Common Goodness

by digby

There is much to recommend Michael Tomasky’s essay today in The American Prospect. I agree with Atrios that it is important that the Democratic party give people something to believe in. Politics without heart is nothing more than crass deal making.

Tomasky prescribes a Democratic philosophy of the common good and posits that this is the basis of liberalism — sacrifice for larger universalist principles. What’s not to like? Certainly on a rhetorical level it’s a positive philosophical message that serves as an umbrella for Democratic policies. The rub, of course, is in determining what the common good is in the first place.

Perhaps I’m a cynic, but I suspect that for most people, the common good is really the idea that what will be good for me will also be good for others. Very few people knowingly vote against their own self-interests. Tomasky admits this himself, in a way, with his argument (and I think it’s a logical one) that policies are more easily sold when they benefit all rather than a few. FDR made sure that social security was universal for just that reason. He knew very well that while people may believe in the common good, altruistic self-sacrifice is rarely really on the menu. (I’m not talking about fancypants Tragedy of the Commons, Prisoner’s Dilemma stuff here, although it’s quite relevant.) I’m just saying that policies that benefit the most people always go down easier. That’s why Republicans lie about their tax policies, after all.

The problem is that a political party cannot be all things to all people. And here’s where the politics of the common good becomes complicated.

Tomasky charts the history of the New Deal through its dissolution in the late 60’s, which he characterizes as a golden age of liberalism except for all those problems with, well, equality and civil liberties. He praises those who broke down those barriers but throughout the piece betrays a subtle distaste for those who still labor on behalf of civil rights and civil liberties. Like most liberal intellectuals of a certain age (although he’s younger than most) he clearly believes that the New Left pretty much destroyed the party and by 1980 had left a legacy of rapacious, singleminded, special interest groups that have made it impossible for real liberalism to reassert itself.

Yet, without coming out and saying it, he is quite obviously aware of the polarizing racial and cultural politics that were at work in the 1980’s when the realignment truly kicked in:

By 1980, Reagan had seized the idea of the common good. To be sure, it was a harshly conservative variant that quite actively depended on white middle-class resentment. But to its intended audience, his narrative was powerful, a clean punch landed squarely on the Democratic glass jaw. The liberals had come to ask too much of regular people: You, he said to the middle-class (and probably white) American, have to work hard and pay high taxes while welfare cheats lie around the house all day, getting the checks liberal politicians make sure they get; you follow the rules while the criminals go on their sprees and then get sprung by shifty liberal lawyers. For a lot of (white) people, it was powerful. And, let’s face it, manipulative as it was, it wasn’t entirely untrue, either!

Can you have a “common good” comprised of only the interests of resentful “regular” racists? I sure hope not.

I’ve always wondered what the Democrats are supposed to have done differently in light of this? Accede to this racist vision of the common good? Lower the boom on welfare and crime instantly to show how much we resented black people too? Tell Jesse Jackson to STFU?

Considering the huge sociological changes that came about in the post war world, (crescendoing in the 60’s) wasn’t it entirely predictable that there would be a backlash? Democratic special interests are responsible for all that, to be sure. But the alternative would have been to not pursue those goals in the first place. The forces that were pushing for equality were being pulled just as strongly from the other side. There wasn’t just a New Left; there was the New Right too. As Thomas Mann, writing on a different subject today spells out:

The seeds of this partisan era were intially planted in the 1960s, with the counter culture, the war in Vietnam, the rise of conservative activists in the 1964 Goldwater campaign, the Voting Rights Act, and the beginning of the economic development of the South. Roe v. Wade set the stage for the political mobilization of religious conservatives within the Republican party. The tax-limiting Proposition 13 in California and the Reagan presidency lent the Republican party a more distinctive economic and national security platform.

Party realignment in the South, fueled by these developments associted with race, religion, economic development and patriotism, radically altered the ideological and regional composition of the two parties. That process was extended to the rest of the country by the increasingly distinctive positions taken by the national parties and their presidential candidates on a number of salient social and economic issues. As these developments played out over time, party platforms became more distinctive, those recruited to Congress were more ideologically in tune with their fellow partisans, congressional leaders worked aggressively to promote their party’s agenda and message, and voters sorted themselves into the two parties based on their ideological views.

Action, reaction.

But Tomasky’s view that the “special interests” overreached is not an uncommon view and it isn’t new; it’s partly what spawned the DLC. And that’s why in some ways, I feel a sense of deja vu. If I didn’t have this herniated disc and an aversion to tequila I’d think I was still in my 20’s and I was reading the New Republic. Or pieces of it anyway. Tomasky admits as much and condemns the DLC’s failure to follow through with its “responsibility” agenda by settling for welfare reform and failing to go after the corporate big spenders. (I don’t remember that last part of the DLC agenda, to be perfectly honest, but then again, I hadn’t given up tequila, so maybe I forgot.) In any case, he sees the DLC’s failure as one of too much faith in markets and not enough in government, which I think it quite right. But from where I sit, the DLC’s failure also stems from its insistence that instead of working with the embarrassing coalition that forms the heart of the Democratic party, they needed to marginalize them. It didn’t work then, and I don’t think it’s going to work now.

Tomasky admiringly mentions “Crashing the Gate” in this context and I too like Markos and Jerome’s book very much. I think it’s one of the most important books in the last decade about Democratic politics. But I think the weakest part is its condemnation of the special interest groups and not because I have any particular affinity for them as institutions. It’s just that I’ve heard it all before. Democratic “special interests” have been the bête noire of every Democratic strategist since 1980. The Republicans have made a fetish of them, and the Democrats have seen them as being stubbornly unwilling to “sacrifice.” (This is not to say that I don’t endorse pressuring them to stop with the outdated “bipartisan” tactics, as with the Sierra Club and Naral endorsing Chaffee. They might as well be wearing a mullet and singing “Power of Love” with that nonsense.)

But it’s very easy to say you believe in the common good until you are told that your particular needs must be sacrificed, postponed, deferred to benefit everyone else. Promises to pick them up later are not very compelling — as two great thinkers (John Maynard Keynes and George W. Bush) have both observed, “in the long run we’ll all be dead.” These are the contentious issues that make people uncomfortable and are therefore the most likely to be shunted aside by timid politicians if given half a chance. It’s a lot to ask.

Tomasky asks:

So where does this leave today’s Democrats? A more precise way to ask the question is this: What principle or principles unites them all, from Max Baucus to Maxine Waters and everyone in between, and what do they demand that citizens believe?

As I’ve said, they no longer ask them to believe in the moral basis of liberal governance, in demanding that citizens look beyond their own self-interest. They, or many of them, don’t really ask citizens to believe in government anymore. Or taxes, or regulation — oh, sort of on regulation, but only some of them, and only occasionally, when something happens like the mining disasters in my home state earlier this year. They do ask Americans to believe that middle-income people should get a fair shake, but they lack the courage to take that demand to the places it should logically go, like universal health coverage. And, of course, on many issues the party is ideologically all over the place; if you were asked to paint the party’s belief system, the result would resemble a Pollock.

At bottom, today’s Democrats from Baucus to Waters are united in only two beliefs, and they demand that American citizens believe in only two things: diversity and rights.

I’m not sure that Baucus and Waters actually agree on those things, but whatever. Let’s suppose that Waters and Baucus simply agree that the common good is good government. They both sign on to universal health care. They agree on taxes and regulation. They agree to get the money out of politics. They agree that the future of the country depends upon all children getting good educations and they commit to devoting the time and energy to doing that. They go to the people and say, “this is the common good, and it’s what we both believe we should fight for.” Huzzah.

But then somebody (a Republican, no doubt) says, what about affirmative action? What about abortion? What about the ten commandments? What about wiretapping? Immigration? The war? And lets assume that Waters and Baucus, being from different regions with very different constituencies, have different views on those things? Who is asked to look behyond his or her special interests on those things? Who decides what is the common good?

Tomasky has an answer for that. He says that the special interest groups must justify their goals in universalist terms or not be taken seriously by anyone. He uses the example of an affirmative action argument, saying that it is a good thing that even corporate America embraces. I suppose one can make a similar argument about immigration. I’m not sure these arguments have much salience, but you can make them, saying that in a globalized economy we are all in this together and we need to be able to compete. (Or something like that — Clinton used to say “we don’t have a person to waste.”) If that’s all it takes, then I guess most special interest groups shouldn’t have any problems complying. It’s “framing” in service of an argument that lends itself very well to economic issues.

But how do you frame abortion as being for the common good? Or religion? How do you parse the fourth amendment? The war? These are huge issues — represented I might add, by special interest groups that can’t easily trust Max or Maxine to do whatever they think is right for “the common good.” How do we construct arguments that will quell these contentious controversies with appeals to a common good when people can’t find common ground? (And at what point are we talking about the common good of the party vs the common good of the country?)

Tomasky offers no compelling examples of “common good” rhetoric pertaining to these questions, so I think it’s fair to assume that this is where the sacrifice comes in.

I don’t mean to be dismissive. I think it’s important to embrace big ideas and big philosophy and reach for some inspiration. The Democrats have been issuing stultifying laundry lists for as long as I can remember and I couldn’t be happier that people are thinking in these terms. But I can’t help but feel that we always end up back at the same spot somehow. The unions, the womens groups, the civil rights groups, trial lawyers, consumer advocates — the whole array of narrow special interests being held responsible for the fact that half of this country really resents the hell out of minorities, women and working people getting a fair shake. And the Democrats continue to pay the political price for that resentment.

I’m all for finding our way out of it. Tomasky’s message has real resonance; I like it very much. But I think that if the party stopped trying to figure out ways to get the “special interests” to shut up and started giving them some respectful assurances that they aren’t going to be the sacrificial lambs in whatever the new paradigm turns out to be, they might find a little bit more cooperation.

I believe in the common good and I agree that it expresses the essence of the liberal philosophy. But the heart and soul of the Democratic party lies in its committment to freedom and equality for all Americans. I think we need to find a way to convince a majority of Americans that the common good is best served by not compromising those principles.

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