Liberalism Restored: Obama’s Regulatory “Revolution”
President Obama isn’t “doing all kinds of crazy stuff that risks destroying America,” as Bill Kristol claims, echoing a common Republican talking point that Obama himself ridiculed at last Friday’s Q&A — and Kristol just proved his point — but he is leading what TNR’s John Judis calls “The Quiet Revolution”:
[T]here is one extremely consequential area where Obama has done just about everything a liberal could ask for — but done it so quietly that almost no one, including most liberals, has noticed. Obama’s three Republican predecessors were all committed to weakening or even destroying the country’s regulatory apparatus: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the other agencies that are supposed to protect workers and consumers by regulating business practices. Now Obama is seeking to rebuild these battered institutions. In doing so, he isn’t simply improving the effectiveness of various government offices or making scattered progress on a few issues; he is resuscitating an entire philosophy of government with roots in the Progressive era of the early twentieth century. Taken as a whole, Obama’s revival of these agencies is arguably the most significant accomplishment of his first year in office.
This isn’t so much about change as it is about restoration, about the recovery of the American liberalism of the last century, about equilibrium, about the possibility of a good, just, and decent society.
It’s a “revolution,” of sorts, but more accurately it’s rejection of the neo-liberal anti-government movement that has come to dominate American conservatism since 1964, a movement that has torn apart the social fabric of the nation and replaced it with a neo-Darwinian “free” market propped up and promoted by a state rendered largely impotent, by a state that exists solely to protect the “winners” from the “losers,” and when necessary to bail out those “winners.”
Now, Republicans will still cry “Socialism!” or “Fascism!” or whatever other lie/smear they dream up, but this restoration is an effort to free the American people from the false freedom of the unregulated market. There’s nothing totalitarian about it. As Obama’s policies clearly show, it is an effort designed to save America, not to destroy it.
(Cross-posted from The Reaction.)
4 Responses to “Liberalism Restored: Obama’s Regulatory “Revolution””
This is absolutely one of the reasons I'm now a Democrat, and no longer a Republican. Ronald Reagan famously said: “Government is not the answer to the problem. Government is the problem.” That's a nice soundbite, but a bunch of nonsense. What Haitian today doesn't wish their government was a functioning institution? And having lived overseas, I've been in countries where regulation of air pollution (for example) was non-existent. It was no fun being in that capital city (which shall remain nameless). Yes, it's possible for government to grow too large, but I would rather err in that direction than the anarchy resulting from the absence of regulation.
Only one thing is correct there — that modern liberalism indeed goes back to the Progressive Era (it actually goes back not only to the last century, but to that before it, the late nineteenth century). It also includes the “fatal conceit” of naive belief in the ability to reengineer the economy and society, and has led to flirting with totalitarianism at its worst (in order to secure compliance with plans and “reforms”).
It is not only overly romantic here, but is laughably superficial when describing the overreach this past year by Obama and the Democrats.
The Wall Street Journal, which was discussing the Congress, also could be correct when discussing Obama's excesses in the Executive — except where ambition is accompanied by ineptitude and amateurism that's self-defeating (fortunately, for us).
“a mandate to repeal more or less the entire post-1980 policy era and to fulfill, at last, their dream of turning the U.S. into a cradle-to-grave entitlement state.
“creatures of the Great Society and what was called the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s … They view the Reagan era as an historical aberration, and they have stayed in Washington for decades precisely in wait of this moment to realize 40-years of pent-up policy ambition. They believe this is their 1965, or 1933.”
“Democrats are proving again that America can't be successfully governed from the left.”
“It takes a special kind of delusion to believe, amid a popular revolt against too much government spending and debt”
that this is a good thing, and that more would be better.
If liberalism were truly “restored”, it would return to its classic liberal roots.
It seems to me that fiscal populists already have a term to name their philosophy: Progressivism. Having hijacked the term “liberal” back in the 1930's, perhaps progressives should reconsider adopting their old name and allowing classical liberals to take back the term. The term “liberal” has suffered enough abuse from both the Right and the Left under the stewardship of fiscal populists.
When you consider the way the term “liberal” is used outside of the United States, Canada, and Britain, you'll see that it has absolutelt nothing to economic populism. Liberalism, properly understood, is about freedom, individualism, tolerance of other people's choices, free trade, and a reluctance to have the government manage the economy.
“If liberalism were truly 'restored', it would return to its classic liberal roots.”
Those roots now support libertarianism. “Liberalism” the word was hijacked in the late 1800s.
“the term “liberal” is used outside of the United States, Canada, and Britain”
Actually, “liberal” is used in the classic sense in Canada as well as in Britain. Hence we saw:
“the neo-liberal anti-government movement that has come to dominate American conservatism since 1964″