Rewarding Good Rhetoric
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)
I’ve written before about the need for serious political activists to use reward-and-punishment models for the behavior of Democratic politicians: in the same way that right-wing groups such as the Club for Growth and the Christian Coalition have no compunction about attacking Republican politicians who fail to live up to their standards while richly rewarding those who do, so too must progressives do likewise. That means heaping praise, money and volunteer hours on politicians who do the right thing, and levying constructive criticism and primary battles if necessary on those who do not.
Putting this mode of behavioral politicking into practice is a little trickier than it may seem, however, especially for politicians who hold the majority or who are directly in power.
Behavioral rewards mechanisms are easy to calculate for the minority party. This is partly why Republicans, who have long toed the line on reward-and-punishment models from their base, find themselves much more comfortable in the obstructive minority than in the legislative majority. Usually, the majority is trying to do things the minority opposition vehemently opposes. In that case, behavioral politics requires that activists reward politicians who obstruct the majority’s harmful agenda. When compromise is inevitably necessary for the functioning of the government, politicians should be rewarded who stick to their guns and ensure that their side wins more of what they want from the compromise than the other side does. The same dynamic applies in the case of divided government: if the President is trying to enact a deleterious set of policies, the legislative should be rewarded for trying to stop him or her–so long as the basic functioning of the government is not imperiled. And, of course, the same is true of the reverse situation.
The situation is more complex for politicians in power who are faced with a minority (or legislative opposition) that simply does not care if the government ceases to function. At that point, the calculus becomes fraught with peril: does one reward behavior that takes the nation to the brink of utter disaster in order to win an ideological battle, or does one reward behavior instead that resembles that of the real mother in the Judgment of Solomon, in deciding to give up the ideological baby rather than see the nation torn asunder?
Obviously, the so-called “Obama Wars” in the blogosphere are more complicated than this: the President could surely take a stronger negotiating position so that the final compromise position with Republicans to avert disaster would have a decidedly more left-leaning skew. Certainly, the President could always have been doing much more with executive decisions, bypassing the Legislature to achieve more progressive results. The President’s rhetoric over the last couple of years could no doubt have been far more forceful. And it would be easier to give the President the benefit of the doubt were there not ample evidence that he actually believes conservative claims that Social Security and Medicare require cutting in order for the nation to solve its deficit problems. Changing all of these things would have helped dramatically, and the criticism the President has received from progressives on these fronts has been more than valid.
But in a very real sense, the cult that conservatism has become has made normal governance all but impossible for the President. Even that fateful decision to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, rightfully criticized by progressives for representing a crucial breach of a major campaign promise, was made under significant duress. Republicans were holding not one but two hostages in exchange for those tax cuts: the START Treaty, a crucial nuclear proliferation issue, and more importantly unemployment benefits for millions of Americans. I can honestly say I probably wouldn’t have made that trade. I would have sought justice for the unemployed through alternate means, and dared the GOP to actually take the step of ending the START treaty. I would probably have played chicken with the GOP in that situation and dared them to blink.
But it’s one thing to rail, demand accountability from the sidelines and play armchair quarterback. It’s quite another to be the man who has to look into the eyes of the unemployed losing their benefits, and to walk into a high-stakes meeting with Medvedev, and tell them that you sacrificed their needs in a domestic chess match in order to win a temporary war over targeted tax cuts. The weight of that decision for a responsible adult making real life-and-death choices is immense, and it’s anything but easy.
When the opposition is borderline psychotic and ready to set the world on fire to achieve ideological purity, actual decision making becomes much harder.
And that’s true not just for the President, but for the activist base as well. Progressives are rightly furious with the President over what he has done–and perhaps more importantly, what he has not done over the past two years.
But the reality is that from now until November 2012, the President is not going to be able to accomplish much of anything in the legislative arena. The Republicans simply won’t allow him to claim any sort of legislative victory, no matter how small.
Which means that all the President really has at his disposal is rhetoric. And thankfully, that rhetoric has been far more aggressive as of late.
Is that a political ploy to win back the progressive base? Probably. But what of it? First of all, rhetoric matters. When the President speaks, the people listen. And if the President is telling the progressive story in an aggressive way, that itself constitutes action in its own way.
But more importantly, at this point, rhetoric is almost all we have to judge the President by. When it comes to direct action, the Republican House is essentially tying his hands.
And given that for better or worse Mr. Obama will be the Democratic standardbearer in 2012, a progressive activist seeking to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior would be wise to praise this newfound aggressive rhetoric as not only a good first step, but truly the only real step possible at this point given the political dynamic at work.
Of course, once election season is over, there has to be follow through. As Georgia Logothetis says:
President Obama’s new aggressive tone and his pledge to be a “warrior for the middle class” reflect a changed dynamic. Politicians are finally realizing that true populism yields better policy and better political results. Whether they take to the bully pulpit for more votes or for real action, at the very least, they’ve decided to step on to the battlefield.
The conflict between a segment of our society that desires to hoard our nation’s wealth at the expense of the majority and a majority that seeks to breathe life again into the American Dream will not reach a conclusion in a single election cycle. No single president or single session of Congress can undue the injuries sustained by the middle class over the last decades.
But realizing that we’re in a battle is a positive first step. The true test of our resolve will be holding our politicians accountable until their actions match their words. Because only when those we send to Washington begin acting like warriors for the middle class, only when the concept of “middle class warrior” becomes less a campaign slogan and more a commanding ethos, only then will we be able to see victory (and a second chance) for the middle class on the horizon.
But for now and for the next year, rhetoric will be 90% of what we have to judge this President on. It’s fairly impossible to tell whether Mr. Obama has had a real change of heart regarding his negotiating strategy with Republicans or not.
But either way, when the President starts talking like this:
“Now, the Republicans, when I talked about this earlier in the week, they said, well, this is class warfare. You know what, if asking a billionaire to pay their fair share of taxes, to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or a teacher is class warfare, then you know what, I’m a warrior for the middle class. I’m happy to fight for the middle class. I’m happy to fight for working people. Because the only warfare I’ve seen is the battle against the middle class over the last 10, 15 years.”
It’s important that this change of pace in his rhetoric be rewarded. We have little else to go on at this point, and little other leverage to use.
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