I wrote last week about the political rhetoric of “uncertainty,” both real and imagined.  My thinking was that Republicans should be called out for their recent talking points that attribute our continued economic woes to fears and uncertainties created by the Democrats’  agenda, but that we should be careful not to dismiss legitimate problems of uncertainty that actually do exist in the economy.

In the Times today, Tom Friedman makes a more eloquent case for the need to recognize the real uncertainties we face.  His analysis is from a higher altitude, as one might expect, and it is dead right.  Friedman attributes broad economic uncertainties to three structural problems: (1) a decade of U.S. growth fueled by deficits and borrowing rather than investment and innovation, (2) a wave of new technology that is destroying lower-skilled jobs in favor of those requiring more education and training, and (3) the “existential crisis” of the European Union as German discipline is exported to Greece and elsewhere.   But these real uncertainties are not on anyone’s political agenda:

America’s two big parties still cling to their core religious beliefs as if nothing has changed. Republicans try to undermine the president at every turn and offer their nostrum of tax-cuts-will-solve-everything — without ever specifying what services they’ll give up to pay for them. Mr. Obama gave us expanded health care before expanding the economic pie to sustain it.

Friedman does not get very deep into specifics for structural solutions, but he doesn’t need to.  As is often true of Friedman’s perspective, the real value of today’s piece lies in the diagnosis.  We are facing real economic uncertainties, and the fact that Republicans are mischaracterizing them so shamelessly does not relieve the president and Democrats from the obligation to show more leadership.  As I wrote last week, Democrats need to stop sticking their fingers in the dike and come up with a more comprehensive plan built on a long-term vision of investment and sustainable growth.  Or as Friedman puts it:

The president needs to take America’s labor, business and Congressional leadership up to Camp David and not come back without a grand bargain for taxes, trade promotion, energy, stimulus and budget cutting that offers the market some certainty that we are moving together — not just on a bailout but on an economic rebirth for the 21st century.

I couldn’t agree more.

I returned yesterday from an overseas vacation to find Washington embroiled in furious controversy over Robert Gibbs’s gibes at the “professional left.” Somehow, the shock waves from this momentous development had failed to register in Corsica, which may be a gorgeous, sun-splashed rock in the Mediterranean, but is hopelessly apathetic about U.S. politics.

Fortunately for slackers like me, Washington’s chattering class is too busy for vacations. And cable TV never rests, keeping the vital discourse of democracy going even as Americans frolic heedlessly on beaches, lakes and mountains. Well, the fun’s over for me, so I might as well wade into the fray between the frazzled White House Press Secretary and his netroots tormentors.

For starters, it’s hard not to feel some sympathy to Gibbs, for whom watching cable TV is an occupational hazard. Too much of a bad thing, is, well, bad and it’s only human for Gibbs to vent about the ideological purism of talk show anchors and lefty bloggers who imagine that most Americans are pining for a full-throated liberal avenger in the White House. Real-life politics is nothing like The West Wing.

And Democrats might as well have it out now, the summer of their economic discontent, rather than, say, in October on the eve of the midterm. One truly silly argument is that Gibb’s criticisms of the administration’s “base” could alienate them and cause them to stay home on election day. In the first place, netroots types aren’t really the Democratic Party’s base.

They are a subset of liberals, who are themselves outnumbered by moderates and conservatives in the party. And they love to be attacked, because it validates their rather inflated sense of political self-importance. The worst thing you can do to the netroots is to ignore them.

In fact, every Democratic President in recent memory has been flayed by the hard left for lapses from orthodoxy. That is especially true of Franklin Roosevelt, the President many of today’s disappointed liberals say they wish Obama would be more like.

Like Obama, FDR was called a tool of Wall Street, a trimmer, an opportunist. He was bitterly assailed for trying to rescue and restore the free enterprise system rather than replacing it with central economic planning.

This drove leading liberal New Dealers like Rexford Tugwell and Harold Ickes to distraction. Here’s Tugwell:

“They [FDR’s liberal critics] are like Chinese warriors who decide battles, not by fighting, but by desertion…They rush to the aid of any liberal victor, and then proceed to stab him in the back when he fails to perform the mental impossibility of subscribing unconditionally to their dozen or more conflicting principles.” (Schlesinger, The Politics of Upheaval, 414)

And Ickes had some equally choice words for the perfectabilian demands of his fellow liberals:

“That so-called liberals spend so much time trying to expose fellow liberals to the sneering scorn of those who delight to have their attention called to clay feet…I get very tired of the smug self-satisfaction, the holier-than-thou attitude, the sneering meticulousness of men and women with whose outlook on economic and social questions I often regretfully find myself in accord. It seems to be a fact that a reformer would rather hold up to ridicule another reformer because of some newly discovered fly speck than he would to clean out Tammany Hall. Sometimes even the fly speck is imaginary.” (Schlesinger, The Politics of Upheaval, 413-414)

Gibbs has a point when he says that liberals undervalue Obama’s major political achievements. On the big matters that really count – the breakthrough on universal health care, the financial regulatory bill, getting out of Iraq on time, and placing liberal women on the Supreme Court (including the Court’s first Hispanic member) – Obama unquestionably has moved the needle in a progressive direction. But if history is any guide, it won’t matter – he’s still going to get pilloried by the congenitally insatiable left for something (For failing to close Gitmo, or embrace gay marriage, or demand amnesty for immigrants, etc.)

The fundamental problem with the left’s carping about Obama is the underlying assumption that their views are shared by a majority of the country: If only he would fight harder for structural transformations in American life, the latent progressive majority would spring into being and rally behind him!

This is sheer fantasy. If the country has moved in any direction over the past two years, it is to the center, and perhaps even the center right (excepting Republicans, who have surged lemming-like off the ideological cliff). What liberals see as overly tepid moves to restructure and stimulate the economy a healthy chunk of the increasingly cranky electorate, especially independences, see as overweening government intrusion.

The party’s leftists are obviously within their rights to criticize Obama when they think he deviates from the true path, just as centrists and conservatives are. And the dialectic between the President’s essential political pragmatism and left-wing fundamentalists is probably a healthy thing. It could force Obama to articulate more clearly the overarching philosophical framework that informs a Presidency that otherwise seems to proceed on the logic of serial pragmatism.

But ultimately, left leaning Democrats aren’t going to find a better horse to ride. And the more they flog Obama, the worse Democrats are likely to do this November.

The Shed -- Dermott, Arkansas

Alexis de Tocqueville would understand “The Hacketts Gospel Singing Shed.”

Located in Dermott, Arkansas on the edge of a small cotton farm, “The Shed,” as locals call it, is a venue for gospel singers and fans to gather for song, worship, and fellowship. In the 1830s, Tocqueville toured America and witnessed the very sort of religiosity and voluntarism that motivated the Hackett family to transform a tractor shed into what has become a local community hub. The young Frenchman’s resulting sociological masterpiece, Democracy in America, explains “The Shed” and offers some timeless lessons about America’s uniquely ambitious political culture –
lessons Democrats looking for keys to ending the Great Recession ought to consider.

During his travels, Tocqueville recognized how republican ideals and cheap plentiful land had produced a profoundly optimistic, democratic, individualistic, entrepreneurial, and decidedly populist people. His shorthand for the differences between the U.S. and Western European political cultures – “American Exceptionalism”— remains a handy and useful concept progressives should both heed and employ.

“Exceptionalism” is not a Limbagh-esqe a priori verification of America’s supreme awesomeness. Rather, exceptionalism cuts both ways. The very populist impulses both bred the civil rights movement and spawned the Tea Party.

In the same way, American individualism is responsible for both a vibrant economic growth, a broad middle class, technological innovation, AND an anemic welfare state, concomitant high poverty and comparatively crime rates.

In sum, exceptionalism is not chest-thumpin’ We-Will-Rock-You, rah-rah USA cornpone; Tocqueville would recognize “The Hacketts Gospel Singing Shed” by echoing Denny Green’s infamous postgame rant, “They are who we thought they were!”

American Exceptionalism not only explains “The Shed.” It should also inform Democratic policy responses, both in substance and style, to the Great Recession.

Progressives understandably shy away from a term that seemingly reeks of parochialism and sounds like a potential first and middle name for one of Sarah Palin’s children. Instead of “exceptional” substitute “difference” and then wonder how and why Germans accept 8 percent unemployment as normal, middle class Danes ride bikes to work instead of drive cars, or Canadian cities are so neat-and-tidy. For better or for worse, the American “difference” is real.

Economic recoveries are like snowflakes—no two are ever the same. This should remind us that the “dismal science” is no hard science at all. To hear Paul Krugman or the Cato Institute’s certitude, however, one would hardly realize economists are making little more than highly educated guesses.

Ironically, even as partisan economists claim all-knowing prescience their field is thankfully moving away from technocratic certainty and toward ambiguity. While it is humbling (and quite a bit scary) to accept mysterious, unpredictable, and ultimately unknowable economic forces control our material fates, this is exactly why the American difference matters.

Modern progressive economic policy should combine short-term fiscal stimulus and long-term deficit reduction with rhetorical and policy faith in the American character. While sound policy matters, more and more economists realize that intangibles and emotions often spell the difference between recovery and double dip recessions.

The American difference really matters. Four hundred years of history (including the colonial era) proves that American optimism, individualism, entrepreneurial spirit, and waves of eager immigrants will eventually lead to robust economic recovery. Talk of decline, power moving east, and a new “normal” are reminiscent of the early 1990s when observers claimed Japan and Germany would overtake American economic leadership. If memory serves, the 1990s were fairly good economic times.

President Obama has provided such leadership. Time and again he has extolled the American work ethic and unique character; it is Congressional leaders and the liberal punditocracy, however, who are out of tune with the great resilience of the American tradition., Congressional leaders – who too often dwell myopically on technocratic details, medium versus big stimulus or extending unemployment benefits – fail to convey the most important ingredient for economic policy success: sunny optimism and a profound belief in an American difference.

All peoples in all lands hope, innovate, and work for a better future. Americans do so in their own unique, different, and yes even “exceptional” way. The route of this mess takes good policy but requires bold, optimistic, and a quintessentially American leadership. It is the sort of simple yet profound wisdom that a Frenchman; the folks of Dermott, Arkansas; and skinny kid with big ears and a funny name all know in their bones.

photo credit: Jeff Bloodworth

At CQ today, Roll Call columnist and election handicapper Stu Rothenberg has a piece today complaining about Democrats who are arguing that it was inevitable all along that they’d have a bad midterm outcome, regardless of the economy or other objective developments.

I’m not sure which “Democrats” Rothenberg’s talking about, since the only person he cites who believes the economy is irrelevant to the midterms is Joe Scarborough.

But while I don’t personally know anyone who thinks the economy isn’t going to be a drag on Democratic performance, in burning down this straw man, Rothenberg goes too far in dismissing structural factors that were going to make 2010 far more difficult for Democrats than 2008 no matter what Barack Obama did or didn’t do.

Since Rothenberg’s entire argument is framed in terms of House seats Democrats are likely to lose, the obvious structural factor to keep in mind is the historic tendency of the party controlling the White House to lose House seats in midterms. Stu acknowledges that, but points out that the level of losses varies (of course it does) and also points to 1998 and 2002 as years the ancient rule of midterm losses didn’t apply. That’s fine, though anyone citing those two years as relevant should probably note that the former year came in the midst of the first impeachment of a president since 1867, while the latter year came after the first attack on the continental United States since 1814. At any rate, while most Democrats early in the Obama presidency hoped the party would overcome the heavy weight of history, few predicted it as likely.

But the second structural factor is one that Rothenberg does not mention at all: the very different demographic composition of midterm versus presidential electorates, which is especially important this year given the high correlation of the 2008 vote with age (at least among white voters), and the heavy shift towards older voters in midterms. As I like to say, this means that Democrats were in trouble for the midterms the very day after the 2008 elections. That doesn’t mean everything that happened since doesn’t matter, by any means, but it does suggest pessimism about 2010 and a corresponding optimism about 2012, when the 2008 turnout patterns are likely to reemerge or even intensify.

Finally, in this kind of discussion of House “gains” and “losses,” it’s important to remember that the entire U.S. House of Representatives is up for reelection every two years. So the position of the two parties nationally is reflected by the absolute results, not which party “gains” or “loses” seats from the prior election. If Democrats hang onto control of the House, it’s a Democratic victory (albeit a much smaller one than in 2008) because they will have won a majority of seats (and presumably a majority of votes for the House nationally), and it’s not a Republican victory but instead a smaller defeat. House gains or losses are relevant to trends, of course, but shouldn’t dictate characterization of specific election results.

In other words, Rothenberg’s effort to anticipate and preempt Democratic spin about the November elections is all well and good, but there a lot of questionable assumptions about this election that need to be examined–most definitely the idea that any significant Republican gains mean the country has fundamentally changed its mind since 2008. That’s a “spin” that Republicans are already avidly promoting every day.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Photo Credit: wallyg’s Photostream