Clintonism vs Rooseveltism | Robust Analysis

I did not listen to Hillary Clinton’s speech yesterday and have not yet digested the transcript. (That’s on tap for this week.) I have substantial reservations about Clinton. I don’t hate her but she generates no enthusiasm. My sense is that she represents a contemporary Rockefeller Republicanism – more socially-liberal than the original but still very Free Market friendly. With respect to the latter, she appreciates that government can sand down some of market capitalism sharp edges. Sure, but… “Meh.” If the overall mood of the country were along the lines of Rockefeller or Eisenhower Republicanism then decent odds I’d go along with it – “Meh.” but you could certainly do much worse. Unfortunately, the country has been infected by a virulent strain of JohnBircherism which has effectively killed off the nominally liberal Republicans within the party. The extinction of liberal Republicans leaves that niche to the Democrats and we don’t fill it very well.

Part of my lack of enthusiasm for the combination of social liberalism with center-right policies on other issues is that I care more about kitchen table economic and environmental issues than I do about social issues [1][2][3]. My views on politics and political economy are in line with old school FDR/Truman/pro-New-Deal Democrats rather than Bill Clinton/DLC/Third Way Democrats. I dropped my affiliation with the Democratic party in the mid-90’s because of my disgust with the Third Wayers. I take heart that old school (New Deal) views on economics appear to be getting a new voice. There’s tension between (Bill) Clintonism and Rooseveltism within the party. It’s been brewing for a while and is coming to a head with the Hillary vs Bernie primary. While Sanders is unreservedly in the FDR tradition, HRC appears caught between the two. Over at Brad DeLong’s blog, commenter Dan Kervick captures the challenge she faces with her candidacy:

Here’s the core political problem Hillary Clinton faces: Bill Clinton was not FDR. He just wasn’t. And Hillary Clinton’s team can’t seem to decide whether she intends to elevate Bill Clinton or Franklin Roosevelt as the chief economic policy icon of her campaign.

Clinton certainly had his good points. But he and Hillary Clinton are widely understood to have been two of the chief architects – perhaps the two main and most important architects – of the Third Way or New Democrat tendency in late 20th century American politics. And that tendency is widely understood, in turn, to be a partial repudiation of the older, Roosevelt-inspired Democratic Party politics.

The bipartisan neoliberal turn in US (and wider) political economy – a turn that the Clinton administration was certainly part of – has had some undeniably harmful effects, effects that almost everyone now recognizes: surging inequality; financial destabilization; personal and family insecurity; inadequate public and private investment in long-term social goals and durable forms of wealth; the erosion of the social contract; a commercialized coarsening of discourse and mores; the shift of political power toward transnational and unaccountable concentrated private capital.

So you can’t just squish Clintonism and Rooseveltism together in a package and pretend they are the same basic idea. This won’t fly. It’s intellectually incoherent and dishonest.

The two alternative strategies for Clinton are both politically fraught. The first is to admit that major mistakes were made over the past 40 years, and that as a country we need to turn the page and inaugurate a new era. The problem for her is that a lot of people will then say, “Hey, you’re right. And you know who were two of the central characters are on those pages we’re turning? Bill and Hillary Clinton!”

The other strategy for Hillary Clinton is to reaffirm her commitment to The Clinton Way, and try to convince people that the 90’s were awesome and there is nothing wrong with America that can’t be fixed by returning to those Bill Clinton Happy Days of declining government investment and economic leadership, free trade and free capital flows, weak unions, booming knowledge-class yuppies, vanishing industry, metastasizing finance, and a balanced Rubinomical budget. They can try to blame all of the problems that have emerged as due entirely to the Bush tax cuts and the war-driven growth of the deficit and public debt. In other words, they can deny reality, snort a few more lines of standard grade New Democrat campaign rhetoric, and make a play to boomer nostalgia and unthinking, kneejerk Blue Team loyalty.

At the end of the day, to be credible and viable in 2015, Hillary Clinton is going to have to separate herself, definitively and forthrightly, from some key elements of the Bill Clinton 1990’s policy framework.

Extremely well put.

Notes:

You might notice that, aside from occasional notes re gun issues that there’s no much social commentary here on the blog. It’s not that I don’t care about social issues. It’s that I believe economic and environmental issues are a much bigger deal with respect to our hierarchy of needs.
I hear a lot of “I’m liberal on social issues but I’m a fiscal conservative.” Good for you. We’ve got an oversupply of those. Where are my fiscally-liberal, pro-environment social conservatives? Those are in short supply. (If Pope Francis ran for office I’d be happy to throw in with him.)
“Good neighbors mind their own damn business.” Is that a liberal position or a conservative one?