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18th Apr 2011 The Death of the BookBen Ehrenreich
Pity the book. It’s dead again. Last I checked, Googling “death of the book” produced 11.8 million matches. The day before it was 11.6 milion. It’s getting unseemly. Books were once such handsome things. Suddenly they seem clunky, heavy, almost fleshy in their gross materiality. Their pages grow brittle. Their ink fades. Their spines collapse. They are so pitiful, they might as well be human.
The emphasis shifts with each telling, but every writer, editor, publisher, bookseller, and half-attentive reader knows the fundamental story. After centuries of steady climbing, book sales leveled off towards the end of the 1900s. Basic literacy began to plummet. As if television and Reaganomics were not danger enough, some egghead lunatics went and built a web—a web!—out of nothing but electrons. It proved a sneaky and seductive monster. Straight to our offices and living rooms, the web delivered chicken recipes, weather forecasts, pornography, the cutest kitten videos the world had ever seen. But while we were distracted by these glittering gifts, the internet conspired to snare our friend the book, to smother it.
The alarm at first built gradually. In 1999, Robert Darnton, writing in The New York Review of Books, consoled his readers that, all the grim prophecies notwithstanding, “the electronic age did not drive the printed word into extinction.” The book seemed safe enough for a few years, in more danger from the avarice of the carbon-based conglomerates that ate up all the publishers, than from anything in silicon. Safe until the fall of 2007, when lady Amazon released her hounds. Within a month of the Kindle’s debut, the New Yorker was writing of the “Twilight of the Books.” (Cue soundtrack: all minor keys, moody cello.) The London Times worried that “the slow death of the book may be with us.”
Last summer Amazon announced that it was selling more e-books than the paper kind. The time to fret had passed. It was Kindle vs. kindling. MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte—whose name is frequently preceded by the word “futurist”—declared that the demise of the paper book should be written in the present tense. ”It’s happening,” Negroponte said, and gave the pulpy artifacts just five years to utterly expire.
None of this is new of course. Nor is it new to point out that people have been diagnosing—and celebrating—the book’s imminent demise for generations. It is possible to regard much of Western avant garde poetry and prose as an extended argument with the bound pages from which literature would prefer to break free. In a 1913 manifesto, Filippo Marinetti (a futurist of the OG sort) called for “a typographic revolution directed against the idiotic and nauseating concepts of the outdated and conventional book.” His insurrectionary program may now seem quaint—“on the same page we will use three or four colors of ink, or even twenty typefaces if necessary”—but Marinetti was not alone in rebelling against the uniformity imposed on language by the standard typeset page. Similar urges ran through most of the high modernists, certainly through Stein, Joyce, and Pound, and through the iconoclastic American poet and journalist Robert Carlton Brown (better known as Bob), who, in the late 1920s, envisioned a reading machine designed to liberate words from the static confines of the page. Brown imagined something like a desk-sized microfiche reader capable of displaying spooled celluloid texts called “readies.” ”Writing has been bottled up in books since the start,” he wrote. ”It is time to pull out the stopper.”
Not everyone was enthused. F. Scott Fitzgerald bemoaned the deadly consequences of the development of sound cinema—not so much on literature as on his earning capacity as an author. ”There was a rankling indignity,” he wrote in 1936, “in seeing the power of the written word subordinated to another power, a more glittering, grosser power.” But talkies did not kill the book, just as still photography and radio had not and television would not. Far from it: the mass consumption in the US of what we might call serious literature—by which I don’t mean the somber stuff so much as the challenging and formally inventive—probably peaked in the late 1960s or early ’70s.
Most talk of the death of the book in that era was enthusiastically in favor. In 1962, Marshall McLuhan had published an almost spookily prescient book titled The Gutenberg Galaxy. It was, among other things, an extended critique of the culture of print. Technology shapes our consciousness, McLuhan argued, and the development of the printed book in the mid-fifteenth century had inaugurated a reorientation of human experience towards the visual, the regimented, the uniform and instrumental. Language, which had once been a wild, uncontainable affair between the oral and aural (think whisper, shout, and song, the playful market-square dynamism of dialect and argot) was silenced, flattened, squeezed into lines evenly arrayed across the rectilinear space between the margins. Spellings were standardized, vernaculars frozen into national languages policed by strict academies. Print, for McLuhan, was the driver behind all that we now recognize as modern. Through it nationalisms arose, and other horrors: capitalism, individualism, alienation. Time itself was emptied out—reduced, like the words on each page, to a linear sequence of homogeneous moments. Print had stolen something. Books had shrunk us. They had “denuded” conscious life. “All experience is segmented and must be processed sequentially,” McLuhan mourned. “Rich experience eludes the wretched mesh or sieve of our attention.”
An end was in sight. We had already entered a “new electric age” characterized by interdependence rather than segmentation. “The world has become a computer,” McLuhan wrote, “an electronic brain, exactly as in an infantile piece of science fiction.” The Internet was still a Cold-War fantasy, but for McLuhan print’s corpse was already growing cold. (He dated the collapse of the “Gutenberg Galaxy” to 1905 and Einstein’s early work on relativity.) This was not necessarily cause for optimism. McLuhan coined the phrase “global village” to describe the hyper-networked world that was already taking shape. He had no illusions, though, about the nobility of village life. Our newly TV-, telephone-, and radio-enwebbed multiverse could just as easily be ruled by “panic terrors … befitting a world of tribal drums” as by any bright pastoral harmony. And so it was and is.
In 1967, when Jacques Derrida took up the theme of “the end of the book” in Of Grammatology, McLuhan’s ideas were still sufficiently in the air that the philosopher could refer to “this death of the civilization of the book of which so much is said” without need for further explanation. But the “civilization of the book,” for Derrida, meant more than the era of moveable type. It preceded Gutenberg, and even the medieval rationalists who wrote of “the book of nature” and via that metaphor understood the material world as revelation analogous to scripture. The book for Derrida stood in for an entire metaphysics that reached back through all of Western thought: a conception of existence as a text that could be deciphered, a text with a stable meaning lodged somewhere outside of language. “The idea of the book is the idea of a totality,” he wrote. “It is the encyclopedic protection of theology and of logocentrism against the disruption of writing, against its aphoristic energy and … against difference in general.” Those, in case you couldn’t tell, are fighting words.
It is perhaps a symptom of print’s decline that the current conversation about the book’s demise has forgotten all these other ones. Instead we shuttle between two equally hollow poles: goofball digital boosterism a la Negroponte on one side and on the other a helpless, anguished nostalgia for the good old days of papercuts. Call it bibilionecrophilia: the retreat of the print-faithful into a sort of autistic fetishization of the book-as-object—as if Jeff Bezos could be convinced to lay e-profits aside by recalling for a moment the soft, woody aroma of a yellow-paged Grove Press paperback; as if there were nothing more to books than paper, ink, and glue.
For the record, my own loyalties are uncomplicated. I adore few humans more than I love books. I make no promises, but I do not expect to purchase a Kindle or a Nook or any of their offspring. I hope to keep bringing home bound paper books until my shelves snap from their weight, until there is no room in my apartment for a bed or a couch or another human being, until the floorboards collapse and my eyes blur to dim. But the book, bless it, is not a simple thing.
Nor, as we know it, is it particularly venerable. All of our words for book refer, at root, to forms no longer recognizable as such: biblos being the Greek word for the pith of the papyrus stalk (on which texts in the Greco-Roman world were inscribed); libri being Latin for the inner bark of a tree, just as the Old English bóc and Old Norse bók referred to the beech tree. Likewise “tome” is from a Greek word for a cutting (of papyrus) and “volume” is from the Latin for a rolled-up thing—a scroll, which is the form most texts took until they were replaced by folded parchment codices. Prior to the late 13th century, when paper was first brought to Europe from China, the great works of Western civilization were recorded on the skins of animals. The Inca wrote by knotting strings. The ancient Chinese scrawled calligraphy on cliffs. (Do mountains count as books?) The printed, paper book, as we know it, dates only to the mid-fifteenth century, but those early Gutenberg exemplars were hardly something you’d curl up with on a rainy Sunday afternoon. The book as an affordable object of mass production—as something directly kin to the books that line our shelves—was not born until the 19th century, just in time for the early announcements of its death.
But what could it mean for the book to die? Which sort of book? And what variety of death? What if the book had only ever lived by dying? What if it were only ever present through its absence, like the figure of the book that is sketched over the many volumes of Edmond Jabès’ poetry, so loved by Derrida? (“The book dives and drowns in books still to be written which are only its repeated efforts to escape death or, rather, the illegibility to which it is pledged.”) Or like the uppercase Book described by Bruno Schulz, who opened his 1937 collection Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass with an odd and wonder-filled short story titled simply, “The Book.” Four years after its publication, German troops marched into the small southeastern Polish city of Drogobych, where Schulz lived. And though Schulz was Jewish (as was Jabès, not at all coincidentally), he resisted his friends’ attempts to smuggle him to safety. Two years into the occupation, Schulz was shot in the street by the SS, his own last book—The Messiah, he called it—unfinished and now lost for good.
In the world of Schulz’s fiction, The Book is, to borrow a tic from Derrida, always already lost. The story opens with a coy admission of defeat: “I am simply calling it The Book without any epithets or qualifications,” Schulz begins, confessing “a shade of helplessness … for no word, no allusion, can adequately suggest the shiver of fear, the presentiment of a thing without name that exceeds all our capacity for wonder.” Of course words are all he has, and with them he goes on to recall the Book from a hazy, near-forgotten epoch “somewhere in the dawn of childhood,” when he saw it lying on his father’s desk. Sometimes, when his father was away, the child narrator would watch as birds—whole “flocks of swallows and larks”—erupted from its pages. Sometimes the wind opened it “like a huge cabbage rose [and] the petals, one by one, eyelid under eyelid, all blind, velvety, and dreamy, slowly disclosed a blue pupil, a colored peacock’s heart, or a chattering nest of hummingbirds.”
Then, for years perhaps—chronology is more than hazy here—the Book disappears from memory. One night it returns to the narrator in a dream. He wakes and scours the shelves. He demands that his parents tell him what’s become of it. They humor him, pushing various volumes into his hands. His father hands him a Bible and he scoffs: “Why do you give me that … clumsy falsification? What have you done with The Book?”
Here Schulz parts ways with all but the most heretical of his own People of the Book. The text Schulz’s narrator is searching for exceeds the virtue of any mere Torah scroll. It’s nothing as banal as the old Book of Nature either. The father tries to deny that it exists, to belittle it as a childish fiction we all grow out of—like Santa Claus or a god that loves us. The narrator knows better: “I knew then that The Book is a postulate, that it is a goal.” Soon after, when the housekeeper laughs aloud at an ad for a miraculous hair tonic (“I, Anna Csillag, born at Karlovice in Moravia, had a poor growth of hair…”), the narrator grabs a sheaf of “advertisements and personal announcements” from her hands, recognizing in it, “The Book, its last pages, the unofficial supplement, the tradesman’s entrance full of refuse and trash!” She had been tearing out its pages all along to wrap his father’s lunches.
Like all of Schulz’s fictions, “The Book” is set in an atmosphere of painful, almost unfathomable drabness—think wintry provincial Poland, all the world “a gray and empty Tuesday”—but one over which reality is stretched like a delicate skin, a membrane shivering with infinite possibility. So it is here: in print’s crudest manifestation, in a mail-order catalog, he finds vestiges of “the authentic Book, the holy original.” Its pages hawk miracle cures, barrel organs, songbirds, the services of “a certain Mme. Magda Wang,” experienced in “the ‘dressage’ of men.”
Soon, all these advertised offerings have climbed from their columns of print, rebelling against the dull tyranny of margins. They take over the story. Legions of cripples, relieved of their ailments by one magic elixir and graced by another with prodigious growths of hair, cast aside their crutches and march off through the “white villages steeped in prose and drabness.” They follow their leader, Anna Csillag, like an “odyssey of beavers, roaming from town to town with barrel organs,” singing aloud as bright multitudes of finches take flight from their instruments. The Book is not all joy and birdsong, though even its darkness titillates: the village the cripples leave behind will be shortly taken over by “the cynical and perverse Magda Wang.”
Towards the end of the story, Schulz reveals “a strange characteristic of the script, which by now no doubt has become clear to the reader: it unfolds while being read, its boundaries open to all currents and flexibilities.” And so it turns out that after all that searching, The Book—dead again and lost forever, living only in hoarse echoes and degraded traces—has not been written yet. The world is unfinished and “god” a word half-spoken. The Book is a mountain, a goatskin, a forest, a slab of clay, a knotted string, a blinking screen, a reed, a flock of finches. It is a chorus line of electrons. Don’t freak out. You can’t buy it or sell it no matter what you do. You’d be a fool to want to own it. Except through writing it and reading it and participating thereby in its creation—The Book always eludes us. Until we’re done, which may be soon, books will be with us: dead as always, the picture of health.
Ben Ehrenreich is the author of The Suitors and of Ether, which will be published this fall by City Lights Books. He is currently a visiting professor at the University of California, Riverside.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Michael Connelly - The Fifth Witness
I have now read all 4 of Connelly's Mickey Haller novels. This is a good one---as good as any of them.
The plot is first rate. The misdirection is well-done. Throughout the book you wonder if Mickey's client is guilty and at the very end you get the answer. The problem with crime fiction is generally the ending. Rarely is the ending satisfying. Things are neatly wrapped up in this one.
There isn't much development of the character of Mickey Haller though there is a surprise at the end regarding his future. The underlying personal current is that he's twice divorced and hoping to reunite with his first wife and mother of his teenage daughter. The other underlying current in the 4 novels is his feelings about what he does for a living---defending society's undesireables who are usually guilty as charged.
All in all, this is good stuff if you like crime fiction and legal drama.
The plot is first rate. The misdirection is well-done. Throughout the book you wonder if Mickey's client is guilty and at the very end you get the answer. The problem with crime fiction is generally the ending. Rarely is the ending satisfying. Things are neatly wrapped up in this one.
There isn't much development of the character of Mickey Haller though there is a surprise at the end regarding his future. The underlying personal current is that he's twice divorced and hoping to reunite with his first wife and mother of his teenage daughter. The other underlying current in the 4 novels is his feelings about what he does for a living---defending society's undesireables who are usually guilty as charged.
All in all, this is good stuff if you like crime fiction and legal drama.
Friday, April 29, 2011
The Causes of the Civil War 2.0
From the NY Times
April 28, 2011, 10:07 pm
The Causes of the Civil War, 2.0
By EDWARD L. AYERS
A new poll from the Pew Research Center reports that nearly half of Americans identify states’ rights as the primary cause of the Civil War. This is a remarkable finding, because virtually all American textbooks and prominent historians emphasize slavery, as they have for decades. Even more striking, the poll shows young people put more stock in the states’ rights explanation than older people. The 38 percent of Americans who believe slavery was mainly to blame find themselves losing ground.
Of course, there’s no denying that states’ rights played an important role as the language of secession. But how might historians convey a more precise, comparative sense of the role slavery played in the states’ decision to secede? New computer-assisted techniques allow historians to draw clearer conclusions from immense amounts of data, including newspapers, public records and legislative proceedings. And few states left behind a better, more information-rich record of their secession debates than Virginia.
Virginia, a visitor from South Carolina during the secession crisis noted with exasperation, would “not take sides until she is absolutely forced.” In retrospect, it may seem surprising that Virginia took months to decide what to do. The state, after all, had more enslaved people than any other, became famous as the capital of the Confederacy, suffered more battles than anywhere else, and held to the memory of the Lost Cause with a special devotion, long after the war had ended.
But in 1861 it was by no means clear what Virginia might do. After South Carolina seceded in December 1860, quickly followed by six other states in the Lower South, Virginia’s General Assembly responded by calling for a special election in February 1861. Each county in the state would send delegates to a convention to debate the matter thoroughly and then recommend a course of action for the Commonwealth. The great majority of the 152 delegates arrived in Richmond that winter as Unionists, expecting to find a way to save the nation, the state and slavery. Virginia’s convention debated until April — so long, in fact, that secessionists built bonfires of protest in the streets of the city.
The weeks of debate in Richmond were transcribed by local reporters and then gathered and edited in 1965, totaling nearly 3,000 pages. Historians have long mined this record for material to support a wide range of arguments, but until recently it has been impossible to assess the debates as a whole — to measure, for example, exactly how often and in what contexts delegates invoked various words and phrases.
New computer-assisted tools and techniques can find and evaluate patterns of language and emphasis, otherwise hard to see, among those debates. Researchers at the University of Richmond have developed a computerized text that allows us to explore those hundreds of speeches over time and space, to find connections buried beneath parliamentary procedure and exasperating digressions. Those tools, available to the public online, also make it possible for people to explore the Virginia debates themselves, to address this enduring question with their own curiosity and ingenuity.
Some of the patterns in the speeches quickly undermine familiar arguments for Virginia’s secession. Tariffs, which generations of would-be realists have seen as the hidden engine of secession, barely register, and a heated debate over taxation proves, on closer examination, to be a debate over whether the distribution of income from taxes on enslaved people should be shared more broadly across the state. Hotheads eager to fight the Yankees did not play a leading role in the months of debates; despite the occasional outburst, when delegates mentioned war they most often expressed dread and foreboding for Virginia. Honor turns out to be a flexible concept, invoked with equal passion by both the Unionist and secessionist sides. Virtually everyone in the convention agreed that states had the right to secede, yet Unionists in Virginia won one crucial vote after another.
The language of slavery is everywhere in the debates. It appears as an economic engine, a means of civilizing Africans, an essential security against black uprisings and as a right guaranteed in the United States Constitution. Secessionists and Unionists, who disagreed on so much, agreed on the necessity of slavery, a defining feature of Virginia for over 200 years.
The language of slavery, in fact, became ever more visible as the crisis mounted to the crescendo of secession in mid-April. Slavery in Virginia, delegates warned, would immediately decay if Virginia were cut off from fellow states that served as the market for their slaves and as their political allies against the Republicans. A Virginia trapped, alone, in the United States would find itself defenseless against runaways, abolitionists and slave rebellions.
But the omnipresence of the language of slavery does not settle the 150-year debate over the relative importance of slavery and states’ rights, for the language of rights flourished as well. The debate over the protection of slavery came couched in the language of governance, in words like “state,” “people,” “union,” “right,” “constitution,” “power,” “federal” and “amendment.” Variants of the word “right,” along with variants of “slave,” appear once for every two pages in the convention minutes. When the Virginians talked of Union they talked of a political entity built on the security and sanction of slavery in all its dimensions, across the continent and in perpetuity.
Contrast this with white Republicans in the North, for whom the real issue was the threat slaveholders presented to the nation. For too long, Republicans argued, slaveholders had overridden popular majorities at home and in the United States as a whole, dragged the country into war, and corrupted the Supreme Court, the presidency and the Senate. The Republicans pointed out that only a quarter of white Southerners owned even a single slave and that the rest of Southern whites suffered from the dominion of slaveholders.
But the Republicans miscalculated, underestimating the unanimity of white Southerners, whatever their other divisions, over slavery. Entire states, not merely individuals, possessed and were possessed by slavery. Secessionists and Unionists in Virginia sought to protect the single greatest unifying interest in the state — enslaved labor — with the single language they possessed for doing so, a language of political right. The South sought to protect slavery’s interests in the only way available to them, through shifting their allegiance to a new federal system, the Confederate nation.
In short, the records of the Virginia secession debate demonstrate how the vocabularies of slavery and rights, entangled and intertwined from the very beginning of the United States, became one and the same in the secession crisis. Virginians saw themselves as victims, forced into action. Walter Leake, a delegate from Goochland County, lamented that “Northern fanaticism” had brazenly claimed “the power of the Federal Government for the purpose of advancing their selfish interests, and not for the purpose of saving the Constitution or advancing the rights and interests of all.”
The “disease which has called together this convention,” Leake lamented, was the North’s fixation on slavery. That fixation was not a mere “derangement; it is chronic, it is deep-seated,” and it must come to an end. “It is necessary for the Northern people to correct their sentiments upon the subject of slavery, it is necessary that they should abstain from intermeddling with the institution before any harmony or quiet can be restored.” No one could doubt who, or what, was to blame for the crisis of the Union.
Lincoln’s call for non-seceding states to contribute militia to put down the rebellion in South Carolina after the firing on Fort Sumter forced a choice. Virginia, willing to stand aside while the Union was dismantled, would not raise its hand against the “subjugation” of a “sister” slave state. If the federal government could coerce South Carolina it could coerce Virginia. The call for troops drove a choice between the North and the South and the secessionists seized that moment to push Virginia into disunion.
Perhaps, given new tools and perspectives, Americans can change the focus of our arguments about the “primary cause” of the Civil War. If the North fought to sustain the justice, power and authority of the federal government, the corollary, many assume, must be that the South fought for the opposite, for the power of the states.
But the equation did not balance in that way: the North did not fight at first to end slavery, but the South did fight to protect slavery. It is vital that we use the tools newly available to us to grasp this truth in its immediacy and complexity, before it fades even further from view.
April 28, 2011, 10:07 pm
The Causes of the Civil War, 2.0
By EDWARD L. AYERS
A new poll from the Pew Research Center reports that nearly half of Americans identify states’ rights as the primary cause of the Civil War. This is a remarkable finding, because virtually all American textbooks and prominent historians emphasize slavery, as they have for decades. Even more striking, the poll shows young people put more stock in the states’ rights explanation than older people. The 38 percent of Americans who believe slavery was mainly to blame find themselves losing ground.
Of course, there’s no denying that states’ rights played an important role as the language of secession. But how might historians convey a more precise, comparative sense of the role slavery played in the states’ decision to secede? New computer-assisted techniques allow historians to draw clearer conclusions from immense amounts of data, including newspapers, public records and legislative proceedings. And few states left behind a better, more information-rich record of their secession debates than Virginia.
Virginia, a visitor from South Carolina during the secession crisis noted with exasperation, would “not take sides until she is absolutely forced.” In retrospect, it may seem surprising that Virginia took months to decide what to do. The state, after all, had more enslaved people than any other, became famous as the capital of the Confederacy, suffered more battles than anywhere else, and held to the memory of the Lost Cause with a special devotion, long after the war had ended.
But in 1861 it was by no means clear what Virginia might do. After South Carolina seceded in December 1860, quickly followed by six other states in the Lower South, Virginia’s General Assembly responded by calling for a special election in February 1861. Each county in the state would send delegates to a convention to debate the matter thoroughly and then recommend a course of action for the Commonwealth. The great majority of the 152 delegates arrived in Richmond that winter as Unionists, expecting to find a way to save the nation, the state and slavery. Virginia’s convention debated until April — so long, in fact, that secessionists built bonfires of protest in the streets of the city.
The weeks of debate in Richmond were transcribed by local reporters and then gathered and edited in 1965, totaling nearly 3,000 pages. Historians have long mined this record for material to support a wide range of arguments, but until recently it has been impossible to assess the debates as a whole — to measure, for example, exactly how often and in what contexts delegates invoked various words and phrases.
New computer-assisted tools and techniques can find and evaluate patterns of language and emphasis, otherwise hard to see, among those debates. Researchers at the University of Richmond have developed a computerized text that allows us to explore those hundreds of speeches over time and space, to find connections buried beneath parliamentary procedure and exasperating digressions. Those tools, available to the public online, also make it possible for people to explore the Virginia debates themselves, to address this enduring question with their own curiosity and ingenuity.
Some of the patterns in the speeches quickly undermine familiar arguments for Virginia’s secession. Tariffs, which generations of would-be realists have seen as the hidden engine of secession, barely register, and a heated debate over taxation proves, on closer examination, to be a debate over whether the distribution of income from taxes on enslaved people should be shared more broadly across the state. Hotheads eager to fight the Yankees did not play a leading role in the months of debates; despite the occasional outburst, when delegates mentioned war they most often expressed dread and foreboding for Virginia. Honor turns out to be a flexible concept, invoked with equal passion by both the Unionist and secessionist sides. Virtually everyone in the convention agreed that states had the right to secede, yet Unionists in Virginia won one crucial vote after another.
The language of slavery is everywhere in the debates. It appears as an economic engine, a means of civilizing Africans, an essential security against black uprisings and as a right guaranteed in the United States Constitution. Secessionists and Unionists, who disagreed on so much, agreed on the necessity of slavery, a defining feature of Virginia for over 200 years.
The language of slavery, in fact, became ever more visible as the crisis mounted to the crescendo of secession in mid-April. Slavery in Virginia, delegates warned, would immediately decay if Virginia were cut off from fellow states that served as the market for their slaves and as their political allies against the Republicans. A Virginia trapped, alone, in the United States would find itself defenseless against runaways, abolitionists and slave rebellions.
But the omnipresence of the language of slavery does not settle the 150-year debate over the relative importance of slavery and states’ rights, for the language of rights flourished as well. The debate over the protection of slavery came couched in the language of governance, in words like “state,” “people,” “union,” “right,” “constitution,” “power,” “federal” and “amendment.” Variants of the word “right,” along with variants of “slave,” appear once for every two pages in the convention minutes. When the Virginians talked of Union they talked of a political entity built on the security and sanction of slavery in all its dimensions, across the continent and in perpetuity.
Contrast this with white Republicans in the North, for whom the real issue was the threat slaveholders presented to the nation. For too long, Republicans argued, slaveholders had overridden popular majorities at home and in the United States as a whole, dragged the country into war, and corrupted the Supreme Court, the presidency and the Senate. The Republicans pointed out that only a quarter of white Southerners owned even a single slave and that the rest of Southern whites suffered from the dominion of slaveholders.
But the Republicans miscalculated, underestimating the unanimity of white Southerners, whatever their other divisions, over slavery. Entire states, not merely individuals, possessed and were possessed by slavery. Secessionists and Unionists in Virginia sought to protect the single greatest unifying interest in the state — enslaved labor — with the single language they possessed for doing so, a language of political right. The South sought to protect slavery’s interests in the only way available to them, through shifting their allegiance to a new federal system, the Confederate nation.
In short, the records of the Virginia secession debate demonstrate how the vocabularies of slavery and rights, entangled and intertwined from the very beginning of the United States, became one and the same in the secession crisis. Virginians saw themselves as victims, forced into action. Walter Leake, a delegate from Goochland County, lamented that “Northern fanaticism” had brazenly claimed “the power of the Federal Government for the purpose of advancing their selfish interests, and not for the purpose of saving the Constitution or advancing the rights and interests of all.”
The “disease which has called together this convention,” Leake lamented, was the North’s fixation on slavery. That fixation was not a mere “derangement; it is chronic, it is deep-seated,” and it must come to an end. “It is necessary for the Northern people to correct their sentiments upon the subject of slavery, it is necessary that they should abstain from intermeddling with the institution before any harmony or quiet can be restored.” No one could doubt who, or what, was to blame for the crisis of the Union.
Lincoln’s call for non-seceding states to contribute militia to put down the rebellion in South Carolina after the firing on Fort Sumter forced a choice. Virginia, willing to stand aside while the Union was dismantled, would not raise its hand against the “subjugation” of a “sister” slave state. If the federal government could coerce South Carolina it could coerce Virginia. The call for troops drove a choice between the North and the South and the secessionists seized that moment to push Virginia into disunion.
Perhaps, given new tools and perspectives, Americans can change the focus of our arguments about the “primary cause” of the Civil War. If the North fought to sustain the justice, power and authority of the federal government, the corollary, many assume, must be that the South fought for the opposite, for the power of the states.
But the equation did not balance in that way: the North did not fight at first to end slavery, but the South did fight to protect slavery. It is vital that we use the tools newly available to us to grasp this truth in its immediacy and complexity, before it fades even further from view.
Trumping Trump
Editorial from The New Republic
Liberals: Don’t Even Consider Gloating About Donald Trump Share the Wealth Some Questions About Obama’s Speech April 29, 2011 Now that Donald Trump appears on the verge of launching a presidential campaign, it is worth reflecting on the meaning of this low moment in American political history. Trump is a clown and a buffoon, and the odds of him winning even one Republican caucus or primary appear slim. But there is no denying that Trump has managed to tap into something genuinely worrisome in American politics. Democrats may be tempted to take pleasure in the fact that Trump will likely push the GOP presidential field to the right, and thereby help Obama in 2012. But this would be sheer myopia, and any delight over Trump’s arrival on the political scene is entirely misplaced. The Trump ascendancy calls not for glee, but for serious concern about the state of our country.
It’s true that the media erred in awarding Trump such a large spotlight—did all the cable news networks really have to cover his press conference on Wednesday?—but, at this point, the Trump phenomenon does not seem to be a mere media creation. His popularity (he currently leads in several polls) can no longer be denied. So what is Trump’s appeal? Why do his message and vulgar personality resonate with such a significant percentage of Americans? Trump’s embrace of birtherism has been the most widely discussed aspect of his rise. But this only scratches the surface of the Trump phenomenon.
What Trump actually stands for is an exaggerated sense of victimhood. This is the theme that unites his personal style with the political views he has thus far expressed. Are you tired of being pushed around? Are you tired of our country being pushed around? Trump’s political acuity lies in his ability to take these grievances and turn them into politics. His foreign policy views in essence consist of a pledge to bully other nations. China is “decimating our country.” OPEC is imperiling the economy. And ungrateful Libyans and Iraqis are trying to build a society from oil that is rightfully ours. (“We won the war. We take over the oil fields. We use the oil.”) When Bill O’Reilly, in an interview with Trump, seemed taken aback by the idea that we could simply force OPEC or China to do our bidding, Trump appeared surprised that anyone could view international relations as anything more than a contest of machismo. “The messenger is the key,” Trump told O’Reilly. “If you have the right messenger and they know how to deliver the message … you’re going to scare them, absolutely.”
Trump’s thinly veiled accusation that President Obama benefited from affirmative action when he applied to college derives from the same theme. This time the victims aren’t Americans as a whole, they are white Americans; but the message—of anger, resentment, and victimhood—is identical.
America is currently engaged in three wars. The country faces major economic challenges. Global warming is continuing apace. There is no chance any of these issues can be solved by yelling at foreign countries, or stirring up anger at Iraqis or Libyans or minority applicants to elite colleges. Donald Trump has appointed himself spokesman for some of the nastiest impulses in American politics, and he seems to have a following. The sooner the Republican mainstream rejects him, the better. And we liberals should be cheering them along as they do.
Liberals: Don’t Even Consider Gloating About Donald Trump Share the Wealth Some Questions About Obama’s Speech April 29, 2011 Now that Donald Trump appears on the verge of launching a presidential campaign, it is worth reflecting on the meaning of this low moment in American political history. Trump is a clown and a buffoon, and the odds of him winning even one Republican caucus or primary appear slim. But there is no denying that Trump has managed to tap into something genuinely worrisome in American politics. Democrats may be tempted to take pleasure in the fact that Trump will likely push the GOP presidential field to the right, and thereby help Obama in 2012. But this would be sheer myopia, and any delight over Trump’s arrival on the political scene is entirely misplaced. The Trump ascendancy calls not for glee, but for serious concern about the state of our country.
It’s true that the media erred in awarding Trump such a large spotlight—did all the cable news networks really have to cover his press conference on Wednesday?—but, at this point, the Trump phenomenon does not seem to be a mere media creation. His popularity (he currently leads in several polls) can no longer be denied. So what is Trump’s appeal? Why do his message and vulgar personality resonate with such a significant percentage of Americans? Trump’s embrace of birtherism has been the most widely discussed aspect of his rise. But this only scratches the surface of the Trump phenomenon.
What Trump actually stands for is an exaggerated sense of victimhood. This is the theme that unites his personal style with the political views he has thus far expressed. Are you tired of being pushed around? Are you tired of our country being pushed around? Trump’s political acuity lies in his ability to take these grievances and turn them into politics. His foreign policy views in essence consist of a pledge to bully other nations. China is “decimating our country.” OPEC is imperiling the economy. And ungrateful Libyans and Iraqis are trying to build a society from oil that is rightfully ours. (“We won the war. We take over the oil fields. We use the oil.”) When Bill O’Reilly, in an interview with Trump, seemed taken aback by the idea that we could simply force OPEC or China to do our bidding, Trump appeared surprised that anyone could view international relations as anything more than a contest of machismo. “The messenger is the key,” Trump told O’Reilly. “If you have the right messenger and they know how to deliver the message … you’re going to scare them, absolutely.”
Trump’s thinly veiled accusation that President Obama benefited from affirmative action when he applied to college derives from the same theme. This time the victims aren’t Americans as a whole, they are white Americans; but the message—of anger, resentment, and victimhood—is identical.
America is currently engaged in three wars. The country faces major economic challenges. Global warming is continuing apace. There is no chance any of these issues can be solved by yelling at foreign countries, or stirring up anger at Iraqis or Libyans or minority applicants to elite colleges. Donald Trump has appointed himself spokesman for some of the nastiest impulses in American politics, and he seems to have a following. The sooner the Republican mainstream rejects him, the better. And we liberals should be cheering them along as they do.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
The Republican Crackup
The Republican Crackup
By Joe Klein Tuesday, April 26, 2011 Ezra Klein–this is boring, but it’s almost always the case–has yet another smart piece today in which he posits Barack Obama as a moderate Republican from the early 1990s. I don’t know about the label, but the substance is right on target: Obama favored an individual mandate universal health care plan, which–as I’ve insisted here before–was originally a Republican idea (the first version I saw in the early 1990s was Stuart Butler’s Heritage Foundation plan, if you can believe it). Obama favored a cap-and-trade plan to limit carbon emissions; the first Bush Administration passed a (very successful) cap-and-trade plan for acid rain emissions. Obama favors a mix of tax increases and program cuts to melt the deficit, so did George H.W. Bush. (And that worked, too, in large part because Bill Clinton kept Bush’s discretionary spending freeze and added higher rates for the wealthy.) I could also add in Bush the Elder’s successful non-crusading foreign policy, which has been emulated by Obama (with a few exceptions, like Libya, but then Bush had his exceptions, too: Panama).
Given the success of all these programs, my thoughts turn not to Obama–but to the Republicans. Why aren’t they moderate Republicans anymore?
Seriously, the early 1990s were a fecund time for policy thinking–especially for programs, like those above, that seemed to combine liberal ends with conservative means. There were severe blind spots, to be sure: both Bush the Elder and Clinton were in the thrall of Wall Street greedsters; Clinton, especially, worked overtime to prove his bona fides and eligibility for campaign contributions by joining in the parade of financial deregulation. But there did seem to be a mainstream consensus–or, at least, negotiable differences–on many, if not most, important issues.
Now we have this craziness. The Republican party has rejected all of the polices mentioned above, except for financial deregulation. It has gone off the deep end on taxes. It has denied the long-term economic and societal benefits of universal health insurance. It has gone into climate change denial…it is hard for any card-carrying Republican to say: I believe that Darwinian evolution is God’s plan. These sad realities probably led to Haley Barbour’s decision not to run for President and may well lead to the same decision for Indiana’s Mitch Daniels. They have led Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty to make mortal fools of themselves.
A hundred years from now, historians will be having a field day: How did the Republicans go so far astray? Why did it work, from time to time, electorally? Why weren’t the Democrats more effective in stopping them? Why didn’t the society’s major conservative economic stakeholders (outside the uber-reactionary Oil Patch) renounce the sideshow and demand a more reasonable brand of conservatism?
Two words immediately come to mind: Fox News. And two more words: Rush Limbaugh. And two more words: Newt Gingrich. And two more: Frank Luntz. But it seems clear that all eight of these words are part of the same, superficial, demagogic media phenomenon. And it also seems clear to me that there is a lot more to the profound political swing to the right that we’ve witnessed than telecharlatanism. The fear that has accompanied our economic slump has made the fear that right-wing demagogues sell a more attractive product. There is also the accumulating decades of educational incompetence, since–let’s face it–a whole lot of smart female teachers were liberated to pursue their dreams and we were left, as Albert Shanker used to say, with the bottom 20% of college graduates to preside in our classrooms. And another thing: Perhaps this is just rear-view, rose-colored glasses, but after Bill Clinton took his lumps in 1994, he learned how to out-argue and out-think the extremists. His message was complicated, but his persona was clear–he was the McDonald’s-eating, lounge-singer-screwing, good ol’ boy with the 800 SATs, who really did understand how Americans (especially blue-collar American males) think, and really cared about their welfare. It was just flat embedded in his DNA after a childhood of having the cool athlete guys laugh at his sax-playing obese butt.
These are still early days for this President, a cooler cat than Clinton. His policies track with the Bush-Clinton sanity of the 1990s. He has arrested some truly dreadful trends that Bush the Younger launched us upon overseas and at home. He would have to be considered a favorite to be reelected in 2012, especially given the loony-bin nature of the current Republican party. But I do wonder why Obama isn’t more forceful, at times, in defense of sanity. And even more than that, I wonder about my media colleagues: Why are we so often chasing the palpable nonsense that Fox News peddles? Why aren’t we continually pointing out that there was a time–as Ezra implies today–when we had something resembling a consensus on some of the most important issues facing us? Why aren’t we going back to basics–I’m looking at you, CNN–on some fundamental things like evolution and the science behind climate change? (On the other hand, CNN has done a sensational job explaining what is actually in the federal budget.)
Last night, I watched two examples of the media at our best: Lawrence O’Donnell quietly filleting Rush Limbaugh on the subject of Jesus of Nazareth’s economic policies and Anderson Cooper proving the utter non-existent nonsense of Donald Trump’s “investigative” efforts to discover the “truth” about Barack Obama’s birth certificate in Hawaii. Regular readers here know that I’ve avoided all mention of Trumpet from my posts on the grounds of life being too short for me to be played a sucker by that lame fool, but Anderson’s work is probably a necessity for a mainstream outlet.
For most of the 40 years that I’ve been a working reporter, the country chugged along pretty damned well. There were plenty of important issues, but none that threatened the essence of our American miracle. That’s no longer true. We face a future dominated by the celebration of ignorance and sloppy short-term thinking. I think those of us who are trying to actually report the world as it is–flawed and mistaken as we sometimes are–are facing a great challenge right now. We really owe the public a good, smart, rigorous couple of years between now and election day, 2012.
By Joe Klein Tuesday, April 26, 2011 Ezra Klein–this is boring, but it’s almost always the case–has yet another smart piece today in which he posits Barack Obama as a moderate Republican from the early 1990s. I don’t know about the label, but the substance is right on target: Obama favored an individual mandate universal health care plan, which–as I’ve insisted here before–was originally a Republican idea (the first version I saw in the early 1990s was Stuart Butler’s Heritage Foundation plan, if you can believe it). Obama favored a cap-and-trade plan to limit carbon emissions; the first Bush Administration passed a (very successful) cap-and-trade plan for acid rain emissions. Obama favors a mix of tax increases and program cuts to melt the deficit, so did George H.W. Bush. (And that worked, too, in large part because Bill Clinton kept Bush’s discretionary spending freeze and added higher rates for the wealthy.) I could also add in Bush the Elder’s successful non-crusading foreign policy, which has been emulated by Obama (with a few exceptions, like Libya, but then Bush had his exceptions, too: Panama).
Given the success of all these programs, my thoughts turn not to Obama–but to the Republicans. Why aren’t they moderate Republicans anymore?
Seriously, the early 1990s were a fecund time for policy thinking–especially for programs, like those above, that seemed to combine liberal ends with conservative means. There were severe blind spots, to be sure: both Bush the Elder and Clinton were in the thrall of Wall Street greedsters; Clinton, especially, worked overtime to prove his bona fides and eligibility for campaign contributions by joining in the parade of financial deregulation. But there did seem to be a mainstream consensus–or, at least, negotiable differences–on many, if not most, important issues.
Now we have this craziness. The Republican party has rejected all of the polices mentioned above, except for financial deregulation. It has gone off the deep end on taxes. It has denied the long-term economic and societal benefits of universal health insurance. It has gone into climate change denial…it is hard for any card-carrying Republican to say: I believe that Darwinian evolution is God’s plan. These sad realities probably led to Haley Barbour’s decision not to run for President and may well lead to the same decision for Indiana’s Mitch Daniels. They have led Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty to make mortal fools of themselves.
A hundred years from now, historians will be having a field day: How did the Republicans go so far astray? Why did it work, from time to time, electorally? Why weren’t the Democrats more effective in stopping them? Why didn’t the society’s major conservative economic stakeholders (outside the uber-reactionary Oil Patch) renounce the sideshow and demand a more reasonable brand of conservatism?
Two words immediately come to mind: Fox News. And two more words: Rush Limbaugh. And two more words: Newt Gingrich. And two more: Frank Luntz. But it seems clear that all eight of these words are part of the same, superficial, demagogic media phenomenon. And it also seems clear to me that there is a lot more to the profound political swing to the right that we’ve witnessed than telecharlatanism. The fear that has accompanied our economic slump has made the fear that right-wing demagogues sell a more attractive product. There is also the accumulating decades of educational incompetence, since–let’s face it–a whole lot of smart female teachers were liberated to pursue their dreams and we were left, as Albert Shanker used to say, with the bottom 20% of college graduates to preside in our classrooms. And another thing: Perhaps this is just rear-view, rose-colored glasses, but after Bill Clinton took his lumps in 1994, he learned how to out-argue and out-think the extremists. His message was complicated, but his persona was clear–he was the McDonald’s-eating, lounge-singer-screwing, good ol’ boy with the 800 SATs, who really did understand how Americans (especially blue-collar American males) think, and really cared about their welfare. It was just flat embedded in his DNA after a childhood of having the cool athlete guys laugh at his sax-playing obese butt.
These are still early days for this President, a cooler cat than Clinton. His policies track with the Bush-Clinton sanity of the 1990s. He has arrested some truly dreadful trends that Bush the Younger launched us upon overseas and at home. He would have to be considered a favorite to be reelected in 2012, especially given the loony-bin nature of the current Republican party. But I do wonder why Obama isn’t more forceful, at times, in defense of sanity. And even more than that, I wonder about my media colleagues: Why are we so often chasing the palpable nonsense that Fox News peddles? Why aren’t we continually pointing out that there was a time–as Ezra implies today–when we had something resembling a consensus on some of the most important issues facing us? Why aren’t we going back to basics–I’m looking at you, CNN–on some fundamental things like evolution and the science behind climate change? (On the other hand, CNN has done a sensational job explaining what is actually in the federal budget.)
Last night, I watched two examples of the media at our best: Lawrence O’Donnell quietly filleting Rush Limbaugh on the subject of Jesus of Nazareth’s economic policies and Anderson Cooper proving the utter non-existent nonsense of Donald Trump’s “investigative” efforts to discover the “truth” about Barack Obama’s birth certificate in Hawaii. Regular readers here know that I’ve avoided all mention of Trumpet from my posts on the grounds of life being too short for me to be played a sucker by that lame fool, but Anderson’s work is probably a necessity for a mainstream outlet.
For most of the 40 years that I’ve been a working reporter, the country chugged along pretty damned well. There were plenty of important issues, but none that threatened the essence of our American miracle. That’s no longer true. We face a future dominated by the celebration of ignorance and sloppy short-term thinking. I think those of us who are trying to actually report the world as it is–flawed and mistaken as we sometimes are–are facing a great challenge right now. We really owe the public a good, smart, rigorous couple of years between now and election day, 2012.
Budget DeficIt FACTS
Budget Showdown Wednesday, Apr 27, 2011 08:01 ET
How The World Works Don't believe the Obama big spender hype
The GOP just can't handle the truth: Tax cuts, war and the financial crisis created our huge deficits
By Andrew Leonard
President Barack ObamaHow many outright errors of fact can you spot in the following paragraph from an op-ed by Mitt Romney published this Monday?
[Barack Obama's] approach has been to engage in one of the biggest peacetime spending binges in American history. With its failed stimulus package, its grandiose new social programs, its fervor for more taxes and government regulations, and its hostility toward business, the administration has made the debt problem worse, hindered economic recovery and needlessly cost American workers countless jobs.
Let's see. We're at war in Afghanistan, so "peacetime" is dubious. Obama has cut taxes -- income taxes, payroll taxes, taxes for small businesses. Private sector economic forecasters say the stimulus increased GDP growth and kept the unemployment rate from rising higher. We could even range into the subjective, and argue that from the left side of the political aisle, Obama has been anything but hostile to business and hasn't done nearly enough to regulate the financial sector. And we could note, just for fun, that Obama's "grandiose" social program is modeled explicitly after the healthcare reform enacted by none other than Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. (And this guy, most political analysts think, poses the biggest threat to Obama's reelection!)
But nothing is more ridiculous than the notion that Obama is a "binge" spender. Paul Krugman rightfully calls this scurrilous accusation a "zombie lie." No matter how many times you kill it, whether by decapitation, a spike through the heart or immolation -- it just keeps coming back. It's enough to make you despair -- particularly when you consider how many more times we're going to hear this nonsense from Romney and the rest of the Republican presidential candidates from now until the last precinct closes on Election Day 2012.
But as long as the undead keep coming, we have no choice but to fight hellspawn with our own holy fire. So let's review the facts.
The current budget deficit is predominantly an outgrowth of the Bush tax cuts, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Medicare Part D and the financial crisis.
Here's the first thing to understand. Before Obama took office, before he was able to spend a single dime as president, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that the 2009 deficit would be $1 trillion dollars. According to an analysis published by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in June 2010, about half of that total -- $500 billion -- can be attributed to the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Another $400 billion was a direct result of the "changed economic outlook" -- the collapse of "tax revenues and swelling outlays for unemployment insurance, food stamps and other safety-net programs."
In the summer of 2009, the New York Times's David Leonhardt (recently awarded a Pulitzer prize for his economic coverage) conducted an indispensable analysis of the budget deficit for 2009. (By that point it was projected to hit $1.2 trillion; ultimately it reached $1.4 trillion -- in part because of stimulus spending and in part because the economy continued to get worse.) Leonhardt observed that since 2000, the year that Bill Clinton bequeathed George Bush with an $800 billion surplus, there had been a negative $2 trillion swing in the health of the government's finances. Crunching the numbers from a decade's worth of CBO reports, Leonhardt discovered:
The 2001 and 2007-2009 recessions accounted for 37 percent of the swing -- again, because of decreased tax revenue and automatically higher spending on social welfare.
Legislation signed by George Bush accounted for another 33 percent -- the tax cuts and Medicare Part D.
"Mr. Obama's main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies -- together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama -- account for 20 percent of the swing."
"About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama's agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas."
The CBPP includes a neat little chart in its analysis that brings home the long-term consequences of the decisions made by Bush and Obama. Yes, the stimulus added to the budget deficit in the short term, but over the next 10 years, its contribution to the ongoing deficit -- along with TARP and the Fannie-Freddie rescue -- is minimal. The real drivers of the deficit will continue to be the Bush tax cuts and the wars -- if both continue. The tax cuts alone will account for some $7 trillion of the additional national debt over the next 10 years. And the interest payments on the debt accrued simply to pay for the automatic safety-net response to the Great Recession will also continue making a meaningful impact for years to come, long after a full recovery.
How The World Works Don't believe the Obama big spender hype
The GOP just can't handle the truth: Tax cuts, war and the financial crisis created our huge deficits
By Andrew Leonard
President Barack ObamaHow many outright errors of fact can you spot in the following paragraph from an op-ed by Mitt Romney published this Monday?
[Barack Obama's] approach has been to engage in one of the biggest peacetime spending binges in American history. With its failed stimulus package, its grandiose new social programs, its fervor for more taxes and government regulations, and its hostility toward business, the administration has made the debt problem worse, hindered economic recovery and needlessly cost American workers countless jobs.
Let's see. We're at war in Afghanistan, so "peacetime" is dubious. Obama has cut taxes -- income taxes, payroll taxes, taxes for small businesses. Private sector economic forecasters say the stimulus increased GDP growth and kept the unemployment rate from rising higher. We could even range into the subjective, and argue that from the left side of the political aisle, Obama has been anything but hostile to business and hasn't done nearly enough to regulate the financial sector. And we could note, just for fun, that Obama's "grandiose" social program is modeled explicitly after the healthcare reform enacted by none other than Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. (And this guy, most political analysts think, poses the biggest threat to Obama's reelection!)
But nothing is more ridiculous than the notion that Obama is a "binge" spender. Paul Krugman rightfully calls this scurrilous accusation a "zombie lie." No matter how many times you kill it, whether by decapitation, a spike through the heart or immolation -- it just keeps coming back. It's enough to make you despair -- particularly when you consider how many more times we're going to hear this nonsense from Romney and the rest of the Republican presidential candidates from now until the last precinct closes on Election Day 2012.
But as long as the undead keep coming, we have no choice but to fight hellspawn with our own holy fire. So let's review the facts.
The current budget deficit is predominantly an outgrowth of the Bush tax cuts, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Medicare Part D and the financial crisis.
Here's the first thing to understand. Before Obama took office, before he was able to spend a single dime as president, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that the 2009 deficit would be $1 trillion dollars. According to an analysis published by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in June 2010, about half of that total -- $500 billion -- can be attributed to the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Another $400 billion was a direct result of the "changed economic outlook" -- the collapse of "tax revenues and swelling outlays for unemployment insurance, food stamps and other safety-net programs."
In the summer of 2009, the New York Times's David Leonhardt (recently awarded a Pulitzer prize for his economic coverage) conducted an indispensable analysis of the budget deficit for 2009. (By that point it was projected to hit $1.2 trillion; ultimately it reached $1.4 trillion -- in part because of stimulus spending and in part because the economy continued to get worse.) Leonhardt observed that since 2000, the year that Bill Clinton bequeathed George Bush with an $800 billion surplus, there had been a negative $2 trillion swing in the health of the government's finances. Crunching the numbers from a decade's worth of CBO reports, Leonhardt discovered:
The 2001 and 2007-2009 recessions accounted for 37 percent of the swing -- again, because of decreased tax revenue and automatically higher spending on social welfare.
Legislation signed by George Bush accounted for another 33 percent -- the tax cuts and Medicare Part D.
"Mr. Obama's main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies -- together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama -- account for 20 percent of the swing."
"About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama's agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas."
The CBPP includes a neat little chart in its analysis that brings home the long-term consequences of the decisions made by Bush and Obama. Yes, the stimulus added to the budget deficit in the short term, but over the next 10 years, its contribution to the ongoing deficit -- along with TARP and the Fannie-Freddie rescue -- is minimal. The real drivers of the deficit will continue to be the Bush tax cuts and the wars -- if both continue. The tax cuts alone will account for some $7 trillion of the additional national debt over the next 10 years. And the interest payments on the debt accrued simply to pay for the automatic safety-net response to the Great Recession will also continue making a meaningful impact for years to come, long after a full recovery.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Krugman vs. Leonard
I hope that in essence Leonard is correct; that this President has achieved all that could be achieved progressively, that a more aggressively progressive leader would have achieved less.
by Andrew Leonard
Paul Krugman Tuesday, Apr 26, 2011 15:25 ET
How The World Works Paul Krugman and the disillusioned left
A profile of Obama's toughest critic inspires liberal gloom. But is there an alternative history that makes sense?
By Andrew Leonard
Wikipedia/ProlineserverEven though it recapitulates a narrative that has been explicit and endlessly discussed since the very beginning of the Obama administration -- leftist disillusionment with Obama -- Benjamin Wallace-Wells' New York Magazine profile of Paul Krugman, "What's Left of the Left," has been getting plenty of attention.
Maybe it's the paradoxical tone of Wallace-Well's eloquently articulated elegy for liberalism -- Krugman's got a lot going for him, after all -- Nobel Prize, prominent public intellectual bully pulpit, hugely trafficked blog -- but somehow Wallace-Wells uses the profile to tell a story of defeat: of Obama's failure to deliver true progressive change, and Krugman's failure to get Washington to listen to his liberal "purism."
For close followers of the political and economic scene, Krugman's Obama critique is all too familiar: the stimulus should have been bigger, healthcare reform should have included a public option, the banks should have been nationalized, et cetera. Krugman staked out his position before Inauguration Day -- Obama is insufficiently aggressive and ambitious -- and he has stuck to it ever since. But for those on the left who are feeling a sense of outright betrayal, Krugman delivers a bit of a surprise:
Krugman has been suspicious of Obama since the beginning of the campaign, and his early doubts have remained. "It's not so much -- it's not a values difference. I think Obama was and is committed to the welfare state." What has always troubled him, Krugman says, is Obama's conviction "that we can find the center and work with these people." This seems to Krugman a deeply naive view of politics, though one that is pervasive in Washington. "There are really very, very few things, very few values issues on which both sides of our political divide agree," he says. "You may in the end get an agreement that involves both parties but is not bipartisan in any positive sense of the word."
The quote put me in mind of a telling moment during the conclusion of Obama's speech on the deficit two weeks ago, when the president alluded to the partisan warfare that had plagued his term.
Of course, there are those who simply say there's no way we can come together at all and agree on a solution to this challenge. They'll say the politics of this city are just too broken; the choices are just too hard; the parties are just too far apart.
And then with a wry smile and downcast eyes, Obama said "And after a few years on this job, I have some sympathy for this view."
It was a laugh line, but it was also an honest line -- and just happened to be in a speech that contained the boldest articulation of Democratic values that Obama has made during his term so far. The president could have been speaking directly to Krugman. He was, in part, acknowledging Krugman's point.
But who is really being naive here? Krugman's position is that Obama starts too far to the right and leaves himself little negotiation room -- that he reduces the politics of the possible. But you have to wonder whether Obama would have gotten any significant legislation accomplished if he had come out of the gate pushing for a much bigger stimulus, single-payer healthcare, and the nationalization of Citigroup.
Which scenario is more likely -- the current Republican party buckling to Obama's progressive vigor, or centrist Democrat senators fleeing for the hills, denying the White House 60 votes on any of its agenda items? I know where I'd lay my money down.
This is not to say that Obama couldn't have demonstrated more leadership. It's a fair criticism to argue that he too often allows his opponents to seize the initiative, and he hasn't been forceful enough in articulating his own vision. That's disappointing, but it's not betrayal -- it's not evidence that Obama is some kind of conservative mole, destroying what remains of liberal America from within. And it should not be confused with the notion that had he been more explicitly radical he would have achieved more -- that's simply not guaranteed at all.
The two Democratic presidents who built the vast majority of the liberal welfare state we know today, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, operated under dramatically different political dynamics than does Obama. Their majorities were far bigger, the partisan divide wasn't set in concrete, and -- especially important -- the Senate was not a place that required a super-majority for every procedural step.
It's also worth noting that Lyndon Johnson's civil rights accomplishments were in large part responsible for the partisan reorganization of the United States that plagues us today -- the demise of the liberal northern Republican and the migration of southern Democratic conservatives to the GOP. Obama's tragedy may be that he is by nature a conciliator and a compromiser in an era that brooks no accommodation. But true disillusionment would require confidence that a different leader could have achieved much more. I think the opposite is more likely true -- a different leader could have dug us into an even deeper hole.
by Andrew Leonard
Paul Krugman Tuesday, Apr 26, 2011 15:25 ET
How The World Works Paul Krugman and the disillusioned left
A profile of Obama's toughest critic inspires liberal gloom. But is there an alternative history that makes sense?
By Andrew Leonard
Wikipedia/ProlineserverEven though it recapitulates a narrative that has been explicit and endlessly discussed since the very beginning of the Obama administration -- leftist disillusionment with Obama -- Benjamin Wallace-Wells' New York Magazine profile of Paul Krugman, "What's Left of the Left," has been getting plenty of attention.
Maybe it's the paradoxical tone of Wallace-Well's eloquently articulated elegy for liberalism -- Krugman's got a lot going for him, after all -- Nobel Prize, prominent public intellectual bully pulpit, hugely trafficked blog -- but somehow Wallace-Wells uses the profile to tell a story of defeat: of Obama's failure to deliver true progressive change, and Krugman's failure to get Washington to listen to his liberal "purism."
For close followers of the political and economic scene, Krugman's Obama critique is all too familiar: the stimulus should have been bigger, healthcare reform should have included a public option, the banks should have been nationalized, et cetera. Krugman staked out his position before Inauguration Day -- Obama is insufficiently aggressive and ambitious -- and he has stuck to it ever since. But for those on the left who are feeling a sense of outright betrayal, Krugman delivers a bit of a surprise:
Krugman has been suspicious of Obama since the beginning of the campaign, and his early doubts have remained. "It's not so much -- it's not a values difference. I think Obama was and is committed to the welfare state." What has always troubled him, Krugman says, is Obama's conviction "that we can find the center and work with these people." This seems to Krugman a deeply naive view of politics, though one that is pervasive in Washington. "There are really very, very few things, very few values issues on which both sides of our political divide agree," he says. "You may in the end get an agreement that involves both parties but is not bipartisan in any positive sense of the word."
The quote put me in mind of a telling moment during the conclusion of Obama's speech on the deficit two weeks ago, when the president alluded to the partisan warfare that had plagued his term.
Of course, there are those who simply say there's no way we can come together at all and agree on a solution to this challenge. They'll say the politics of this city are just too broken; the choices are just too hard; the parties are just too far apart.
And then with a wry smile and downcast eyes, Obama said "And after a few years on this job, I have some sympathy for this view."
It was a laugh line, but it was also an honest line -- and just happened to be in a speech that contained the boldest articulation of Democratic values that Obama has made during his term so far. The president could have been speaking directly to Krugman. He was, in part, acknowledging Krugman's point.
But who is really being naive here? Krugman's position is that Obama starts too far to the right and leaves himself little negotiation room -- that he reduces the politics of the possible. But you have to wonder whether Obama would have gotten any significant legislation accomplished if he had come out of the gate pushing for a much bigger stimulus, single-payer healthcare, and the nationalization of Citigroup.
Which scenario is more likely -- the current Republican party buckling to Obama's progressive vigor, or centrist Democrat senators fleeing for the hills, denying the White House 60 votes on any of its agenda items? I know where I'd lay my money down.
This is not to say that Obama couldn't have demonstrated more leadership. It's a fair criticism to argue that he too often allows his opponents to seize the initiative, and he hasn't been forceful enough in articulating his own vision. That's disappointing, but it's not betrayal -- it's not evidence that Obama is some kind of conservative mole, destroying what remains of liberal America from within. And it should not be confused with the notion that had he been more explicitly radical he would have achieved more -- that's simply not guaranteed at all.
The two Democratic presidents who built the vast majority of the liberal welfare state we know today, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, operated under dramatically different political dynamics than does Obama. Their majorities were far bigger, the partisan divide wasn't set in concrete, and -- especially important -- the Senate was not a place that required a super-majority for every procedural step.
It's also worth noting that Lyndon Johnson's civil rights accomplishments were in large part responsible for the partisan reorganization of the United States that plagues us today -- the demise of the liberal northern Republican and the migration of southern Democratic conservatives to the GOP. Obama's tragedy may be that he is by nature a conciliator and a compromiser in an era that brooks no accommodation. But true disillusionment would require confidence that a different leader could have achieved much more. I think the opposite is more likely true -- a different leader could have dug us into an even deeper hole.
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