Fear Can Be Productive, Fearlessness Destructive

There is something different happening in this economic downturn. It's not just the fact that the recovery has been stubbornly slow, but the political response to it. For the first time in modern American history, conservatives have no fear of the social consequences of economic distress.

This is an unprecedented situation, and a dangerous one. It has turned one of the two political parties into an uncompromising, extremist faction blinded by ideology.

In his column in the New York Times last Friday, David Brooks argues that Republicans today are not extreme, they just have a different viewpoint: "many Republicans have now come to the conclusion that the welfare-state model is in its death throes." Democrats, on the other hand, fail to see the writing on the wall and are simply re-arranging the deck chairs on the old Titanic.

The behavior of today's Republican Party is a problem for those like Brooks who see themselves as responsible conservatives. No reasonable person wants to defend the people who still question where the president was born, or the people in Michigan who put a sign saying "Obama Presidential Library" on a bullet-hole pocked outhouse last week, or even legislators who are willing to take the government to the brink of default.

So Brooks ignores that kind of embarrassing extremism and focuses instead on this big-picture "viewpoint" that he clearly views as much more intellectually respectable. The problem is this: the very viewpoint he identifies is also an extremist one.

Brooks implicitly suggests that the perception of extremism is due to the extremity of the situation: we are at a turning point in world history: the "welfare-state model" is dying. I would respond that we are now seeing the domestic economic and political consequences of a real turning point in world history that came over twenty years ago: the death of communism.

The limited welfare state in this country came into being as a response to two great crises of American capitalism--the depression of the 1890s and the Great Depression of the 1930s. What we call the "welfare state" was initially the product of two large movements that followed those economic calamities: the Progressivism of the early 20th century and the New Deal.

In both cases, intelligent American political leaders had one central insight: the only way to preserve American capitalism from the threat of revolution was to reform it, to moderate it, to curb its worst excesses. As Theodore Roosevelt put it in 1912:

There is urgent necessity of applying both common sense and the highest ethical standard to this movement for better economic conditions among the mass of our people if we are to make it one of healthy evolution and not one of revolution.

Without reform, revolution was inevitable. The true conservative, TR knew, was a reformer.

The reformers of both eras knew there was something worse out there as a possibility: the specter of communism. That radical ideology gave disgruntled workers an alternative that promised a more just and equitable society. The wisest of the capitalists understood the threat this ideology represented, and more importantly, they knew that the only way to preserve capitalism was to reform and limit it. On some level, they were scared--but this was the good kind of scared, the kind that sees a real threat and responds to it rationally and reasonably, producing something better.

The result was a regulatory system that began modestly under TR with legislation like the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Hepburn Act (which empowered the Interstate Commerce Commission so that it could effectively regulate the railroad industry). Under FDR, the result was Social Security and unemployment insurance, both of which were designed (at least in part) to prevent future economic downturns from spiraling out of control. The New Deal also saw the creation of the SEC to regulate Wall Street and the Glass-Steagall Act to regulate the banks.

The result of all of this reform was the emergence of the United States as the great economic powerhouse of the mid-to-late 20th century.

What is different in this latest crisis of capitalism is that capitalists today are not scared of the "mass of our people." Ever since the collapse of the Soviet empire and communism 20 years ago, American conservatives have had no fear of social unrest, at home or abroad. They believe that there is no alternative for frustrated workers, so these reforms of the 20th century are no longer needed. They can turn back the clock on reforms they never really liked, ones they'd only grudgingly accepted as necessary to preserve social peace.

With nothing to fear, they have spent the last 20 years trying to undermine the regulatory state and the limited welfare state. They've deregulated the financial industries, repealed Glass-Steagal. They've repeatedly cut taxes to "starve the beast." They've encouraged the growing income disparity that has left the middle and lower classes stagnant or declining while the wealthiest accumulate ever-greater shares of the national wealth.

And when as a result it all came crashing down in 2008, they blamed not the tax cuts, not the increasing concentration of wealth at the very top, not the deregulation, not the banks, not the markets. Instead, they blamed the unions, people on unemployment, recipients of public assistance, government workers. The people they no longer feared, the people they've long seen as impediments to even greater profits and concentrations of wealth.

The Republican Party has, for the last three years, acted like people who think they hold all the cards. They don't need to compromise. The worse the economy gets, the better it is for them politically, the easier it becomes to scapegoat the government and administer the final death blows to the welfare state. They are not afraid.

Unlike smart conservatives in earlier ages, today's conservatives see no reason to curb the excesses of capitalism. Far from it. They rail against "Obamacare" despite the fact that it retains (and arguably subsidizes) the private insurance system and is dominated by conservative ideas of health insurance reform. They whine that the modest financial industry reforms of the Dodd-Frank Act mark the end of freedom.

More cruelly, rather than trying to take the edge off in tough times, they seem intent on sharpening the pain inflicted by the failings of the economic system.

Feeling no fear, seeing no need to reform, they are pressing what they see as their advantages--not only do they refuse to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, they are pushing for further cuts in tax rates that are already unusually low. Rather than bolster the protections against the vicissitudes of the economic system (like unemployment insurance and food stamps), they seek to diminish or remove them. Rather than make concessions to unions to help workers, they try to destroy them.

The argument (such as it is) that Brooks makes is that we cannot afford the "welfare-state model" anymore. In this perverse vision, government is so big that it has strangled capitalism (fact--there are 500,000 fewer federal government employees today than there were in 1980, though there are 82 million more Americans). Now the welfare state is too expensive, we can't afford it, it has outlived its usefulness, so now it has to go.

But the historical reality is different. Yes, undeniably, the modern welfare state would be impossible without the wealth creation of capitalism. But it was also the emergence of the regulatory state and the welfare state that made possible the continued growth of capitalism after its near self-destruction in the depressions of the 1890s and the 1930s.

Without adequate regulation, without government policies to moderate its impact, free market capitalism produces socially destabilizing and destructive swings of boom and bust.

Smart conservatives in America's past knew that. Today, a precious few like David Frum occasionally try to pull conservatism back in that direction (e.g., reminding them that opposition to "Obamacare" is not enough, they need an alternative that addresses the problem of the uninsured).

But mostly, people like David Brooks, people who should know better, enable modern conservatism's short-sightedness by elevating it to a respectable "viewpoint" and ignoring its extremism.

It is extreme. It is short-sighted. It is stupid. And worst of all, it is self-destructive.

It used to be that conservatives were wise enough to fear extremism. Today, they embrace it.

Ike & Joe & Mitt & Donald

Nearly 60 years ago, during the 1952 presidential campaign, Dwight D. Eisenhower had to work hard to unite a potentially fractious Republican Party. In the nomination fight, he had vanquished Sen. Robert Taft, whom Ike considered dangerously isolationist in his foreign policy. Eisenhower also had to contend with the anti-communist demagoguery of Joe McCarthy.

Two years earlier, McCarthy had quickly made a name for himself by claiming to have a list (which he never, of course, produced) of known Communist Party members who were employed by the State Department. While he never uncovered a single actual Communist, McCarthy's bluster kept his name in the papers.

Privately, Ike expressed his contempt for McCarthy."I will not get into the gutter with this guy," he told aides who encouraged him to publicly denounce the Wisconsin senator.

But late in the campaign, in October 1952, Eisenhower faced a decision. McCarthy had slandered George C. Marshall, the United States Army Chief of Staff during World War II and Secretary of State and then Secretary of Defense under President Truman. McCarthy called Marshall "a man steeped in falsehood," and suggested that he had deliberately sabotaged American policy in China: "If Marshall were merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that part of his decisions would serve this country's interest."

As Truman later pointed out, Marshall was "the man who had done more for Eisenhower than anyone else on earth.... Every major promotion that Eisenhower got, every major assignment, came about because George Marshall recommended it or ordered it."

Eisenhower and McCarthy, Oct. 1952.
Photo by Robert Boyd, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Credit: Wisconsin Historical Society

So what would Ike do: defend his mentor Marshall or appease the demagogue McCarthy? His first instinct was to do the former. He was headed for McCarthy's home state, and his speech writers prepared a draft praising Marshall. His aides leaked word of that to the press. McCarthy heard and managed to board Ike's campaign train on its way to Milwaukee, and argued that Ike should omit those statements. Though he reportedly reacted with "red-hot anger" to McCarthy, Ike caved. He appeared on the same platform with McCarthy, removed the praise of Marshall from his speech, and echoed some of McCarthy's anti-communist rhetoric.

Truman was appalled. He thought Marshall "one of the most decent and honorable men this country has ever produced." He wrote privately that the incident showed Ike was "chickenhearted" and a "weak man cowering at a mental image of McCarthy's pugnacious face and rasping voice."

The recent spectacle of Mitt Romney attending a fund-raiser with Donald Trump brought this old story to mind, because it raises the same questions of character in politics. Trump, of course, has made himself notorious as the most prominent proponent of the discredited idea that President Obama was not born in Hawaii. Romney has received a fair amount of heat for his embrace of Trump. When asked about it, he replied:

"You know I don’t agree with all the people who support me and my guess is they don’t all agree with everything I believe in." This is no doubt true. It is also irrelevant. No reasonable person believes that candidates for office are personally responsible for all of the views of all of their supporters.

Romney and Trump, Feb. 2012.
Steve Marcus / Reuters

But that was not the issue. This was no run-of-the-mill supporter. This was someone famous, whose recent notoriety is due to spouting a demonstrably false conspiracy theory about Romney's opponent.

This is someone with whom Romney chose to do a fund-raiser. It is entirely fair to assume that choosing to share a stage with someone implies there are no important disagreements with that individual.

The question to Romney really should have been: "Is there anything Donald Trump could say that would lead you to forego doing a fund-raiser with him?"

Presumably the answer is "yes," which then leads to the follow-up: why doesn't Trump's birther nonsense meet that standard? After all, what Trump is suggesting is that the President of the United States is illegitimate and a fraud. Romney knows this, but it changes nothing about his relationship with Trump. Why does Romney choose to associate with someone who stoops to such baseless demagoguery?

Fortunately, Romney answered that question without it being asked: "I need to get 50.1 percent or more." In other words, his answer is no different that the one Eisenhower would given: it was politics.

Romney's shape-shifting from moderate to "severely conservative" means that the conservative Republican base does not trust him. Many of those same people consistently express doubt that the president was born in the U.S.A. So Romney indirectly panders to them by embracing their spokesman, even as he tries to maintain credibility with sane voters by accepting the facts about Obama's birthplace.

Eisenhower had a similar problem. As a career military man, no one even knew which political party he belonged to until shortly before the 1952 campaign. He defeated "Mr. Republican" (Robert Taft) for the nomination, but still had to prove himself to the far right McCarthyites. He tried to do that by choosing Sen. Richard Nixon as his running mate (Nixon, due to his role in the Alger Hiss case, was seen as the smart man's McCarthy).

But it was not enough. It never is for the politically rabid. McCarthy bullied Ike into forsaking the man most responsible for the fact that Eisenhower was ever considered a potential president. For Eisenhower, it worked politically. He cruised to victory in 1952. But it sullied his reputation as a man of personal loyalty and honor.

It may work politically for Romney, too. His willingness to get down in the gutter with Trump, his refusal to scorn the chief proponent of birtherism, however, makes it hard to see Romney as a man of character. And so his problem becomes circular--because there is no "there" there, he constantly needs to pander to the base; the more he panders to the base, the more he proves that there really is no "there" there.

The Southern Strategy Lives

The semester is over at Wofford. Though I was on leave from my normal teaching duties, I did supervise the independent work of three students, one of whom (Jennifer Coggins) wrote an excellent honors thesis on Richard Nixon, the southern strategy, and school desegregation. For her, of course, Nixon was fairly distant history. For me, Nixon is memory. I always tell my students that Nixon is the first president I really remember and that the adult version of me is no more taken with him than the child version was, so they should take my mixture of memory and history with an appropriate grain of salt.

Last week brought a jarring reminder of the relevance of scholarly work like this thesis. In short (and I'm simplifying a 50 page argument), in the 1968 campaign, Nixon employed what has been called the "southern strategy" and the rhetoric used in the election had real consequences for Nixon administration policy regarding school integration.

The "southern strategy" was the attempt to exploit politically LBJ's full embrace of civil rights in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. The thinking was that disaffected Democrats (especially, but not exclusively, from the south--think Archie Bunker) could be convinced to vote Republican by the used of racially coded rhetoric that would signal sympathy with their opposition to the civil rights movement.

South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond with
Richard Nixon during the 1968 campaign.

The trick, however, was to do so without being too obvious about it, since that ran the risk of alienating independents and Republicans who supported civil rights. So Nixon used phrases such as "law and order" which had no inherent racial meaning, but had become racially charged due to the rioting after Martin Luther King's assassination in April 1968 and the rise of militant groups like the Black Panthers.

Choosing the right words, therefore, could send different messages to different audiences: opponents of civil rights could see a rebuke to the movement, while others could see a non-racial appeal for social stability in a tumultuous time.

Last Thursday, the New York Times ran a story about a proposed ad campaign, funded by a conservative billionaire named Joe Ricketts, to use Rev. Jeremiah Wright to try to discredit President Obama. Using Rev. Wright would not necessarily raise comparisons to Nixon's southern strategy. In fact, nothing in the Times article did for me. But the Times helpfully included a link to the entire proposed ad campaign document.

Title page of the memo by "Strategic Perceptions"

Being a historian, I welcomed the chance to read the primary source. Not surprisingly, the authors were aware of the potential racially charged nature of the proposed ad. To pre-empt any such charges, they proposed getting "an extremely literate, conservative African American in our spokesman group," as well as using focus groups to test how the ad came across. The focus group would help identify what might seem racist to viewers.

Again, nothing too overtly suggesting the southern strategy. In fact, for a moment, I thought that the idea was to insure that there was truly nothing racist about the ad. Then came the explanation that the focus group would help them in "making fine-tuning adjustments in wording and visuals to increase the impact, while lessening any elements that could reasonably be deemed 'racist.'"

"Lessening." In that one word, we see the essence of the southern strategy.

The paragraph begins with the assumption that the "instant response liberals give to any attack is to deem the attack as racist." But those are not the people the ad's authors care about. The perception that they are trying to influence is not that of knee-jerk, partisan liberals. The focus group is there to tell them what could reasonably be deemed racist.

They take as a given that the focus group may well think parts of the ad "could reasonably be deemed 'racist.'" And in response they would tweak the ad to lessen those elements.

Not "eliminate," but lessen.

As it was with the southern strategy, the concern is perception. The challenge is to use a racially charged attack and try to make it not look racist to people who will be offended by its racism. So you identify and lessen the racist elements. But you don't eliminate them, because that would defeat the purpose. You are also speaking to another audience, and they need to be able to perceive what will motivate them.

Four years ago, Rick Perlstein wrote a book called Nixonland, that argues that Nixon shaped the political world we now live in. That is probably an overstatement. But when it comes to the southern strategy, some people are clearly still living in Nixonland.

Let's Play "Name That Candidate!"

The following passage comes from a major address by the nominee for president of a major political party:

Whatever progress has been made we all accept.... there are certain principles that are accepted by substantially all of the American people. They cannot be treated as partisan principles. They are national policies. For instance, the policy of providing the farmer with a fair share of the national income is a national policy.... We say to you workers that the right of collective bargaining by labor's own free choice is not a partisan right. It is a national policy. The principle of setting a floor under wages is likewise an established principle. That floor should be raised as rapidly as our increasing prosperity permits... It is national policy to set a limit to the hours of labor. Whenever those hours are exceeded, overtime must be paid at the rate of time and a half. Social Security is a national policy. And so are old age pensions. Nobody has a patent on them. It is national policy to care for the unemployed.... It is national policy to care for the aged, the sick, the physically handicapped, the blind, and others who need our help.

I admit, this isn't an easy one. He did not go on to become president, so he's less well-known. So how about this question instead: which political party does he belong to, the Democratic or Republican?

Answer: The Republican Party.

This is from Wendell Willkie's final speech of the 1940 campaign, given over the radio, originating from a campaign rally in Madison Square Garden in New York City.

I came across this speech doing some research, and was somewhat dumbfounded when I read it. Even allowing for the real possibility that Willkie's support for all of these "national policies" might have been more rhetorical than real (after all, Paul Ryan today has the chutzpah to claim that his plan to end Medicare is really meant to "save" it), this is remarkable.

My first thought was the rather obvious one: can anyone imagine the Republican nominee in 2012 full-throatedly supporting all of these policies that were enthusiastically embraced by the Republican nominee 72 years ago in 1940?

To be fair, Willkie also said things that could easily have come from Romney's mouth in this campaign: "We believe ... that in order to protect [these benefits] and to extend them it is necessary to have a government that is financially sound."

In fact, Willkie's defense policy statement is almost exactly the same as Romney's: "All of us believe in the need for a powerful national defense. But our administration ... would have it so powerful that no aggressor would ever dare or seek to strike."

Romney has repeatedly said in this campaign: "I will insist on a military so powerful no one would ever think of challenging it."

Those similarities notwithstanding, it is remarkable to see how different the rhetoric is.

Willkie supported collective bargaining, while Romney has praised Gov. Walker's and Gov. Kasich's efforts to limit collective bargaining in Wisconsin and Ohio.

Willkie supported not only the concept of a minimum wage, but anticipated increasing it, while Romney is against an increase and in the past has proposed at most indexing it to inflation (which would have the effect of never increasing it in fact). Some Republicans (e.g., Ron Paul and Tea Party leader and former congressman Dick Armey) even favor abolishing it.

Willkie talks about caring for the unemployed, while Romney has opposed extending unemployment benefits and has even said he'd like to see "reform of our unemployment system, to allow people to have a personal account which they're able to draw from as opposed to having endless unemployment benefits." In other words, he would privatize it and end any government responsibility for the unemployed.

Willkie says it is "national policy" to care for the sick, but Romney would repeal the Affordable Care Act and has proposed no national policy to advance the cause of providing health insurance for the uninsured.

Willkie supported Social Security and old age pensions, while Romney would increase the eligibility age for both Social Security and Medicare.

The unavoidable conclusion is how far to the right the Republican Party (and, to some extent, the Democratic Party) has moved over the last 70 years, with most of that rightward movement having taken place in the last twenty years.

It has become commonplace to note that Ronald Reagan, the nominee in 1980, and Richard Nixon, the nominee in 1968, would be too liberal for today's Republican  Party. Turns out, Wendell Willkie in 1940 would be, too.

Justice Scalia is a Political Hack

Ever since Antonin Scalia was appointed to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan in 1986, he has been widely lauded as the great thinker on the Court. "Certainly, no one denies his immense legal brilliance and intellectual abilities," one biographical sketch says, reflecting a fairly commonly accepted opinion--even on the left. In the past, I've even accepted it myself.

But I've grown increasingly skeptical of Scalia's "legal brilliance" over the years, and reports I read about the recent health care and immigration cases argued before the Court made me doubt it more than ever. Knowing that isolated quotations can be misleading, however, I decided to read the immigration case oral arguments in their entirety to see Scalia at work.

I was prepared for Scalia to be hostile to the administration's position, so I wasn't surprised when Scalia had little to say while Paul Clement made the case in favor of the Arizona law. What took me aback was how overtly political he was in his questioning. I expected that his hostility to the administration's position would be constitutionally based. I was wrong.

During the oral arguments, Scalia went out of his way to object not to the administration's constitutional argument, but to federal policy on immigration. Note how Scalia frames the issue in this exchange with Clement:

JUSTICE SCALIA: You’ll concede that the – that the State has to accept within its borders all people who have no right to be there, that the Federal Government has no interest in removing?
MR. CLEMENT: No, I don’t accept that, Justice Scalia, but –
JUSTICE SCALIA: That’s all the statute – and you call up the Federal Government, and the Federal — yes, he’s an illegal immigrant, but that’s okay with us.

Recall that the nature of federal enforcement policy is not the issue before the Court. But it seems fairly obvious that it is the object of Scalia's hostility. Scalia refers to people "that the Federal Government has no interest in removing" with the mocking tone that has made him famous. Regardless of what Scalia thinks of federal enforcement policy, it is absolutely irrelevant to the constitutionality of Arizona's law.

Scalia's point here is decidedly not constitutional. It is overtly political. He is effectively saying:  "I don't like how the federal government deals with immigration, so Arizona should be allowed to act differently, because I like their get-tough approach." That's a political argument, not a constitutional one.

Scalia's subsequent questioning showed that his disdain for federal policy blinded him to arguments that the point here is federal jurisdiction over immigration, not specific policy choices.

Later, during the federal government's presentation, Scalia became (not surprisingly) more argumentative. He even turned the administration's case on its head, and argued that states have the right to control their borders. He had hinted at this earlier in an exchange with Clement:

JUSTICE SCALIA: And the State has no power to close its borders to people who have no right to be there?

That, at least, was in the form of a question. But Scalia took it further in his questioning of Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, who presented the federal government's case:

JUSTICE SCALIA: The Constitution recognizes that there is such a thing as State borders and the States can police their borders.

What Scalia seems to be suggesting here is that states are the fundamental sovereign entity, a point which he later made even more explicit:

JUSTICE SCALIA: But if, in fact, somebody who does not belong in this country is in Arizona, Arizona has no power? What does sovereignty mean if it does not include the ability to defend your borders?

Think about that. If Scalia is right, and states have the right to defend their borders, would Arizona also be constitutionally authorized to check the IDs of every person entering the state from other states and detaining anyone whose papers were not in order? It would seem so. After all, mere days earlier Scalia had himself argued, with apparent seriousness, that without a "limiting principle" the federal government's argument for the individual mandate in health care would also allow it to force everyone to buy broccoli.

How can anyone known for his "legal brilliance" could even suggest a state power so absurd and obviously unconstitutional? When he's more concerned with politics and ideology than the Constitution, that's how.

But the worst example of Scalia's political posturing came when Verrilli tried in vain to explain to Scalia the difference between bank robbing and immigration. Scalia, sounding rather proud of himself, presented Verilli with the following analogy:

JUSTICE SCALIA: Anyway, what — what’s wrong about the states enforcing Federal law? There is a Federal law against robbing Federal banks. Can it be made a state crime to rob those banks? I think it is.
GENERAL VERRILLI: I think it could, but I think that’s quite –
JUSTICE SCALIA: But does the Attorney General come in and say, you know, we might really only want to go after the professional bank robbers? If it’s just an amateur bank robber, you know, we’re — we’re going to let it go. And the state’s interfering with our — with our whole scheme here because it’s prosecuting all these bank robbers.

Once again, Scalia's point is blatantly political--he doesn't like the selective enforcement policy of the federal government, it's an absurd "scheme" that no reasonable person could support.

Verrilli tried to explain to Scalia that immigration was different than bank robbing:

GENERAL VERRILLI: In addition, we have very significant issues on the border with Mexico. And in fact, they are the very issues that Arizona is complaining about in that –
JUSTICE SCALIA: So we have to — we have to enforce our laws in a manner that will please Mexico. Is that what you’re saying?
GENERAL VERRILLI: No, Your Honor, but what it does — no, Your Honor, I’m not saying that –
JUSTICE SCALIA: Sounded like what you were saying.
GENERAL VERRILLI: No, but what I am saying is that this points up why the Framers made this power an exclusive national power. It’s because the entire country feels the effects of a decision — conduct by an individual State. And that’s why the power needs to be exercised at the national level and not the State level.

As a matter of historical practice, Verrilli is undeniably right. How foreign nationals are treated in this country is inextricably intertwined with foreign policy. (For example, San Francisco's decision to force Japanese children into segregated schools in 1906 caused Theodore Roosevelt serious diplomatic headaches).  That makes the idea of allowing states to interject themselves into immigration constitutionally problematic to say the least. You would expect a Supreme Court justice to take that issue seriously. Scalia didn't.

Scalia's undisguised contempt for the idea that the United States should care what another nation thinks is remarkable. As repellant as I find the knee-jerk xenophobia that Scalia gave voice to, as a citizen he's entitled to that simple-minded view. He is not, however, entitled to introduce it as relevant to the constitutionality of the Arizona immigration law.

Whether or not the federal government chooses to take the views of the Mexican government into consideration has no bearing whatsoever on its constitutional power to make such judgments. That's a policy decision, one made by the elected representatives of the people. As a justice, Scalia has no business judging the wisdom of federal policy--none. His only concern in this case should be whether making those policy choices--whatever those choices are--is the federal government's exclusive purview.

But Scalia clearly was unconcerned with Verrilli's constitutional argument--the only one that is supposed to matter before the Court. He made a series of political points to support the decision he had unquestionably already reached. A truly brilliant legal scholar would at least make a show of couching his political views in constitutional language. Scalia doesn't even bother anymore. And that makes this alleged intellect of the Court little more than a political hack.

Romney's Stephen Douglas Problem

When Stephen Douglas was running for re-election to the United States Senate from Illinois in 1858, he was in some sense running two races at once. He already had his sights set on the Democratic nomination for president in 1860. The latter was far more likely if he were to succeed at the former. But winning the Senate race in his state might require that he say things that could cost him the national nomination.

The most tricky issue in 1858 was slavery in the territories. The new Republican Party had as its foundational principle that slavery should not be allowed to expand into any new territories, putting it on "the course of ultimate extinction," in Abraham Lincoln's phrase. This was generally a popular position in free states, but was anathema to southern Democrats. Douglas tried to finesse the issue by removing the federal government from the matter entirely: he stood for the concept of "popular sovereignty," under which the people of the territories themselves would decide whether or not to allow slavery. Rather than take a clear stand for or against slavery in territories, Douglas sought to elide the problem by being for the idea of democratic choice--regardless of what that choice was.

The Douglas dilemma came to mind this week now that it is undeniable that Mitt Romney's path to the 2012 GOP nomination is clear. Like Douglas, Romney's political instinct is to try to avoid unequivocal statements on thorny issues. Clarity, he seems to think, is the enemy of his ambition.

Romney's recent interview with Diane Sawyer has a prime example. Sawyer asked Romney about one of his most blatant political transformations, from pro-choice to pro-life. Note how Romney responded:

I would love the Supreme Court to say, "Let's send this back to the states," rather than having a federal mandate through Roe v. Wade, let the states again consider this issue state by state rather than having this--the setting that we have now with a federal mandate being imposed in all the states.

This is Romney's "popular sovereignty" position: get the federal government out of the issue entirely. He even subtly associates Roe with the unpopular health care "mandate,"claiming the states rights mantle in opposition to an overbearing federal government.

What his position tries to mask is Romney's profound discomfort with the issue:

I believe that--that--that the right course for--for the nation would be for individuals to be concerned with both those lives. And I know people come down on both sides of that issue and feel very deeply about it. But I'm pro life--that's my view.

Romney seems to be trying to say several things:

1) The president doesn't have the power to affect this--the Supreme Court does--so it does not really matter what I think.

2) If the Court did reverse Roe, it would simply send it back to the states, so liberal states like New York and Massachusetts would continue to have it, while conservative states like Kansas, which have come close to banning abortion in practice, could do so outright. So pro-choice moderates, don't worry too much--your states would get to keep it, in the unlikely event the Court overturned the decision.

3) If you're pro-life, I am too. If you're pro-choice, I can't change anything. So whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, vote for me.

For strong pro-life voters, this won't do. If abortion is intrinsically evil, it is not enough that some states outlaw it. They want a constitutional amendment banning on it--they don't want to abolish the "federal mandate" Romney criticizes. They want to reverse it and create a new federal mandate that no state allow abortion. Their problem is not with a mandate per se, but with the substance of the current mandate.

Similarly for strong pro-choice voters, the principle of a woman's right to choose is not something that can be allowed to exist some places and not others. The language of "rights" means that one's ability to exercise one's rights should not depend on whether one is in Massachusetts or Kansas.

This is what Romney does when he knows that "people come down on both sides of that issue and feel very deeply about it." He tries to appeal to both, but he can't. The positions are irreconcilable. That doesn't, however, keep him from trying.

And that is Romney's core weakness as a candidate. It is the same one Lincoln recognized in Douglas. In their fifth debate in 1858, Lincoln blasted Douglas for "his declaration that he 'don't care whether Slavery is voted up or down.'" Lincoln, by contrast, was clear and unequivocal: he thought slavery was wrong and should be voted down.

Lincoln knew who he was and what he believed. He did not try to be all things to all voters. In the second debate, he instructed the audience to vote against him if they were not truly with him:

If it be true, that on the grounds which I occupy ... my views, though partly coinciding with yours, are not as perfectly in accordance with your feelings as his are, I do say to you in all candor, Go for him and not for me.

Can you imagine Mitt Romney saying that in the fall debates with President Obama? Me neither. The very question it raises--what are the grounds Romney occupies?--is damning.

There is no easy political lesson here. Douglas, after all, won that race in 1858. As Lincoln ruefully noted, "Douglas had the ingenuity to be supported in the late contest both as the best means to break down, and to uphold the Slave interest."

But Lincoln also correctly noted that Douglas had won an immediate, and not long-run, victory: "No ingenuity can keep those antagonistic elements in harmony long." The things Douglas had said in fending off Lincoln in 1858 ended up so alienating southern Democrats that they refused to support him as the nominee in 1860, the party split, and Lincoln became president.

Romney's ingenuity has allowed him to survive the Republican primaries. It may even get him the presidency. Whether the reckoning comes this November or during a Romney presidency, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that "No ingenuity can keep those antagonistic elements in harmony long." Someone so lacking a center cannot and will not be a successful leader, even if he does manage to be a successful candidate.

If We Listen

I took a few days off last week and fulfilled a long-standing desire to go to the New York Mets Spring Training camp in Port St. Lucie, Florida. (Don’t worry—I’m going to resist the urge to write one of those pseudo-intellectual paeans to baseball.) It couldn’t have been better: three games in three days, great seats, great weather. Just about perfect.

As you might expect, there were lots of fathers there with their kids, carrying around baseballs (and sometimes bats) in hopes of getting an autograph from a favorite player.

But my favorite moment was a reversal of that typical scene.

At Wednesday afternoon’s Mets-Nationals game, there was a family sitting behind me. Mom, Dad, son, grandparents. I was expecting to hear the Dad explaining the game to his son.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, it was the son (maybe 11 or 12 years old) patiently explaining the fine points of the game to his grandparents. From their accents, I’d guess they were immigrants from eastern Europe, and from their comments, it sounded like this was their first baseball game--ever.

The boy did a fine job of explaining what was going on, and his grandparents sounded genuinely interested in learning. It was probably my favorite part of the whole experience.

At one point, when a there was a runner at first base, the grandfather asked why the runner was not standing on the base.

“Well,” the grandson said, “he’s taking a lead.”

“Why does he get to do that?”

“He’s allowed to steal second.”

“Well, that’s not fair,” the grandfather said, with some indignation in his voice.

And it seemed to me, that’s just what I’d expect a kid to say the first time he heard about that little quirk of the game.

I couldn’t help thinking that this was a microcosm of an important part of the American story. This couple had come from Europe, probably many decades ago, and had made their way in the States, made a good life for themselves, raised a family. And while they had not had the time, or maybe the inclination, during all those years to become a fan of the American pastime, their son evidently had, and then in turn his son had become quite knowledgeable about the game at a relatively young age.

And now he was teaching his grandparents.

Just two generations from knowing little or nothing of America and its ways, to an expert in grade school. That’s what immigrants do—when they get the chance. They absorb the American experience, they make it their own.

And, if we listen, they sometimes remind us that what we take for granted, what we think makes sense because we’ve never really thought about it, might be a little strange, or even unfair.

If we listen.