Our Brave New Service Economy

Apr 23, 2012Bryce Covert

More low-wage, dead-end jobs might sound good to business owners, but is that what we want for our country?

More low-wage, dead-end jobs might sound good to business owners, but is that what we want for our country?

One of Romney’s big selling points is that he knows the “real economy” (much like some conservatives know “real America,” I guess) because he has experience as a businessman. Conservatives have started substituting business acumen for political acumen, making the mistake of comparing what’s required to run a country to what’s required to run a company. At first blush it almost makes sense: both oversee groups of people, both deal with budgets, both make decisions. But not only does that experience not necessarily translate to the White House, it also belies a deeper problem about the kind of economy we’re trying to recreate in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Viewing the country, and its economy, as a private business isn’t likely to create solid middle-class jobs.

“This American Life” had a recent episode called “What Kind of Country” that explored what kind of country Americans want this to be, but parts of it had more to do with what kind of economy we want. Take the example they give in act three: Colorado Springs. With a stretched city budget, local businessman Steve Bartolin, CEO of the Broadmoor Hotel, decided to look and compare it to running his hotel. After all, he tells the reporter on the story, “We have the same number of employees as the city… I look at us as a service delivery organization,” just like the city, apparently. They are both concerned with “how do you deliver the highest quality of service in the most efficient, cost effective manner.”

His main focus became how much both entities spend on their employees. “They’re running a 70 percent labor cost and we’ll run a 35 percent labor cost,” he says. “Any business person can look at that and say, ‘Jesus, we’re going to be out of business by 2014 at this pace.’” He writes a manifesto to the city council that ends up being circulated all over town: the city should lower starting wages for its employees, require them to pay more for their health insurance, and start contracting out anything it can to private businesses.

A city councilwoman explains that payrolls for the city government are higher than the hotel’s because it doesn’t control its own pension costs, which are mandated by the state. But she also makes a very important point: it has to hire people with more training and experience. City engineers and police officers can’t be hired on the cheap like the service industry workers at the Broadmoor.

And herein lies a big problem. What Bartolin proposed, basically, is to make government employees more like service employees. This is highly problematic, particularly for the black Americans and women who have long relied on public employment because it paid decently, offered good benefits and stability, and enabled them to move up the economic ladder. Public employment has been credited with helping to create the black middle class. If we make these jobs as unstable and low-benefit as service jobs, we’ll be taking away a huge boon from groups who have historically benefitted from it.

But we’re not just dragging public employees down to the level of service workers. In fact, the jobs our economy is best at producing these days are service jobs. As Harper’s recently tweeted, the chances that an employed American works in the service industry are six in seven. Those jobs have been growing very quickly: from 2010 to 2011, occupations like salespersons, cashiers, and food preparation workers grew by 3.2 percent. As Nona Willis Aronowitz recently reported, one in 10 employed Americans works in food service, making up 9.6 million people. And young people are taking a lot of those jobs: a quarter of people ages 16 to 29 who have a job work in hospitality, meaning travel, leisure, and food service. “A study of 4 million Facebook profiles found that, after the military, the top four employers listed by twentysomethings were Walmart, Starbucks, Target, and Best Buy,” she writes.

These are low-wage, low-benefit jobs that rarely pay much more than minimum wage (if even that) and offer schedules that can change on a whim. A report from the Retail Action Project in New York found that over half of retail workers made under $10 an hour – and 12 percent earn the minimum wage. Less than a third get health benefits through their employer. The Restaurant Opportunity Centers United reported that the average yearly income for restaurant workers in 2009 was $15,092, and less than a third make a livable wage. And what about those hotel workers who might be under the employ of Batolin? Non-managers make less than $12 an hour on average.

And unlike government work, these jobs offer little training and room for advancement. The sector relies on employee churn to keep labor costs lower. (Just ask Barbara Ehrenreich.) Service careers aren’t designed to advance much farther than flipping burgers.

Is this what we want our economy to look like? Do we want most jobs to offer wages that don’t cover basic expenses and to deny workers the benefits they need to stay healthy? Businesspeople would call this cost effective. I call this unsustainable.

Bryce Covert is Editor of Next New Deal.

 

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Rediscovering Government

Rediscover Representative Democracy

Apr 18, 2012Herbert J. Gans

Vote HereTo create a more civilized economy and political debate, we need a democracy that represents more than just the rich and powerful.

Vote HereTo create a more civilized economy and political debate, we need a democracy that represents more than just the rich and powerful.

By now, common sense should tell us that whether our form of government is called a plutocracy or a corporate democracy, its three branches and the constituencies that control it are unlikely to solve the country's critical economic, political, and social problems. But what if we could enlarge the citizen constituency, and thereby rediscover representative democracy?

Representative democracy entitles all citizens to be properly represented by their elected officials, and right now, American democracy is clearly unrepresentative. Since the Reagan era, the already economically powerful have obtained more political clout than ever. As a result, many other citizens are deprived of their fair share of political voice and political power, as well as the help government can provide.

The economic and political power-holders will never surrender any powers voluntarily, and the recently emerged Occupy, union, and other protest movements have not yet raised national power-sharing issues.

Suppose, however, that new players could enter the electorate and other parts of the political playing field. They would add new issues and demands to the political agenda, remove some old political warhorses, and upset a variety of political applecarts. If more people feel that voting and other ordinary forms of political participation can do some good, they are likely to make themselves heard, and their elected representatives might then push the economy and politics in a more egalitarian direction.

Representative democracy will not come easily or quickly, and in a huge country like the U.S., it can never be fully achieved. Changing a political system long stacked to favor profit-seekers over rank and file citizens is politically very hard work, and neither the big corporations, other fat cats, or their organized allies are going to let go without a humongous struggle. Persuading larger numbers of citizens to vote, and to do so thoughtfully, may be no easier.

Still, representative democracy as an issue sits on high moral ground and opponents cannot reject it out of hand. Consequently, it is very much worth thinking about and publicly discussing it now, so that the right moves can be undertaken if and when the political time becomes ripe.

For example, if large and varied protest activities develop, or if the religious and cultural conservatives find they must vote their economic interests, the country might elect a liberally inclined populist president and Congress. If and when that happens, several essential first legislative and executive steps can be taken. One is to begin to rapidly enlarge the electorate by making voting faster, easier, and more pleasant. 

Another step is to require, or bribe, the relevant media to run political advertising free of charge, and at the same time start pressing for the public financing of elections.

These changes will take time and perhaps some political miracles as well, but when they can be accomplished, further progress might be a little easier.

For example, a larger and economically more representative electorate could well demand that government and private enterprise jointly become employers of last resort. Many more voters would also support progressive tax reform, especially if they understand that putting some money in more pockets will grow the consumer economy and thereby the rest of the economy. Even corporate executives that profit from the consumer economy might turn a bit more liberal.           

Eventually, however, a truly representative government will require reforming the governmental structure. In a properly democratic Senate, senators from the four smallest states, which have less than 1 percent of the population, would no longer cast the same number of votes as their colleagues from the four largest, which have nearly 33 percent of the population. Or maybe the Senate should be turned into the equivalent of the British House of Lords.

Fairer congressional districting is also needed, and the same reforms are needed in state and local government. A federally mandated recall procedure should be instituted for all levels of government. 

The Supreme Court needs reforming as well, for right now it is not accountable to anyone. At some point the country must figure out how to amend or revise the Constitution in order to modernize the intentionally weak and divided government with which the Founders saddled us. 

Meanwhile, and as soon as possible, the federal Department of Education should institute courses in everyday politics and economics, beginning in the first year of high school. The citizenry needs, and has always needed, all the help it can get to understand what politics and the economy do for and to them.

Greater representative democracy may take decades to realize fully, and even then it is no panacea; it will not eliminate economic or political injustice. It should do away with political polarization, but it will not eradicate political disagreement or economic conflict. In fact, if more people are politically involved, their elected officials will have to cope with a larger number of viewpoints, values, and interests among the electorate. However, if more people know they have a voice and a government that is really listening, America could end up with a more civilized economy and politics.

Herbert J Gans is the Robert S. Lynd Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Columbia University and the author of Imagining America in 2033.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com.

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Mark Schmitt: Why We May Want America to Decline

Apr 16, 2012

In the latest episde of our weekly Bloggingheads series, "Fireside Chats," Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Mark Schmitt and Edward Luce o

In the latest episde of our weekly Bloggingheads series, "Fireside Chats," Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Mark Schmitt and Edward Luce of the Financial Times ask whether the American decline we hear Republicans bemoaning on the campaign trail is really such a bad thing. In the clip below, Mark notes that as we fall, others rise. "One part of it is simply relative economic growth compared to China and India, and some of that is either that's just how life is going to be, or maybe you even want it to be that way."

Given that the economic dominance of the U.S. and Europe was never a natural state of affairs and that something truly awful would need to happen to keep countries like China and India from gaining power at this point in their development, Mark argues that "a certain amount of relative decline is not in itself the end of the world."

Mark and Edward also examine some of the growing disfunctions in America's political system, from rising inequality to political gridlock brought on by Republicans. Mark notes that "it's a poltiics in which paralyis benefits certain players, and they're going to use that." He explains that "we tend to think of paralysis in sort of game theory terms," as a "tragedy of the commons with two people each trying to do good things," but "that's not always true. Sometimes that's exactly what people want to create and benefit from." For more, including Mark and Edward's thoughts on the benefits of the German education system and the inside dirt on Larry Summers, check out the full video below:

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Price Point

A 99% White Party is Bad for Republicans -- and for America

Apr 13, 2012Tim Price

The conservative movement remains beholden to its racist fringe, and that has left progress at a standstill across the political spectrum.

The conservative movement remains beholden to its racist fringe, and that has left progress at a standstill across the political spectrum.

“If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date… Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway… In a pure meritocracy there would be very low proportions of blacks in cognitively demanding jobs.” These are just a few of the pearls of anti-wisdom offered by conservative pundit John Derbyshire in his instantly infamous essay, “The Talk: Nonblack Version.” Derbyshire’s employers at the National Review were quick to distance themselves from him and his racist manifesto, which was written as a response to the outcry over the hunting and killing of Trayvon Martin.

But as other commentators have pointed out, there’s more to this story. For one thing, “Derb” has been producing openly racist (and homophobic) material for years now without repercussion. So why did the premiere intellectual journal of American conservatives only disassociate itself from a bigot once the very last vestiges of plausible deniability had been stripped away? The answer lies in the fact that the conservative movement, while not racist in and of itself, is beholden to racists who support it. And in order to maintain their support, it appeases them either actively or through sins of omission in ways that alienate other potential supporters and create barriers to real progress on racial justice.

I want to be clear that conservatives are not inherently racists, just as progressives are not by default free of racism. While some conservative policies, such as restricting voting rights, cracking down on undocumented immigrants, and slashing the social safety net may have racially disparate outcomes in practice, there are intellectual and moral arguments for each of these that that have nothing to do with race. Sadly, Republicans often fail to make them because they’re busy sending more coded signals than a third base coach in order to appease the most reactionary elements of their base. And when taken in aggregate, it’s easy to see why minority groups perceive the conservative agenda as actively hostile toward their interests, even if that’s not the intent.

The uneasy alliance between high-minded conservative wonks and unreconstructed racists is a legacy of Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy, which used civil rights as a wedge with white voters to turn the formerly Democratic “Solid South” into staunch Republican territory. But while that approach has continued to reap short-term rewards, it’s a bad bet in the long run. As Roosevelt Institute Fellow Dorian Warren has noted, “the Republican strategy is basically to be a white party and a white southern party. The time is ticking on that demographic in this country.” With the voting bloc of angry white conservatives from the old Confederacy giving way to the most diverse and progressive generation in history, Republicans risk political extinction if they can’t refurbish their image and adapt their policies accordingly. In this year’s Republican primaries, even states with the largest black populations have registered only 1 to 2 percent black voter participation. And despite the GOP’s hope that it could peel away minority voters who agree with them on social issues, Barack Obama enjoys approval ratings in the high 80s among black voters and retains strong support from Latinos when matched up against his Republican rivals. Yet the conservative base seems stubbornly resistant to change, and to quote Donald Rumsfeld, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had. Thus, even many moderate and mainstream conservatives are forced to politely clear their throats and look away from all but the most egregious examples of racism among their allies. Without them, they wouldn’t have the votes to win elections.

The right is clearly sensitive to this issue, or it wouldn’t be so bashful when the Derbyshires of the world let their fig leaves drop. But instead of addressing these internal tensions, it tries to turn the tables by accusing progressives of “playing the race card” (i.e. mentioning that racism exists). As Alex Pareene wryly noted, many conservatives seem to operate under the assumption that “accusations of racism are the new racism, and said accusations are invariably politically motivated.” This tendency has been on full display in the case of Trayvon Martin, from labeling President Obama a “race hustler” for extending his sympathies to Martin’s family to the Free-Beacon’s blunt headline, “Registered Dem Killed Trayvon.” Sure, George Zimmerman shot a 17-year-old boy to death, but the real question on everyone’s mind was who he voted for.

While these attempts to turn racism into a partisan issue might help to assuage some guilty consciences, the results are ultimately bad for both conservatives themselves and the country as a whole. The need to keep the racist fringe mollified means that once Republicans are in power, they inevitably set to work implementing discriminatory and divisive laws like the ones mentioned above – even, as my colleagues Bryce Covert and Mike Konczal have pointed out, when their electoral sales pitch is based on promises of fiscal discipline and economic recovery. This also has consequences for their attempts to broaden their base. It’s no shock that outreach toward Latinos has failed when 91 percent of them want progressive immigration reform like the DREAM Act yet it can barely garner single-digit support among congressional Republicans. And on a broader level, it’s impossible to seriously discuss or redress racial inequality and injustice if someone keeps changing the subject.

Some progressives might be tempted to say, “So what? Aren’t we trying to discredit conservatives anyway? Let’s just sit back and watch the train wreck.” But in truth, the inability of the conservative movement to escape the racist albatross around its neck is bad for progressives, too. If we’re to be measured by the quality of our opponents, what does it say about us if we win because the other guys got caught e-mailing each other Photoshops of Barack Obama as a witch doctor with a bone through his nose? There’s no reason for progressives to push ourselves to strengthen our arguments or develop bold new solutions to seemingly intractable problems unless there’s an equally powerful, credible, and clear-minded counter-force. Besides, in a two-party system, the other side is going to take the reins of power at least some of the time. When that happens, we want them to be people we can debate in good faith.

This sad state of affairs wasn’t inevitable. For a brief moment, Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 seemed to signal a sea change in America’s eternally fraught racial politics. The last, greatest barrier had been surmounted and a new generation, unburdened by the prejudices of the past, had risen to power, ready to tackle the big issues and debate the questions that really mattered. But the idea of Obama being a “post-racial” president soon degenerated into a punch line as many Republicans, terrified of the new president’s broad appeal, gave in to their darkest impulses. The most high-profile and embarrassing of these efforts was the attempt to cast doubt on Obama’s birth records, which culminated with Donald Trump beclowning himself by basing his entire presidential campaign around an easily debunked conspiracy theory. (Oddly, Trump was not asked to produce any documentation to explain what part of the planet Earth produces vividly orange people with gossamer hair.) Instead of putting the last nail in racism’s coffin, Obama’s historic triumph brought the cranks out of the woodwork, spooked by a premonition of their demise.

But all hope is not lost just because some conservatives continue to write clueless op-eds about how white privilege doesn’t exist because someone who may or may not have been black may or may not have stolen a bike. Even if electoral concerns make the right hesitant to repudiate and cut ties with its more retrograde allies for now, it remains a demographic reality, as Jonathan Chait has written, that the current conservative coalition must either change or die – and conservatives are nothing if not resilient. And if conservatives do manage to join the 21st century and start winning over minority groups, it will mean that elected Democrats will actually have to start working for their votes again. As Bryce Covert has written, “once we find ways to get our representatives to truly represent the diversity of our people, more Sarah Palins and Herman Cains will be a good sign. Progressives won’t have to vote for them, but we’ll know that they come with the territory of greater equality.” Once that happens, and once conservatives start proactively challenging racism in their ranks instead of shouting “I’m rubber; you’re glue!” when called on it, maybe we can finally have an adult conversation about race and move forward as a united country.

Tim Price is the Deputy Editor of Next New Deal.

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Rediscovering Government

Forcing Both Parties to Get Specific About What Government Should Do

Apr 9, 2012Mark Schmitt

As part of the How We Value Government series, demanding that both Republicans and Democrats be forced to outline a real vision of government instead of proposing vague cuts or making specific defenses.

As part of the How We Value Government series, demanding that both Republicans and Democrats be forced to outline a real vision of government instead of proposing vague cuts or making specific defenses.

There's an old rule of thumb about Americans' attitudes toward government that's no less true for being familiar: Americans are "operational liberals" but "philosophical conservatives," the political scientists Lloyd A. Free and Hadley Cantril concluded in their 1967 book The Political Beliefs of Americans, based on their analysis of dozens of public opinion surveys. That is, we favor the specific services government provides, but we're distrustful on an abstract level and respond favorably to attacks on "big government."

This small insight was true even at the peak of the Great Society and the era of "liberal consensus," and it fits as an explanation for much of the back-and-forth of American conceptions of government ever since. Whether it accurately represents public opinion or not, it's a good guide to the behavior of actors in the political process. Conservatives attack "government" as an abstract concept that has little to do with our real lives and mostly creates wasteful excess benefiting either bureaucrats themselves or other people. Liberals respond by trying to show the harsh reality of cuts to particular programs, especially safe ones that reach large constituencies. In 1994 and 1995, for example, voters were first drawn to Newt Gingrich's promises to eliminate entire cabinet departments, but as soon as the idea of cutting government was converted to the reality of shuttering national parks and slashing Medicare, the political tides turned swiftly in the other direction. George W. Bush won reelection in 2004 talking vaguely about the need to change Social Security, yet given the opportunity to put such a plan in action, he saw the public lose faith so quickly that he never found a single congressional sponsor for the legislation. Even Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980 in what we still see as a critical moment in shifting attitudes toward government, largely backed off from that agenda after the 1981 budget cuts and his own ham-fisted attack on Social Security.

Mitt Romney's announcement recently that he would eliminate several large government programs, but wouldn't name them lest he face political criticism, represents the conservative tactical approach to Cantril-Free perfectly. (Except they usually remember not to read the stage directions.)

The struggle over government thus often takes the form of this push-pull between the abstract, where anti-government conservatism reigns, and the specific, where people seem to appreciate government. The result, until recently, has been a happy dance through which both sides achieve their short-term objectives: Conservatives win their share of elections, which they can use to push through tax cuts, without worrying much about the size of government, while liberals get their turns at power and avoid major cuts to programs. The Cantril-Free paradox has even generated new paradoxes of its own. Conservatives often expand government as political insurance, albeit carelessly, as in the creation of the Medicare Part D prescription drug program in 2003. Liberals and Democrats are more likely to cut programs (such as the Medicare cuts of 1993 and 2010), both because they take government more seriously and in the hopes that showing a commitment to cutting waste and improving people's experience of government will ameliorate their abstract opposition.

Join the conversation about the Roosevelt Institute’s new initiative, Rediscovering Government, led by Senior Fellow Jeff Madrick.

But what's missing from this well-rehearsed dance is any effort to force the question, to make a real choice about what we want government to do. That missing element has been devastating in the last few years, when it seemed impossible to convince the public or Congress that an emphatic government effort was the only way to prevent a long and debilitating recession.

For the most part, as Romney's comment suggests, the 2012 election cycle is evolving into yet another battle between the abstract call for cutting government and the specific defense of popular programs, particularly those threatened by Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan. But there are indications that the game might be changing. House Republicans have now tied themselves to the mast and voted twice for Ryan's radical plan. They've built up some defenses against the classic attacks about cutting Medicare and other vital programs: They've drawn a new line that defines Medicare and Social Security for current seniors and those over 55 as benefits that have been "earned," while for others they are unaffordable giveaways. They've redefined programs like unemployment insurance as if they were welfare. They've used deficit fever and misleading statistics to portray Social Security and Medicare as doomed, so that the only option is their cuts.

Meanwhile, embracing the need to reform entitlement programs, Democrats have (correctly and responsibly) blunted their own ability to play the old game. As Slate's Dave Weigel wrote after the Republican victory in a special election in New York City last year, Medicare is "not really a wedge issue -- it's the slow death of a wedge issue."

These two changes directly challenge the politics of "operational liberalism." Going forward, it might not be enough to pick a few appealing government programs that reach the middle class and use them as political ammunition. And that could be a good thing. Instead of focusing on narrow specifics, this change demands a full-throated defense of government as a whole -- programs that benefit "other people" as well as ourselves, programs that represent the shared benefits of our social contract. And it demands that we open up the "submerged state," which obscures government programs and encourages the illusion that government programs benefit only someone else.  It calls for a full-fledged commitment to making sure that government programs, especially Medicare, are in fact sustainable for the future.

The biggest risk to the promise of shared prosperity, assisted by government, is that liberals and Democratic political operatives are living in the past and believe that they can replay the old Clinton game against Gingrich over and over again.

Mark Schmitt is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Fellows Program at the Roosevelt Institute.

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Cato vs. Koch and the Importance of Nonpartisan, Opinionated Think Tanks

Mar 21, 2012Mark Schmitt

Think tanks that serve the interests of a particular party won't decrease the power of lobbyists.

Think tanks that serve the interests of a particular party won't decrease the power of lobbyists.

In yesterday's post, I discussed the theory of lobbying as a "legislative subsidy" to under-staffed members of Congress and discussed a proposal to diffuse the influence of lobbyists by paying congressional staff more. I argued that a major push by conservatives had been to dismantle or discredit independent sources of analysis, such as the Office of Technology Assessment, but that the same effect could be achieved by creating more shared resources.

Another independent resource for information and analysis comes from think tanks, and this connects the debate over lobbying and money to the argument about whether think tanks are becoming "too political," as Tevi Troy of the Hudson Institute asked in an important recent article in National Affairs. That the question had immediate relevance became apparent when Charles and David Koch filed suit (that is, asked for help from the government) to take control of the libertarian Cato Institute. The dispute itself is confusing and seems to reveal a strange management structure in which Cato was controlled not by its board, like most non-profits, but by a small group of people who called themselves "shareholders." But the Kochs' underlying complaint seems to be that Cato was too independent and was not serving the political interests represented by other groups the Kochs back, such as Americans for Prosperity.

Troy argued in the Washington Post last weekend that "the dispute is tarnishing Cato's reputation as a place that can provide nonpartisan, if not non-ideological, research." There's an important distinction here: Cato obviously has a viewpoint. It is libertarian. But as Troy implicitly accepts, having a viewpoint, or ideology, doesn't necessarily hurt the credibility of a paper or argument coming from Cato or another think tank. If I read something from Cato, I'm reasonably confident that it will be a solid libertarian argument for a particular position and that the facts in it will be basically accurate, even if I might draw a different conclusion. The distinction between "nonpartisan" and "non-ideological" that Troy draws works well in the case of Cato, because libertarianism exists orthagonally to the current political parties. Making Cato more useful to Republican candidates and causes, as the Kochs seemingly would do, would be a huge shift.

Buy a copy of The Unfinished Revolution: Voices from the Global Fight for Women’s Rights, featuring a chapter by Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Ellen Chesler.

Having a viewpoint, especially one that is known and public, can be a great strength for a think tank. On the center-left, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, for example, has a general point of view about the importance of the social safety net, and its analyses are considered impeccable. As politics has shifted and become more sharply partisan, they may have fewer Republican friends and probably find themselves critiquing, say, Paul Ryan's budget proposals more harshly than Democratic ones. But their north star is not the current interests of a political party. As Troy shows (drawing heavily on the work of former Roosevelt Institute president Andrew Rich), think tanks naturally evolved from the technocratic quasi-universities of the Brookings Institution and the Rand Corporation to be more open and explicit about their ideological assumptions. That's a healthy development, just as it is healthy for the media to abandon the "view from nowhere" and be more open about their assumptions.

But not everyone wants reliable, solid analysis. For the same reasons that the Gingrich Republicans eliminated the OTA, their 2012 counterparts would take down Cato and make it into something more reliably useful to their immediate interests. A think tank that serves the political interests of a party, or the economic interests of its backers, can't help at all in offsetting the legislative subsidy provided by lobbyists. In fact, it increases their monopoly.

You don't have to agree with the Cato Institute to see that there's more at stake here than just the meaning of an old agreement among a bunch of libertarians.

Mark Schmitt is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Fellows Program at the Roosevelt Institute.

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Bipartisanship Made the New Deal Possible

Mar 8, 2012David Woolner

The New Deal wasn't just a product of Democratic super-majorities. Principled legislators in both parties were willing to work together to revive the economy.

The New Deal wasn't just a product of Democratic super-majorities. Principled legislators in both parties were willing to work together to revive the economy.

The true conservative seeks to protect the system of private property and free enterprise by correcting such injustices and inequalities as arise from it. The most serious threat to our institutions comes from those who refuse to face the need for change. Liberalism becomes the protection for the far-sighted conservative. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

Republican Senator Olympia Snowe's recent announcement that she has decided to leave the Senate because of partisan gridlock is being widely viewed on both sides of the aisle as further confirmation -- as if we needed it -- of just how dysfunctional our political process has become. In good health and likely to win if she were to run, Senator Snowe said she had to consider how productive an additional term would be given the "polarized environment" in Congress. In light of this, and in light of the fact that she does not expect the intense partisanship of recent years to change over the short term, she reluctantly decided not to seek re-election. Her fellow senator, Republican Susan Collins of Maine, remarked that she is "devastated" by the news, while Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont called her decision a real loss, noting that he misses the days when "Republicans and Democrats worked together" for the good of the country.

Partisanship has been part of America's political process from the beginning. Why, then, is today's partisanship so much more destructive than in the past? The answer may lie in the makeup of the parties themselves. Many Americans, for example, assume that Franklin Roosevelt was able to get through such landmark pieces of legislation as the Social Security Act or the National Labor Relations Act because the Democrats held huge majorities in both houses of Congress. But the truth is that many of FDR's harshest critics came from the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, while some of his strongest supporters were progressive Republicans.

In the early days of the New Deal, for example, FDR teamed up with Republican Senator George Norris of Nebraska to create the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), our nation's first major regional supplier of public power. On May 8, 1933, also a part of the famous 100 days, Republican senators Robert La Follette Jr. of Wisconsin and Bronson Cutting of New Mexico joined forces with Edward Costigan of Colorado to sponsor a bill authorizing $6 billion in public works expenditures. Moreover, the director of one of the most important New Deal stimulus agencies, the Public Works Administration (PWA), which among other things built the Triborough Bridge and Lincoln Tunnel in New York, the Washington National Airport, the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, the Grand Coulee Dam, and thousands of miles of public highways, was led by the progressive Republican head of the Department of the Inferior, Harold Ickes. Progressive Republicans even supported legislation aimed at securing the rights of workers to join unions and secure better wages, hours, and working conditions -- the National Labor Relations Act and Fair Labor Standards Act -- and the vast majority of Republicans in both the House and the Senate voted for the Social Security Act and the establishment of the Social Security Administration, whose first head was the former governor of the state of New Hampshire, Republican John G. Winant.

Check out “The 99 Percent Plan,” a new Roosevelt Institute/Salon essay series on the progressive vision for the economy.

In the meantime, the Roosevelt administration's determination to expand the U.S. economy and put people back to work through compensatory deficit spending had raised the ire of many conservatives -- including conservative Democrats -- who denounced the New Deal as nothing more than a left-wing plot to take the United States down the path of socialism. One of the most outspoken critics was Al Smith, the former governor of New York and Democratic candidate for president in 1928. Smith's vehement opposition to Roosevelt's policies led him to join forces with other prominent conservative Democrats like John J. Raskob, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Jouett Shouse, who had served as the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the DNC, and John W. Davis, the party's nominee for president in 1924, in forming the American Liberty League in August of 1934.

The Liberty League also received strong support from conservative Republicans and was largely financed by some of the most powerful business elites in the county, including the du Pont family and other prominent corporate Republican leaders, such as the heads of General Motors, General Foods, Chase National Bank, Standard Oil, and other major corporations. The League spent vast sums of money in an attempt to unseat FDR in the 1936 presidential election. They ruthlessly attacked the New Deal and characterized their efforts as being motivated by a desire "to defend and uphold the [U.S.] Constitution." The League also insisted that the growth of the national debt was a sign of permanent economic decline and argued that there was no difference between Roosevelt's policies and socialism, warning, as Al Smith did in the 1936 election, that there "can only be one capital, Washington or Moscow."

The Liberty League's efforts to roll back or halt the New Deal and defeat FDR in the 1936 election failed spectacularly. One of the main reasons for this failure was the widespread consensus that had emerged in Washington by this point among like-minded members of both parties that government action in the face of such an unprecedented crisis was critical -- not merely as a means to provide relief to the millions of unemployed, but also as a means to restore the American people's faith in liberal capitalist democracy. As FDR put it in his first inaugural, the onset of his administration was a "day of national consecration," a time when the nation was "calling for action and action now," and as the legislative record of his first administration in particular shows, most members of Congress -- be they Republican or Democrat -- understood this.

This is not to say that the two parties did not compete with one another. They most certainly did. But the partisan divide of the 1930s was based much more on political and economic philosophy than it was on party affiliation. One gets the sense that this not only made for a healthier and more natural political discourse -- a debate over ideas instead of party -- it also made it much more likely that the forces necessary to form a political consensus over a particular issue would form. All of this was helped along of course by FDR's political genius, but the major reforms of the New Deal were not solely of his making. He had a great deal of help from both Democrats and Republicans, many of whom joined hands in a common effort to provide the American people with Social Security, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, protection from the avarice of an unregulated banking and financial sector, and a host of other programs designed to provide the average citizen with a measure of economic security within the capitalist system.

Today, in the wake of the Great Recession, one might assume that the U.S. Congress would respond in a similar fashion. But as Senator Snowe's decision reminds us, this is not to be the case. Senator Leahy is right. It is a sad day indeed when, in the face of a similar economic crisis, a consensus-seeking legislator like Olympia Snowe, who has dedicated much of her life to serving the public interest, now finds it impossible to serve that interest in the one national institution whose sole purpose is to do so.

David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

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Olympia Snowe: Political Polarization Will Turn Women Off

Feb 29, 2012Bryce Covert

Snowe's reasons for leaving are an increasingly divided and uncivil Congress. That will make many women think twice about running in the first place.

Snowe's reasons for leaving are an increasingly divided and uncivil Congress. That will make many women think twice about running in the first place.

Maine Senator Olympia Snowe announced late yesterday that she won't be seeking reelection for her seat. This came as a surprise to a lot of people. As Steve Kornacki says, "This is not a Joe Lieberman situation; Snowe was not out of options." She had a good chance of winning the election and had a viable option to run as an independent. However, "evidently she was out of patience with what her political life had become," he notes.

That's gleaned from her statement, in which she explains:

I do find it frustrating that an atmosphere of polarization and 'my way or the highway' ideologies has become pervasive in campaigns and in our governing institutions.

With my Spartan ancestry I am a fighter at heart; and I am well prepared for the electoral battle, so that is not the issue. However, what I have had to consider is how productive an additional term would be. Unfortunately, I do not realistically expect the partisanship of recent years in the Senate to change over the short term...

I intend to help give voice to my fellow citizens who believe, as I do, that we must return to an era of civility in government driven by a common purpose to fulfill the promise that is unique to America.

Jonathan Chait sees some evidence in her remarks that she's headed for a third party candidacy. But for now, let's take her at her word: she's leaving her office because of increased polarization.

As Ezra Klein points out, increased polarization doesn't have to go hand in hand with increased rancor, but it sure has in our current system. The increasing ideological divide has left us more and more gridlocked. Invective is thrown by both sides. Snowe points to "an atmosphere of polarization and 'my way or the highway' ideologies." This is a huge problem for getting things done politically, but it also represents a large hurdle for getting more women into office.

Check out “The 99 Percent Plan,” a new Roosevelt Institute/Salon essay series on the progressive vision for the economy.

A study that I've written about before took a deep look at the reasons that women don't run for office. They came up with seven key reasons, but three of those relate to an increasingly acrimonious and divided political body.

Women react more negatively than men to many aspects of modern campaigns.

Modern campaigns are shaped by the polarization that goes on in Congress -- Snowe makes reference to this problem both on the Hill and on the trail. In the study, women showed an aversion to many of the less glamorous activities of campaigning, but the biggest differential was for "potentially having to engage in a negative campaign." Sixteen percent of men were deterred by that idea; that number jumps to 28 percent for women. If translated to the actual political arena once they're in, women are going to be less interested in the bile tossed from one side of the aisle to the other. That's Snowe's main complaint: she doesn't want to operate in a body that yells at itself without moving anything forward.

Female potential candidates are less competitive, less confident, and more risk averse than their male counterparts.

Snowe says she's a fighter. But a more polarized and gridlocked Congress will mean a more combative -- and thus competitive -- environment that will turn women off. They are at least 25 percent less likely than men to report being competitive, having a thick skin, and willing to take risks. Why would they sign themselves up to enter Congress at a time that, as Snowe says, we've drifted away from an "era of civility"?

Women are substantially more likely than men to perceive the electoral environment as highly competitive and biased against female candidates.

Based purely on perception, women were much more likely to view their local campaigns as competitive. This also translates into the actual machinations of Congress. Women consider the current environment, deduce that the competition is fierce, and decide to stay out. Snowe feels she'll make a bigger difference on the outside, and many women may feel the same way.

There are other reasons women don't run, such as perceived gender bias, the need to care for children, and few of them being approached to run. But as Congress becomes more and more polarized, we run a higher risk of women sitting it out.

Bryce Covert is Editor of New Deal 2.0.

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Chart of the Day: We Haven't Really Had a Year of the Woman Yet

Feb 24, 2012Bryce Covert

Women have yet to get even a quarter of the seats in Congress, but we make up over half the population.

The first Year of the Woman was 1992, when a number of women were elected to the Senate. A lot of elections since then have been dubbed that as well, and the 2010 midterms were supposed to be another female sweep, yet their numbers actually declined slightly in that election.

Women have yet to get even a quarter of the seats in Congress, but we make up over half the population.

The first Year of the Woman was 1992, when a number of women were elected to the Senate. A lot of elections since then have been dubbed that as well, and the 2010 midterms were supposed to be another female sweep, yet their numbers actually declined slightly in that election.

But taking a step back for a bit, this chart makes it seem a little silly to say that any year has truly been a Year of the Woman for the United States Congress (h/t Andrew Sullivan):

women-in-congress

Check out “The 99 Percent Plan,” a new Roosevelt Institute/Salon essay series on the progressive vision for the economy.

The chart comes from a new report by the Congressional Research Service on the demographics of Congress. Note the highest value in the vertical axis of the first chart is just 18 percent. We haven't broken that mark in either the Senate or the House yet, even though women are over half the American population. It's been almost 100 years since the first woman was elected to Congress (not to mention that we've had the vote since 1920), yet we haven't even taken a quarter of the seats yet.

I've discussed the many reasons women don't run for office before. A lot of them are hardwired through socialization into women's heads at a young age. This is a systemic problem that doesn't have many quick fixes. But it's clear that we're doing a pitiful job of making our political representation look like an actual representation of our people.

Bryce Covert is Editor of New Deal 2.0.

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Michelle Obama Embodies the Reasons Women Don't Run for Office

Feb 8, 2012Bryce Covert

They don't feel confident. No one tells them to run. Sexism plagues female candidates. Michelle Obama faced all of these problems and decided to stay out.

They don't feel confident. No one tells them to run. Sexism plagues female candidates. Michelle Obama faced all of these problems and decided to stay out.

Get ready for yet another "Year of the Woman." It seems that every election cycle since 1992 has been thus dubbed, no matter the fluctuating results of actually getting more women into office. In fact the last "Year of the Woman" -- 2010 -- actually represented the first dip in the percentage of women in Congress since 1978. There are some promising signs for this year: 10 female candidates from both parties are running for the Senate this year. Half of the Democrats' 76 House races will run female candidates.

Yet as a study on why so few women are in politics, "Men Rule: The Continued Under-Representation of Women in U.S. Politics," points out, "women, assuming they win their primaries, will still compete in fewer than one-third of all races." So even in the best-case scenario women's political representation only stands to rise about one or two percentage points. That's because our progress has recently stalled in getting more women into office. Eighty-four percent of congressional members are men; three-quarters of officials and legislators at the state and local level are men; women hold only 12 percent of governorships and 8 percent of mayoralties.

Why this persistent gap in representation? The authors of "Men Rule" found that it all gets back to women lacking the desire to run. Despite the fact that women are just as successful as men when they do, and despite high profile women like Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton getting into the mix, women don't run. "There is a substantial gender gap in political ambition; men tend to have it, and women don't," they write. They found seven key factors that lead women to be wary:

1. Women are substantially more likely than men to perceive the electoral environment as highly competitive and biased against female candidates.

2. Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin's candidacies aggravated women's perceptions of gender bias in the electoral arena.

3. Women are much less likely than men to think they are qualified to run for office.

4. Female potential candidates are less competitive, less confident, and more risk averse than their male counterparts.

5. Women react more negatively than men to many aspects of modern campaigns.

6. Women are less likely than men to receive the suggestion to run for office -- from anyone.

7. Women are still responsible for the majority of childcare and household tasks.

These factors have led to a "persistent and unchanging" gap in appetite for running: men are 16 percentage points more likely than women to have considered it.

But can we find a living, breathing incarnation of this research? If women are shying away from office, can we ever know who they are? Turns out we can. After reading Jodi Kantor's new book on the first couple, The Obamas, it's clear that Michelle stayed away from running for office herself for most of the reasons listed above.

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An ongoing theme throughout Kantor's book is the differing views of politics between Michelle and Barack. Barack thinks he should join the system in order to change it; Michelle thinks you have to work outside the system for real change. That plays right into the problem of women reacting negatively to modern campaigns -- and by definition, modern politics. The system doesn't seem like it's going to work for them. As Kantor writes, "Barack saw the same problems with politics as Michelle did. But for him, those weren't reasons to stay out; they were reasons to get in. He believed in his own talent and singularity; he felt sure that the usual rules would not apply." Michelle remains suspicious of DC and all it represents.

That quote also illuminates a difference between their self-confidence: another theme in the book is Barack's -- and Michelle's -- belief that he is a historical, transformative figure. But Michelle doesn't seem to have the same idea about herself. This is just like the women who don't think they're qualified enough to run, compared to most men who just plunge in, thinking they're perfectly qualified. Michelle is keenly aware of and concerned about the problems facing this country, yet Kantor writes, "She viewed the events of the presidency more as an outsider, her aides said... But Michelle Obama knew and cared a great deal about what was going on in the United States."

One reason women may feel less self-confident is they don't have people around them boosting their egos. As the study reports, women are less likely to have people tell them they should run. And no one seems to have told Michelle. Ann Marie Lipinski, former editor of the Chicago Tribune, remembers, "Over the years, many Chicagoans thought Michelle showed just as much promise as her husband did; maybe more. 'If someone said to me, one of them is going to grow up to be president, I may have bet on her.'" Yet there's no mention of people urging her to run.

And Michelle doesn't seem to have much appetite for jumping into the fray anyway -- she's seen what happened to those who came before her. The study found women have picked up on the cloud of gender bias hanging over Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, and the treatment of Clinton did not get past Michelle. "The first lady told an aide that she did not want to get drawn into the policy details [of the administration]," Kantor writes. "'I don't want to be Hillary Clinton, I can't be that person,' she said, referring to the criticism her predecessor had earned for taking charge of her husband's failed reform efforts."

On top of all of this, even if some women did have the appetite to run they'd have a hard time balancing it with childcare and household chores. And, sadly, that is still overwhelmingly a woman's province. Michelle is no exception, even if she has a law degree from Harvard. During her husband's early campaigns, "She worried that her husband was not home enough, that campaign staff weren't... helping her get to a campaign event and then home again to feed her kids." The kids and the house were her concern. She herself has noticed this difference. "What I notice about men, all men, is that their order is me, my family, God is in there somewhere, but me is first. And for women, me is fourth, and that's not healthy," Kantor quotes her. Yet it's still pretty inescapable.

So what are the answers? How do we reach the Michelle Obamas and convince them to run? Because that will be the only real way to make substantial progress on the gender gap in political representation. The study ends with some suggestions for how to overcome this dilemma. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that we have to recruit women -- early and often -- to foster their ambition. If women are told to run, and told that they'll be successful at it, from early on it will help boost that desire and confidence. We can also spread the word that women succeed when they run just as much as men do, and we can work with them to help with the personal trade-offs that come with campaigning. And of course, as is the case with many issues facing women, helping them deal with work-family balance comes back to implementing work-family policies.

We have to figure it out. We've been left behind by 90 other nations in the percentage of women in our national legislature. It doesn't serve the women or men who live in this country to be represented by only one half of our population.

Bryce Covert is Editor of New Deal 2.0.

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