The public doesn't understand specific policies but it does understand stories that link them together. The stories give the policies context and meaning, and thereby show where policymakers are taking a nation… Republicans lack specific policies but they have a story. Obama and the Democrats have lots of specific policies but don't have a story…. The economy has stalled. Unemployment is still in the stratosphere and shows no sign of improving. The housing market is worsening….
The Republican story is simple. It's the fault of government. They say Obama's policies have bankrupted the nation and made businesses too uncertain to create jobs. The answer is less government. Cut taxes and spending, privatize, and deregulate. It's not a new story but it's capturing the public's mind because the Democrats offer no story to counter it with. Obama and the Democrats respond by defending their specific policies. The stimulus worked, they say, as did the bailout of Wall Street, because the economy is better today than it would be without them. If anything, we need more stimulus. And healthcare reform will protect tens of millions. A large and growing segment of the public believes none of this. The public doesn't think in terms of specific policies. All it knows is the economy has stalled and there's only one story that explains why and points the way forward -- and that's the Republican's.
What should the Democratic story be? How can they connect the dots? Here's a clue. In times of economic stress, Americans lose faith in the nation's large institutions. They blame either government or its counterpart in the private sector -- big business and Wall Street…. The underlying political debate in America is which of these is most responsible for the mess we're in, and which can be most trusted to get us out of it -- big business and Wall Street, or government.
It wouldn't be hard for Democrats to make the case that big business and Wall Street blew it. The Street's wild speculation took the economy off the cliff, caused the stock market to crash (and millions of 401(k)s along with it), and created a housing bubble whose burst has hurt millions more. Big business has used the Great Recession as an opportunity to slash payrolls and cut wages and is now sitting on a $1.8 trillion mountain of cash it refuses to use to create new jobs. Instead, it's using the cash to build more factories abroad, buy back its own shares of stock, invest in more labor-replacing technologies at home, and do mergers that will lead to even fewer jobs. Meanwhile, a parade of "public-be-damned" actions have threatened small investors (Goldman Sachs's double dealing), individuals trying to buy health insurance (WellPoint's double-digit premium increases), worker safety (the Massey mine disaster), the environment (BP), and even our food (Jack DeCoster's commercial egg operations). And a gusher of corporate and Wall Street money has flooded Washington, exemplified by Big Pharma and the health-insurance lobby fighting heatlhcare reform, and Wall Street's minions fighting off stricter financial reform.
If Obama and the Democrats would connect these dots they'd have a story that would make Americans' hair stand on end. We're in this mess because of big business and Wall Street…. That's why we need an activist government to stimulate the economy, create jobs, and protect the public from their excesses… Big business and Wall Street have used their money and political clout to stop government from doing as much as needs to be done. The story is clear, and it has the virtue of being the truth.
Everything Reich says here -- and he elaborates more, do follow the link for the unexpurgated version -- seems to me to be right, and indeed fairly obvious.
I must say that I regret, however, that the classic Democratic impulse to shoot oneself in the foot is in evidence in Reich's otherwise sensible post, when he fails to end it with the clarity of the statement above, and leaves his readers instead with these two terrible, resolve-weakening rancor-inducing questions:
Why won't Obama and the Democrats tell it ["The Story"]? Is it because big business and Wall Street have the money and political clout even to prevent the story from being told?
These are terrible questions, and the second one is especially terrible not least because Reich has already answered it. That "Big Business and Wall Street have used their money and political clout to stop government from doing as much as needs to be done," is included as part of the story Reich has already proposed we start telling.
By repeating the point again, but this time insinuating that commercial forces are not just getting in the way but preventing us from doing the right thing, this otherwise clear-headed and helpful piece opens the door for a cynical resignation to the impossibility of doing anything in the face of enormous forces arrayed monolithically against us.
Further, given that the whole point of the post is to identify Big Business as the villain of the story, and Republicans as their villainous enablers, why on earth would you want to end instead on the insinuation that it is Obama and the Democrats who are to blame for our distress? Confronted with set-backs Democrats have already demonstrated themselves to be all too happy to wallow in endless self-recrimination rather than actually educating, agitating, and organizing in the service of desired outcomes, come what may.
If Obama won't tell the right story (and I don't actually think it is entirely fair to make this claim in such an unqualified fashion) -- then we must tell it.
This is precisely what Reich has done himself -- right up to the closing stumble of his piece. By ending instead on the charge that Obama and Democrats won't do the right thing, we kick the our own chosen protagonists out of the story we ourselves are presumably telling, and make the story about why we failed rather than why people have a stake in our success because our success is their success, too. Why invite more debate premised on a pre-emptive declaration of defeat, when the point of the piece is to re-direct debate in the service of winning so that we can continue the fight to make things better?
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