Auguries, Democrats and The Year of the Moose

Back to hard, cold reality today -- there's work to be done, and so I'm running a little behind.  Probably like the rest of you.

But there's something bracing about it -- the return to productivity, after the holiday dream state has gotten to be -- let's be honest -- just a little too much.

So it's comforting to see everyone back at his station.  The economic priests, for example, are hard at it, examining the entrails and producing new auguries -- the consensus seems to be, so far, so good.  The Wall Street Journal even talks about a "Goldilocks Year."  If, that is, nothing changes.

But we've heard about the Goldilocks Economy before, haven't we?  And, as noted, there's also a certain darkening of the mood. 

About that darkening -- it's predictable that the New York Times op-ed would feel grim.  But it's worth mentioning one aspect in particular of Jared Diamond's article -- this one:

History also teaches us two deeper lessons about what separates successful societies from those heading toward failure. A society contains a built-in blueprint for failure if the elite insulates itself from the consequences of its actions. That's why Maya kings, Norse Greenlanders and Easter Island chiefs made choices that eventually undermined their societies. They themselves did not begin to feel deprived until they had irreversibly destroyed their landscape.

Could this happen in the United States? It's a thought that often occurs to me here in Los Angeles, when I drive by gated communities, guarded by private security patrols, and filled with people who drink bottled water, depend on private pensions, and send their children to private schools. By doing these things, they lose the motivation to support the police force, the municipal water supply, Social Security and public schools. If conditions deteriorate too much for poorer people, gates will not keep the rioters out. Rioters eventually burned the palaces of Maya kings and tore down the statues of Easter Island chiefs; they have also already threatened wealthy districts in Los Angeles twice in recent decades....

The other deep lesson involves a willingness to re-examine long-held core values, when conditions change and those values no longer make sense.

Now, that's interesting in its own right, but more striking when you pick up this week's Economist and read about the threat to meritocracy in the U.S.:

A growing body of evidence suggests that the meritocratic ideal is in trouble in America. Income inequality is growing to levels not seen since the Gilded Age, around the 1880s. But social mobility is not increasing at anything like the same pace: would-be Horatio Algers are finding it no easier to climb from rags to riches, while the children of the privileged have a greater chance of staying at the top of the social heap. The United States risks calcifying into a European-style class-based society...

The evils that [Theodore] Roosevelt and [Harvard president James] Conant worried about are clearly beginning to reappear. But so far there are few signs of a reform movement. Why not?

The main reason may be a paradoxical one: because the meritocratic revolution of the first half of the 20th century has been at least half successful. Members of the American elite live in an intensely competitive universe. As children, they are ferried from piano lessons to ballet lessons to early-reading classes. As adolescents, they cram in as much after-school coaching as possible. As students, they compete to get into the best graduate schools. As young professionals, they burn the midnight oil for their employers. And, as parents, they agonise about getting their children into the best universities. It is hard for such people to imagine that America is anything but a meritocracy: their lives are a perpetual competition. Yet it is a competition among people very much like themselves—the offspring of a tiny slither of society—rather than among the full range of talents that the country has to offer.

We can say several things about this.  One -- if true, it's disturbing, to say the least (re: "if true," The Economist isn't infallible -- but it does marshal the usual array of statistics and authoritative voices in support of its case).

But it also, interestingly enough, suggests a way forward out of our recent George Lakoff debate -- and a new opportunity for the Democratic Party.

This thought came to mind as I put down The Economist, and picked up on Marshall Wittman's latest on the Bull Moose Blog (thanks to Greg's Opinion for the link).  He calls on the party to move beyond rejectionism and establish an alternative -- and affirmative -- vision:

Whither the Democrats? Given this challenge, the Moose has long held, that the Democrats must transform themselves into an insurgent party. That means that they cannot merely be the party of "no", but also offer an alternative vision while fervently opposing the Republicans scheme to undermine the social safety net. Yes, Democrats must unambiguously reject the Bushies' fanciful and fiscally irresponsible plan to privatize social security - no pay, no play. But the party must also convey that some type of reform is necessary to guarantee the solvency of the program and to offer younger voters an attractive savings option. Democrats must have a "yes" option.

Indeed.  But speaking more broadly -- what would the Democrats' "yes" options be?  What's the basis for a new platform?

Bringing all these threads together, it occurs to me that the answer might be nothing other than the Bull Moose that's hanging on Marshall's virtual wall.  In other words -- Democrats could do worse than take Teddy Roosevelt as a model.

True, it's cousin Franklin who has the emotional hold on Democratic thinking.  There's the additional detail that he was, in fact, a Democrat.  But let's put that aside for a moment.

The Economist discusses at some length TR's attack on privilege.  And as you think about it, the opportunity begins to come clear -- it's an opportunity to establish a vision of community, and use it as the base from which to attack split-off communities and special interests.  What do you get if you build your vision from TR's?  Oh, just a few things.  Such as...

UNITY in the face of divisiveness.  TR is opposed to all gated communities.  He's in favor of the community of the whole.

PRAGMATIC INTERVENTIONISM.  TR isn't against business, and he isn't against capitalism.  He's against the excesses of business and capitalism.  Like FDR, but using the leaner methods of enforcement and the bully pulpit, he sets out to save the capitalist system by protecting it from its own worst tendencies.

INTERNATIONALISM.  Yes, I'm approaching this from a centrist perspective.  But for that and a variety of other reasons, I think there's a huge advantage for Democrats in an engaged, activist internationalism -- for example, economic, social and cultural engagement in the Mideast, in addition to military response.

BIPARTISANSHIP on attack and defense.  TR was a coalition-builder; he was also an equal-opportunity offender.  To restore true meritocracy, you're going to have to attack special-interest communities, and their agendas, on both the right and the left. 

If you're a modern progressive (as opposed to a TR-era progressive), this probably won't appeal to you.  But it's not supposed to.  It's supposed to establish an activist centrist path -- a way for Democrats to come back from the fringe.  It's a vote for a new/old ideology -- the ideology of the community, the public square and the civil religion -- not for a death-struggle of one uncompromising partisanship against the other.

Who might be able to carry the fire for this kind of Democratic vision?  Maybe Spitzer, maybe Obama, maybe the two in combination (which might in some sense be a combination of TR and FDR).  Or maybe somebody we haven't noticed yet.

This is a beginning -- just a sketch.  There's clearly more work to do.  But since it's clearly one of the more interesting and more important tasks out there for a communicator/mythologist -- expect more to follow.