In yesterday's Times, faux centrist David Brooks starts with his usual "I'm in the middle" column, whining that "The country is about to be offered the same two products: one from Soviet Production Facility A (the Republicans), and the other from Soviet Production Facility B (the Democrats)." (David has apparently run out of sane metaphors.)
After citing some statistics about supposed rampant pessimism, he concludes with what appears at first glance to be the usual Broderesque yearning for a bipartisan "solution:"
New political forces will emerge from the outside or the inside. A semi-crackpot outsider like Donald Trump could storm the gates and achieve astonishing political stature. Alternatively, insiders like the Simpson-Bowles commission or the Senate’s bipartisan “Gang of Six” could assert authority and recreate a strong centrist political establishment, such as the nation enjoyed in the 1950s.
(Emphasis added.) After thinking about the last phrase for a moment, I thought, "Wow. This is big news. David Brooks wants to go back to the days of Ike" -- you know, when tax rates were 90% and the 1956 Republican Platform included:
We are proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs—expansion of social security—broadened coverage in unemployment insurance —improved housing—and better health protection for all our people.
and this:
Extend the protection of the Federal minimum wage laws to as many more workers as is possible and practicable.
Stimulate improved job safety of our workers, through assistance to the States, employees and employers.
Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of Sex.
Clarify and strengthen the eight-hour laws for the benefit of workers who are subject to federal wage standards...
Revise and improve the Taft-Hartley Act so as to protect more effectively the rights of labor unions, management, the individual worker, and the public.
(H/t to MeMeMeMe's great diary from Feb. 2010 -- Quick: Who wrote this?)
Of course, Brooks probably agrees with almost none of those things. He thinks we need "austerity" and "re-evaluation of the social welfare state."
Brooks "slip" about the '50s reveals the damning secret of the right. They long for those halcyon days of the '50s, but blind themselves to the truth that the consensus of the '50s was based on Republican acceptance of the despised "social welfare state" and the New Deal. That the Fifties showed that social programs and free enterprise can flourish together.
This point was brought home best by Paul Krugman's Conscience of a Liberal, a book that all Democrats should read. Krugman systematically shows how the "age of relative income equality" of the '50s and '60s gave way to the growth of grotesque inequality from 1980 to the present. He also shows the central role that race played in getting lower middle class voters (e.g., "Reagan Democrats").
Of course, the relative income equality of the '50's reached African-Americans substantially less than whites (though I would argue that that group was better off because of the New Deal).
But that's part of the point. The consensus began to fray when the Great Society and Civil Rights laws began to extend New Deal benefits to African-Americans. Republicans, starting with Nixon, exploited this extension to engender fear and resentment, culminating with welfare queens and Willie Horton, in order to veer away from the '50s.
And David Brooks, of course, was on board with all of this, whether it was tax cuts, bogus wars and recently "austerity."
So David -- if you are sincere about the '50s consensus, I look forward to your next column on Friday, when you embrace everything in that 1950's platform -- extending unemployment insurance; extending the minimum wage; strengthening unions ferchrissakes!
Do it this Friday, across the page from Krugman, so you can be praised and not (anonymously dissed) in Krugman's blog afterwards.