Hamiltonian Conservatism: Fusion with Radical Centrism ? Most interesting. Brooks is hard not to like and his reasoned approach to politics is a welcome antidote to confronational politics 24/7 in an election year. This begs the question of whether confrontational politics makes good sense in non-election years, my view of the issue, but Brooks' point is valid. We have more choices than the MSM and political partisans want us to think we have. The trouble with Brooks is that too often he comes across as a wimp. As timid, to use a less inflammatory word, in any eventuality not bold, not decisive, not strong, not someone with passion for what he believes. This impression is not necessarily the case in what he writes but to hear him speak leaves no doubts on the matter. Possibly this reflects the dilemma of someone with conservative views working at the NY Times. He is the paper's "Affirmative Action" resident 'Rightist.' Making too many waves could cost him his prestigious job and the status and income that go along with it. Understood and understandable. I know what that is like and while I didn't like it either, what is the practical choice ? If the Times was even more Leftist in outlook , if it was openly pro-Communist, or if editorial policy was pure Cultural Marxism, the only choice for someone with a conscience would be to depart and find another job elsewhere, regardless of the "demotion." But bad as the NY Times can be, which is seriously bad, it hasn't gone that far, and staying makes sense. As I said, " been there, done that." Elsewhere. But is this the only alternative ? One could create one's own kingdom, after all, and God knows that Brooks has had that chance. One blockbuster best-seller and you become your own boss, and that, no question for me, is better than working for the NY Times --or anywhere else. Trouble is that Brooks simply doesn't have the imagination --sense of vision and a driving sense of purpose-- for any such thing. He has published books, but while they are "good," some have sold very well on the market, there is nothing in them that I know about around which anyone might be motivated to launch a Brooksian political movement or anything along those lines. So much for his limitations. "Hamiltonian Conservatism," however, holds a lot of promise. It could easily be integrated into the Radical Centrist mix --and maybe we should take preliminary steps to do just that. Some of us here already are at least partly Hamiltonian, I know that I am, but I am not alone by any means. Would this work for Brooks ? Very doubtful since he takes a dim view of Populism, and some of us are, to coin a phrase, Hamiltonian Populists. A little rabble rousing now and then can do a world of good. But what is Hamiltonian Populism but another take on Teddy Roosevelt ? Wonder why Brooks hasn't make the connection. Billy ================================================ from the site : Bensonian Hamiltonian Conservatism: A Third Way in American Politics? Posted on _November 29, 2011_ (http://bensonian.org/2011/11/29/hamiltonian-conservatism-a-third-way-in-american-politics/) by _Christopher Benson_ (http://bensonian.org/author/bensonian/) For years New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks has argued for a revival of Hamiltonian conservatism. One writer _describes_ (http://nymag.com/news/media/67010/) him this way:
Brooks’s charming, levelheaded optimism may be out of style. But he gets to play the voice of reason against a chorus of doomsayers. His moderate conservatism—a synthesis of conservative giant Edmund Burke and Ur-centralizer Alexander Hamilton that has earned him the label of “liberals’ favorite conservative”—may be anomalous, but it allows him a kind of freedom that other, more partisan pundits lack. He’s a party of one, without followers. This is Brooks’s central paradox: He’s both the essential columnist of the moment, better than anyone at crystallizing the questions we face—ones for which there are often no good answers—and also, somehow, totally out of step. Brooks succinctly articulates his moderate conservatism here: There are two major political parties in America, but there are at least three major political tendencies. The first is orthodox liberalism, a belief in using government to maximize equality. The second is free-market conservatism, the belief in limiting government to maximize freedom. But there is a third tendency, which floats between. It is for using limited but energetic government to enhance social mobility. This tendency began with Alexander Hamilton, who created a vibrant national economy so more people could rise and succeed. It matured with Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War Republicans, who created the Land Grant College Act and the Homestead Act to give people the tools to pursue their ambitions. It continued with Theodore Roosevelt, who busted the trusts to give more Americans a square deal. Members of this tradition have one foot in the conservatism of Edmund Burke. They understand how little we know or can know and how much we should rely on tradition, prudence and habit. They have an awareness of sin, of the importance of traditional virtues and stable institutions. They understand that we are not free-floating individuals but are embedded in thick social organisms. But members of this tradition also have a foot in the landscape of America, and share its optimism and its Lincolnian faith in personal transformation. Hamilton didn’t seek wealth for its own sake, but as a way to enhance the country’s greatness and serve the unique cause America represents in the world. Members of this tradition are Americanized Burkeans, or to put it another way, progressive conservatives. This tendency thrived in American life for a century and a half, but it went into hibernation during the 20th century because it sat crossways to that era’s great debate — the one between socialism and its enemies. ------------------------------------------------------------ NY Times Reviving the Hamilton Agenda By _DAVID BROOKS_ (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/index.html?inline=nyt-per) Published: June 8, 2007 (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/08/opinion/08brooks.html?ref=alexanderhamilton&_r=0#) (http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&opzn&page=www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/opinion&pos=Frame4A&sn2=f8475720/9aad5d74&sn1=b6b3cdb6/ae2 91fa0&camp=FSL2012_ArticleTools_120x60_1787511b_nyt5&ad=Hitchcock_120x60_Oct 11_Secure&goto=http://www.foxsearchlight.com/hitchcock) These days there seem to be four schools of political economic thought. First, there are the limited government conservatives, who think taxes should be low and the state should be as small as possible. Second, there are the Hamiltonians, who believe in free market capitalism but think government should help people get the tools they need to compete in it. Third, there are the mainstream liberals, who think government should intervene in small ways throughout the economy to soften the effects of creative destruction. Fourth, there are the populists, who believe the benefits of the global economy are going to the rich and we need to fundamentally rewrite the rules. If you are reading this column, you’re keeping company with somebody in group No. 2. We Hamiltonians disagree with the limited government conservatives because, on its own, the market is failing to supply enough human capital. Despite all the incentives, 30 percent of kids drop out of high school and the college graduation rate has been flat for a generation. Just when it needs a more skilled work force, the U.S. is getting a less s killed one. This is already taking a bite out of productivity growth, and the problem will get worse. We Hamiltonians disagree with the third group, the mainstream liberals, because their programs haven’t worked out. Retraining programs for displaced workers have flopped. Tax code changes to reduce outsourcing are symbolic. Federal jobs programs aren’t effective. Moreover, the high taxes you need to pay for these programs sap the economy. There’s now a pile of evidence showing that higher taxes mean reduced working hours. In the face of Chinese and Indian competition, we don’t need Americans working less. We Hamiltonians disagree with the populists because we don’t find their storyline persuasive. The populists argue that global trade is creating a race to the bottom that is leading to stagnant wages and vast inequality. But when you look at the details, you find that most inequality is caused by a rising education premium, by changes in household and family structure, by the fact that the rich now work longer hours than the less rich and by new salary structures that are more tied to individual performance. None of this can be addressed by changing global trade rules. The global economy radically decreased poverty and increased living standards. It’s crazy to upend this complex system to return to some nostalgic vision of a 1950s industrial wonderland. When it comes to what Hamiltonians are actually for, two big themes stand out. First, the overall economy has to remain dynamic. The biggest threat is the looming wall of entitlement debt. We Hamiltonians would break the current campaign silence on the issue by raising the retirement age and tackling medical inflation to make Medicare affordable. The second big theme is a human capital agenda. No one policy can increase the quality of human capital, but a lifelong portfolio of policies can make a difference. Children do better when raised in stable two-parent families. Bigger child tax credits and increasing the earned income tax credit can reduce the economic strain on young families (and shift the tax burden to older, affluent ones). Extending government income support to young men in exchange for work would make them more marriageable. Nurse practitioners who make home visits can stabilize disorganized, single-parent families. Quality preschool can help young children from those disorganized homes develop the self-motivation skills they’ll need to succeed. The most important thing in a school is quality teachers. That means there should be merit pay for the best, and a change in the certification rules (we should allow more people into the profession and weed out the mediocre ones, regardless of their certification). Senior citizen groups could mentor students to keep them emotionally engaged during college years. National service should be a rite of passage, forcing city kids to work with rural kids, and vice versa. Middle-aged workers need portable pensions and health insurance so they can move and take risks. The immigration system should reward skills, like the college admissions system. The government should increase funding for basic research, especially in math, engineering and physics. The list could go on. My goal here is merely to describe the different economic policy schools that are out there, and to emphasize my favorite, the one least represented by the current presidential candidates. Government is really bad at rigging or softening competition. It can do some good when it helps people compete. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Radical Centrist in outlook -- NY Times Pundit Under Protest By _DAVID BROOKS_ (http://topics.nytimes.com/to p/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/index.html?inline=nyt-per) Published: June 13, 2011 I’ll be writing a lot about the presidential election over the next 16 months, but at the outset I would just like to remark that I’m opining on this whole campaign under protest. I’m registering a protest because for someone of my Hamiltonian/National Greatness perspective, the two parties contesting this election are unusually pathetic. Their programs are unusually unimaginative. Their policies are unusually incommensurate to the problem at hand. This election is about how to avert national decline. All other issues flow from that anxiety. The election is happening during a downturn in the economic cycle, but the core issue is the accumulation of deeper structural problems that this recession has exposed — unsustainable levels of debt, an inability to generate middle-class incomes, a dysfunctional political system, the steady growth of special-interest sinecures and the gradual loss of national vitality. The number of business start-ups per capita has been falling steadily for the past three decades. Workers’ share of national income has been declining since 1983. Male wages have been stagnant for about 40 years. The American working class — those without a college degree — is being decimated, economically and socially. In 1960, for example, 83 percent of those in the working class were married. Now only 48 percent are. Voters are certainly aware of the scope of the challenges before them. Their pessimism and anxiety does not just reflect the ebb and flow of the business cycle, but is deeper and more pervasive. Trust in institutions is at historic lows. Large majorities think the country is on the wrong track, and have for years. Large pluralities believe their children will have fewer opportunities than they do. Voters are in the market for new movements and new combinations, yet the two parties have grown more rigid. The Republican growth agenda — tax cuts and nothing else — is stupefyingly boring, fiscally irresponsible and politically impossible. Gigantic tax cuts — if they were affordable — might boost overall growth, but they would do nothing to address the structural problems that are causing a working-class crisis. Republican politicians don’t design policies to meet specific needs, or even to help their own working-class voters. They use policies as signaling devices — as ways to reassure the base that they are 100 percent orthodox and rigidly loyal. Republicans have taken a pragmatic policy proposal from 1980 and sanctified it as their core purity test for 2012. As for the Democrats, they offer practically nothing. They acknowledge huge problems like wage stagnation and then offer... light rail! Solar panels! It was telling that the Democrats offered no budget this year, even though they are supposedly running the country. That’s because they too are trapped in a bygone era. Mentally, they are living in the era of affluence, but, actually, they are living in the era of austerity. They still have these grand spending ideas, but there is no longer any money to pay for them and there won’t be for decades. Democrats dream New Deal dreams, propose nothing and try to win elections by making sure nobody ever touches Medicare. Covering this upcoming election is like covering a competition between two Soviet refrigerator companies, cold-war relics offering products that never change. If there were a Hamiltonian Party, it would be offering a multifaceted reinvigoration agenda. It would grab growth ideas from all spots on the political spectrum and blend them together. Its program would be based on the essential political logic: If you want to get anything passed, you have to offer an intertwined package that smashes the Big Government vs. Small Government orthodoxies and gives everybody something they want. This reinvigoration package would have four baskets. There would be an entitlement reform package designed to redistribute money from health care and the elderly toward innovation and the young. Unless we get health care inflation under control by replacing the perverse fee-for-service incentive structure, there will be no money for anything else. There would be a targeted working-class basket: early childhood education, technical education, community colleges, an infrastructure bank, asset distribution to help people start businesses, a new wave industrial policy if need be — anything that might give the working class a leg up. There would be a political corruption basket. The Tea Parties are right about the unholy alliance between business and government that is polluting the country. It’s time to drain the swamp by simplifying the tax code and streamlining the regulations businesses use to squash their smaller competitors. There would also be a pro-business basket: lower corporate rates, a sane visa policy for skilled immigrants, a sane patent and permitting system, more money for research. The Hamiltonian agenda would be pro-market, in its place, and pro-government, in its place. In 2012, on the other hand, we’re going to see another clash of the same old categories. I’ll be covering it, but I protest. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
