neoliberalism, RIP?
[This is TNR’s response to the David Brooks column that Carl Remick
posted the other day. The Kinsley article that Brooks cited as the
birth of neoliberalism is at
problem with getting his facts straight.]
What is neoliberalism, anyway? Left Sank? by Jonathan Chait Only at TNR Online | Post date 03.12.07
David Brooks’s column in yesterday’s New York Times tries to wedge
TNR into a larger theory of the change in American liberalism. He has
some kind words for us, and his theory is at least somewhat correct,
albeit shallowly rendered, but the evidence he musters actually
subverts his own point.
The really weird part of the column is the first paragraph. He begins
by citing a 1981 Michael Kinsley article called “The Shame of the
Democrats.” This article, he writes, “began the era of
neoliberalism,” which is now dead, because it is the sort of article
TNR has stopped publishing.
I know the article very well, having read it several times. Its point
was to attack the Democratic Party for surrendering to Ronald
Reagan’s 1981 tax cut, and for failing to use its leverage in
Congress to fight for traditional liberal goals of preserving the
progressivity of the tax code and maintaining social benefits for the
very poor. “The Democrats have done practically nothing to mitigate
the general unfairness of Reagan’s scheme,” Kinsley wrote, “Instead,
they have concentrated on saving or inventing various special goodies.”
In other words, Kinsley was attacking the Democrats from the left. If
this is Brooks’s definition of neoliberalism, then he need not fear:
Neoliberalism is alive and well at Daily Kos.
In any case, in recent years TNR has run countless stories along
precisely those same lines–attacking Democrats for capitulating to
regressive tax cuts. A very quick search turned up this editorial a
column of mine, another editorial, and many, many others. It’s
probably our most distinct genre.
So the opening of Brooks’s column, which is the frame upon which he
hangs his entire thesis, is wrong to the point of absurdity. It would
be as if I were trying to identify a change in Brooks’s style by
citing some old column he wrote about Hipster Yuppies or Patriotic
College Students or Firefighters Who Shop at the Gap and wondered why
he doesn’t write that sort of piece anymore.
Brooks’s second odd point is his scolding us for lacking programmatic
detail. “The magazine now habitually calls on Democrats to take bold
action on things like the war and global warming,” he writes, “but
it’s still a little fuzzy on what that bold action should be.” Well,
OK, these are hard issues, and not everything we say about them has
Brookings-like detail. There was, however, our recent special issue
on Iraq that was filled with specific recommendations. That issue had
an editorial in which we took our best shot. Our most recent
editorial on global warming argued that no legislation should be
proposed until a new president is in the White House. I think we can
be forgiven for withholding specific solutions in an editorial urging
the Democrats to withhold specific solutions.
Like I said, I could see the case for even more detail. But what an
odd complaint coming from David Brooks! This is the creator of
National Greatness Conservatism, a governing ideology whose one
specific programmatic detail was a call for more national monuments.
As I noted above, I do think that Brooks is right in one sense. The
fissure between neoliberals and traditional liberals has narrowed in
recent years, and some of this narrowing can be seen in TNR. Brooks
does not suggest any reason for this change, except for vaguely
hinting that liberals have gotten meaner and more partisan.
In fact there are very good reasons why neoliberalism has faded away.
Neoliberalism grew out of the 1970s, and the conditions that gave
rise to it have changed. First, many of the Democrats’ weaknesses
were addressed by Bill Clinton, who remade the party somewhat along
the lines neoliberals had suggested. Second, George W. Bush has
jerked the political spectrum rightward, making the excesses of
liberalism less salient.
What’s beyond dispute, I think, is that the style Brooks identifies
with neoliberalism (and which he claims is disappearing) remains the
hallmark of TNR: We’re “sprightly and lampooning” and “love to argue
among [our]selves.” Again I refer Brooks to this new thing called the
blogosphere, which has been relentlessly attacking TNR for its lack
of partisan discipline for several years now. Or he could check out
our current issue, which contains, for instance, a (generally)
laudatory cover story on Barack Obama as well as a (generally)
critical Diarist on the same.
I don’t think Brooks’s column was some kind of vicious attack, but it
was kind of confused.
Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at The New Republic.