(Cross posted at Progressive Blue)
Jonathan Chait wrote a flawed lengthy straw men laden rebuttal to drew Westen's piece in the New York Times at the Neoliberal Republic, Oh I'm sorry, the New Republic.
Westen's op-ed rests upon a model of American politics in which the president in the not only the most important figure, but his most powerful weapon is rhetoric. The argument appears calculated to infuriate anybody with a passing familiarity with the basics of political science. In Westen's telling, every known impediment to legislative progress -- special interest lobbying, the filibuster, macroeconomic conditions, not to mention certain settled beliefs of public opinion -- are but tiny stick huts trembling in the face of the atomic bomb of the presidential speech. The impediment to an era of total an uncompromising liberal success is Obama's failure to properly deploy this awesome weapon.
Chait’s op ed rests upon the model of American politics in which the President is powerless, except for state secrets, signing statements, conducting wars that build up debt that is used politically to starve the beast. Then later to get Democrats to accept that framing(as Obama is doing now) on the need to cut social programs to pay off this said deficit ran up by Republicans. This argument also infuriates anyone who knew basic legislative history in that until 1975 it took 2/3rds to break a filibuster, not to mention this rhetoric taken up by the President is not settled a belief on public opinion Chiat is excusing it as.
SS and Medicare are very popular. Cutting them and using RW framing like calling them "entitlements" would be going against real settled beliefs of public opinion. Third Way Democrats and their apologists like Chait want us to believe that neoliberal ideas are settled into the public consciousness, but this is not true.
Westen’s earlier pieces provide data to disprove this and though Jonathan Chait likes to spout on about knowing something about political science this is from an actual political scientist:
What we have witnessed in the last several months is a phenomenon described in a classic book nearly 20 years ago by the political scientist John Zaller. What Zaller discovered is that public opinion tends to follow the lead of party leaders and pundits, as partisans turn to their own leaders and trusted sources for cues on what they should think and feel about the central questions of the day. Normally, when the two sides offer competing views, the 40-45 percent of voters on each side follow the lead of the "opinion leaders" on their side of the aisle.
But when leaders on one side are voicing a strong opinion -- in this case, the Republicans arguing that the sky is falling on the economy because of deficits, tax and spend liberalism, and over-regulation of business -- and the other side is either silent or echoing GOP talking points -- the average voter hears what sounds like a consensus and starts to mouth it.
Then pollsters start to pick up in their polls precisely the view they have been promulgating and elites have been putting into the minds and mouths of ordinary citizens, rendering elected officials all the more afraid of bucking what is now the conventional wisdom. And the result is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I would recommend reading this piece as a companion piece to the NYT editorial to cut through many of Chait's straw mans as if rhetoric was the only thing Westen talks about. However, political rhetoric cannot be dismissed so easily altogether because we know it matters what the president says ever since Teddy Roosevelt defined the term bully pulpit. This is a real term with actual relevance.
He made barn burning speeches against J.P Morgan’s Northern Securities Company and then used the Sherman Anti-Trust to break it up with public support behind him because of those speeches. And then a new paradigm had been established in Washington after that, and Roosevelt would go on to file suit against more than 40 major corporations during his presidency. So this narrative dismissing the effect of the narrative of a Presidential podium is rather weak tea, historically.
His cousin FDR will also disprove this notion just as Drew Westin said and Chait’s flawed analysis and polling data as you will see will soon fail to refute this.
To find a case of a president successfully employing his desired combination of "storytelling" and ideological purity, Westen reaches back to the example of Franklin Roosevelt:
In similar circumstances, Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Americans a promise to use the power of his office to make their lives better and to keep trying until he got it right. Beginning in his first inaugural address, and in the fireside chats that followed, he explained how the crash had happened, and he minced no words about those who had caused it. He promised to do something no president had done before: to use the resources of the United States to put Americans directly to work, building the infrastructure we still rely on today. He swore to keep the people who had caused the crisis out of the halls of power, and he made good on that promise. In a 1936 speech at Madison Square Garden, he thundered, “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.”
Westen's use of this example is wildly, redundantly incorrect, in ways that helpfully summarize his most fundamental errors. First, Roosevelt did not take office "in similar circumstances." He took office three years into the Great Depression, after the economy had bottom out, and immediately presided over rapid economic growth (unemployment plunged from a high of 24.9% in 1933 to 14.3% in 1937.) His administration's primary contribution to this rapid recovery was to eliminate the most harmful monetary policy error by loosening the gold standard.
Hmm, fundamental errors, huh? I assume Chait is going to hope he can gloss over that unemployment was still 3 times as high in FDR's day, even with the free-fall Obama inherited. However did FDR supposedly have it easy in this example because Chait assumes there was unemployment insurance or really any New Deal institution like now? There wasn't. Wrong again.
Sorry Chait, Obama himself has even compared these circumstances to the Great Depression and he's right on that but he was wrong on how he handled TARP with no accountability, temporary nationalization, or making any effort to stop TBTF like FDR did.
Also, here's a tip; when trying to point out Westen's supposed errors, it might help if you yourself actually learn what caused the actual recovery(fiscal stimulus) and maybe a little bit about Keynes’s General Theory:
Was the Great Depression a monetary phenomenon?
A central theme of Keynes’s General Theory was the impotence of monetary policy in depression-type conditions.
While it's true that loosening the gold standard was helpful because it lent room to fiscally spend given there was a gold restraint in our Monetary system that lent credibility that deficits mattered in the long run, as we can see it was the fiscal policy of stimulus that led the recovery, because as the General Theory states monetary policy is quite impotent in depression type conditions. Chait should educate himself on that.
This is where Jonathan Chait attempts to school Drew Westen's apt thesis that the president should stop using RW Neoliberal deficit fetishistic rhetoric because it hurts support for those programs unlike FDR who's fireside chats supported them.
Westen strongly implies that Roosevelt persuaded Americans to understand the efficacy of government spending in order to combat mass unemployment. In fact, he utterly failed to convince Americans to support fiscal stimulus:
Gallup Poll [December, 1935]
Do you think it necessary at this time to balance the budget and start reducing the national debt?
70% Yes
30 No
Gallup Poll [May, 1936]
Are the acts of the present Administration helping or hindering recovery?
55% Helping
45 Hindering
Gallup Poll (AIPO) [November, 1936]
DO YOU THINK IT NECESSARY FOR THE NEW ADMINISTRATION TO BALANCE THE BUDGET?
65% YES
28 NO
7 NO ANSWER
That's a funny statement by Chait because it's ignorant. The polling he shows shows that those polled thought the New Deal was helping instead of hurting. People knew what was going on.
They could see WPA work going on. They didn't know paying down the deficit would hinder the ability to put money into the economy necessarily and they weren't given a choice regarding jobs or the deficit. As Westen says they would pick the former despite Chait's excuses.
Not only that, Chait's research is wholly incomplete. Here is a full Pew Research Analysis showing that FDR did in fact convince the public to support fiscal stimulus.
Pro-Government Preferences
Among policies approved by roughly two-in-three in 1936-7, was the new Social Security program -- this despite the fact that the questions asked about it focused on the compulsory equal monthly contributions by employers and employees rather than on any promised benefits at retirement.
Large majorities favored the federal government providing free medical care for those unable to pay (76%), helping state and local governments cover the costs of medical care for mothers at childbirth (74%), spending $25 million (big bucks in those days) to control venereal diseases (68%), and giving loans on "a long time and easy basis" to enable tenant farmers to buy the farms they then rented (73%).
Look at the public support favoring the National Recovery Administration. This same organization created 4 million jobs in two months even though it was later ruled unconstitutional by the SCOTUS. It did so through massive direct stimulus spending and the public knew this and wanted a second one despite the SCOTUS ruling! I think Jonathan Chait just made a fool out of himself.
Chait then ridiculously claims FDR only truly used populist rhetoric after he was reelected in 1936.
To say this speech was not helpful and didn't steer the debate with the public behind him is a-historical nonsense and embarrassing revisionism on Chait's part. Basically if Jonathan Chait doesn't know this, he has no right to be criticizing Drew Westen's piece about anything whatsoever.
Stop pretending qualitative legislative achievements are the same as quantitative legislative achievements. Stop getting your Keynes wrong and your polling wrong. Stop omitting the Super Congress when you talk about how entitlements not being part of this budget deal, especially since they can be fast tracked with no amendments or filibuster and they were put on the table regardless of what happened.
Try harder next time or better yet stop writing about things you don't understand in order to prop up third way Democratic politics and "achievements."