Rick Perlstein at TPM Cafe Book Club:
The central concern of the archetypal right is security, and the archetypal concern of the left is equality. The right is driven by a resentment directed at anybody, whether at home or abroad, who threatens their sense of right order and stability. The left is driven by resentment directed at those who aggrandize to themselves more than their fair share. When times are good, the mood of the country leans to the right; when times are bad, it leans left. When times are good, most people don't care about inequality because they have their piece of the pie.That some people have too much is not a problem for the broad center so long as the center has enough. The center doesn't care about inequality until they see themselves as being treated unfairly. It's really pretty simple. And that's why a left politics is unsustainable in the long run: once the problem (I don't have enough) is solved, the people in the center go back to leaning toward the right.
I don't think I'm being cynical in stressing that politics of the left or the right is driven more by resentment than by idealistic aspiration. True idealists are always a very small percentage of the electorate. Their practical role when they reach leadership positions (with the once or twice in a century exception) is limited for the most part to create a cover story that provides moral justification for immoral purposes. They themselves might be sincere in professing this ideal as their own true motivation, but such idealism is used by others to cover their less than idealistic agenda. It's as true for Jacobins on the left as for the fascists on the right. But to pick an example from this week, McClellan apparently still believes that Bush wentt into Iraq to spread democracy.
There's a difference between being and idealist and being a fool or a fanatic. You have to be in some bizarre dissociated state of denial to really believe that at this point Iraq was primarily motivated by the idealistic idea to spread democracy, but a lot of people do, and maybe even George Bush himself does. But the obvious truth is that Americans supported the war not because it was an opportunity to spread democracy but because of their security fears regarding the threat of terrorism. They bought the propaganda, at least at first, that invading Iraq was the government's way to keep them safe. And the obvious truth is that the government would never have invaded Iraq if the only reasons were either to fight terrorists or to spread democracy. Israel was a factor, but it was always primarily about controlling the oil. I think most people understand that now, even if McClellan still does not.
A big part of my approach to understanding political identity is dispositional: my sense that "right" and "left" are fundamental, and perhaps permanent, ways of being in the world, not a mere list of policy positions; that, as William Gilbert of Gillbert and Sullivan wrote in his libretto for Iolanthe, "every boy and every gal/ That's born into the world alive; Is either a little Liberal/ Or else a little Conservative." . . .
One of the things I most regret about my work in Before the Storm is that I uncritically accepted, in Joe's terms, "the Right's own account" of its own postwar history, and especially its own representation of itself as a more or less sui generis formation dating from the formation of National Review. Just as right-wing dispositions are continuous throughout American (and human history), right-wing politics is as well, even at the high tide of the New Deal era; just pick up a random issue of the the Congressional Record from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, or 1950s, and you will find perorations from Southern Democrats and Midwestern Republicans in no way distinguishable from a Ronald Reagan or Strom Thurmond from 1964 (or 1974, or 1984, or 1994, for that matter).I think this is correct. There is a kind of archetypal left and right. It's the characteristic of any modern or post-traditionalist society. And while most of us fall in between, the mood of the country pushes people in the center to create majorities for the left or the right. Politics is about one side or the other controlling the mood. But why is the mood of the country controlled at times by the right and at other times by the left?
The central concern of the archetypal right is security, and the archetypal concern of the left is equality. The right is driven by a resentment directed at anybody, whether at home or abroad, who threatens their sense of right order and stability. The left is driven by resentment directed at those who aggrandize to themselves more than their fair share. When times are good, the mood of the country leans to the right; when times are bad, it leans left. When times are good, most people don't care about inequality because they have their piece of the pie.That some people have too much is not a problem for the broad center so long as the center has enough. The center doesn't care about inequality until they see themselves as being treated unfairly. It's really pretty simple. And that's why a left politics is unsustainable in the long run: once the problem (I don't have enough) is solved, the people in the center go back to leaning toward the right.
I don't think I'm being cynical in stressing that politics of the left or the right is driven more by resentment than by idealistic aspiration. True idealists are always a very small percentage of the electorate. Their practical role when they reach leadership positions (with the once or twice in a century exception) is limited for the most part to create a cover story that provides moral justification for immoral purposes. They themselves might be sincere in professing this ideal as their own true motivation, but such idealism is used by others to cover their less than idealistic agenda. It's as true for Jacobins on the left as for the fascists on the right. But to pick an example from this week, McClellan apparently still believes that Bush wentt into Iraq to spread democracy.
There's a difference between being and idealist and being a fool or a fanatic. You have to be in some bizarre dissociated state of denial to really believe that at this point Iraq was primarily motivated by the idealistic idea to spread democracy, but a lot of people do, and maybe even George Bush himself does. But the obvious truth is that Americans supported the war not because it was an opportunity to spread democracy but because of their security fears regarding the threat of terrorism. They bought the propaganda, at least at first, that invading Iraq was the government's way to keep them safe. And the obvious truth is that the government would never have invaded Iraq if the only reasons were either to fight terrorists or to spread democracy. Israel was a factor, but it was always primarily about controlling the oil. I think most people understand that now, even if McClellan still does not.
But back to the mood of the country: The thirties was a time when times were bad for most people, so the country leaned left. The fifties was a time when times were good, so the country leaned right. The sixties continued the prosperity of the fifties, but was also a time when long-simmering grievances from the black minority along with a disastrous war were the fly in the ointment. The War and the civil rights movement converged to create a remarkable period of unrest during a time of general prosperity. Most prospering Americans leaned right, while many young people (though not a majority) and most black people leaned left because of the war and because of the oppressiveness of the segregationist system. The people enjoying this prosperity by and large saw themselves in opposition to those who were not enjoying it or feared giving up their lives pointlessly in an absurd, unwinnable war.
Nixon saw this polarization and simply developed a "silent-majority" politics to exploit it. The interesting question for me is whether the backlash to the right had to happen the way it did. Every modern society has this dispositional left/right polarization. So why, for instance, in the last forty years did the right control the mood in the U.S. and the left control it in large parts of Europe? I think the most likely explanation has to do with the prosperity enjoyed by the U.S. in the fifties and sixties that contrasted with the relative lack of prosperity in Europe during that time. And because Europe didn't have the intensity of civil unrest America suffered because of civil rights and the war, it did not experience the polarization that was the seedbed of the right-wing ascendancy in the U.S. after the seventies.
European-style social democracies provide reasonable solutions that meet the basic human needs for both order and equity. European societies, I would argue, evolved more or less sanely along a social democratic trajectory because there were relatively few threats to its social order to feed the fears and resentments of the right. The European dispositional right was still there, but it was not taken seriously by those in the center. The same evolution probably would have happened in the U.S. along a continued New Deal social democratic trajectory had it not been for the fears and resentments provoked by the threats to order that characterized sixties and the sexual and identity politics that characterized the seventies, all of which combined put too great a strain on Main Street's tolerance for change. It was too much too fast, and the country leaned right in the delusional hope that things would slow down.
The second interesting question is whether Main Street is ready now to move on. That's what Obama represents. Saying goodbye to all of that polarization and to move forward along what should be a natural social democratic trajectory. I think it is, and that's the basis for my confidence that Obama will win fairly easily in November. I have only one real qualm: The country might feel uncomfortable to give the Democrats both a congressional majority and the White House. That might push some independents to split their vote.
I have certainly made the argument that one party controlling all the branches of government is not healthy for the republic. But the problem lies in that the GOP is not really a legitimate party anymore. The opposition it offers since the nineties has not been a loyal opposition but an purely obstructionist one that puts party over country. The dispositional right certainly has a place in our politics, but the party of the right needs to restore its legitimacy as loyal opposition before it is taken seriously again.
Nixon saw this polarization and simply developed a "silent-majority" politics to exploit it. The interesting question for me is whether the backlash to the right had to happen the way it did. Every modern society has this dispositional left/right polarization. So why, for instance, in the last forty years did the right control the mood in the U.S. and the left control it in large parts of Europe? I think the most likely explanation has to do with the prosperity enjoyed by the U.S. in the fifties and sixties that contrasted with the relative lack of prosperity in Europe during that time. And because Europe didn't have the intensity of civil unrest America suffered because of civil rights and the war, it did not experience the polarization that was the seedbed of the right-wing ascendancy in the U.S. after the seventies.
European-style social democracies provide reasonable solutions that meet the basic human needs for both order and equity. European societies, I would argue, evolved more or less sanely along a social democratic trajectory because there were relatively few threats to its social order to feed the fears and resentments of the right. The European dispositional right was still there, but it was not taken seriously by those in the center. The same evolution probably would have happened in the U.S. along a continued New Deal social democratic trajectory had it not been for the fears and resentments provoked by the threats to order that characterized sixties and the sexual and identity politics that characterized the seventies, all of which combined put too great a strain on Main Street's tolerance for change. It was too much too fast, and the country leaned right in the delusional hope that things would slow down.
The second interesting question is whether Main Street is ready now to move on. That's what Obama represents. Saying goodbye to all of that polarization and to move forward along what should be a natural social democratic trajectory. I think it is, and that's the basis for my confidence that Obama will win fairly easily in November. I have only one real qualm: The country might feel uncomfortable to give the Democrats both a congressional majority and the White House. That might push some independents to split their vote.
I have certainly made the argument that one party controlling all the branches of government is not healthy for the republic. But the problem lies in that the GOP is not really a legitimate party anymore. The opposition it offers since the nineties has not been a loyal opposition but an purely obstructionist one that puts party over country. The dispositional right certainly has a place in our politics, but the party of the right needs to restore its legitimacy as loyal opposition before it is taken seriously again.