In “The Big Debate” Bobo gurgles that only by returning to its roots can American democracy prevail against the efficiency of new, booming autocracies. In the comments “gemli” from Boston had this to say: “Our democracy has become defective because it is under attack by a form of malignant conservatism. Oligarchs and fundamentalists have worked to corrode democracy from within, and then use the dysfunction they’ve created to demonstrate its failure. … The democratic process has been hijacked by a small number of the filthy rich, aided and abetted by shills and lickspittles who are paid to tell us that it’s the people who are the problem.” Mr. Cohen is in Kiev. In “Gettysburg on the Maidan” he says Ukraine’s leader shares his thoughts on Putin’s land grab and Kiev’s battle for Western values. In “Bankrupt Housing Policy” Mr. Nocera says a memoir from Timothy Geithner offers the chance to look back on the financial crisis and ask: Why didn’t the government do more to help homeowners? I’d ask a different question — Why aren’t a gaggle of banksters rotting in jail? Mr. Bruni ponders “Hillary’s Obstacle Course” and says between Bill’s soliloquies and Barack’s slump, she’s got problems. Here’s Bobo:
It’s now clear that the end of the Soviet Union heralded an era of democratic complacency. Without a rival system to test them, democratic governments have decayed across the globe. In the U.S., Washington is polarized, stagnant and dysfunctional; a pathetic 26 percent of Americans trust their government to do the right thing. In Europe, elected officials have grown remote from voters, responding poorly to the euro crisis and contributing to massive unemployment.
According to measures by Freedom House, freedom has been in retreat around the world for the past eight years. New democracies like South Africa are decaying; the number of nations that the Bertelsmann Foundation now classifies as “defective democracies” (rigged elections and so on) has risen to 52. As John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge write in their book, “The Fourth Revolution,” “so far, the 21st century has been a rotten one for the Western model.”
The events of the past several years have exposed democracy’s structural flaws. Democracies tend to have a tough time with long-range planning. Voters tend to want more government services than they are willing to pay for. The system of checks and balances can slide into paralysis, as more interest groups acquire veto power over legislation.
Across the Western world, people are disgusted with their governments. There is a widening gap between the pace of social and economic change, and the pace of government change. In Britain, for example, productivity in the private service sector increased by 14 percent between 1999 and 2013, while productivity in the government sector fell by 1 percent between 1999 and 2010.
These trends have sparked a sprawling debate in the small policy journals: Is democracy in long-run decline?
A new charismatic rival is gaining strength: the Guardian State. In their book, Micklethwait and Wooldridge do an outstanding job of describing Asia’s modernizing autocracies. In some ways, these governments look more progressive than the Western model; in some ways, more conservative.
In places like Singapore and China, the best students are ruthlessly culled for government service. The technocratic elites play a bigger role in designing economic life. The safety net is smaller and less forgiving. In Singapore, 90 percent of what you get out of the key pension is what you put in. Work is rewarded. People are expected to look after their own.
These Guardian States have some disadvantages compared with Western democracies. They are more corrupt. Because the systems are top-down, local government tends to be worse. But they have advantages. They are better at long-range thinking and can move fast because they limit democratic feedback and don’t face NIMBY-style impediments.
Most important, they are more innovative than Western democracies right now. If you wanted to find a model for your national schools, would you go to South Korea or America? If you wanted a model for your pension system, would you go to Singapore or the U.S.? “These are not hard questions to answer,” Micklethwait and Wooldridge write, “and they do not reflect well on the West.”
So how should Western democracies respond to this competition? What’s needed is not so much a vision of the proper role for the state as a strategy to make democracy dynamic again.
The answer is to use Lee Kuan Yew means to achieve Jeffersonian ends — to become less democratic at the national level in order to become more democratic at the local level. At the national level, American politics has become neurotically democratic. Politicians are campaigning all the time and can scarcely think beyond the news cycle. Legislators are terrified of offending this or that industry lobby, activist group or donor faction. Unrepresentative groups have disproportionate power in primary elections.
The quickest way around all this is to use elite Simpson-Bowles-type commissions to push populist reforms.
The process of change would be unapologetically elitist. Gather small groups of the great and the good together to hammer out bipartisan reforms — on immigration, entitlement reform, a social mobility agenda, etc. — and then rally establishment opinion to browbeat the plans through. But the substance would be anything but elitist. Democracy’s great advantage over autocratic states is that information and change flow more freely from the bottom up. Those with local knowledge have more responsibility.
If the Guardian State’s big advantage is speed at the top, democracy’s is speed at the bottom. So, obviously, the elite commissions should push proposals that magnify that advantage: which push control over poverty programs to local charities; which push educational diversity through charter schools; which introduce more market mechanisms into public provision of, say, health care, to spread power to consumers.
Democracy is always messy, but, historically, it’s thrived because it has been more flexible than its rivals. In 1787, democracy’s champions innovated faster. Is that still true?
After that I’m going to add a long comment from “Jack in Chicago” who had this to say: “At the national level, American politics has become neurotically democratic.” This is a statement not connected to any experience I have had with respect to current American politics. It is simply ridiculous. Mr. Brooks patches together generalizations, false equivalences, and catchy phrases. What this column doesn’t contain is any deep thought or insight. “Speed at the top”, “speed at the bottom” what does it all mean? Not much, I think. After reading these columns for too long now, I finally realize that whatever Mr. Brooks is for, I’m against, so maybe reading this stuff has devolved into pointlessness.” Amen, Jack. Here’s Mr. Cohen:
Ukrainians are reluctant to dismantle the symbols of their revolution on streets that have become the hallowed ground of democracy and a nation-constituting struggle. On Independence Square, known as the Maidan, and in the surrounding area, makeshift barricades of tires and timber, impromptu shrines to the more than 100 dead, and Ukrainian flags flanked by that of the European Union constitute a stage set of defiance against Russian aggression.
This unusual urban landscape, at once stirring and vulnerable, surrounds the office of Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, the acting prime minister and a man now forged, like many young Ukrainians, in the bloodshed of defiance.
“Putin is caught in the cell of his own propaganda,” Yatsenyuk said of the Russian president. “We can offer him an off-ramp. It is called ‘Get out of Crimea.’ I spoke to his envoy and I told him that even the Roman emperors disappeared, and one day we will have Crimea back.”
His words may appear quixotic, given Russian might and Ukrainian weakness, but Yatsenyuk’s determination reflects a clear choice that has emerged from the success of the Maidan uprising and the ousting of the former president and corrupt Putin toady, Viktor F. Yanukovych: in favor of European pluralism and against a Eurasian imperium.
Ukraine is today the pivot of a struggle between individual freedom and imprisoning empire. There is no halfway house in this confrontation and no escaping the imperative of moral clarity in picking sides. Vladimir V. Putin’s unleashed nationalism and Crimean land grab represent a return to Europe’s darkest days. Americans and Europeans need to stand together to resist this threat.
“I don’t know what’s in Putin’s head or what his final destination is,” Yatsenyuk said. “Luhansk? Lviv? Lisbon? Ask our Polish friends. They are afraid of Russian troops. A permanent member of the United Nations Security Council has decided to grab the land of an independent country.”
The prime minister was speaking to a small group of American, Canadian and European visitors, including the Polish author and former dissident, Adam Michnik; the former French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner; the literary editor of The New Republic, Leon Wieseltier; and the Yale historian, Timothy Snyder.
Snyder has recently written in The New Republic: “We easily forget how fascism works: as a bright and shining alternative to the mundane duties of everyday life, as a celebration of the obviously and totally irrational against good sense and experience.”
The fact that Putin has chosen the label “fascists” for the likes of Yatsenyuk in Kiev (even as the Kremlin maintains excellent relations with extreme-right parties in Western Europe) only underscores the Orwellian mind games of his resurgent nationalism. It is typical of fascism to twist history into a narrative of national humiliation justifying the apotheosis of an avenging leader bent on righting these supposed wrongs — be they in the Sudetenland or Ukraine.
During an hourlong conversation, Yatsenyuk said Russia would do its best to “disrupt and undermine” Ukraine’s May 25 election, suggesting there were now up to 20,000 armed people in the eastern part of the country orchestrated by several hundred well-trained Russian agents. Nevertheless, he said, a credible election across most of Ukrainian territory is possible. “We need a legitimate president,” he said.
He rejected the federalization of Ukraine — “Buy every governor; that is the Russian planning behind so-called federalization” — but spoke strongly in favor of the devolution of power and the rights of Russian speakers. “My wife speaks Russian and she does not need any protection from President Putin,” he declared.
Putin must recognize that Ukraine is a “European state” that will go ahead with its contested association agreement with the European Union and recognize the results of the election, Yatsenyuk said. He said Ukraine is ready to pay its debts to Gazprom, the Russian energy company, on condition that Russia adopts “a market-based not a politically-based approach” — cutting off trade when it suits Putin to punish Kiev.
Asked about American policy toward Ukraine, the prime minister sighed deeply. He said he recognizes that every nation has its limits and constraints. But he continued: “The United States is the leader of the free world. You have to lead. If someone crosses a red line, he is to be prosecuted for this in all ways.” As for American military support, he said, “I never ask in case I don’t get it,” adding that he would of course be “happy to have Patriot missiles on Ukrainian soil.”
There is no question that Putin has exploited a perception of American weakness that began in Syria with President Obama’s retreat there from his “red line” against the use of chemical weapons — a retreat that at once underwrote President Bashar al-Assad, strengthened Putin and undermined American credibility. Ukrainians have now died fighting for American and European values of liberty and pluralism. After its Gettysburg on the Maidan, a free and independent Ukraine is a critical U.S. interest and test.
Now here’s Mr. Nocera:
The publication of Timothy Geithner’s memoir, “Stress Test,” has caused all the old arguments that were fought during the financial crisis to come rushing to the surface again.
Did the government make a mistake in allowing Lehman Brothers to file for bankruptcy? Was it right to bail out the too-big-to-fail banks despite all the harm they had done to the economy? As Sheila Bair, the former chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, put it in her review of “Stress Test”: “Tim’s book has reinvigorated a much-needed debate about whether our financial system should be based on a paradigm of bailouts or on one of accountability.”
And one other thing: It has re-raised the question of why the government wasn’t willing to do more for struggling homeowners, who bore the burden of the Great Recession. In his book, Geithner, the former Treasury secretary, devotes a handful of pages to the Obama administration’s mortgage relief efforts, though the writing comes across as halfhearted, not unlike Geithner’s efforts while he was running the Treasury Department.
But, in the course of perusing another new book about the financial crisis, “Other People’s Houses,” by Jennifer Taub, an associate professor at Vermont Law School, I was reminded of an effort that took place in the spring of 2009 that could have made an enormous difference to homeowners, one that would have required no taxpayer money and might well have become law with a little energetic lobbying from the likes of, well, Tim Geithner. That was an attempt, led by Dick Durbin, the Illinois senator, to change the bankruptcy code so that homeowners who were underwater could modify their mortgages during the bankruptcy process. The moment has been largely forgotten; Taub has done us a favor by putting it back on the table.
As she notes, thanks to a 1993 Supreme Court decision, homeowners saddled with mortgage debt on their primary residences have not been able to take refuge in the bankruptcy courts. The unanimous ruling by the court found that when Congress rewrote the bankruptcy code in 1978, it specifically gave “favorable treatment” to mortgage lenders “to encourage the flow of capital into the home-lending market,” as Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in a concurring opinion. Durbin was trying to get rid of that favorable treatment.
Why? Because, as Bair told me in an email, “It would have been a powerful bargaining chip for borrowers.” Without the ability to file for bankruptcy, underwater homeowners unable to pay their mortgages were helpless to prevent foreclosures. With it, however, servicers and banks were far more likely to negotiate the debt load. And if they weren’t, a bankruptcy judge would rule on the appropriate debt to be repaid. For all the talk about the need for principal reduction, this change would have been the easiest way to get it.
Indeed, although the financial services industry had pushed hard for their bankruptcy carve-out, they would have been helped, too. Knowing that a borrower can avail himself of bankruptcy court would undoubtedly have a sobering effect on lenders, making them more cautious about underwriting standards.
As the financial crisis heated up during his first presidential run, then-candidate Obama said that he favored changing the bankruptcy laws “to make it easier for families to stay in their homes.” But he became convinced that the Democrats should not push for it as part of the controversial bailout legislation, so he backed off, promising to push it once he was in the White House.
Once he was president, however, Obama was rarely heard from on the subject. In late April 2009, with a bankruptcy bill having already passed the House, Durbin offered his amendment on the Senate side. The financial services industry pulled out all the stops, arguing that a right of bankruptcy for a homeowner would increase the cost of home loans, undermine the sanctity of contracts and promote (of course!) moral hazard.
Adam J. Levitin, a professor at Georgetown Law School, believes that nothing untoward would have happened if Durbin’s amendment had passed. He and another researcher looked at interest rate and loan size data from 1978 to 1993 when some jurisdictions did allow homeowner bankruptcies. “The effect on interest rates was small,” he told me. “The sky didn’t fall.”
He added, “This should have been a no-brainer.”
As it turns out, there is one other person who was opposed to the bankruptcy option. That was Tim Geithner. He writes in his book that he didn’t think it was “a particularly wise or effective strategy.” Although Geithner says the votes weren’t there for Durbin’s amendment, it did get 45 votes. How many more might it have gotten if the Treasury Department and the White House had come out strongly in support?
Which leads to one other unanswered question about the financial crisis. Why is it that the fear of moral hazard only applies to homeowners, and not to the banks?
The MOTU own the government and it didn’t suit them. Here’s Mr. Bruni:
Reince Priebus made a joke on Sunday.
I don’t know that he meant to — comedy isn’t his forte — but the only way to hear one of his comments on “Meet the Press” was as a put-on. He said that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t run for the presidency if “she has another month like she just had,” with questions about Monica, about Benghazi, about Boko Haram, about her brain.
I almost fell down. For one thing, she’s had countless months like that. For another, they’re the only kind on the horizon: Hillary as the fodder for the morning talk shows (on Sunday’s panels, she came up 98 times, according to a Washington Post tally) and Hillary as a piñata for late-night comedians; strenuously marketed Hillary scandals with a modicum of merit and strenuously marketed Hillary scandals with none.
If Republicans believed in global warming, they’d surely divine her hand in it. Speaking of body parts, I suspect we’ll move from Hillary’s brain to her heart, probably her liver, possibly her pancreas and maybe even her pinkie toe. What Hillary goes through in the public arena isn’t an examination. It’s a vivisection.
That she endures it is admirable. That she’s so willing to is scary. With all politicians, you worry about the intensity of the hunger that enables them to suffer the snows of Iowa and the slings and arrows of outrageous pundits. With Hillary and Bill, you worry that it’s rapaciousness beyond bounds.
You also grow weary. The Clintons are exhausting. And that’s just one of many drawbacks worth discussing as Hillary plays Hamlet, mulling what to do.
She’s without doubt the contender to bet on. But she’s a contender with baggage and obstacles that get woefully short shrift in all the nonstop chatter about her inevitability.
For starters, Americans have been in a pessimistic mood for an unusually sustained period, their faith in the political system at rock bottom. How does someone who’s been front and center in that system for more than two decades — who’s a symbol of intense partisan warfare — become the voice of change? There’s no “Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)” for Hillary. Tomorrow was yesterday.
Remarks she made in Washington on Friday illustrated that point. At a conference titled “Big Ideas for a New America,” she mused about what “the 1990s taught us,” looking into the future by traveling into the past, which isn’t the terrain on which presidential elections are typically won.
Bill traveled there just two and a half weeks earlier, in a speech of his own at Georgetown University. “Speech” is too paltry a word; this was one of those ego extravaganzas, like his aria at the Democratic National Convention, that went on and on and reaffirmed his talent for making everything, including the current income-inequality debate, about him. In this case he was singing the praises of his own presidency’s economic record.
He was also serving notice that despite his screw-ups during Hillary’s 2008 campaign, it may be impossible to muzzle him in 2016. Just last week, on yet another stage, he again joined the fray, proclaiming Hillary blameless for Benghazi and vouching that her concussion was merely that. There’s a thin line between chivalry and butting in. Can he stay on the right side of it? If not, he could hurt her candidacy, overshadowing her and undercutting her feminist story line.
She has additional challenges. If Obama’s approval rating doesn’t rise, his would-be successors will be best served by breaking with him. For Hillary that’s hard. Given her history on health insurance, she can’t run against the Affordable Care Act. Given her role in his administration, she can’t run against his foreign policy.
How does she simultaneously defend and defy him? It’s a balancing act that Al Gore never perfected in regard to her husband.
The last month has indeed been instructive, demonstrating how practiced Republicans are at attacking her — and how exuberant they are about it. I think they want her to run. She’s the devil they know. She’s the dragon worth slaying.
She’s considered inevitable in part because she’s political royalty, awash in money and celebrity endorsements, but is royalty what an economically frustrated, embittered electorate wants? With fame of her duration and magnitude, how does she find a common touch?
And how does she show us anything that she hasn’t shown us before, introducing or even reintroducing herself?
Maybe any sense of staleness will be expunged by the prospect of a first female president, but she lacks an opportunity that many successful presidential candidates enjoyed: that period of the rollout when a more detailed biography emerges, a personality is defined and voters get a chance to swoon.
We can’t fall in love that way with Hillary, not at this point. We’re too far past the roses and Champagne.
Well, Frank, if you’re so very, very tired of reading and hearing about the Clintons why not just STFU and write about something else instead of channeling MoDo.
