Dana Blankenhorn

Two Enemies

Think of this as Volume 18, Number 9 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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Each generational crisis contains elements of those that came before.

As in 1968, we see a nation divided by war and growing debt. As in 1860, this is mainly a regional split, north vs. south. As in 1896, it's all about money, with a small Gilded Age crowd of oligarchs seeming to hold all the cards.

But there's also a great commonality with the crisis that consumed Franklin Roosevelt after 1932. Democracy is at stake, with the greatest risks to it being false choices and apathy.

The New Deal was created to address the key problem of the economy, but that program did not define the existential crisis of the Greatest Generation. That was a more basic question: could democracy survive? Could freedom live in a highly scaled industrial era, against the false choices of communism and fascism?

The Value of Emotional Intelligence

Think of this as Volume 18, Number 6 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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The industrial era was marked by shortages, and the need for technical expertise to overcome those shortages.

That expertise came in many forms. There was political and economic expertise, there was engineering and scientific expertise. A host of new professions grew up around this expertise. The world that these people built was defined by this kind of knowledge, turned to science, then through engineering transformed into technology.

The Internet Era has flipped all this on its head. You don't necessarily need to know stuff when you can Google it. The job of building knowledge, which was once about brute force, is now more about building connections, both among facts and among the people with access to those facts.

This is why the center of economic life has shifted in the 21^st century. Power that resided in factories early in the 20^th century, then moved to offices later in the century, now resides on university campuses.

The Fall of Faith-Based Economics

Think of this as Volume 18, Number 3 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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I recently did a piece for TheStreet.com on Austrian economics and, out of modesty, I didn't offer my full view of the matter, because I'm a tech writer.

My view is that Austrian economics, like Karl Marx' communism, is faith-based economics. It ignores economic evidence, its acolytes spending all their time rejecting contrary facts.

They explicitly reject the notion that government can weigh evidence of economic strength or weakness and do anything about it. Thus Austrian economics can never fail. It can only be failed by those too weak to apply it rigorously enough.

Austrian economics stands alongside climate denialism and religious millenialism as one of three pillars of the modern conservative movement. This is what makes conservatism a clear and present danger to democracy in our time. It's at the heart of our present crisis.

2014: Forgetting And Beginning Again

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 52 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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While in New York recently I got a powerful insight into what the next year will bring.

I decided to visit the site of the World Trade Center, “Ground Zero,” or “The Pit,” as it's been variously called.

Construction is transforming it. The new One World Trade Center, with its huge antenna, has been topped out. A shorter building, called Four World Trade Center, is going up nearby. The buildings that survived 9-11 are being redone under the name Brookfield Place .

Right now, a visit remains like going to a grave site. There are tickets, and tours, of the site where the Towers once stood, now transformed into a memorial. But there is also scaffolding everywhere, and it obscures the view of what's actually happening, the beautiful process of rebuilding.

Next year, that scaffolding comes down. Next year, New York can begin the important process of forgetting.

We all talk about remembering the past, of memorializing it, but it's also important to forget it and move on. You can't mourn forever.

Some time next year, New York will finally start to move on, and so will the rest of us. Instead of the empty, elevated courtyard of the old site, the new site is at street level. The new World Trade Center isn't separated from the rest of the city, as the old one was, but is integrated into it.

2013: The Shifting of the Political Wind

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 51 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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It is the job of any crisis leader to deal with a fundamental shifting of political winds.

It happens just once in each generation. An existential crisis causes a rising generation to adopt new values, and causes some in the older generation to shift theirs. The result is to turn the old majority into a new minority, and vice versa. Until next time.

This has happened 5 times in modern American history. The Civil War. The Progressive Era. The Great Depression. The 1960s. Now, the Great Recession.

Presidents elected at a time of crisis have a unique opportunity. Success puts them at the forefront of great American Presidents. Failure doesn't change the history, it doesn't prevent the turn, but it passes that opportunity on to a successor.

Who are generally acknowledged to be our greatest Presidents?

Impeaching Your Own President

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 46 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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During America's last political crisis, which began with Richard Nixon's election and ended with the validation of his political coalition through Ronald Reagan, a huge strategic mistake was made.

Watergate delayed the conservative movement's march to power by nearly a decade. They'd had a 60-40 win over McGovern, they were well on their way to taking over the South, but because Nixon over-reached, because he was inherently distrustful of democracy – as other conservatives remain – we had six years of what was, in hindsight, an apotheosis of liberalism.

Democrats are, en masse, threatening to make the same mistake, turning away from Barack Obama.

Populism Costs Republicans the Future

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 44 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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Political analysts of the left, right and center all misunderstand the nature of the Tea Party.

They're not “conservatives,” as we usually define the term. They're populists.

Populism is as old as the Republic. Thomas Jefferson ran as a populist in 1800, but eventually accepted renewal of the U.S. Bank. Andrew Jackson was our most successful populist, and he killed the bank.

The Panic of 1837, which followed soon after, killed populism as a governing principle. It only ended after American imperialism seized the southwest from Mexico, and we found gold in California.

Populism then merged with anti-immigrant Know Nothingism. It infected the Democratic Party through non-slaveowners supporting the Ku Klux Klan. It only became associated with liberalism thanks to William Jennings Bryan's “Cross of Gold” speech.

But populism was never about economic theory. It was and is about relative advantage, about people losing their edge -- or assuming they're losing it -- against newcomers rising up around them.

Populism, at its heart, is about a fear of change, the assumption that everything is a zero-sum game. And it's the nature of America that it's not a zero-sum game, that history sides with the newcomers. 

Populism also doesn't have to be internally consistent. It isn't. 

The Obama Consensus

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 42 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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In the days after the government shutdown everyone on the TV was asking, “Was it worth it?”

My answer? Hell, yes. It was worth it.

Despite the estimated $40 billion in economic activity that didn't occur?

Despite 74% of people saying they want the whole Congress gone, and the President's popularity falling to an all-time low? Despite the fact that this was “only” a three-month respite in the Congressional war?

Yes. And it was damned cheap at that.

Teenage Nervous Breakdown

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 41 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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Most American political crises have a set pattern.

First comes excess. An obsolete political thesis (a set of myths and values underlying power) causes the crisis. In this case, it was George W. Bush following the Nixon Thesis into the ditch of Iraq, Katrina, and the Great Economic Meltdown of 2008.

When anyone questioned him, he just repeated the old mantras, louder. He knew no other way, any more than Lyndon Johnson, or Herbert Hoover, or James Buchanan before him. After all, he learned his politics at his daddy's knee, and his father adapted his to those of Ronald Reagan. Who validated Nixon. 

It's when Thesis hardens into ideology and ideology runs into history that America runs into a brick wall.

The Nature of the Crisis

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 40 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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Every crisis in America's history has been a unique mixture of causes requiring a unique cure.

The Civil War was existential, the war itself inevitable. The progressive crisis was governmental. The New Deal problem was economic. The Vietnam crisis was social.

Our present crisis is political. What looked at first like an economic problem turned out to be a political one. This crisis tests whether our political institutions can survive an all-out attack from a determined minority, or whether a system originally designed to protect slavery would also, by its nature, halt the march of progress.

We have the perfect President for this crisis. Barack Obama studied constitutional law. He understands the nature of our political system inside and out. He understands our past and where we need to go.