Learning from the Debacle: It’s the Institutions, Stupid

What do the depressing, if predictable, results of the 2010 midterm election mean for the potential for progressive change in our country? In the storm of post-debacle opinions, two kinds of arguments have held sway—one quite dark, the other glinting with the hope that a better day might come as soon as 2012.

Pessimists take the long, doleful view: they argue that the United States is and will probably remain a center-right nation; the immensity of corporate power seduces; co-opts; and, when necessary, bludgeons its opponents. The result is that millions of Americans keep voting against their interests; swallow lies about “death panels”; and are taken in by the old right-wing attack on “liberal elitists,” even when it is directed at a black president, raised by a single mother, who attended Ivy League schools on scholarships and got rich only by writing two eloquent books. Some liberals go a step further, blaming ordinary Americans for being stupid or, at least, woefully ignorant about how government works. How else could they give back control of the House to Republicans who ran ads like one paid for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that announced, “Government run health care. Medicare cuts. Have you had enough?”

Optimists counter with a list of short-term failures—of policy and political imagination. The stimulus passed in early 2009 was too small and ill-designed to put most of the jobless back to work; the president let the Tea Partiers gain a near monopoly on populist rage; the ungainly process of enacting health reform left much of the public uncertain about what the legislation actually contained; and Barack Obama failed to explain what he and the Democratic Congress had done and to inspire much enthusiasm for it. Absent a compelling narrative, young people of all races voted in anemic numbers, and the GOP surged to victory, almost by default. But if Obama comes up with a better narrative, and the economy rebounds, his chances of winning re-election are bright.

Each perspective has some merit, of course. The president did make the cardinal error of assuming that good policies were, by themselves, good politics. Unlike Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, he allowed himself to be defined by his adversaries and neglected the oratorical skill and empathetic demeanor that had helped him win the White House. At the same time, it would be naïve to deny that big business knows how to protect its interests and regards serious regulation and healthy unions the way the late Jerry Falwell saw gay marriage.

But both pessimists and optimists suffer from their own kind of myopia. The keep-hope-alivers ignore polls that report that twice as many Americans identify themselves as conservatives as those who call themselves liberals. That is a lot of minds for a progressive administration to change. Their gloomy counterparts who voice disdain for ordinary people, though, are committing a more profound error. ...