Sailing along

Romney Flounders in Fishtown is an interesting analysis that raises many questions.  Obama did pretty much what the author describes, by appealing to socialism's moral agenda of equality and fairness, and making a generalized promise of "change" that would presumably move the nation in that direction. As long as it's kept sufficiently vague -- something Obama was careful to do -- that agenda has wide moral appeal.

A GOP candidate must also promise "change," but what should be its moral basis?  On moral grounds, capitalism is unfortunately a much more difficult sell: It's too complicated and indirect, morally desirable outcomes appear as unintended consequences rather than a result of moral intentions, and the goal of increased economic growth and societal wealth is easily demagogued as leading to even greater inequality and unfairness, almost all of it ending up in the pockets of the 1%.

The question here is not what works better, because those results only occur after the sale has been made. This is about making the sale in the first place. Socialism has the great advantage of carrying its morality on its sleeve, for seeming to most people to be moral in its essence; its failures are excused as a result of that essence being subverted by the venality of individuals and accidents of bad leadership.  People fail socialism, not the other way around.

The author argues that Romney cannot succeed by just doing a better job preaching an economic gospel, "but he should also speak to renewing not only the policies and regulations but also the moral musculature and the cultural values that nurtured the most extraordinary economic expansion in human history.  That would be a vision and a basis for a movement.  The Romney campaign has focused too much on Romney himself.  They need to present him as the leader of something larger than himself.  Otherwise, they won’t defeat Barack Obama, and they may not even win the nomination."

When I read that, I think two things. First, I think that's probably correct in principle.  But, second, I think it has about zero hope of succeeding in practice.  At the societal level, "moral musculature" and "cultural values" can't be talked into existence; those things arise from the lives people lead, they're products of the conditions of existence as people experience them. If it were otherwise, Santorum could become president.

History doesn't move by foresight. People become disillusioned with socialism only by direct painful experience, when it fails them catastrophically, as it eventually always does. I think we have further to travel down that road before there will be any realistic probability of going in a new direction. As it is, the massive piling-up of debt has no felt reality at all, and so far most people's direct experience of redistribution/entitlement programs has been to get a lot more out than they put in. The author is shouting into the wind, because our ship is going to sail this course until it crashes on the rocks, which it will, and it won't be turned around before that happens.

Byron