Francis Fukayama's endorsement of Obama yesterday in The American Conservative and David Brooks' endorsement of Keynesian public works spending in today's NYT are merely the latest in a long line of indicators of an impending Obama victory. They join the Palin 2012 stickers, the polling data, and the yawning enthusiasm gap between the 2 campaigns. More significantly, they join the list of "conservative intellectuals" (an oxymoron if there ever was one) like Greenspan who are now admitting the error of their ways.
Those of us who are old enough to recall the Reagan years have spent their entire adult lifetimes swimming against a philosophical tide that would have been worthy of an Orwell novel. Like the anthropomorphic characters in Animal Farm, the GOP chant of "markets good, government bad" has dominated our national discourse for a generation. The party of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and the Great Society has spent about 30 years now continually on the defensive in debates on core economic policy.
It's utterly bizarre, accordingly, to see former high priests of that dominant creed espouse utter heresies. Fukayama, for example, says as follows:
At a time when the U.S. government has just nationalized a good part of the banking sector, we need to rethink a lot of the Reaganite verities of the past generation regarding taxes and regulation. Important as they were back in the 1980s and ’90s, they just won’t cut it for the period we are now entering. Obama is much better positioned to reinvent the American model and will certainly present a very different and more positive face of America to the rest of the world.
Brooks says as follows in his column today:
I’m hoping the next president takes the general resolve to spend gobs of money, and channels it into a National Mobility Project, a long-term investment in the country’s infrastructure.
Major highway projects take about 13 years from initiation to completion — too long to counteract any recession. But at least they create a legacy that can improve the economic environment for decades to come.
A major infrastructure initiative would create jobs for the less-educated workers who have been hit hardest by the transition to an information economy. It would allow the U.S. to return to the fundamentals. There is a real danger that the U.S. is going to leap from one over-consuming era to another, from one finance-led bubble to another. Focusing on infrastructure would at least get us thinking about the real economy, asking hard questions about what will increase real productivity, helping people who are expanding companies rather than hedge funds.
Greenspan admitted the following in his Congressional testimony last week:
Now 82, Mr. Greenspan came in for one of the harshest grillings of his life, as Democratic lawmakers asked him time and again whether he had been wrong, why he had been wrong and whether he was sorry.
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"You had the authority to prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. You were advised to do so by many others," said Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, chairman of the committee. "Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?"
Mr. Greenspan conceded: "Yes, I’ve found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I’ve been very distressed by that fact."
In Stalin's USSR, such men would now be headed to the gulag. In Mao's China, such men would now be headed to re-education camps. Here, these men will continue to enjoy incomes well into six (or even seven) figures after publicly admitting that the guiding philosophy they so eagerly espoused has completely and utterly failed.
The real news of this election year is not the fact that a poorly informed former beauty queen and an unlicensed plumber became the public face of the GOP campaign. It's not even the fact that solidly red states like VA, NC, and IN have suddenly become Dem targets. The real news is the complete and utter collapse of our opponents' reigning ideology.
Fukayama told us we were at "the end of history" when the Berlin Wall fell. Greenspan spent the better part of 2 decades as this country's most powerful economic figure applying the crackpot theories he (literally) learned at Ayn Rand's knee. Brooks has been allowed to regularly espouse his half-baked concepts on the op-ed page of our paper of record and on PBS.
Imagine, for a moment, Paul Krugman supporting the McCain health care plan. Imagine Bernie Sanders publicly telling his Hill colleagues that he has found a flaw in his core theories. Imagine James Galbraith calling Sam/Joe the Plumber a savant. We're seeing exactly the opposite of that right now.
In the face of this philosophical rout on the other side, it's time to take the initiative starting next Wednesday. A newly elected prez, a true Senate majority, and an expanded House majority will give us unique opportunities. An opposition that has publicly lost confidence in its prior core verities gives us even more opportunities.
There is nothing wrong w/ reaching across the aisle to get votes to get various legislative items passed. There is something very wrong, however, w/ trying to meet the other side "halfway" on policy matters when the other side's public faces are openly confessing obvious error. When David Brooks is openly advocating the passage of a key plank in the Obama economic platform, the tectonic plates have clearly shifted.
Elections have consequences. Obvious policy failures do, too. When your opponents are simultaneously losing an election and admitting to a policy failure, it's time to press your advantage.
A world of possibility will be open to us in a matter of days. It will only remain open for so long. It would be very unfortunate to squander it in unnecessary attempts at "bipartisanship."