Reagan started his political life trying to win over the other party’s voters alongside mobilizing his own party’s base. In this forum, Henry Olsen talks about the difference between “reaching out” and “inclusion.” Olsen says:
I think reaching out says we’re starting from a position of our own ideas and we’re going to bring them to you. What we need to do is talk about inclusion., and the first step of inclusion is listening. And listening to your aspirations, your values, and frankly what you don’t like about us. And then figuring out where we have common ground.
Reagan spent years of his pre-electoral career talking conservative politics to FDR-loving, unionized, Democrat-voting GE employees. He couldn’t do that job well if he didn’t listen. He had to learn how his audience saw themselves and the world around them. He had to know the arguments of the other side because his audience had already heard those arguments. The result of this training was that Reagan knew the arguments of his political rivals better than center-left politicians themselves.
Look at the 1980 debate with Carter. Everybody remembers “there you go again”, but check out this exchange between Reagan and Carter on inflation. Carter says of the Kemp-Roth tax cut proposal:
Governor Reagan’s proposal, the Reagan-Kemp-Roth proposal, is one of the most highly inflationary ideas that ever has been presented to the American public.
Reagan responds:
I would like to ask the President why is it inflationary to let the people keep more of their money and spend it the way that they like, and it isn’t inflationary to let him take that money and spend it the way he wants?
It is a shot to the head because Reagan understands the arguments behind both his own and Carter’s view of inflation. Carter seems to have internalized one point of view at most.
So what would Republicans have learned if they listened more? Here is one thing I’ve picked up on. Republicans didn’t like talking about policy alternatives to Obamacare. Doing so would have confused and perhaps divided their own political coalition which had a strong status quo bias. But younger and nonwhite voters were not socialized to respond negatively to rhetoric about socialized medicine and such. That doesn’t mean they were for it, but at least Obama was out there trying to do something. The Republicans were just standing in the way. To make gains among these voters, Republicans needed to make detailed (but pithy) arguments about what was wrong with Obamacare and the benefits of Republican health care policy X (read National Affairs to get an idea of some of the things they could have said), and do so in plain language.
That means Republicans would have to actually make arguments. Lots of Republican politicians aren’t used to this. During the Republican presidential primaries all that most of the candidates could do was deliver cheap anti-Obamacare applause lines. When Romney defended the basic structure of Obamacare Romneycare he usually won. Romney’s political opponents weren’t trying to convince anyone. They were trying to use clichés to mobilize the Reagan coalition. They were trying to spend down the political capital accumulated by Reagan. They didn’t even know their own minds.
The low point (maybe – there are several to choose from) was in one forum where Robert P. George asked Michelle Bachmann if she thought the Constitution forbade a state-level health insurance purchase mandate like the one in Romneycare. She said yes, but when pressed about where the Constitution forbids such a mandate, Bachmann was stumped. The most she could say was “Well, I’m sure you [Robert P. George] could enlighten me as to the provision [in the Constitution.]” She was used to getting cheers from the likeminded when she told them that their policy preferences (whatever they might be) were exactly what the Founders wanted. Watching her squander Reagan’s political legacy almost makes me wish for an estate tax.
The conservative politician who can listen to members of the other political coalition like Reagan did, and who can learn to respond to the arguments of the other side (as opposed to just posturing for the amusement of their own side), won’t just win over those who currently think of themselves as swing-voters. They will win over people who consider themselves proud Obama Democrats.
December 24th, 2012 | 12:24 am
[...] Reagan started his political life trying to win over the other party’s voters alongside mobilizing his own party’s base. In this forum, Henry Olsen talks about the difference between “reaching Source: Postmodern Conservative [...]
December 24th, 2012 | 7:17 am
“And listening to your aspirations, your values, and frankly what you don’t like about us. And then figuring out where we have common ground.”
That’s an excellent insight, Pete.
What this would look like, maybe, would be finding some successful, affluent, well-educated white male family men from conservative Catholic backgrounds who nevertheless support Obama, and then listening to and understanding what motivates their collection of self-righteous, self-validating bigotries toward the Republican Party.
Because if you can’t understand how to find common ground with people like that, it’s going to be a long, long way to understanding working-class Hispanics.
December 24th, 2012 | 8:37 am
Michael, some people’s hostility to the GOP is more deeply rooted than others – for example:
“If the theory is that the Republican Party can jettison the plutocrats, jettison the racists, jettison the tax jihadists, jettison the creationists”
If you really think this way, the GOP probably really isn’t for you – and that’s okay (the not being for the GOP – not the cartoonish view of the opposition.)
December 24th, 2012 | 10:58 am
[...] Learning From Reagan Part III – Pete Spiliakos, PoMoCon [...]
December 26th, 2012 | 2:10 pm
Republicans in general and Conservatives in particular will always have problems explaining their ideas, as Conservativism by definition does not trust cetnralized government solutions. And yes, many Republicans do not wish to discuss alternatives to ObamaCare for the simple reason that the cards are stacked against them. The problem isn’t just health insurance availability and afforadability. We can trace almost all of these problems back to the federal government and the creation of both Medicare and Medcaid. The problems first began to show themselves in the 1980s. Congress, which created the problem, only applied band-aids to fix them. And since 1986, the costs and availability of healthcare have become even more acute. Obama’s solution is – more cowbell. But, we certainly cannot go back to pre-1965. That would be political suicide. And the elderly insist on full funding of Medicaire benefits no matter how many resources that program consumers. Unfortunately, Medicare is on much better footing than Medicaid. Both programs are in long term decay; however, Medicaid is even in worse financial shape.
Therefore, it is best for the GOP to raise the surrender flag. ObamaCare, Medicaire, and Medicaid are unsustainable financial disasters that cannot even come close to being reformed. And niether our political class nor our Cognitive Class (the so-called) experts even contemplate alternatives. Conservaitves should just bide their time and develope alternatives plans that are 180 degrees opposite of current ones (Believe it or not, many European nations do have viable private health care solutions. The only problem is, they are available only to the well-to-do and wealthy). Creative destruction is in order.
December 26th, 2012 | 11:42 pm
1) Carter is and was correct as it turns out. This is of course why Reagan raised taxes and embarked with the aid of Volker on an insane quest to control inflation. (which ended up hurting capital/debt intensive (peanut?) farmers like Carter. (many farmers actually…)
2) Leaving aside that no one is going to fully be capable of unwinding the precise impact of every policy change vis a vis taxes under Reagan…One thing that a very simple american undergraduate economist(yours trully) might be able to understand or predict is that we were in a drastically different IS-LM position at that point, not to mention a different place on a Laffer curve(I accept the theory, the idea goes all the way back to David Hume and J.S. Mill.) While there are potentially an infinite number of battles to be fought over details in between, Volker was signalling to us that Inflation was very important as a matter of public policy! Currently Bernanke is not signalling to us that Inflation is very important as a matter of public policy. Or actually in my reading Bernanke is signalling to us that Inflation is very important as a matter of public policy…but quite in the opposite direction as Volker suggested. This QE1-3 is unprecedented, as is the general begging of congress to deficit spend.
That is my rhetorical response for Carter in modern times to a Reagan in modern times: Deficit spending is inflationary (with IS-LM caveats) but essentially we should let people spend money the way they want while letting government spend money the way it wants.
Given the fact that the fed has pumped around 29 trillion into the banks, ( http://www.levyinstitute.org/publications/?docid=1462 ) it is easy to see why some groups like the Peterson group are all about fighting the deficit, i.e. engaging in a war against fiscal policy in favor of monetary policy. To give Bernanke a bit of an out, I think he knows the game that is going on, but his legal duties force him to abeit this quasi-fraud. So long as Bernanke makes a bit of noise and reminds folks that he was all for fiscal policy, when folks really catch on he can just turn and blame congress. (It will happen). On the other hand all this 29 trillion gets paid back…but it is still a pretty valuable interest to be able to borrow at super low rates and lend at much higher ones. (or to be able to cherry pick and dump off the bad loans.)
This in my view is the fault of folks not being principled Keynesians.
This brings us to another truthful Romney gaffe, which is probably a Marxist axiomatic truth about Capitalism: “The rich will do fine no matter who wins in Nov.” In fact you should consider Marxism to be a long run prediction about distribution effects of Capitalism on the fiscal side, while Malthusianism is a long run prediction about Capitalism on the material resources side. On either a Marxist or Malthusian basis going over the fiscal cliff is largely a moot point. On the Marxist side Mitt Romney nailed it! (corporations are people, or at least corporations are run by people) (not that Citizens United was rightly decided)…but basically those big banks are run by rich people, and it is almost certain that with less fiscal policy, these rich people will receive more monetary policy largess.)
On the Malthusian side anything that slows consumption in one sense buys time for the fossil fuels corn bubble to be extended, albeit by slowing patent development pushed by Gov. it also slows the future trickle down of science and hurts the capacity of the bulls to outrun the Malthusian bear.
So the two quasi-discredited bears are playing a very very long run game. As spoiled americans it is perhaps easy to mock the Malthusian +Marxist bear by engaging in a debate over the relative greatness/trademark value of McDonalds and Waffle House. I have so much food my big mac commodity fetishism is better than yours! Indeed, my milk shake brings all the bulls to the yard!
I for one am hopeing that I win over people who considered themselves proud Obama democrats, or rather I am hopping that Krugman will do so.
Do you realize how much Krugman is moving in the direction of simple arguments I made? i.e. patent as the only long run trickle down economics. (for which you have the Hicks model). The path of the bull and growth against the Marxist and Malthusian bears? A need for Keynesian Macro-economics to move into the long run while embracing its true destiny and original intent as Anglo-American exceptionalism! (Keynes historically respected Malthus)
see Krugman: “It’s taken me a while to get around to Bob Gordon’s stimulating essay suggesting that the great days of economic growth are behind us. It’s not that different from things he’s been saying before, and I have in the past had a lot of sympathy for that view. I now believe, however, that his technological pessimism is wrong — or if you prefer, it’s the wrong kind of pessimism. But this is definitely a discussion worth having.” (AGREED)
In other words a large macro view of Krugman is to see him peeling away from the perma-bears altogether (away from malthus)…but realize that some part of Reagan was also peeling away from the perma-bears (away from Carter+ the deficit hawks).
In the end of the day you aren’t selling either Reagan or Keynes if you believe that america’s best days are behind her. American exceptionalism has to believe that we can see technology trickle down that is not Hicks Neutral, yet still absorb the unemployment this creates by pushing fiscal policy for full employment. If the rich get richer, that is ok but it isn’t the primary goal, and in point of fact once we understand this, we no long need to have some sort of “cold war” dynamic to push technological innovation.
Among the republicans the most Reaganesque (or at least Bullish) was probably Newt Gingrich, and I actually think this isn’t far from the direction he wanted in terms of satisfying his dreams for a moon colony.
Krugman says: “So we could be looking at a society that grows ever richer, but in which all the gains in wealth accrue to whoever owns the robots.”
(This is the Marxist bear)
The answer is in understanding (and improving) the Hicks model and melding this with a theory of intellectual property/USPTO.
“Anyway, interesting stuff to speculate about — and not irrelevant to policy, either, since so much of the debate over entitlements is about what is supposed to happen decades from now.”
Keep preaching Krugman!
I never said the Marxist and Malthusian bears weren’t going to get us, just maybe we can kick that can down the road. GO BULLS!
December 27th, 2012 | 1:39 am
I picked up on that since, oh, the 1980s when Kennedy was stumping for some version or other of the UK’s National Health to be transplanted to America. Here’s something else I’d picked up on, there are no nice policy alternatives to nationalized medicine. Someone is going to get less doctoring than wished for because there’s no infinite pot of money and no vast corps of monk-like doctors and nurses who’ll work for free. Yet strangely, most people vote as though the State has an infinite pot of money (or would if only taxes on other people were covetous enough).
Frankly, talking to people who wish for such things as single-payer health care, nationalized medicine, Hillarycare, Obamacare or socialized medicine by any name is as useless as trying to logically reason someone out of an infatuation. Can’t be done. Since the 1980s I’ve figured that some form of socialized medicine would inevitably come to America because the temptation and illusion of the thing is just too strong for most people to resist.
JP’s advice “to raise the surrender flag” is, alas, probably the best pragmatic political advice. Sure, the parts of Obamacare that are simply ideological Culture Of Death bludgeons against the Church, morality and innocent life can and should be fought. Those battles can be won because they have nothing fundamentally to do with the “making health care affordable” illusion that’s the basis of this tempting of America. Until the whole paradigm of health care we have today is made obsolete by some sufficiently advanced techonology that gives people easy and preferable alternatives to today’s practice of medicine, some socialized medicine scheme will remain politically unstoppable.
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