A pragmatist’s ticket: Barack Obama and Lawrence Summers

If presidential elections were conceived to realize the ideals of bloggers as well as billionaires, my nomination for the ideal ticket for our times would be the re-election of Barack Obama and the return of his principle economic advisor Lawrence Summers as his Vice-President.

Summers is as lovable and definitely as smart as Dick Cheney—and clearly the only serious conservative of the two. Unfortunately, both Summers and Obama spent time in Harvard and Washington; Republicans, libertarians, and political refugees in Canada could make something of that for a while.

Yet, they balance each other in striking ways. Obama speaks softly and Summers looks like Teddy Roosevelt’s big stick. Obama is serving a tumultuous first term and Summers is enjoying a sabbatical. Summers is the heavyweight on everything suburban that Mitt Romney thinks Barack Obama is light on.

Obama may turn out in the history books to be the most level-headed conservative president since Dwight Eisenhower. But that can’t be accepted in real time—he’s not white, wide, rich, or old enough.

These are dangerous, ambiguous times—replete with circumstances that weak individuals in politics can’t acknowledge. They’re the ones who ask Americans to feel sure about the future by drawing red lines on maps on other continents and who promise constitutional amendments to balance the national budget. As if ultimatums and constitutions can excuse leaders from using their heads when the facts change and new decisions are required.

On the other hand, Obama and Summers use words like “flexibility” and “contingency” when thinking about how to address future responsibilities. Here’s Summers in the Financial Times writing on how to get to sustainable growth:

"The right approach is to use contingent commitments – policies that commit to action to normalize conditions, but only when certain thresholds are crossed. So, for example, it might be appropriate for the Federal Reserve to commit to maintain the current Fed Funds rate until some threshold with respect to unemployment or expected inflation is crossed. Commitments to fund infrastructure over many years might include a commitment that a financing mechanism such as a gasoline tax would be triggered when some level of employment or output growth has been achieved for a given interval. Tax reform legislation might propose that new rates be phased in at a pace that would depend on economic performance.”

Click on: www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/52818152-74d8-11e1-ab8b-00144feab49a.html#axzz1qJwOYXFg

This is not sexy stuff for the campaign trail. At the same time, Obama is being scolded by Mitt Romney for using the word “flexibility” in characterizing future talks on nuclear arms cooperation with Russia.

My ticket’s use of words like flexibility, contingency, and other qualifiers will need millions of marketing dollars to compete against the Hollywood masculine rhetoric of the likely alternative. However, their approach, over time, just might leave a rather compelling impression of two individuals determined to apply careful thought to the work of serving America’s interests.

Losing Russia will make losing China more likely

It’s still cool—even if it excuses stupendous profits and ridiculously expensive speeches by Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger—to believe that trade will ultimately lead to democracy in China and a more stable world.

Conversely, it is not cool any longer to be hopeful about Russia.

It’s the height of sophistication in American politics to not count on Russia to act like a democracy or to be of any help in advancing America’s interests. Obama’s desire to “re-set” the relationship was an example of a young president’s naiveté. Time Magazine, that well oiled weather vane for thousands who still read magazines to inform their politics, recently profiled Vladimir Putin as the “Tsar of the New Russia.”

On March 4th Russia will hold a presidential election and on March 6th the Republicans will have their Super Tuesday in eight US states.

Feelings are sour in both electorates. So, Putin, the Russian presidential front-runner, campaigns against American imperialism and promises to rebuild Russia’s defenses. In America, not one Republican candidate for president bothers to even talk about rebuilding relations with Russia—the biggest, strongest—albeit troubled—new democracy in the world.

This could turn out very badly—surprisingly, for those who think the future’s all about what happens to China.

Richard Bernstein points out how the Chinese government uses the quarrels between the United States and Russia to play down the ideological content of the west’s appeal in China:

“The day after the Russian parliamentary elections in early December, the Chinese publication Global Times, an English-language newspaper and website managed by People’s Daily, the official organ of the Communist Party official, ran an editorial on how little credit the West gave to Vladimir Putin’s Russia for becoming a democratic country. “Russia’s transition to democracy has cost it dearly,” the editorial said, attributing a lot of Russia’s problems, including its failure to achieve prosperity and its “brutal wars” in Chechnya, to its adoption of a “Western-style election with a multi-party system.” The lesson is clear. China shouldn’t make the same mistake of trying to curry favor with the West by becoming a multiparty democracy itself. “The West doesn’t really have an interest in promoting democracy to the world,” the editorial avers. “Its scheme is to expand its interests hidden behind that process.”

Click on: www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/feb/23/chinese-are-coming/?pagination=false

China’s present model of authoritarian state capitalism isn’t an end state. But China isn’t necessarily on its way to becoming a western butterfly either.

National pride can be a dangerous tool for reactionaries and is being used effectively by China’s governing elite.

The more the United States and Russian leaders and elites portray one another as imperialists and corrupt, the easier it is for Chinese leaders to portray soft power talk about democracy as merely a ploy to repress China’s ambitions to be a great power.

The closer Russia gets to becoming a great democratic power, the better freedom’s chances will be in China.

After two centuries, Europeans still insist that American democrats and capitalists haven’t yet grown up. At least, Americans should give Russians a little time, say a decade or so, to catch up.

Jeffrey Sachs and Niall Ferguson: duelling visions, in person

One thing that made the 60s exciting—and great—was the vivid personal animosity between many of its best protagonists. Gore Vidal and William Buckley, Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson ripped into one another in public and openly feared what the other’s ideas would do to America, and the world.

Now rising above the incoherence of statistics and pup-tents in parks, we finally have a duel of egos worthy of that earlier era of danger and change.

A week ago, on America’s blue-ribbon public affairs show GPS, Fareed Zakaria asked world economist Jeffrey Sachs and world historian Niall Ferguson what they thought of the OWS movement. Almost instantly, they went for each other's throats. A week later, Sachs made it clear in an interview in The Toronto Star that he at least has no desire to patch things up:

Star: You described the top 1 per cent as lazy. They’ve stopped trying, you said. That’s quite an indictment.

Sachs: Well, I was saying that many behaved to game the system. And I was specifically talking about Wall Street. The CEOs. The people who wanted the easy way to phenomenal wealth, even if that way was not through their economic prowess but through financial fraud or through corporate lobbying.

Star: On Fareed Zakaria’s show, GPS, historian Niall Ferguson accused you of overstepping the mark, moving from academic to demagogue. What is your response?

Sachs: Well, I thought he overstepped the mark moving to a blatantly inappropriate ad hominem attack.

Star: You seemed upset that he was calling you names.

Sachs: I thought he was obnoxious.

Star: What does Ferguson not get?

Sachs: He has long represented powerful interests. He works with financial companies... I don’t know. Those are his choices. They’re not my choices.

            Click on: www.thestar.com/news/article/1086149

Jeffrey Sachs doesn’t need to exaggerate to get attention. Furthermore, he’s not a trivial outsider with nothing to lose. He enjoyed tremendous influence during the glorious early days of neo-liberalism and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Government of Russia and other post-totalitarian states turned to him for ready advice on how to create markets and appropriate regulatory infrastructure.  

Desperate places and big problems don’t intimidate him. Before writing his latest book, The Price of Civilization: Economics and Ethics after the Fall, he wrote The End of Poverty. He has twice been identified by Time Magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Sachs perspective on today’s problems is surprisingly radical. He doesn’t say that simply revving up the recently collapsed capitalist culture will be enough. Here’s his American agenda in today’s New York Times:

“Following our recent financial calamity, a third progressive era is likely to be in the making. This one should aim for three things. The first is a revival of crucial public services, especially education, training, public investment and environmental protection. The second is the end of a climate of impunity that encouraged nearly every Wall Street firm to commit financial fraud. The third is to re-establish the supremacy of people votes over dollar votes in Washington.”

Click on: www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/the-new-progressive-movement.html?_r=2

The prospect of thinkers like Ferguson and Sachs publicly fighting over what are the obligations as well as the competences of entrepreneurs, taxpayers, and politicians only makes it more likely that the next year of US national politics will be forward-looking as well as bitter.

Bring it on.