Reformers Only Morning Glories

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 21 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

Money is the most enduring power in American politics.

Reform will come and reform will go, but the only secure way to power is by negotiating with the money power.

Each generational turn of the wheel in American history has been followed by just such a negotiation. Money lost the struggle only once, as Andrew Jackson closed the Bank of the United States. This was followed by economic collapse driven by the states' uncontrolled issuance of bonds. Money won't make that mistake again, especially since Europe is playing the 1837 Game right now.

Republicans put the money power in charge after the Civil War. The progressive era was a continued effort to negotiate with, and struggle against, the money power. The liberal era forced the money power to accept a new normal of regulation in exchange for profit. And the Nixon era overturned the compromise.

The best explanation for why money covets order can be found in the classic "Plunkitt of Tammany Hall." "Reformers are only morning glories," Plunkitt claims. Truer words do not exist. Issues drive reformers, and causes. These are problems of a moment. They may transform, but they do not transact. You can't have constant political revolution. Eventually you have to settle down and do business.

In the years around a genuine political crisis, and that's what we've been in since 2005, this can be hard to see, hard to fathom. There is great fervor on both sides. The question for money is always, who will set the rules.

During the Bush Excess money set the rules alone. It was the only force at the table. That's why the ambulance crashed. Money has no principles, no limits. The ideology of money, put in place by Reagan, was always self-defeating. Money must always compete, it must be challenged and channeled, or its raging water is just a flood, destroying everything before it.

The insanity of the money ideology is plainly visible in the Tea Party. Its call to the "founders" is stupid because the founders had very little money. They argued vehemently about money's place in their new political order. Hamilton and the Federalists put it in the front seat. Jefferson and his Republicans had it in the back seat. Jefferson won the argument, but Hamilton won the day. And you don't see Tea Partiers quoting Hamilton.

Money must make a choice, and right now there seems little choice it can make. The Netroots are seen as Socialist (even the New Deal is seen as Socialist under Reagan ideology). The Tea Party is just plain silly. For some time the money power felt it could guide the Tea Party, that it could control it, and direct it. That's what Dick Armey is really all about, an attempt to tie the Tea Party to specific corporate "causes" that are in fact just business interests.

But such passions are, in the end, ungovernable. You can't buy off the Tea Party, any more than you could buy off Robespierre. The passion eventually consumes everything in its path. Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are both headed, in time, to the political equivalent of the guillotine, which is to say oblivion.

But not before they do what the New Left did to the Democratic Party 40 years ago, destroy its chances for a generation by driving out the money power. It won't take all of business to create a new order based on regulation and negotiation. If business interests are balanced between the parties Democrats will easily dominate.

That's the trick Obama is in the process of pulling off. It's the same trick Nixon pulled off. It's the same one FDR pulled off, by drawing regional bankers like Jesse Jones and reformed speculators like Joseph P. Kennedy into his governing coalition. It's the same thing Teddy Roosevelt did until he let himself be overthrown, and the same thing Republicans did under U.S. Grant.

So while everyone in the media is focused on the day-to-day hurly-burly, the real name of the game right now is consolidation. Where will the money power consolidate power? What rules will it be forced to accept in exchange for the normalcy it most craves, the order business needs in order to do business?

While Netroots Democrats are still moving to purge their party of those with no ideals, the Democratic Administration has been quietly negotiating with business interests on a new order, one governed by rules that look a lot like those of Roosevelt, and a progressive order like that sought by the first Roosevelt.

Business can do business with people like Chuck Schumer. It can't do business with Mitch McConnell, because he can't hold his own caucus (Rand Paul). The immense scandals of the last few years — of finance, of energy, of housing, of the military-industrial complex — can only be addressed by negotiating new, firm rules that will channel capitalism in a more progressive direction.

That's what the calm face of the President is offering. Negotiation. New rules. Money in the front seat but no longer driving the car. It's the same thing Nixon offered, the same thing the Roosevelts offered, the same thing Hamilton offered. Ordered liberty. Competition within boundaries that everyone respects.

The gang at CNBC, like reporters everywhere, looks only to the immediate past as a guide to the future. They assume the Nixon Order is the way things must be. But that order has been overthrown by events. Nixon is dead, he's not coming back.

Slowly, a new political order is being established, one based on channeling money into useful directions so the ambulance can't crash. What Obama is offering is what Nixon offered, what FDR and TR offered, what Alexander Hamilton offered. Ordered liberty.

Money always chooses order over disorder.