David Frum recently wrote a blog post for CNN regarding the difference between Presidential strategy and tactics that is well worth reading. He mentioned Obama’s vision of a post-racial Presidency, and the use of his tenure as a leader who can reunite the [mainly] two political parties in this country. Many examples of this can be found, including Obama’s 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention.
But was the strategy dead on arrival? I’m not criticizing the idea’s merit, nor the tactics being deployed to achieve it (that would be for another post.) My concern is whether or not the United States electorate is psychologically capable of entering a post-racial environment.
Obama’s strategy seeks to confront the steadily increasing red/blue distinction by identifying common ground between the parties. This has been successful in the past. However, the old presuppositions are no longer valid. The ascendancy of Fox News and the terror attacks of 9/11 made feasible the utilization of the right-wing authoritarian personality type – driven by fear of the dangerous world, and motivated by self-righteousness. The RWA personality type submits to a designated authority, exhibits aggression toward outside groups, and strongly conforms to [sometimes] arbitrary norms. By employing this group of people as kindling in the political debate, it becomes impossible to achieve governing consensus or compromise in the public sphere (for a wonderful treatment of this subject, complete with survey tools, see Dr. Robert Altemeyer’s recent book, “The Authoritarians.”)
The existence of this mindset precludes cooperation, even if the outcomes are mutually beneficial. As a result, we bear witness to the ideological purge of the GOP, and the rise of Senator Jim DeMint, who has stated that he would rather lose elections than compromise values. With his winner-take-all approach to governing, it is not possible to accept less than everything or grant anything to a future minority. The days of trading chits on the floor of Congress are bygone.
Given the conditions on the ground, Obama’s strategy faces huge resistance. They are conditions that the tactic of effective, prolific legislative accomplishment cannot overcome. And while I want to be hopeful, there are few ways to counteract the attraction to authority that many RWAs experience. The President and Mr. Axelrod would do well to acquaint themselves with Dr. Bob’s research.
With all the media spectacle about the mid-term election horse race, I think the following quote will resonate with most of you.
Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them.
Here is an interesting discussion of America’s oil perspective, given by Lisa Margonelli of the New America Foundation. She does an excellent job of highlighting the salient issues raised by petroleum dependence and how that shapes public policy.
We live in interesting times. It is a testament to the amount of change we face that there is so much cultural reaction: the Tea Party being just one manifestation. While the politics and shouting are certainly colorful, they cause me to reflect on the reasons why our society struggles to incorporate cultural knowledge from generation to generation. Before I speculate on these reasons, I’d like to select a couple of contemporary, critical issues and illustrate the failure to leverage historical knowledge in their resolution.
America faces legitimate policy debates, regardless of whether the standards are born by political parties or others. Our country is still submerged in a deep economic morass, brought about by deregulation and a laissez-faire attitude. After nearly a decade of war in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, a profound military restructuring is occurring before our eyes, with an almost sexy, rebranding program. And, as one of those conflicts winds down, the bellicosity of many politicians towards Iran, North Korea (video via ThinkProgress) and Venezuela increases. While these issues all have history to inform the debate, policy makers are repeating a number of mistakes without much notice on the part of the press or citizenry.
Global Transformation
I’m going to start here because this seems like the easiest item (although I’m sure that many pundits will disagree.) Since the beginning of World War II, there has been an unbroken belief in the ability of America to transform other countries in the world with its military power. Whether through covert action, such as the 1953 overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh, and tinkering throughout Latin America, or full-scale warfare in Vietnam, this belief evolved to its pinnacle with the Bush Doctrine, when our country asserted that we were the sole arbiters of deciding whose values were aligned with our own, and who needed to be deposed. If a political regime is not allied with us, then military force is a desirable transformation tool.
Historically, the United States’ track record on ‘regime change’ is poor. While we did maintain influence in Iran for a quarter-century after the Mossadegh coup, the backlash which led to the Iranian revolution has caused headaches for us in the Persian Gulf for over three decades. The overthrow of Prime Minister Diem in Vietnam was allowed in order to assert more American authority, but we were unable to fill the consequent power vacuum and eventually failed to achieve our objectives in southeast Asia. And then there’s Iraq. George Bush and the neocons opened up a huge vacuum in one of the most unstable parts of the world, and acted surprised when their “reverse domino theory” failed to spread democracy across the region.
Power vacuums behave unpredictably, and are inherently dangerous. This is especially true when authoritarian leaders are overthrown, because nothing has had the opportunity to develop and fill the vacuum in an orderly fashion. Now, I don’t want to sound snarky, but that was one of the first things I learned in International Relations class – Political Science 102 with Dr. Cindy Kaplan. It requires a tremendous amount of hubris to engage in this kind of behavior.
Counterinsurgency (COIN)
I could rant about this for hours, and others have given it serious treatment. However, my only purpose is to outline the issue and illustrate how it applies to my thesis that America has a cultural knowledge problem.
The policy of counterinsurgency is sexy-hot right now, and General David Petraeus – the head of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan – has more celebrity cache than Brad Pitt. But is our collective memory that short? Most of us think of the military as a brute-force tool to be used as a last resort when lots of people need to be killed in order to force a nation-state to submit. After all, that’s exactly what it was through World War II. For a number of reasons beyond the scope of this post, that all changed with Vietnam. After realizing that the Vietnamese could not be decisively defeated, the tactic of counterinsurgency was introduced. It was an abject failure, and the Army Officer Corps repented. In fact, the tactic was so unpopular through the 70′s and 80′s that David Petraeus actually divorced himself from the idea in his Ph.D. dissertation.
The Powell Doctrine wiped away the bitter taste of Vietnam when it was applied during the first Gulf War. It was used again for the invasion of Iraq, and the American public was treated to “shock and awe.” However, after the Iraq war went off the rails, and the Bush Administration was handed its head on a pike in the 2006 mid-term elections, something new was needed. In stepped General Petraeus with his counterinsurgency manual. It was a political lifeline for George W. Bush, and the “surge” allowed him to extend the Iraq war as well as redefine the measure of success. As the idea of decisive victory is jettisoned in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are being prepared for “the Long War” – decades of low-grade deployment and indecisiveness – right before our very eyes, and without public debate.
Regulation of Industry
At this writing, the Deepwater Horizon disaster is not quite four months old. The well has been temporarily capped, but not before an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled into a fishery that supplies 25% of the domestic catch. In 2008, the American financial sector completed a decade-long bender by placing its head between its knees and puking all over its feet, and ours. Just two weeks ago, a half-billion eggs from two factory farms were recalled for salmonella contamination, affecting fourteen states. Asserting that the interests of consumers are not being adequately protected would be a gross understatement.
And yet, the public debate has deteriorated into an uncivil shouting match, with an entire political party doubling-down on the idea that we already have too much regulation. Despite my pleasant, carefree day-to-day life, I am being told that I live under the yoke of tyranny. This hyperbole is now the center of the debate, as opposed to fringe background noise. While it is easy for many people to dismiss, it exerts influence on the parameters of the debate. Our country continues to move towards the fringe, albeit slowly. I wonder what Sir Francis Galton would say about that?
For those ideologues on the right, it is pertinent to point out that even two ‘godfathers’ of libertarian economics – Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek – recognized the importance of regulation to optimize markets. For if a consumer in the market can’t be assured of the contents of a product, it is impossible to assign an accurate value to it. Nicolas Gruen wrote an interesting piece on Smith’s treatment of regulations in the banking industry, but you can also go straight to the horse’s mouth and find passages in The Wealth of Nations. Hayek devotes quite a bit of space to this topic in his seminal piece, The Road to Serfdom. He notes that, in order for free markets to thrive, barriers to entry must be low, and consumers must have adequate information to make decisions. These things and others require an appropriate amount of government regulation, as well as developed legal statutes and an efficient court system with integrity. Laissez-faire is a phrase that is never given consideration.
Preserving Cultural Knowledge
It’s not that I don’t believe in experimentation. But Americans have a tendency to over-apply the notion of sui generis. By seeing each situation as unique and undiscovered, we relieve ourselves of the need to make tough and unpopular decisions. How do we explain the detachment from reality? It’s easy to blame things on ignorance, but that doesn’t explain much. And the cultural knowledge itself – preserved in our literature, oral and written histories, cinema and video – is certainly available to anyone who looks for it. In fact, it requires a concerted effort to weave an alternate mythology, an effort that should be more visible to informed Americans. The process is intense and expensive, so it should come as no surprise that its purpose is to gain power, which illustrates the high value of holding power in this country. That so many of our politicians – people we trust to lead our country – would forego knowledge and accomplishment to the benefit of the nation, for the purpose of gaining power, is beyond disappointing (remember ‘Country First‘?)
The inefficient transfer of cultural knowledge does more than simply vindicate the adage of repeating mistakes, it wastes tremendous societal resources and hinders achievement. If Thomas Jefferson’s vision for the United States included progress through the application of Enlightenment reasoning, then anything less than the preservation and reliance on cultural knowledge will fail to achieve that goal. But beyond the references to Hayek and Smith, conservatism demands pragmatism as well. Edmund Burke, the modern father of conservatism (now called paleo-conservatism to give the neo-conservative radicals a pass) strongly believed that dogma impeded progress, and was anathema to good public policy (see Russell Kirk’s conservative bible, ‘The Conservative Mind’ for a wonderful treatment of many conservative thinkers.) In other words, storing and utilizing cultural knowledge isn’t a political issue, it is – obviously – a societal one. We can strive to move forward and achieve excellence in our public discourse, or we can remain uncivilized.
As a result, we bear witness to the ideological purge of the GOP, and the rise of Senator Jim DeMint, who has stated that he would rather lose elections than compromise values. With his winner-take-all approach to governing, it is not possible to accept less than everything or grant anything to a future minority. The days of trading chits on the floor of Congress are bygone.
