This morning the indefatigable Joe Gandelman drew our attention to a fascinating column from Dick Meyer, Editorial Director of CBSNews.com. In the column Meyer looks into his crystal ball to consider the Democrats’ prospects for 2006 and farther ahead to 2008. Here’s the kernel of his conclusions:
My hunch is that Democrats will capture House and Senate seats but not the House or Senate. And if they do, the victory will be fleeting and they will do poorly in 2008.
That’s a hunch, no more, and I admit it. But I felt it as a certainty when I read a column by The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne this week. Dionne was arguing with a fellow liberal who wrote what the Democrats need to do is destroy today’s “radical individualism” and replace it with “a politics of a “common good.” That’s fine, Dionne said, but we need to hear “more about self-interest, rightly understood.”
That phrase made me cringe. It still does.
“Self-interest, rightly understood” is a fancy-pants way of saying, “I know what is in your interest better than you do.” It is, in my view, a politically stupid and morally diseased position. Democrats, by temperament, are slightly more susceptible to it than Republicans.
Meyer’s comments rang true to me. You may have noticed that I’ve characterized the national Democratic Party as the party of Fordism pretty frequently here. See here, here, and here.
Let me be frank: I find the tendency to elitism an extremely unappealing trait regardless of which party expresses it. And, as both Meyer and Joe suggest, I think that, because of the prevailing beliefs in the United States, it will be self-defeating for any party that adopts it. I distrust elitism since I believe that its inevitable concommitant is the conflation of self-interest with the common good and, consequently, the pursuit of power for its own sake. It calls out “Trust me! Think of all the great things I can do!†(without being too specific about what those great things are).
Consider the biographies of the last several presidential candidates of both political parties.
Bill Clinton
Small-town boy. Graduated from Georgetown University. Rhodes scholar. JD from Yale Law School. Long-time governor of one of the smallest states in the Union.
George H. W. Bush
Son of a U. S. senator. Graduated from Yale University. U. S. Congressman. Ambassador to the U. N. Director of the CIA.
Bob Dole
Small-town boy. Graduated from Kansas University. Graduated law school from Washburn University. Long-time U. S. Senator.
Al Gore
Son of U. S. Senator. Graduated from Harvard University. Long-time Congressman and Senator. V. P. of the United States.
George W. Bush
Son of U. S. President. Graduated from Yale University. Graduated from Harvard Business School. Governor of Texas.
John Kerry
Son of a prominent New England family (his mother’s). Graduated from Yale University. Long-time U. S. Senator from Massachusetts.
Consider each of the face-offs. George H. W. Bush vs. Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton vs. Bob Dole. Al Gore vs. George W. Bush. George W. Bush vs. John Kerry. In each case whichever candidate was most effective as portraying himself as being a man of the people i.e. not being an elitist prevailed. Bill Clinton’s personal narrative of achievement accompanied by his down-home air was significantly more convincing than George H. W. Bush’s relentlessly aristocratic background and bearing. Clinton vs. Dole was a tougher call but Dole’s long-time position as a Washington insider neutralized what might otherwise have been an advantage for him.
Gore vs. Bush was a wash: both were aristocrats and the election was one of the closest in U. S. history. In Bush vs. Kerry Kerry’s studiedly patrician air, while it may be a good sell in a Massachusetts Senate race, worked against him in the presidential race. He lost to a clearly weak incumbent.
Just for fun let’s consider the biography of a couple of leading prospects for the 2008 race.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Prosperous Chicago family. Graduated Wellesley College. Law school at Yale University Law. Wife of President of the U. S. U. S. Senator from New York.
John McCain
Father and grandfather were admirals in the U. S. Navy. Graduated U. S. Naval Academy. Long-time Senator from Arizona.
It’s hard to see how either candidate will be able to portray themselves as anything other than elite but the campaign may well hinge on how well the candidate may convey the opposite message.
Bush’s persona as a drunken fratboy, ex-alcoholic, and general all-around failure before he found success feeding at the public trough would have done him good by this way of thinking.
He was as close to a ommon-man as a born aristocrat could get.
But then his general incompetence didn’t look so good. We want somebody who acts like “Oh, I’m just a country boy” who actually does know best.
So I’m thinking we’re going to be looking for people who have good instincts. The candidate says “I dunno about all this complicated theorizing, but my gut instinct tells me…” and then he says something that makes crystal-clear sense and his policies actually work. Somebody who really does know best but not because of a fancy education or double-dome thinking. Just a good old boy with great instincts.
“Dionne was arguing with a fellow liberal who wrote what the Democrats need to do is destroy today’s “radical individualism†and replace it with “a politics of a “common good.—
“Radical Individualism” That’s one of my favorites, right up there with “involuntary entrepreneurship” and “tyranny of choice.” All phrases that have been crafted to deligitimize individual initiative and freedom with the purpose of convincing people to go along with “a politics of common good.” The “common good” of course being determined by a self-appointed elite. This kind of mentality is not compatible with the free society and will always seek to expand gov’t at the expense of individual intitiative and autonomy (AKA “Radical Individualism”) It’s important to remember that of all the political ideologies generated by Western Civilization only one is an ideology of freedom and that’s classical liberalism. And you are right that the elitism of both parties is a problem and is inconsistent with the “prevailing beliefs” of American society. But that doesn’t stop them from acquiring power and screwing the common man in the name of the common good.
OK. I’m ready to fight for “self-interest, rightly understood.”
It is _not_ about elites knowing one’s self-interest better that oneself. It can be spun that way (by either the speaker or the listener), but shouldn’t. The phrase after all comes from Adam Smith, who wasn’t too keen on telling people how to live their lives.
However – Smith’s phrase really speaks to the difference between knowing one’s interest and and knowing one’s desires. Our interests are not the same as our desires, and often in fact necessitate longer-term thinking, and more consciousness about how other’s interests can intersect with and/or impede our own. By Meyer’s measure, M. Scott Peck’s sound advice about delaying gratification to benefit one’s long-term interest was elitist twaddle.
That doesn’t mean the Democrats are going to have a big win this year, of course. But let’s not throw away a good phrase by conflating it with something that it’s not.
I take your point, Tom. The question remains, properly understood by whom? BTW isn’t it de Tocqueville rather than Adam Smith?
As a neo-Jeffersonian I’m in favor of greater education of the citizenry so that they have a better understanding of where their interests lie. But nonetheless I mistrust overruling the people’s understanding of their own interests.
Before he went off the track, Jude Wanniski wrote a good book and part of it related to this theme. He said that we always got whatever President it was that we deserved. And he didn’t encourage “getting out the vote” since voting remains best when it is self-selected. IOW, it is elitist to drag people to a civic behavior they neither understand nor particularly want.
BTW, we overruled the people’s understanding of their own interests when we began to grow the tumor known as Big Government. It gave us Social Security and too many special interest lobbies to be named. In fact, we overturned people’s self-interests entirely and now must depend on miniscule small liberties for any satisfaction as citizens.
As for education, we deliberately keep our children economically illiterate and we no more prepare them to live responsibly in the real world than we give them flying lessons.