US Politics: Posner Speaks

It is a rare day in paradise that I agree with Richard Posner. He is a conservative judge appointed by Ronald Reagan and has built a reputation as a leading and articulate advocate of conservative ideological positions. His early advocacy of free market economics and deregulation earned him a spot teaching at the University of Chicago, which as you all know, is one of the key the centers of right wing economics in the US. It was the home of Milton Friedman and his more extreme heir Robert Lucas. Eugene Fama of efficient markets fame also resides there.

First, Posner has come some distance in his economic thinking: he now broadly sees himself as a Keynesian, which must shock and astound his colleagues. Recall that Lucas is on record as saying that anyone arguing from a Keynesian perspective would be coughed and snickered at in ‘respectable’ economic circles. By respectable I imagine Lucas means the halls of Chicago and similar venues of right wing thinking.

Second, and just yesterday, Posner has announced to the world that he thinks the contemporary Republican Party is ‘goofy’.

Well, Judge, welcome to the other side.

Only goofy isn’t the word that springs to my mind. Horrible maybe. Dangerously extremist definitely.

I am all for healthy political discourse. Such discourse requires two or more points of view all of which are constructive and earnest in their opinions, supported by sensible theory, and which contribute to the arrival at socially acceptable policy making. Inevitably this implies leaving behind some of the more extreme or idealistic positions an advocate might hold in order to reach a decision on action. Whether we more active folks like it or not the muddled middle is where democratic processes tend to make most of their decisions.

What Posner is really saying is that the Republican Party is no longer a party comfortable in that muddled middle, but has become determined to shift the entire discussion well out of the middle and towards one side. This tendency began before Ronald Reagan’s ascension to its head, and originates in the right’s hatred of much of the discourse and policies of the 1960’s. From opposition to civil rights, women’s equality, and other liberal social issues, to deregulation, pro-business, and anti-environment positions in economics, the Republicans have cobbled together a rag-tag coalition of highly dissatisfied and vocal groups intent on rolling back the clock to some imagined pre-1960’s conservative nirvana. Along the way they have been able to frame the entire political debate in the US around a right wing agenda, and have eliminated any effective advocacy of left of center positions. They have also persuaded the media and others that the US is naturally a ‘center-right’ nation, implying that socially progressive policies are always cutting against the grain and are somehow ‘un-American’.

I reject this view.

The most obvious counter-factual being the enormous success and popularity of the great social programs – Social Security and Medicare. It has taken decades for the right to chip away at them, and only now, after a carefully constructed and executed attack on the Federal budget, has their continuance been threatened. Voters have come to believe that those programs are fiscally insecure, which opens the door to right wing recidivist policy making. Even then, as George Bush discovered, rolling back or ‘privatizing’ them remains immensely unpopular.

Gay rights too has made tremendous progress, with many polls now showing majority – thin majority – support for their expansion.

So the facts do not support the center/right narrative.

Indeed, I would argue that any complex democracy will drift steadily towards a center/left position with strong social programs coexisting alongside a regulated capitalist economy. I see no reason for the US to resist this trend. It might always lag, but it will surely follow.

What threatens this drift is that the negative feedback that keeps political discourse in that muddled middle can switch to positive feedback under extreme conditions. A vocal and organized minority can insert itself into the mainstream and then co-opt the entire democratic process and pull it off center. If conditions are bad enough such a move builds momentum as the politicians in the muddled middle are increasingly perceived to be weak, ineffective, and incapable of taking strong action. Voters respond to strength at such moments. And extremists are naturally strong in their advocacy, argument, and action.

So if we couple the rightward drift of the post 1960’s era, add the allure of Reagan’s charisma, add the self-righteousness that came after the fall of the Soviet Union and the implication of ‘victory’ for capitalism, and then the capitulation of the left under Clinton and his triangulation and invention of the ‘third way’ which was nothing more than a veil over his continuance of Reagan style policies, we arrive at a potent, but still contained rightward shift. A shift sufficient to convince analysts and other observers of America’s commitment to the center/right. Despite the evidence as I have already mentioned.

Fast forward to the steady erosion of the middle class – due entirely to the income redistribution enabled by the rightward shift – and then to the debt induced collapse of the economy into its current depression, and the feedback flips from negative to positive. The shift can no longer be contained and the extremists break into open ground. They are now leading the debate. Framing the discussion. And attracting support because they appear to be both in the ascendancy and to be action-oriented. And voters viscerally require and support action.

So, to me, the goofiness that Posner now decries is simply the direct result of an un-contained rightward shift that began benignly, built momentum, and which when it needed resistance to revert it back to the muddled middle, met none.

Posner, as I noted, has personally stepped back from the brink. He remains conservative. But what that means he is no longer sure. I think many of the older generation of Republicans are in the same boat. They were originally caught up by the exhilaration of the Reagan revolution and the seeming turn away from the 1960’s. They thus abetted and welcomed the rightward shift as being a natural counterpoint to that decade’s excesses. But they went too far. What started as a re-balancing act, became a radical cause, and a revolution. Once unleashed and unconfined the shift started to threaten those old timers who may be conservative, but who also value consensus and understand that democracy is inevitably not pure.

They were replaced by purists. They were overtaken by extremists. They lost power within the Republican Party, and only now has the takeover been completed. The Obama years have shown us all just how complete the victory of the extremists has been. There are no moderate Republicans. None. To hope for Romney to be able to govern from the middle is absurd in the face of the evidence.

He has shown himself to be the quintessential post-modern relativist. He has no values other than those he needs today to win the next election. He believes only in a simple set of business principles which are amoral at their core. He has also demonstrated not one whit of ability to contain the extreme right. He may, as some people argue, be a right/center person, but he will be unable to resist the pressure of the extreme right. He has some more center/right advisors, but they will count for nothing in the face of the onslaught from the extreme wing of his party. His ability to legislate and operate in the muddled middle is fatally compromised by the fact that his party no longer exists there. More to the point: nothing he has done suggests he will be able to build a middle way. The threat of veto will come, not from the left, but from his own right. Besides the left has lost its way and now is forced to make its arguments on the extreme right’s home ground. Neither Clinton, nor Obama, saw fit to push back against the right wing’s framing of contemporary issues. All they did was to validate them by attempting to reach across and embrace the enemy. This exposed the left as weak and as having no alternative framing. I give you one example of this: Obama persists in describing the deficit and the budget in Republican terms. Nowhere does he project strength. He could, for example, deride the notion that Social Security ‘needs’ major reform. It doesn’t. It needs minor tinkering. Yet he has so lost control of the discussion that it is commonly believed that Social Security is somehow in peril and that future generations will not receive it. He could have altered that perception. He didn’t.

The right looks strong. The left looks weak.

And the extremists remain rampant.

So much so that Posner is forced to call them goofy.

If by goofy he means destructive, wicked, and dangerous to our democracy, then I agree.

If by goofy he merely means a little odd, then I think he is, well, goofy.

It is time for the right to rein itself back in. The left doesn’t seem to want to. Posner’s criticism may help. I hope it’s not too late.