Bianca Steele

How do you feel about the word inspired?

My freshman year in college, my roommate and I both were prospective English majors and writers/journalists.  She had a lot more experience than me, however: more preparation for college-level study of literature, and a better idea about how to write.  One day she came back to the room and announced that, after having struggled to find a topic for an essay, she was inspired.  Sounded reasonable to me.  But, some time later, I tried the same thing on a guy who lived in the same dorm as us, down the hall.  It was the first snowfall of the year, my first snowfall in New York, and I had gone for a walk down Broadway to get a sandwich at Mama Joy’s, and was when I came back, I told him, “inspired.”  His reaction was scorn.  “Inspired?  What does that mean?”  I was tongue-tied; I didn’t know what inspired really meant, or why it was a good thing with reference to essay-writing.  Since then, I’ve been leery of the word.

John Holbo over at Crooked Timber isn’t afraid of it, though, apparently.  And he’s a philosophy professor, so he should know.  He’s also got a good post about why the conservative arguments against health care reform are silly.

Meritocrats Vs. Rockefeller Republicans

I don’t know as much about Robert McNamara as I should.  I do know he was the Lyndon Johnson adviser who was responsible for the escalation of American military involvement in Vietnam.  His recent death brings David Brooks and Gail Collins, on their New York Times blog, “The Conversation,” to discuss a question the caption writer words as, “Has our ruling class gotten better or worse over the ages?”

Brooks starts off.  He compares the bureaucratic elite of the 1950s to the elite of the 1960s (McNamara’s time), and presents McNamara’s failings as of a piece with what he as a conservative considers the decline of America generally over those two decades.  He presents a narrative in which the “wise men” of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations were great men, innovators, responsible for creating the institutions that made the America of the second half of the twentieth century what it was.  The corresponding “best and brightest” of the succeeding decade, however, were entirely different.  In their hands, everything fell apart.

In case you were wondering why, Brooks offers up a handful of possibilities: the kind of education they were given, their belief that they were in possession of scientific knowledge that could tell them exactly how to govern, their belief in their own competence, and their belief that they could improve conditions for other people at home and around the world.  Basically, they were Democrats.  The men of the 1950s, on the other hand, were wealthy industrialists (and the sons of industrialists), plutocrats with Wall Street values who believed their wealth and opportunities gave them the responsibility and the competence to participate in government.  In other words, Republicans (though probably Rockefeller Republicans, as they’d later be called, not necessarily conservatives).

Undeniably, something happened sometime between 1958 and 1974.  The difference between the bureaucrats of the immediate post-war period and those of the Vietnam era makes a nice example.  But the question remains what the causes of the difference really were.

With the data Brooks relays to us, it seems that the only way of explaining the change is by the subsequent generation’s being inexplicably dumber than its predecessor had been (not its parents: the only subsequent political Harrimans that Wikipedia lists exist in science fiction).  Or we might invent some theory of inevitable decline—where the men of the 1950s were indeed better than those of any other period in recent memory, but where the law of reversion to the mean shows that all good things must come to an end, and that they correspondingly did.  What seems certain is that, for Brooks, many other possibilities, though imaginable, are not likely.  The men of the 1950s did not leave weak or fragile institutions to their successors.  The men of the 1950s did not leave nearly insuperable problems, of their own creation, to those of the 1960s.  The men of the 1960s did not do the best they could under bad circumstances, and certainly did not lay the groundwork for improvement in the next two or three decades.  (Any of these possibilities would cast in doubt Brooks’ assertion that the 1960s were a sad falling off from a high place.)  No: what you see is what you get.

What you see is what you get.  Americans were generally happy in the 1950s, and the presidents of the 1950s were Republicans.  Americans were increasingly unhappy in the 1960s, and the presidents of that decade were Democrats.  In the 1950s there wasn’t yet much in the way of the social sciences, and bureaucrats could be only generally educated yet govern with little outside criticism.  In the 1960s many people felt a lot more was known, and at the same time problems were being identified with increasing frequency.  Conservatives like David Brooks are asking you to do the math.  He thinks you’ll be forced to draw the right conclusion.

Frames Versus the Invisible Hand

Via Will Wilkinson, Matt Yglesias says of financial firm CEOs: “surely we could agree that the executives at these institutions are primarily bad people.”  He goes on to elaborate, explaining that they are “greedy.”  This isn’t his main point, and he goes on to invoke Adam Smith and to “recognize that none of us are without sin,” but he says it more than once, and I think Wilkinson is right to point out that it’s not consistent with what Yglesias has represented his argument to be.

Yglesias’ post invokes a frame that it’s unusual to see in sophisticated economic reasoning: every problem can be blamed on a particular person, who both benefited directly from the problem in the most natural way, and committed a particular sin that necessarily would have caused that particular problem.  In this case, as the frame, and as Yglesias, would have it, the problem was not only caused by financial firms, but by the individual executives of these firms.  And it’s not just that their actions caused the problem because they made some mistake, because they were lazy, because they were incompetent, because they were out to get somebody else and lost track of what they were really supposed to be doing—they caused financial problems for other people because they were out to benefit themselves financially.  And it’s not just that their desire to get big bonuses or to drive up the price of their employers’ stock—or even their self-identification with the firm and its products, so that the firm’s gains felt like their own—led them to act in acquisitive ways, it’s that they were acting to benefit themselves instead of with the public good in mind.

There really is no other way to explain the stupidity of this kind of argument (at least I can’t think of one), than to see it as basically automatic, nearly unconscious.  It’s something you expect to hear from a guy who’s just finished yelling, “You kids get off my lawn!”

And what it misses is something important.  If we really think Adam Smith was right, it is important to have people around who will act with self-interest (their own and others’) in mind.  If we want to live in a modern society with complex institutions, it is important to have people around who are aware of the impact their actions have on the well-being of others without imagining that impact is direct.  And if we want to get anything done at all, it is also important to have people around who do not become paralyzed with fear every time it occurs to them that “none of us are without sin.”

The Definition of "Neoliberalism"

At Blographia Literaria, Andrew Seal is discussing Walter Benn Michaels’ essay “The Neoliberal Imagination,” which appeared in n+1, and he says:

Michaels accuses liberals of stooping to a politics of respect or recognition where we should be practicing a politics of redistribution. "[T]he politics of the neoliberal imagination involve respecting the poor, not getting rid of poverty—eliminating inequality without redistributing wealth." Liberals, he argues, like to treat classism as homologous to racism or sexism—as being primarily about the destructive force of prejudice, rather than the destructive force of not having enough money to pay for basic needs. "So, just as being opposed to racism is by no means to be opposed to racial difference… to be opposed to classism is by no means to oppose class difference."

But to my ear, “neoliberal” is not interchangeable with “liberal.” “Neoliberal,” as originally used in the US in the 1990s, refers to the second generation of people who were previously liberals but were moving in the direction of conservatism. The first generation said they were “liberals who had been mugged by reality,” whatever that means, and called themselves “neoconservatives.” The next clump were politicians like Joseph Lieberman, people who wanted to consider themselves liberals, still didn’t want to see Roe v. Wade overturned, etc., but who read Sullivan’s The New Republic and increasingly saw merit in conservative arguments.  These Democrats, the DLC and so on, are the ones who were in power since the early 1990s, so I think I'm using the word in pretty much the same sense Michaels is, at least in this Bookforum essay.

“Neoliberal” is a word I didn’t hear much for a while, until around the time the n+1 guys came around. I assumed they had heard it from their professors at Harvard. No idea what those guys thought it meant.

I later learned that “neoliberal” was used in Europe to refer to what’s called a “classical liberal”: someone who believes in the free market, disestablishment of religion, in other words, someone who a European reactionary would call a liberal. My understanding is that the Liberal Party in England is “liberal” in this sense. In the United States, it describes Jonah Goldberg: conservatism without the bigots.

But, as I said, I have no idea what those krazy n+1 kids mean by it.

How out of touch are conservative pundits?

Here is a quote from ex-Bush speechwriter and GOP strategist David Frum (as told to Barron YoungSmith of The New Republic). He’s talking about Sarah Palin:

Here's a candidate who embodies and epitomizes not just conservative values but a conservative style. At the same time, she's a person who inspires very little confidence in her ability to run a modern government. Which of these things is more important to you?

Frum voted for the McCain/Palin ticket, and said he thought there was nothing to choose between Palin and Obama when it came to fitness for high office.  He's the most well known of those Republicans who criticized the Palin VP pick very harshly (as did his wife, Danielle Crittenden, at the Huffington Post), and he writes genial posts on occasion about the English and American novel, but he is the farthest thing from "nonpartisan" that can be imagined.

He and others are trying to find a new direction for “conservatism,” by which they mean the Republican party. To begin to see why they are unlikely to succeed, and why David Frum is not a good ally for those who might consider themselves to be “cultural conservatives” without strong ties to either party, try to answer the following questions:

1. What are “conservative values”?
        a) Values typically possessed by the mass of people who accept things as they are
        b) Opposition to values typically possessed by those who can’t rightly be considered part of
“the mass of people who accept things as they are”
        c) Values that derive from conservative institutions, such as Christianity, the writings that constitute “Western Civilization,” and the medical professions
        d) Values that my parents, grandparents, and teachers shared

2. What best characterizes a “conservative style”?
        a) “Of the people,” practical-minded, taking cues from the past
        b) Proudly defiant and defiantly anti-intellectual
        c) Calm, staid and dignified
        d) Reminds me of the most respected members of the community in which I spent the most time as a child

3. What would “inspire confidence in [a person’s] ability to run a modern government” or other large organization?
        a) Has worked in large organizations, had management positions within them, got things done effectively and reasonably efficiently, left behind a good reputation among other people in those organizations
        b) Knows everything without having to ask or to look it up, and doesn’t take no for an answer or let anyone push him/her around
        c) Good manners, conservative moral values, requires hard work from themselves and others, makes the bottom line a priority
        d) Reminds me of the people my teachers and past employers had labeled as having “leadership qualities”

4. Which set of answers would be given by
        a) Ramesh Ponnuru?
        b) Ross Douthat?
        c) Andrew Sullivan?
        d) David Frum?
        e) Leon Wieseltier?
        f) Jim Manzi?

5. Who can the GOP most easily do without?

6. Who is most likely to stick with the GOP no matter what?

7. Why do conservatives feel that “values” and “style” are appropriate criteria for choosing a president?

8. Who or what is responsible for the fact that global warming and obesity are considered partisan issues?
        a) Human nature
        b) Capitalism
        c) Secular humanism
        d) “Arrogant libruls always telling people what to do”
        e) National Review and rightwing talk radio

9. Who or what is responsible for the fact that “modern art” was long considered a partisan issue?

10. What is the difference -- if any -- between a policy argument and a strategy argument?

Also see this analysis from a civic republican point of view by Jim Sleeper at openDemocracy.

Yuval Levin on Aristotle's Definition of Practical Wisdom

Yuval Levin, defending Sarah Palin in Commentary (h/t Damon Linker), writes:

[T]hose who reacted so viscerally against [Sarah Palin] evinced little or no appreciation for an essential premise of democracy: that practical wisdom matters at least as much as formal education, and that leadership can emerge from utterly unexpected places.

In what way are journalists -- especially journalists like William Kristol and Fred Barnes who consider themselves intellectuals, close allies of university-based academics (and who, from all accounts, are the ones who anointed Palin a potential VP pick) -- qualified to judge whether any particular individual possesses practical wisdom?

If you look at what Palin’s promoters said about her, they did not especially note her practical abilities. They praised her personality and her charisma. They praised her background. She was a housewife and mother. She was the wife of a worker. She was a small business owner. She was a religious conservative. And she was a charismatic person who had risen to the top of her community and looked set to rise even farther if she was given the chance. They assumed that any worker was as good as any other. They chose her for her “star quality.” Where is that supposed admiration for “practical wisdom”?

Levin continues in the same error: while pretending to praise practical wisdom, he snarks against non-journalists -- everybody unlike himself -- who might actually possess some of it. Anyone who disagrees with him “react[s] . . . viscerally” instead of thinking rationally, fails utterly to “appreciat[e] . . . an essential premise of democracy,” etc., etc., etc.

When I watched Sarah Palin’s first television interview, what I saw was a job candidate who was digging herself a hole. She reminded me of all the charismatic young men who come into an interview ready to tell you how stupid you are, how stupid everything about your company is, how everything everybody in the profession has always done is wrong. Are Levin and Kristol telling me those guys have more “practical wisdom” than those of my colleagues whom my years of experience have taught me to respect? That they and I ought to have stepped aside and let these charismatic youngsters do whatever they wanted, on the company's time? That democracy requires eviscerating institutions in the name of giving the unqualified and the qualified an equal say?

Linker has it exactly right:

In the hands of these conservatives, Aristotelian phronesis becomes the gut instinct or brute common sense possessed by plumbers and mayors of small towns in the farthest-flung provinces of the nation -- possessed, in fact, by just about everyone in the United States except for those unlucky enough not to have escaped corruption by an Ivy-League education. For these conservatives, attaining the peak of human judgment requires no prior study of history or philosophy, science or mathematics, literature or the arts. It can be possessed by someone incapable of listing a single book or magazine or newspaper or website she has recently read. And it certainly does not presuppose openness to or curiosity about the world beyond America's borders. Nope, it just takes a wink, some sass, a sexy smile.

A Gang of ModeratesSTRIKE Naysayers

David Brooks writes in praise of “moderates.” By which he means “naysayers.” For him, moderates are people who say no to everything: extremists propose new legislation and moderates say no until . . . the legislation has become less extreme.

This is not the only way for deliberative government to work. In a model more familiar to many students of government, the majority party proposes legislation and the minority party says no until the legislation has become more moderate. In this system, moderates -- members of the two rival parties whose personal beliefs are closer to the center and who are good at working across the aisle -- act constructively, though not creatively. (This is the system that produced Clintonian triangulation, by the way.)

In the model Brooks is praising this morning, moderates are destructive -- and yet somehow automagically creative as well. Brooks writes: “The big news here is that there are many Democrats who don’t want to move in a conventional liberal direction and there some Republicans willing to work with them to create a functioning center.” I wonder whether Brooks could explain to his readers how persistent, unrelenting negativism could create a functioning center where previously there had been nothing.

I have a guess: He seems to imagine that any objection made must necessarily have some substance to it. By saying no until no can no longer be possibly said, the “moderates” Brooks envisions will discover the true form the legislation ought to take.

I have an idea what he is missing. Anyone else have a guess?

TNR on the Demise of Movement Conservatism

This article by Sam Tanenhaus on why “movement” conservatism is moribund is a must-read. Or it would be if the online formatting of TNR’s print articles weren’t so horrible (good luck trying to find out the name of a book under review when the review is behind the pay firewall). I believe Tanenhaus is saying something more interesting than that this brand of conservatism doesn’t even follow Edmund Burke. Damon Linker assures me that he is. But I can’t say for myself because I got tired of clicking randomly on each of the eight web pages into which the article is split up to see whether I lighted on anything that seemed interesting.

Rhetoric, Poetry, and American Politics

President Obama has great rhetorical skills. His speeches and his books are a promise that if we work for it, the world can become what we hope it will be, that we are not fated to end up in the world we fear in our darkest moments we are moving toward.

You will hear it said that rhetoric -- verbally convincing people to do something they would not have done otherwise, especially by appealing to their emotions, using fancy words that add little to the rational basis of what you’re saying -- is dangerous. The speeches of Adolf Hitler were said to be so powerful that listeners who understood not a single word of German came away from his rallies convinced that he was a great man and would lead his people to do great things.

Every evidence is that Obama’s speeches do not fall victim to the rhetoric he makes use of, but overcome the history to which that rhetoric has been put to use.

President Obama decided to have a poem read at his inauguration, something that may be becoming, but is not yet, traditional. Poetry, though not a form of rhetoric exactly, like rhetoric relies on the emotional response of listeners and readers. Like rhetoric, poetry can lie, and still be good at being what it is. Keats may have written, “Beauty is truth, Truth beauty,” but Keats may have been wrong.

A world in which only firmly, commonly accepted truths could be spoken would be a world without poetry. We expect our everyday, pragmatic, practical world to be a world in which what happens is by and large predictable. We do not expect our workplaces, our hospitals, our social service agencies to be places where people go around speaking poetry in place of clear, rational prose. It is difficult to imagine a society in which poetry and art had no place at all even in people’s off-hours, but it is not impossible. There are those who believe the Communist sphere was such a place. There are those who believe the neoliberal West, including the contemporary United States, is. There is no reason that must be the case.

A world in which there was no poetry would not necessarily be a world in which there was no rhetoric. It is possible to imagine a world in which speeches issued by powerful leaders were the closest thing to poetry anybody ever heard. I don’t think such a world is one we should be trying to bring about.

Some American conservatives and many neoliberals seem to believe we ought to want a world in which Keats and Dickens are revered but Elizabeth Alexander is ridiculed, in which Shakespeare is our secular equivalent to Scripture but people who make good speeches are accused of megalomania. They are, I think, afraid that the rise of fascism was due to some quality inherent in the ability to write and deliver a speech that will move enormous numbers of people -- essentially inherent. I think they are wrong.

How embarrassing.

Looks like when I bought into the implication that the name of David Frum’s promised “NewMajority.com” referred to the majority of the electorate that wanted Obama to be President -- and thus that Frum was embracing bipartisanship -- I was duped.

Either that, or, for him, “There is a new Republican majority” means merely “I wish there were a Republican majority.” (Oops, I linguified. How embarrassing, again.)