Idea Men: The Phantom Says A Good Idea is Often Wasted

e

Bill Clinton remarked when he was President, he had to be very careful about everything he said, but once out of office he had the wonderful freedom to say anything he wished--the only problem was that none of what he said mattered any more.

What he was saying, of course, was that once out of power your ideas may be irrelevant  because they do not lead to action
.

When you are in power, people are hanging on your every word, reading meanings and gravitas into them which may or may not be there--the Being There syndrome. Alan Greenspan was the classic example of this.  Markets rose and fell on his every semi colon. But, of course, as is so often  true of economists, he had no idea what he was talking about. 

When he had to admit this later, it didn't matter. Nobody was really listening. He was out of power

Paul Krugman has been speaking good sense, if not real science, for at least the past two years, but of course, it doesn't matter because nobody is listening who can actually put his thoughts into practice.


So what good are idea men?  Or more to the point, what good are ideas if the man or woman expressing them is not in power?

Well, if you're lucky, I suppose, they could lead to a job which puts you in or near power.

But ideas are like sounds in the forest with no ear to hear.


What made me think about all this was reading two recent pieces from very different perspectives,  one by Hendrick Hertzberg of the New Yorker and the other by David Frum, in the New York Times.

Hertzberg noted the enormity of Mr. Obama's defeat with cogently assembled numbers: This is the first time in sixty years the Democrats will have fewer than 200 members in the House of Representatives (which has 435). This was the result of an election in which about half as many people voted than in 2008, when he was elected. 


And what were those voters, always referred to as "The American People" thinking? 


Herztberg's wonderful analogy is to arson and those who respond to it. The arsonists of the economy were pretty clearly those who sailed with the Republicans.  Republican senators may not have lit the match, but they opened the door and looked the other way when the arsonists crept in with their incendiaries.


Only the firemen (the Democrats who had found themselves in power) were left for The American People  to wreck their fury upon.  


So the American People put the very accomplices to the arsonists back in power--the party that 1/ opposed the stimulus, the party that  2/ blocked the extension of unemployment benefits, the party that  3/ turned surpluses into deficits, the party which   4/rages against deficits but refuses to fix the deficit with a tax on the super-rich and The American People rage against inaction but reward  5/ The party of No, whose sole purpose is to prevent the re-election of Obama, and if that means the country  and its economy must tank for two more years, this party thinks that's the price we all must pay to rid the country of this Democratic President. 


And the wisdom of the American People can only be judged by exit polls, and pre election polls--and who knows how trustworthy these are--but what they tell us is that 2/3 believed  1/ middle class taxes have gone up under Obama,  2/ that the economy has shrunk under the Democrats,  3/ the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money was lost, thrown down the toilet to the undeserving rich Wall Street men  4/ The healthcare law, Obamacare, will add to the deficit. 


None of these turn out to be true, but you can always trust that "Voters are not fools" and in the "Wisdom of the American People."


Some of the fault in the dementia afflicting The American People, is the explanations for why these things are wrong is not easy--1/ Without the bailout the Great Recession would have become the Great Depression--but try proving what didn't happen would have 2/ The health care law will only slowly gain effect and so its benefits are not yet clear 3/ The macroeconomy is different from your kitchen table checkbook--sometimes when the checkbooks of ordinary citizens are closed the government really does have to go into more debt and spend or nobody will and the economy shuts down.


Unfortunately, President Obama is no Harry Truman. He apparently thinks The American People are all as smart as he is and could see this without being told in forceful ways. Instead, The American People listened to Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and that gaggle of ignorant self serving paranoid misfits.


David Frum reflects on how Republicans managed to dupe themselves into believing the Bush economy was working, that lowering taxes on the rich would pay for themselves, that even as corporate profits soar, corporate America is teetering on the brink of destruction by self righteous Democrats bent on controlling everything. 

Frum notes Republicans have confused the free market economy with "The Markets." The Markets are the financial system which is well paid people playing with other people's money and risking little or none of their own. So, little surprise, The Wall Street Journal  thinks trillions of dollars of derivatives, enough to wreck the entire economy should go unregulated.  

And, Frum adds,  the Republicans fail to understand the economy is more important than  the budget deficits. Lastly, the Republicans failed to comprehend that Social Security is better than no Social Security, even if Social Security is a socialist plot. It turns out, keeping people paying their rent, buying groceries is even good for Wall Street brokers, who would have no financial system to bilk if there were no economy.


Republicans like Sharron Angle say un employment insurance breeds laziness, removes all incentive for people to want to work ignoring there are five applications for every job. Are all those applicants really lacking incentive?


So, there you have it, idea men, with good ideas, with access to millions of readers. 


But does any of this make a difference?


Only if those in power are listening to ideas, are capable of analysis.


Lyndon Johnson, on his tapes, can be heard taking a phone call from an aide who is complaining about the farm lobby arguing over a difference of 3 cents a pound in a proposed bill. Three cents a pound, the aide complains, can you imagine digging in your heels over three cents?  Johnson, a rancher, of course understands and sets his callow aide straight. When you are talking about a 3000 pound heifer, and you've got 10,000 head on your farm, yes three cents a pound adds up to real money. No wonder they are fighting. 


But then Johnson takes a call from Richard Russell, his good friend, about Viet Nam. Johnson likes Russell. They are both good ol' boys from iway back, from the school of hard knocks. The thing is, Russell tells Johnson, the Viet Cong know we are going to go home some day. And they know we know they know it. It is clear Russell is telling Johnson this is an unwinable war. But Johnson gives up analysis in this area. He says he's not going to bend his mind about Viet Nam. He's just going to listen to the smart boys, McNamara, and all those boys who went to Groton, and Andover and Exeter and Harvard and Yale. They know about these things. 


So, like The American People, of today. Johnson decided not to try to analyze things for himself. He just put his faith in someone.  Thinking, ideas, numbers, analysis, asking hard questions, was too difficult. Faith. Having faith in someone was so much easier.


Ideas didn't matter then. Don't now.