The end of the progressive consensus

In today’s Wall Street Journal Alan S. Blinder, the noted Princeton economics professor and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, made the argument that this year’s Republican Party presidential ticket is from “right field,” with policies that subvert the progressive “Rooseveltian consensus” that has guided American politics since the 1930s. Dr. Blinder’s assertion echoes some of the themes I discussed last week in my exploration of Andrea Louise Campbell’s claim that Americans are undertaxed, namely, the notion that something has changed in the country’s attitudes toward the redistribution of wealth via taxes. To read Dr. Blinder’s op-ed piece, however, one would think this phenomenon is sudden and inexplicable, the violent spasm of a new ultraconservatism personified by the top of the 2012 Republican ticket.

The reality is that Dr. Blinder’s argument is about four decades too late. He tries to shoehorn some recent examples of presidential decision-making into the framework of his argument – such as George W. Bush’s ill-advised expansion of Medicare – but his progressive interpretation of Bush’s policy and recent history is at odds with the preponderance of facts supporting a slow, decades-long erosion of the “Rooseveltian consensus.” For every isolated policy decision since 1970 that Dr. Blinder chooses to hold up as proof of the progressive consensus, I can cite a score of other policies from both Republicans and Democrats that have had the effect of eroding that consensus. It would seem that Dr. Blinder has cherry-picked events and policies of the past half-century in order to paint the Republican nominee Mitt Romney as a radical right-winger. While Mr. Romney might not win the 2012 presidential election, poll numbers reflect that the American people are more or less split on many policies one might describe as anti-progressive. Furthermore, the trend line over the past generation demonstrates that progressives have failed to widen their appeal on economic issues.

Dr. Blinder is a very smart man. He of all folks knows that the “broad consensus” he describes is more historical than real. So why is he so intent on doing the work of 1968? Why pretend that the political reality is something other than what it is? And why make the rather bizarre attempt to subsume the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush into the Progressive Era? One can only arrive at a few conclusions – either Dr. Blinder is so blinkered by ideology and nostalgia that he cannot discern what is plainly obvious to everyone else (not likely), or he is being intellectually dishonest. If progressivism is so threatened and effete a political philosophy that it must co-opt the careers of thoroughgoing anti-progressives like Reagan and Bush, then it is in even worse shape than I imagined.

It’s Trust, Not Philosophy

In seeking to define what the progressive consensus was (note my use of past tense), Dr. Blinder wrote the following:

“The Rooseveltian consensus embodied three main elements: a modest social safety net to protect vulnerable Americans from some of the downsides of unfettered markets, Keynesian-style policies to shorten recessions, and a progressive tax-transfer system to mitigate income inequality (albeit only slightly).” 

Of these three pillars of progressivism only the last one matters (wealth redistribution), because it is the engine that enables everything else in the progressive platform, and as I touched on last week, wealth redistribution is probably the most contentious issue in American politics. Far from the consensus that Dr. Blinder imagines, the country has been polarized on this issue for years.

And yet, I believe the source of this polarization is only partly philosophical in nature. Depending on how Americans are asked the question, the imaginary representative American seems genuinely conflicted. There is ample evidence that Americans support some form of a social safety net; at the same time, there is evidence that most Americans feel they are taxed too much – and, importantly, not just themselves personally, but even those Americans at higher income brackets. Assuming that most folks aren’t brick stupid, what, then, accounts for this obvious contradiction?

I believe the key to understanding this dilemma lies in the consistently rotten approval ratings that Congress receives in opinion polls. Just last month, Congress tied its worst-ever measure, with nine out of 10 Americans disapproving of Congress. When viewed in this light, the very foundation of progressive ideology begins to fall apart. What sane person would expect the American people to entrust an institution with a 90% disapproval rating with the redistribution of hundreds of billions of dollars? There is room for honest debate about why Congress has such low approval ratings, and the truth is bound to be very complex and not reducible to a simple explanation; however, the fact remains that progressives wish to grant ever-greater power to a government that isn’t trusted by the people. Rather than ginning up an ersatz history of the past half-century, Dr. Blinder would have been better served by trying to rehabilitate our opinion of Congress.

Good luck with that.