In a recent post on his very thoughtful blog, Brad DeLong posted a self description that I absolutely resonate with:
"I am... a reality-based center-left technocrat. I am pragmatically interested in government policies that work: that are good for America and for the world. My natural home is in the bipartisan center, arguing with center-right reality-based technocrats about whether it is center-left or center-right policies that have the best odds of moving us toward goals that we all share--world peace, world prosperity, equality of opportunity, safety nets, long and happy lifespans, rapid scientific and technological progress, and personal safety. The aim of governance, I think, is to achieve a rough consensus among the reality-based technocrats and then to frame the issues in a way that attracts the ideologues on one (or, ideally, both) wings in order to create an effective governing coalition."
Sounds good, right? Who could argue with that? Well, celebrity blogger Atrios, for one:
"This post disturbed me on so many levels and I've had difficulty sorting them all out... This, in a nutshell, is the worldview of the Sensible Liberal. It's the belief that there are Sensible Policies concocted by Wise Men (and women), preferably ones with advanced degrees, which are Right and True and Good. Wise Men may disagree a bit about the means, and we should throw a few conferences to hash these differences out. Politics and ideologues who do not share the ideology of the Wise Men, who of course are not really tainted by ideology, get in the way of enacting policies which are Sensible. It's a dangerously wrong view of the world."
I'd like to walk through Atrios' arguments point-by-point."First, there are absolutely fundamental differences of opinion about the direction of this country which will have tremendous impact on the lives of people... we're not just talking about minor tweaks. There are wide differences of opinion about not just the means but the goals, and those differences of opinion aren't just about debates between Pat Robertson and writers for the Nation. Those differences of opinion exist throughout society, including in the club of technocrats."
Absolutely. Many of the differences that divide us are fundamental. But Atrios treats this observation as an indictment of DeLong's description. It seems to me that fact-based discussions between "reality-based technocrats" focused on common underlying interests (such as the ones DeLong describes) are the only way to transcend the endless back-and-forth between the ideologues. I don't see how Atrios' problem description invalidates DeLong's suggestion.
"Second, it's a useful conceit to imagine you're above ideology, to plant your feet in a place and call it the center, imagining you have the facts on your side and everyone else is an ideologue, but that's hogwash. Certainly some people are more informed by the facts than others, but that doesn't free them from ideology."
True enough. Everyone is partial to some degree. But is the argument here that ideology is destiny? Atrios is a famous partisan. Is he suggesting that there are no people who can transcend partisanship? Or maybe that facts are irrelevant because they are eternally spin-able, so there is no "objective" truth we can all agree upon. I disagree with this sentiment. There are plenty of people, both in broader society and in the public sphere, who transcend ideology to do what they think is best for our country and for humanity. The temptation to see everything through the lens of ideology is strong, but what you see through that lens is a mirage.
"Third, as someone who has spent a reasonable amount of time around the kinds of people DeLong is talking about, I'm not sure I want them running anything. The sensible technocrats haven't exactly had the best track record lately, in part because imagining you're above it helps to isolate you from the consequences of what you're advocating."
This is a pretty broad statement. Atrios seems to be implying that anyone with expertise is incompetent. Is this an indictment of the current administration? Because if anything, this administration brought in more outsiders to replace career "technocrats" (to wit, former FEMA director Brown) than many administrations before it. And this leap to presume that technocrats "[imagine they're] above it" represents a very sweeping generalization. Many people choose to specialize in a particular area because they care deeply about it, or have experienced it first hand. I think this kind of anti-elitism has sort of a populist appeal, but I don't think Atrios wants non-doctors taking out his spleen or non-mechanics working on his car.
"How's that "free trade" working out for Mexico? How'd that currency peg work out for Argentina? How'd that energy deregulation thing work out for California? How'd that shock therapy work out for Russia? How's the privatization of federal government functions coming along? Oh, and how's that Iraq war coming along?"
It sounds like Atrios' response is focusing primarily on economic reform and the Iraq war. But I don't think DeLong is talking only about Jeff Sachs and Donald Rumsfeld. These kind of problems are some of the most complex and intractable issues to try to solve, and solutions often come over decades, not months. Also, there are plenty of successes (Kosovo, Bolivia) to go with the failures (Iraq, Russia). Really these particular examples are a way to urge the reader into thinking about Vietnam-era pencil-neck number crunchers, disconnected from reality, making decisions in a vaccuum and ignorant of realities on the ground. But what about Engineers working for the Army Corps designing a river cleanup plan in central Pennsylvania? Or biologists discussing the impact of underwater weapons testing on marine mammal migration patterns? Or FDA experts discussing the approval of a new drug to treat alzheimers? Again, I don't understand the alternative to having experts try to solve these issues based on the facts.
"I'm not pinning all of these things on DeLong, I'm just saying that the Consensus View of Sensible Technocrats has been pretty disastrous for a lot of people. Sensible Technocrats are above of all driven by the belief that They Are Right."
And ideologues are not? Actually, my sense of "reality-based technocrats" is that they are willing to admit that they don't necessarily know the truth, and they want to engage in data collection and analysis to transcend their "gut" to get to the best outcome. Ideologues, in contrast, are not only convinced they are right, but they think they have found a universal answer to problems that have not even emerged yet. This redefining of "Sensible Technocrat" to mean (in essence) "arrogant, non-sensible elitist" lies at the core of Atrios' response. Another example:
"When the Russia collapse happened one Sensible Technocrat who was partly responsible for the disaster said it all would've worked out swimmingly if only they'd listened to everything he had said. Perhaps true, but not how the world works in practice."
I think this is a direct reference to Sachs. Again, anyone who reads "The End of Poverty" will reel with the complexity of these kind of economic problems. Sachs had the guts to try to take some of those on, and while he didn't come up with a silver bullet in every case, at least he tried to make things better while using all of his formidable brainpower and expertise.
So why did I react to Atrios' post so virulently? Maybe because I sympathize with DeLong's worldview, and it pains me to see the "ideological left" rejecting "facts and pragmatism." Many have criticised the current administration as being anti-science and anti-expertise, aggressively replacing facts with ideology. The danger of confronting such an aggressive political move is that the kneejerk response is to do the much same thing from the opposite perspective. Which of course further radicalizes society, entrenching the changes that sparked the response in the first place.
Krugman has suggested that the best thing about being in power and opposed to government is that you can fail and then point to your failure to further justify your position. Democrats have long been lampooned as "big government," trying to fix every problem of the world through another agency or spending program, but the time of that Democratic party has clearly passed, from my perspective. What the Democrats should be about is good government, making informed decisions based on the best information that can be obtained, and then building social consensus behind the programs so that they can succeed.
Am I sympathetic to the goal of getting political power out of the back rooms of Washington and into the hands of the people? Absolutely. But I don't see any alternatives being voiced by Atrios that could better handle the incredible range of complex problems and questions we need to address as a country. If the growing mobilization of the left translates into more ideologues and more distance from "good governance" (along the lines DeLong describes) then the damage of the past six years truly will be made permanent.