Politics on the Rocks
Editorial
Weekly Standard
and Financial Times
columnist Christopher Caldwell writes about the big issues in a November
edition of the London paper—namely, the leadership crisis that the
West is experiencing across two continents and the decline of political
parties.
Caldwell argues: “Politics is drifting towards deadlock in every
western country. Americans are coming to distrust the wartime leadership
of George W. Bush. The British press is predicting (or, to put it more
accurately, promoting) Tony Blair’s exit. Jacques Chirac’s
reputation has been dimmed by the French riots. And Angela Merkel, having
failed to catch fire in September’s elections, is taking power hemmed
in by a cumbersome grand coalition agreement. Moments of generalized exhaustion
in party politics are not unusual. The last time there was such worldwide
distrust of leadership— in the late 1970s—international politics
was turned upside down. Are we in the democratic equivalent of what leftists
used to call a ‘pre-revolutionary’ situation?”
Caldwell compares the similarities of today’s politics to the 1970s
with one glaring exception: “In one respect, the situation is decidedly
worse than it was a generation ago: there is a lack of dynamism among
opposition parties. New problems are generating no great well of solutions
such as Thatcherism or Reaganism.”
In fact, rather than see the parties that are out of office rising while
the incumbent political parties struggle, what Caldwell sees in the western
nations is both the parties of left and right sinking, regardless of which
one holds office. He cites the U.S. as one example of simultaneous shrinking
political parties: “One would expect the fall of Mr. Bush’s
popularity to be mirrored by a rise in that of Hillary Clinton, still
the most likely presidential candidate for the Democrats in 2008. This
is not happening. On the contrary, the Hotline
poll found a six point drop in her popularity since October.”
Caldwell has plenty of other examples of the collapse of our present
day western politics, including the first round of French presidential
elections in 2002, when Chirac finished first with the support of just
one-fifth of the public. In 2003, Conservatives and Labour took only half
the vote in Britain. “In Germany, September marked the first time
since the Second World War that both parties got under 40 percent and
the winning Christian Democrats were barely able to scrape their way to
35,” writes Caldwell.
So what is going on? Is this the beginning of the end of our democracies?
Have the citizens of western democracies, the U.S. included, become spoiled
and ungovernable? Many citizens, pundits, journalists, and even politicians,
when they know they are not speaking on the record, believe this—that
our democracies have been first divided and then swallowed by interest
groups to the point where they are broken.
Longtime BrainstormNW advisory board
member Ted Abram described this phenomenon in an April 2000 perspective,
“Stakeholder Government.” Abram wrote of politicians, bureaucrats,
lobbyists, and citizen interest groups conspiring to vote themselves a
larger and larger share of the public coffers, thus increasing both the
size of government and the public’s cynicism about “so-called”
self-government.
Caldwell sees the problem differently, and is more optimistic about the
future of democracy, although not about our present politics. He believes
we are too close to this generational “malaise” of the West
to see it accurately. He writes: “Citizens tend myopically to seek
national explanations for sea changes in their politics. In the 1960’s,
for instance, Americans viewed their battles through the lens of Vietnam
and racial segregation… these explanations had some merit, but surely
there were larger common factors—such as the explosion of university-age
populations, the arrival of women in the political sphere or the codification
of the moral lessons of the second world war—that caused something
roughly similar to happen in every western country.”
Caldwell suggests looking beyond such short-term explanations as Iraq
and campaign financing. In his view the explanation has more to do with
changes caused by the fall of the Berlin Wall and globalization.
There is that word again—globalization.
Oregon is an especially good microcosm of Caldwell’s argument.
The Democrats have been in power for 20 years, their hold on political
power keeps shrinking, as the state now ranks 36th in the nation in per-capita
income, and the median income has fallen for five straight years. Liberals
and their allies in Oregon’s judiciary continue to throw out one
popular ballot measure after another, yet the popularity of the Republican
Party in the state does not grow. How can you explain so many Oregon citizens
agonizing over the state’s leadership vacuum, and yet despite Gov.
Kulongoski’s weak performance, he remains a solid favorite for reelection?
Easy—you can’t have a sea change in your politics if no proposal
is on the table.
From post-war America until now, the U.S. government has subsidized American
housing, education, health care and retirement. Going forward, because
of global competition, government and business will not be able to subsidize
these basics to the extent they have in the past. Many Americans find
this troubling, and a lot has and will be written about the shrinking
middle class. Many believe that those subsidies are what created America’s
successful middle class. Also, the growing share of the nation’s
wealth in the hands of the top one percent makes many see “red”
with class envy. With the structural reforms that are needed ahead and
the growing concentration of wealth, many wonder, “What’s
in it for me with this globalization stuff?”
The answer: Plenty. Lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty
in the last decade in China and in India will only make America and the
world wealthier in the long run, creating opportunities for both Americans
and Asians. But getting there from where we are today will not be easy.
It will require, as Caldwell writes, a sea change in our politics.
In 1978, the Reagan and Thatcher eras began with a ballot initiative
in California that cut property taxes. It was also on the West Coast,
in roughly the same period, that the computer began to revolutionize economic
growth. When looking for sea changes in politics and economics, California
is the trendsetter. That’s why it was encouraging to see Gov. Schwarzenegger
begin the “sea change” by putting four initiatives on the
ballot last month. Less encouraging—all four were defeated. Still,
the conversation has begun.
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