Dana Blankenhorn

It's the Stupid Economy

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 37 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Each of America's great political crises have really been about the economy.

In our time it's about energy coming from devices, as opposed to energy as resources. Resources have  to be transformed by fire to become energy. Devices harness energy from the environment.

There is, in fact, plenty of energy all around us -- as much as we could ever use. Coming down from the sky, flowing under the Earth, blowing across our land. What we need are devices that can harness it.

Meanwhile we have a Stupid Economy. It's stupid because there is an economic force stifling growth we feel powerless to get past, because that force seems to control our politics. In this case, it's energy billionaires like the Koch Brothers, the oil power, and to a lesser extent coal.

Look closely at who funds the Republican National Committee, all the "wingnut welfare" groups and Tea Party arcades. Follow the money where it doesn't want you to go and it's the same collection of names -- energy men and their bankers.

But their economic time has passed. They can no longer deliver the prosperity they once did. They can only beggar our people as they have been doing for the last decade.

This is because resources have prices, prices that  rise with demand. Every sign of economic growth in the last decade has been accompanied by a rise in energy prices. The only way to break the logjam and create real, sustainable economic growth is by harnessing the energy all around us, through devices.

But the resource industry does not want that. Thus they have captured our politics, not for ideological reasons (as they tell their allies), but to keep the power and subsidies that sustain them. Subsidies like wars in the oilpatch as well as tax credits that make it profitable to drill a mile under the Gulf, even at the risk of a catastrophic failure.

The cost of many devices, like solar cells, can actually fall as a function of Moore's Law. Even for those which don't, like windmills, they're a fixed, sunk cost. Upkeep is minor. Energy creation is as reliable as the energy source passing by them. Everything we can do to further energy as devices benefits the U.S. economy. Even the efforts of rivals like Germany and China benefit America -- their devices put a break on energy prices, their knowledge is technology that can be sold and shared.

Not Yet Begun To Fight

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 36 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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As I noted last week, proof that this is a crisis Presidency is obvious in the polls. (Hey, Tea Party. Two can play this game.)

No crisis President is popular at this point in their term. Lincoln wasn't -- we were losing the war. FDR wasn't -- there was serious doubt as to whether democracy would survive. Nixon certainly wasn't -- "We're all Nixon's niggers now," said George Carlin, and the crowd roared.

Why is this? It's because politics are driven by myths and values, by assumptions of right and wrong. A crisis President, by definition, is elected in rejection of these assumptions, and gradually creates what I call a new Thesis, a new set of myths and values that will define power in coming decades.

So it is today. Every poll I see shows the President and his party are unpopular. They all show Republicans winning. But they don't see the Republicans as popular, because they're not.

The truth behind Beckapalooza

Some critics called it Whitestock, but that's not the story here. Most Republican meetings are overwhelmingly white. Despite demographic trends, this also remains the reality of America.

No, there's a deeper truth about this gathering that should give mainstream Republicans pause. That is its cause.

As Beck himself noted, he thought about making this an economic call, but he instead made a social call. His shows and his stands over the last six months have all emphasized social issues, the most divisive on the agenda. Even the claim to be "reclaiming Civil Rights" was a tell in this regard.

But it wasn't a black-white tell. It was a movement tell. Beck is not of the Tea Party. He's of the Taliban party.

This should not be a surprise, but with his earlier emphasis on economic issues it will be to some observers. It shouldn't be a surprise because Beck has always been aligned with the American Taliban. Mormonism is less about belief than about actions, less about what you say than about what you do. Conformity was bred deep into Glenn Beck, and conformity is what those who followed him to Washington are most interested in.

Fact is, black and brown and Indian and Muslim and gay and young and secular Americans don't fit into Glenn Beck's America. There is no place for them there. There is no place for the majority of Americans in Glenn Beck's America, unless we wish to deny our nature.

Run Against The Oilagarchs

The "enthusiasm gap" is as great today as it was 40 years ago, when the anti-war movement was at its height, when Nixon seemed surrounded by enemies, when his cause seemed most hopeless.

He had tried everything he could think of to accommodate the left. He supported creation of the EPA, OSHA, the Consumer Product Safety Commission. But it meant nothing to his enemies, and his friends were turning on him as a result.

So what happened? He won a virtual draw in the 1970 elections, with highlight races like James Buckley (right) winning a minority victory in New York and Bill Brock knocking off Al Gore Sr. balanced against losses elsewhere. (It is easier to score gains when you start with a minority, as Nixon did.)

And he learned not to accommodate. He would never again appear so liberal to his own base, and would try henceforth to feed them more than rhetoric.

The ghosts of hate

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 34 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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One important point liberals conveniently forget is that, despite controlling the Presidency and Congress, they don't yet control the agenda.

The agenda is controlled, still, by the old Thesis. It's only after a new Thesis is validated, as the Nixon Thesis was validated by Reaganism, the FDR thesis by Truman, or the Lincoln Thesis by Grant, that the ability to set an agenda shifts. 

This is what makes life so hard for the leader of a new Thesis. His followers are rushing ahead of him, the media is making every analysis based on the old Thesis, and believers in that old Thesis are going crazy.

Seriously crazy. 

The death of James J. Kilpatrick last week is a good place to start the discussion. Kilpatrick was a conservative in a liberal age. He was an outright segregationist in the 1950s, but had to retreat from that position, as he retreated from others during his career. Ideological offense was not his metier which is why, by the time Reaganism flowered, he seemed antique. 

How does today differ from, say, 1994? It's important to note that Republicans today don't really have a coherent agenda, save opposition. They don't really have an agenda because everything that should be their agenda has been discredited -- tax cuts, foreign wars, "small" government, government as a business.

How can I prove my point to you? It's right here on this page. Just look at the left side.

Who is Phyllis Schlafly now?

Let's play The 1970 Game!

The myths, values and assumptions that make up an American political thesis are peculiar to their time and based in opposition to what appear on the surface to be inevitable trends.

Those who set their stall in opposition are natural idealists. While there is nothing wrong with ideals in the abstract, absolute adherence to them always leads to trouble down the road. Agendas change, the problems change, ideals become ideology, and things that made perfect sense a generation before now seem to make no sense.

To white suburbanites this is what the 60s were all about. They had left the crowded cities to gain more control over their lives and those of their children. Yet the violence and anarchy of those cities was following them, through the TV, into their very homes, into the minds of their children, and taking control in the form of long hair, rock music, and questioning of their authority.

This is the milieu Phyllis Schlafly came from.In 1964 her ideas seemed daring. Her greatest foes were other Republicans, like Nelson Rockefeller, and she was often disappointed that the Nixon Administration mainly gave her only lip service.  (Schlafly's Wikipedia entry offers a recent picture, but I think this portrait, taken from her 1964 book, is more appropriate. She was once, as they say, a babe.)

She organized, she persevered, and when the Nixon Thesis was validated (renamed Reaganism) she was in the forefront, still pushing society to conform more-and-more closely to her authority. She's still at it, well past her sell-by date, a sad and brittle figure, with an openly gay son.

This is not to dismiss her in any way. She is an important figure in America's political history. But she was never satisfied, and can never be satisfied. She is highly polarizing, and has always been so. As a politician she was a failure because she would not bend from her principles.

So who is Phyllis Schlafly now?

An Opportunity Agenda

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 33 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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This is the point in any crisis Presidency when the ghouls come out.

The problems haven't been solved. The President seems to be moving too slowly. He's trapped between his need to be the old AntiThesis (Clinton the Triangulator in this case) and the old fading Thesis (Bushism) still practiced in the Capitol. His own troops are dejected. Change is hard.

What turned things around for all past crisis leaders was, simply, an agenda. Setting a course against the true enemy, in defiance of political assumptions, is the test of leadership.

In the current case, that agenda is simple.

The War Against Oil.

As I've said before, a climate bill isn't really a climate bill. It's really a jobs bill. It's also, right now, the hardest bill to get through the Congress. Republicans won't touch it, and many Democrats are wary as well.

The argument is over stimulus. The question should not be how much, but what the stimulus does. A stimulus that doesn't take us in a useful direction is mindless spending. Whether that's in the form of government aid or tax cuts, it's equally mindless.

We need a stimulus that creates stuff.

The last depression was ended by World War II. Republicans love to say that. They don't like to admit that the war was fought at a deficit, although it was. But we don't have to build bombs to win this war. We can win it with plowshares.

But we first have to declare it.

The New War on Crime

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 28 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Lately I've grown as angry as the gang at Firedoglake.

It happens whenever I turn on CNBC, or read any business newspaper. There is an assumption that the Obama Administration is "anti-business," "proven" when gazillionaires like Jaime Dimon (right) switch financial support to Republicans because of the FinReg bill.

I think most Americans believe Jaime Dimon and his Wall Street pals should be pounding rocks with Bernie Madoff, not pontificating on TV, and certainly not deciding who our leaders should be. I think most feel the same way about BP chairman Tony Heyward.

I think they're right.

Regulation is not "anti-business." Regulation is crime prevention. A properly-regulated market does not "stifle innovation." It is not "socialism." Imagine Las Vegas without casino regulation. That's today's Wall Street.

A center of the conservative ideology that has ruled this country for a generation is that a law that keeps you from destroying someone with a gun must be rigorously enforced, while one that keeps you from doing the same thing with a pen hurts the economy.

A central tenet of conservative tactics is that you attack someone at their strength, or what they think is their strength.

I think we're on to A Clue here.

The Big Dog

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 27 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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One of the recurring patterns of our political history is that the weapons of the previous antithesis must be relied upon to push forward a new thesis, even though the thesis and antithesis have no relation to one another.

Some examples:

• Lincoln was a Whig. He was a great admirer of Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser. Yet his thesis, of union, seemed to be the opposite of what Clay stood for.
• Teddy Roosevelt was a Mugwump. The Mugwumps were "big chiefs," influential and powerful men, who coalesced around Grover Cleveland to fight the corruption of the 1880s. His chief opponents were always other Republicans.
• Franklin Roosevelt identified with Wilsonism. Wilson combined Bryan's populism with an aggressive foreign policy, all supposedly in the name of principle.
• Nixon was Eisenhower's vice president. Eisenhower was the antithesis to the New Deal, accepting its premises but promising a kinder, gentler, more business-friendly version.

Antietam Needed

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 26 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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At the heart of every generational crisis is a period where the new thesis appears on the verge of rejection.

Elections, by themselves, don't solve crises. They begin them. They set a political force against serious momentum, bent on transforming the country by tearing at its foundation. The success of the new movement is never guaranteed.

The problems of the time appear intractable. The uphill fight seems endless. Then, just when it's needed, an event occurs that allows the thesis to move forward, that shifts momentum just enough so that the thesis leader gains confidence and moves as he knows he must.

• During the Civil War, this was the Battle of Antietam. (Above, from Matthew Brady.) It was a bloody, narrow victory, which mostly turned on luck, when Confederate orders were captured. But it was enough to move Lincoln toward proclaiming the Emancipation Proclamation, which while it nominally freed slaves only in areas in rebellion, transformed the war from a struggle over commerce to one over human liberty.
• For the progressive era it was the Spanish-American War. It boosted nationalism, made Theodore Roosevelt a hero, and made America a world power, so he could stamp the age with a progressive thesis of slow, steady reform meant to maintain social peace and order.
• For FDR the crisis really came in 1935, when the National Recovery Act was declared unconstitutional. Much of its work had already been done, but the rejection gave Roosevelt an enemy he could focus on, rally people against, so the alphabet soup he created against the Depression might have a chance to change public attitudes.
• For Nixon the crisis was Cambodia. He sacrificed an entire people for domestic political advantage and it worked. The war, and the war against the war, united conservatives and also gave Nixon the image he needed to open China, which in the end may have been his most important legacy.

In all these cases there was one crisis, and one event, threatening the national future. There was one action that served to give the new thesis momentum.

This crisis is not like that. The Bush era didn't leave us with just one legacy, but a host of crises just waiting to explode. The financial crisis. Two wars. Deregulation, and a feeling among businesses they could act with impunity, that the cops would never come.

But at the heart of all is a more existential question, the immediate past demanding to rule the unknowable future.

Just as the assumptions of the Civil War period set the stage for the 1896 crisis, and the slow pace of progressive change made Roosevelt necessary, and the hubris of America's governing power made Nixon necessary, so Nixon-ism holds the seeds of our present difficulties.