We Need a Less Ideological Language to Describe Politicians…: Tuesday Focus

Every time I see the extremely smart and capable Bob Reich, I feel guilty.

I was a small part of the Treasury team within the Clinton administration that shut down a lot of ideas he had as Secretary of Labor–ideas to spend a little bit of money and quite possibly significantly improve the job the American economy does at matching workers with skills with jobs that need those skills. We thought that it was a much higher priority to pursue a bipartisan deal–a “grand bargain”–to set the financing of America’s social insurance system on a sound long-run basis, and if we could not get such a deal we would do it ourselves

Given that George W. Bush and his Republicans were going to gleefully smash much of our hard budget-balancing work over eight years on the floor in 2001-3–and given that the senior Republican policy barons like Alan Greenspan would only quietly whimper in private about how this was bad policy–it would have been better in retrospect to focus less on long-term fiscal stabilization as the road to equitable growth and to focus more on, well, on equitable growth as the road to equitable growth.

Reich saw the likely future complexion of American political economy more clearly than I did back in the 1990s. I should have listened to him more carefully. I regret that I did not, and I regret that Treasury’s victory over Labor was so complete back then.

Now comes Bob to argue that Chris Christie is really not a “pragmatist” at all:

Robert Reich: Pragmatists, Ideologues, and Inequality in America:

The Washington Post called Chris Christie’s huge gubernatorial victory a “clear signal in favor of pragmatic, as opposed to ideological, governance.” But the mainstream media used a different adjective to describe Bill de Blasio, last week’s other landslide victor. The New York Times, for example, wrote of “the rise of the left-leaning Mr. de Blasio.”… Christie is described as the pragmatist; De Blasio, the lefty. 

But these appellations ignore what’s happening to an America in which almost all the economic gains are going to the richest 1 percent, median household incomes continues to drop, and the number of Americans in poverty continues to rise. Given America’s surging inequality, the pragmatist is De Blasio, who proposes to raise taxes on the wealthy in order to fund pre-school and after-school programs for the children of the poor and hard-pressed middle class…. The real ideologue is Christie, who vetoed an increase in the minimum wage in New Jersey. The current minimum of $7.25 is far lower than it was three decades ago in terms of purchasing power…. New Jersey voters found a way to circumvent Christie’s ideological opposition… approved an amendment to the state constitution that raises the minimum to $8.25…. 

The so-called “pragmatic” Christie also frowns on gay marriage and abortion rights, which puts him in the company of many Tea Partiers. But because Christie himself isn’t a Tea Partier… he appears pragmatic….

The media is casting Christie as the pragmatist and De Blasio as the ideologue because of what’s happened to their respective parties.  The civil war that’s engulfed the Republican Party…. The Democratic Party, by contrast, has been the very model of civility. Establishment Democrats, mostly funded by big business and Wall Street, have dominated ever since Bill Clinton “triangulated” and moved the Party rightward. Progressive Democrats and organized labor… have been remarkably tractable….

Christie appears pragmatic and De Blasio ideological only in comparison with their own parties. But in terms of where America is and what it needs, now and in the foreseeable future, these two labels should be reversed.

I think Bob is right in that the frame ideologue/pragmatist/pragmatist/ideologue for Rick Perry/Chris Christie/Mike Bloomberg/Bill de Blasio does not fit. But reversing it does not fit either. So I want Bob to write another column, and come up with a different formulation…

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November 19, 2013

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