Why Bush and Obama are Not as Different as You Think

Bush ignored the supposed inviolability of nation-states with his invasion of Iraq. Obama believes that we should “spread the wealth around” and is attempting to do so through health care reform, agitating to no end those who believe in the sacredness of individual property. How could these two phenomena be connected?

The nation-state system and the ideology of individualism are codependent in many ways. The illusion of the atomized individual sustained itself as long as global politics forced individualistic societies to bind together in the confrontation of collectivist and/or repressive regimes.

Bush correctly discerned that the system of international law not protect the country in an age of easy travel and transportable, highly destructive technology, and committed non-nation state actors. He undermined the preexisting global order in the face of a real security need.

Obama correctly discerns that, in the wake of the general acceptance of the economic power of individualism and in the absence of a viable ideological alternative (whether, as you would have it, due to Bush’s attack on radical Islam or due to its inherent nihilism), he must confront the social malaise that individualism sometimes creates. Struggle with communism, for instance, can no longer provide an individualistic halo for the reform of education, infrastructure, or social insurance.

The post-national world, emerging slowly for now, presents a new matrix for security decisions and new social challenges to individualistic democracies. Naturally, national governments are a crude tool for managing their own (again, perhaps very gradual) retreat into obsolescence. Nonetheless, it is inevitable, and at times, useful, that they attempt to do so. It is no surprise that confusion reigns in the meantime.

The End of the American Consensus

We weren't told how to behave that day after 9-11, we just knew. It was right; it was the opposite of what we feel today . . . Are you ready to be the person you were that day after 9-11, on 9-12?

-Glenn Beck, 3/13/09

Wherefore 9/11 nostalgia?

What kind of nostalgia does the memory of 9-12-01 provoke? Why would it be appealing?

The memory of unity, of confronting the world as a coherent American people is clearly part of such romanticism.

The current economic recession, the fear of terrorism, and intensified political partisanship (through the Bush and, now, the Obama years) heighten the appeal of a reassuring unity.


Whence our discord?

But the events themselves (terror attack, economic recession) do not explain all of our unease. Nor does partisanship explain all of our discord.

Rather, 9/11 and the financial meltdown forced us to recognize American vulnerability in new ways and to make decisions that undermined the ideological consensus, predicated on the integrity of nation-states and of markets, that constituted the bulwark of American political life from, at least, World War II until recent years.

Let’s look at the security and economic challenges of recent years to understand how they have punctured this American consensus.


The security challenge: 9/11 demonstrated the limitations of the nation-state system: We learned that the apparently mundane political goings-on in other nation-states are of vital security interest to us even when possess no large conventional army. In other words, we have to pay attention to foreign societies, not just foreign militaries. The Bush Administration’s argument for the Iraq war, love it or hate it, proposed a response to this facet of the security challenge. At the same time, the preemptive Iraq War directly undermined Americans’ faith in the stability and relevance of the international laws undergirding the nation-state system.

The economic challenge: The TARP bailout demonstrated the limitations of our corporate sector as well as our new economic vulnerability: Ultimately, the stabilization of that sector demanded the ‘public insurance’ of our tax dollars. Also, our debt and our trade imbalance demonstrated that the economic goings-on in other nation-states are of vital interest to us. Our large international debt limited our options to respond to the financial crisis and may have contributed (read more here here and here) to it in a number of ways.

In short, events have overwhelmed the ideology that underpinned American political thinking from the end of World War II until recent years: We now have less faith in the international system of nation-states as well as less faith in free market, corporate capitalism.

This ideological disorientation causes the malaise that Glenn Beck now exploits.

The Future of Our Political Parties

I predicted, after 9/11, that the political parties in the US would fundamentally reconstitute themselves. 9/11 demanded an acknowledgment of an interconnected world in which the political organization of other countries, as well as non-Americans’ perceptions of us, were to be of vital consequence.

Bush won the day because he was the only one to present a coherent argument for American engagement in a connected world: Namely, America must reshape the world in its own image.

Obama’s argument for pragmatic flexibility, paired with his symbolic internationalism, gave heft to vague calls made by John Kerry in 2004 for ‘multilateralism;’ working with, and learning from, the rest of the world was now an affirmative act of engagement rather than a retreat from American principles: We were to engage the world with a willingness to adapt. This argument, of course, resonated more strongly in the absence of the perception of immediate threats from terrorists.

The economic crisis of the past year, too, supported Obama’s argument for increased American flexibility: how could we claim to know what is best for the entire world when our cherished capitalist system was mired in such a quandary?

Finally, Obama’s careful management of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, not in accord with the speedy withdrawals originally called for during the Democratic primaries, has robbed the Republican Party, even further, of a potentially affirmative, internationalist message: that of the United States bringing democracy to the world. The GOP’s impulse to take on the world reverts, accordingly, to a shallow xenophobia and isolationism.

Bush and Obama share (and the fact of their sharing anything is surely disturbing to many) a conviction that the world is increasingly intertwined. Each built a political persona based on that idea. All those who reject contending with this emerging reality are left to make increasingly ideological claims with little empirical backing and to entertain the least reality-based members of their political tribe. It is clear which party follows these patterns today.

If Obama leads the Democrats to a principled, if much more cautious and less violent, promotion of democracy around the world, and couples it with enhanced American flexibility on a range of other international issues, the Democrats will have stolen the center for a good time to come. Few constructive messages for the GOP will therefore remain and the party will accordingly continue to wither.

The True Story of the GOP's Dissipation

Rapid global development and economic/financial change undermine the relevance of strict rightists and leftists: The need to adapt quickly to new technologies and new economic realities will reward adaptable, rather than orthodox, parties and regimes.

Edward Golberg of Baruch College, in today's Friedman column diagnoses the malaise of the Republican Party accordingly:

Globalization has neutered the Republican Party, leaving it to represent not the have-nots of the recession but the have-nots of globalized America, the people who have been left behind either in reality or in their fears . . . The need to compete in a globalized world has forced the meritocracy, the multinational corporate manager, the eastern financier and the technology entrepreneur to reconsider what the Republican Party has to offer.

Health care is one example of an area where government can play a productive role in supporting economic growth and human capital development.

Government intervention is only justified in the Right's worldview when the capitalist system is under threat (e.g. during ideological struggles with the Soviets, radical Islamists, etc.). They have no ideological context for coming to terms with the pressing national-economic needs of globalization.

Some on the left have a similar problem coming to terms with globalization but the left's solutions happen to be more pertinent at the moment. And, the anti-WTO, anti-trade wing of the Democratic party has receded, for the time being.

Why Business is The New Communism

Which companies have changed our lives most in recent years?

Could you argue that Google and Facebook have been at the lead?

Perhaps you've thought about how these companies don't just represent new computer tools but new philosophies of doing business: they organize information to make it accessible and trust that that will draw you into their grasp, that they will find out how to make money off of you accordingly.

What's communist about that?

The fact that these companies have an interest in engaging your creativity. That commitment, to the extent that other businesses adopt it, represents a revolution in the relationship of commercial interests to social development: people are inherently valued as knowledge producers and consumers, and the increasing intellectual efficacy of an individual is seen as an economic opportunity for business.

So what?

Many have argued, over the past several hundred years, for a social counterweight (often this role is taken by, and presumed by, government) to the narrow interests of business. Others have argued that the narrowness of business interests is a good thing, as it counterbalances overambitious intellectuals and bureaucrats, and is the stuff of gradual economic and social improvement.

The business philosophies of the Information Age undermine the supposition that broad social thinking and the profit motive tend to lead to divergent paths (though, of course, they sometimes will).

The key idea is that increased access to, and ability to contend with, information is (a) increasingly essential to our economy and, simultaneously, (b) increasingly understood by businesses as an essential avenue for growth.

I am not arguing that business will solve all of our social problems, only that the emerging business philosophy of interconnectivity can lead to enormous social good and hold government increasingly accountable to making economically effective investments in human capital.

A substantiated belief in the alignment of business interest and human development is, where it exists, a salutary development that has wide implications. That trend is where we should keep our attention in coming years, and decades.

Why is the Health Care Debate Happening Now?

Because a Democrat is in the White House?

Because health care costs have skyrocketed?

Because free marketed ideologies have been discredited by the financial crisis?

Because Obama is especially charming?

The principal reason these debates are happening now is none of these things. The sea change in public opinion on health care over the past few decades is a result of the international predominance of capitalism and democracy.

Sound crazy?

During the Cold War, for instance, Americans were much more sensitive about socialist reforms. Now, a minority of Americans expresses such concerns.

At the same time, the idea of taking a huge economic risk in the midst of a focus on international political competition with, say, the Soviet Union or Islamic fundamentalists, was extremely frightening.

Finally, of course, the focus on human development has grown with the increase in the value of human capital in the global economy.

So, the global triumph of capitalism and democracy has (1) reduced ideological sensitivity, (2) shifted our focus away from international political competition, and (3) created the conditions for international economic competition, based on human capital investment, to take on increasing importance.

I'm sure you've seen this posted on your homepage:

No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.

I've certainly felt an upsurge of sentiment on this score. And I doubt that that upsurge will go away.

This is not just about health care, though. There is a change of mores occurring in the US, with implications both promising and daunting.

Individual responsibility, to be sure, is not disappearing, but the idea of health care as a right will help to solidify a new meaning of the word "right."

Many others have noticed that "rights" used to imply a freedom from government interference. And that they are coming to mean an entitlement to social support.

This change comes with some risks, economic and social. New rights, however, can lead to both economic and social inefficiencies and efficiencies. We should not pretend that the two conversations are unconnected nor, alternatively, that they always point in the same direction.