Chait on ideas

Democrats have no new ideas. Rather, they spend all their whiny energy in reactionarily obstructing the earnest and innovative efforts of the Bush administration to solve the challenges America faces.

The above is the well orchestrated and effective rhetorical hoodliwink of the right--used in the age old tactic of promoting a policy without actually talking about the merits of the policy. One's offered solution to a purported problem is more easily accepted if you can convince the mainstream media and it's audience that, well, the other side isn't offering anything (on, say, social security).

And the "no idea" silliness has found its use all along the plank, from the Post's Krauthammer:

What has happened to the Democrats over the past few decades is best captured by the phrase (coined by Kevin Phillips) "reactionary liberalism." Spent of new ideas, they have but one remaining idea: to hang on to the status quo at all costs.

to the GOP bloggers:

Liberals haven't had an original idea in the past 10 years. This is why we don't hear them coming up with any substantive plans for fixing a social security system they agreed was failing in the 90's, why we hear them complain about Bush's response to terrorism, but never hear them offer a solution of their own, why they keep obstructing at every turn, but never promoting their own positive plans for anything.

Watch almost any right-leaning talking head on Sunday morning (or take a glimpse at a WSJ or Economist editorial, and you will fairly predictably hear the refrain in the attempt at working its way, Iraqi-nuclear-weapons-like, into the public's subconscious.

It is, then, with profound relief that I read Jonathan Chait's coverstory article in a recent New Republic, "The Case Against New Ideas." Chait quickly dispenses the demonstrably false Krauthammerian rhetoric:

...the plain fact is that liberals have plenty of new ideas. Troll websites of the Center for American Progress, the Brookings Institution, or the Century Foundation, and you will find them teeming with six- and twelve-point plans for any problem you can imagine: securing loose nuclear weapons, reforming public education, promoting international trade, bolstering the military, and so on. They get churned out by the shelfful providing more material than any presidential administration could hope to enact.

But, the real value of this article is a normative and objective observance. It's one thing that GOPsters utilize the 'no idea' line; it is more disturbing that many Democrats go right along with the flawed thinking. Chait's great point in this piece is the, really, common sense response to Democrats' complaint at Democratic inability to express ideas: you need a soapbox on which to stand.

The truth is that liberal ideas aren't getting any circulation because Democrats are out of power, not vice versa. Not long ago, to take an example almost at random, Senate Democrats held a press conference with James Woolsey to unveil an energy-independence agenda. Not a single major newspaper or network covered it. This isn't because reporters harbor a bias against liberals. It's because they harbor a bias against ideas that stand no chance of being enacted. And so, the vast majority of the time, the press will simply ignore ideas put forth by the minority party.

Apart from this too little appreciated point, Chait notes that both liberals and conservatives have ideas, and spend a great amount of time earnestly thinking of things they feel need improving. The priorities, though, differ. This is why we have parties and civic/political identity--not because one party has new ideas and the other does not; rather, because we identify more with one party's sense of priority.

Here the comparison between right and left is instructive. Liberals are brimming with ideas about reforming health care and taming the deficit. Conservatives have little to say about either of these problems. On the deficit, they are theologically opposed to raising taxes, and they have learned from Newt Gingrich that massive spending cuts are political poison. On health care, controlling costs means controlling waste, yet much of that waste is income for interest groups closely aligned with the Republican Party, such as pharmaceuticals, HMOs, and insurance companies. The GOP, then, may be the party of ideas in the sense that its ideas have slowly and inexorably ground forward over a long period of time like glaciers over the Ice Age landscape. But, if this process leaves them unable to confront the actual problems facing the country, you have to wonder why this is something liberals ought to emulate.

The point here is not that conservatives want for new ideas. It's that the question of which ideas hold sway is a function of which party holds power and what priorities it has. It is certainly true that conservatives have devoted more energy to the question of fundamentally reshaping Social Security. But this difference has nothing to do with who has more or better ideas and everything to do with priorities. Liberals like Columbia University's Jeffrey Sachs have devoted lots of energy to devising plans to end world poverty. Liberals have devoted enormous attention to the problem of global warming, while the Bush administration insists it will kill any action on the topic.

Good article. In the last strain, Chait challenges the popular assumption that ideas drive elections. I agree with him, sadly. Would that they did...and we will try to help in causing such a future. In the meantime, it is the unfortunate truth that presidential races remain a strange mix of popularity contest and irrelevant, transitory tidbits of nothingness.