fear that they would be unable to provide adequate health care for themselves and their families. If I'm right - and I'm confident that I am - a health-care plan that actually guaranteed quality, affordable insurance to individuals and families could liberate a million entrepreneurs. It might well be the biggest thing since the invention of the microchip.

Unfortunately, such a health care approach will be impossible so long as we focus on preserving an old system which doesn't work: a system in which health insurance is provided by big corporate employers, who buy it from other big health insurance corporations, to be spent (all too often) at big corporate hospitals and medical practices.

We're not going to build a new economy, or a better society, if we aren't willing to let the dinosaurs die. And, Detroit aside, I can't think of a more deserving group of dinosaurs than our big health insurance companies and the big pharmaceutical companies whose profits they underwrite.

At any rate, this is merely a beginning: One new perspective which might liberate us to think of ways in which our nation might be saved - and might move toward a better future.

Let's think in terms of fewer jobs, and more small enterprise and self-employment.

There is more to this, and I'll pick up the thread next time. But my point is this: Based on the evidence thus far, the Democrats - and their new president - don't seem to be any more future-oriented than the Republicans. They simply have the advantage which comes, for a brief while, when your one and only opposition falls flat on its collective face.

By 2012, the Democrats might well have done the same, in which case, one party of old ideas will again replace the other in a continuing process of nothing new.

Commonwealth Book Club update.

The Commonwealth Book Club will discuss "Three Cups of Tea", by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, at its March 14 meeting. Location TBA, but most likely the Hopewell Library. New members are welcome.

The Commonwealth Book Club is in its fourth year. We have around twelve active members and average about seven per session. Our goal, thus far met, is to read and discuss ten "serious" books per annum. Upcoming authors include Thomas Friedman and Malcomb Gladwell, and I'm lobbying the group to read a good biography of Andrew Jackson.

"To Govern is To Choose"

It's an old saying, but age does not lessen its truth: "To govern is to choose."

The more I watch our new President, the more I doubt his understanding of this fundamental principle. The stimulus package seemed to have something - indeed, a great deal - for almost everyone. There was little evidence of choice. We can do it all, the President said - borrowing a trillion or two now and paying it back later.

Now comes the new budget outline, following the same paradigm. Plenty for everyone, and it will all be paid for (and the deficit halved) by rising receipts when the boom-time economy magically returns in a year or two.

Once again - for the third presidency in a row - I have the impression that there are no adults in the White House. Clinton made choices, true, but his choices were political choices - forced upon him when the opposition took control of Congress. Bush spent like a Democrat - especially on his war and his military toys - fully expecting the prosperity bandwagon to roll on forever. And now, Mr. Obama seems bent on outdoing them both!

The great irony is, of course, that the very generation which worked ceaselessly to elect Mr. Obama stands to pick up the tab for his undisciplined approach. When the bills eventually come due - which can hardly be that long - it is the Millennials who will face the huge interest payments, dwindling discretionary funds, bloated bureaucracy, decaying environment, and hordes of foreign creditors demanding their pound of flesh.

Three years ago, I was a Democrat - a member of the Virginia State Central Committee. But the longer I hung around Democrats, the more I realized that most rank-and-file Democrats live in a parallel mental universe where nothing has a cost and good intentions justify the worst policy choices.

The best thing that can be said for Democrats seemed to be this: They aren't Republicans.

But that wasn't enough. I quit the Democratic Party (for the second time) and have decided from now on to have nothing to do with either party. Neither has the slightest idea of fiscal discipline - or of making any hard decisions which conflict with their desire to win elections.

I say, "a plague on both their houses!" We need something new - a party of virtue, willing to declare that the Emperor (Republican or Democrat) has no clothes.

Let it start here.

Obama is a superb politician, but nothing more. He looks very good right now, because he is willing to promise everything to everyone, at no cost to anyone. But that will pall, in time. Americans, too accustomed to facing their own dismal finances, aren't about to believe Mr. Obama's sub-prime budget-making for long.

Too bad their only alternative is to elect Republicans in 2010, or 2012...

There's Something about Barry.

Just a quick thought for this busy day: I keep wondering when President Obama will move beyond campaign mode and start outlining a future for the country.

As the candidate of the "out" party, running against a monumentally unpopular President - and make no mistake, Mr. Obama ran against President Bush, not John McCain - candidate Obama consistently defined himself in terms of his differences with the last administration. Even when his tone was positive, he spoke in terms of what he wasn't for, what he wouldn't do.

It worked brilliantly, but this is no longer the campaign.

The other day, in The New York Times, columnist Bob Herbert quoted the President as follows:

“Now, I have to say that given that they were running the show for a pretty long time prior to me getting there, and that their theory was tested pretty thoroughly and it’s landed us in the situation where we’ve got over a trillion-dollars’ worth of debt and the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, I think I have a better argument in terms of economic thinking.”

Read that carefully. The central assertion goes something like this: "I must be right, because the other guys were so very, very wrong."

As a rare progressive supporting John McCain, I ran into that logical fallacy again and again during the campaign. In essence, the case for Mr. Obama seems to have been, "Sure, he's not very experienced or tested. But at least he's not Bush. Bush has been so awful, Obama's got to be an improvement!"

Which, of course, ignored the fact that John McCain, also, wasn't George W. Bush. The fundamental mistake of McCain's campaign was his failure to make that apparent - and, indeed, doing almost everything he could to make himself look like America's least popular politician.

But it also ignored the very real possibility that a bad president can be succeeded by another equally bad, or even worse. Take, for example, Franklin Pierce and his successor, James Buchanan.

Here's my point: President Obama is still working that same line. The Bush policies were a failure, therefore mine will be better. They were wrong, so I must be right.

Look at the quotation again. Mr. Obama never actually says what his argument is. He says that the Bush policies were disastrous - which is manifestly true - and then insists on the conclusion that "I have a better argument".

Really?

The deeper we go into this recession, and the longer I watch this administration, the more I fear that there is no guiding vision behind the Obama economic policy. It seems to consist of gestures and sound-bites, e.g., protectionist steel policy in the stimulus package, balanced by assurances that the new legislation means nothing if it contradicts our treaty obligations.

That's campaign stuff: A gesture to Group A, another to Group B. Baffle 'em with bullshit. Make policy after you're elected.

Well, you've been elected, Mr. Obama. The first of your 48 months has flown by. And we still don't have anything like a vision of the America which will emerge from this economic crisis.

The campaign is over, or should be. If you start running for re-election this early, I promise you, it ain't gonna happen.

This is one of those relatively rare times when the best political strategy is to govern well.

A Fresh Start.

I have been away from this space for too long - from writing for too long. The hiatus I took from the Village News last fall has evolved into a permanent parting of the ways. I wish my old weekly well, but we are no longer moving toward the same horizon.

This blog, and its sister, must of necessity become my principal outlet. When we survive this economic crisis - and if newspapers do - I'd like to see my thoughts in print again. But for now, here we are - a little blog, with aspirations.

Above all, my hope for this blog - and for everything I do in the public sphere - will be to create a movement for a third political entity. For lack of an alternate term, a third party - but with this distinction. I'd like to see a third party which defined itself - not in terms of winning elections - but in terms of moving the public conversation forward. A party inspired by the example of the anti-slavery parties of the 1830's and 1840's - the stubborn, righteous little parties which eventually shattered the Whig coalition and gave rise to the intelligent, forward-looking, and relatively virtuous Republican Party of Lincoln.

I'll stop for a moment to reiterate this point, because it seems so utterly at odds with what the "political scientists" preach. I'd like to build a party which defined itself in terms of moving the national conversation forward. A party willing to lose an election - or many elections - in order to make itself heard. A party willing, indeed, to sabotage certain types of candidates - particularly those cold-blooded narcissists who run in the name of good ideas and noble ideals, but in the service of themselves, alone.

It will take me some time to define with any precision where this party would stand, but a starting place would be with the liberal Republican tradition - the tradition of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, of Wendell Willkie and Everett Dirksen, of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Christopher Shays. I seek a party which can balance a maximum of individual liberty with an understanding that we all have a moral, as well as legal, obligation to the greater good - what the Founders would have called the commonwealth philosophy. A party which, as part of that greater good, felt a strong commitment to preserving a liveable environment for our children and grandchildren.

A party which, if it held a few seats in the present Congress, would be equally impatient with the right-wing Republicans' capitalistic myopia and the Democrats' Euro-socialist opportunism.

A party which might support the new President from time to time, but which would consistently urge a longer-range vision.

For this much is certainly true: America - and the rest of the world - will be remade by the current crisis. There is a way to emerge from this as a better society, and that way is almost certainly not to be found the in ideas of New Deal-New Frontier-Great Society statism. Nor is it to be found in propping up an obsolete automobile industry; nor in preserving legal and policy environment which has enriched the developers and bankers and given us suburban sprawl; nor in infusing new life into an employment-based health insurance system which serves to keep bright people working for large corporations instead of freeing them to start new, small enterprises.

I hope my old readers and friends will find me here - and that they will give me the time to make my case. Much of what I say will be uncongenial to supporters of President Obama - and downright heresy to the supporters of his predecessor. Indeed, supporters of each will be horrified to learn that I regard them as more similar than otherwise - as I find their two parties more alike than the only two alternatives in a political society have any right being.

At any rate, I ask you to come with me on a continuous thought experiment. I've always thought outside the box, and my regular readers have learned that I occasionally come up with a thought worth pondering. It's all a matter of turning off that internal editor which automatically rejects anything truly different.

For what we need now, most assuredly, is something different - something new. Perhaps something so old that it appears new.

And so, to begin...