Time for a Tea Party with the Right: Why Progressives Need a Transpartisan Strategy

Paul Krugman derides the embarassing right wing Tea Party-goers protesting government spending. He would be more successful if he looked beneath the protests, to the fear that drives many to join them.

True, the tea parties were largely a ratings-boosting initiative of Fox News, and few participants knew they were performing parts in a play written, and underwritten, by a few billionaires whose handlers are afraid to tell them they're too ideological for their own good.

But Krugman's response - which could apply as easily to many left-wing protests - is misguided and self-defeating. The tea parties tapped a genuine fear that the trillions being spent by government right now will be wasted - and that we and our children will be paying the cost for generations.

Is that fear so unjustified?

Let's face it: government's record for spending money well is - to say the least - really, really bad. Sure, you can point to a lot of good things government dollars buy - like schools, parks, and courts of justice, even the Internet. We need them to keep doing that. But dollar for dollar, government is neither wise nor efficient in many of its spending decisions. That's not what government is for.

Here is why: to paraphrase George Gilder, dead industries and dying institutions employ powerful lobbyists. For that reason, the trillions Congress is now spending will likely be divided mostly on the basis of lobbying power. Sure, a few dollars will be spent on green jobs and technologies. But most of those will look greener than they really are. And the rest of the dollars will prop up old industries, old companies, old labor unions, old interests and old ideas - and will not, for the most part, advance the change Obama stands for. Unless ...

Unless what?

Unless we progressives form an alliance with the right.

We need the right. Not the wing-nuts or the demagogues. We need the legitimate right. Who?

I said it in my last post: The left and the right are the feminine and masculine of American politics - the heart and the head, the purpose and the power, the meaning and the means. Liberal compassion is the heart of American politics - it tells us what we want to be. Conservative discipline, the type that Bush forgot about, that derives from scientific rationalism, is the means of American politics - it tells us how to get there. When progressive transpartisans unite the "what" and the "how," they gain the power to birth new ideas, and grow them to fruition.

We can't achieve the liberal goal of health care for all, for example, if we don't apply the conservative principle of fiscal responsibility, and drive down today's costs. We can't create green jobs, without green profits to pay for them. We can't stop global warming, if we don't build an information-based and clean tech economy to replace our consumptive industrial one.

That's why we need the right. We need the tools of fiscal discipline, to spend our money well. We need a commitment to personal liberty, to guard against overreaching government power. We need personal responsibility, to avoid a self-defeating society where everyone expects a bail-out. Without fiscal discipline, limited government, and personal responsibility, the progressive agenda will fail.

Of course, right now, we need government to spend. Fiscal restraint, in the middle of a major recession, would send the economy straight toward depression. The official Republican proposal to freeze spending for five years - conveniently, until they have a chance to be in charge - is pure, cynical politics.

But that doesn't make the right entirely wrong. Government is best suited not to spending money directly, but to establishing the rules, the framework of incentives by which people and companies spend money.

Wasting our dollars now might help restore the past, for a while. It might help us claw our way back to a late-term fossil fuel addicted consumption-driven economy. But we don't need yesterday - we need tomorrow: a new economy, built on a new, sustainable foundation of innovation, information, and clean technology. It's our job to make sure the stimulus dollars are spent to do that - by real people and real businesses who, unlike government, can do it right.

We need a new alliance of progressives not trying to rebuild an out-of-date past, but growing a new future. A coalition that can bring together people like Michael Lind and Ted Halstead, journalist Mark Satin, philosopher Ken Wilber; and organizations like the Progressive Policy Institute, the New America Foundation, the U.S. Climate Task Force, Radical Middle, NDN, New Policy Institute and many more. (See especially Mark Satin's list of organizations that have advanced selected radical center ideas.)

The group that I work with - Future 500 - is one of many that seek to do this, by engaging diverse interests together, to break their ideological thinking, and help them advance their own deeper mission and interests, along with those of others. We advance solutions that are better for business, labor, society and the environment. It isn't hard to think of those solutions. What's hard is convincing people to set aside archaic positions, and take up fresh new ideas that bring them into alignment with people they used to think were there adversaries.

We have the capacity to meet every one of the challenges we face. We have policy options and technologies that can drive down health care costs, carbon emissions, and petroleum consumption, and drive up health, prosperity, and environmental sustainability.

But we lack a political movement of progressive transpartisans dedicated to advancing these collaborative solutions. This is how we are failing President Obama - and if we don't correct ourselves, we will force him to fail as well.

If progressive centrists simply cheer Obama on, without aggressively supporting collaborative solutions, the administration will be forced to pander to specific interest groups with an old-style super-stimulus plan that pumps more money into a failing system, without dealing with systemic causes. That might restore a little growth for a few short years. But it will further erode our prosperity long-term.

Let's sit down with the right for tea. Let them vent their anger and hate - and we can vent ours. But let's not stop there. Listen to the fear that lies beneath the hate, and to the reasons they (and we) are afraid. Then act - by embracing what's right on the right. We won't win them all over - but with ten percent, we will gain a governing majority with its eyes on the future, not the past.

It's our choice.

Comments

[Kaves]

Thank you for the article. Instead of taking Fox News and CNNs word for it, we should be looking at why this is happening in the first place instead of writing all of these neighbors off as lunatics or racists. Just because media outlets choose to focus on the most offensive signs and slogans from the weakest minds at the rallies doesn't mean you should lump them all together. That's just plain narrow minded and short sighted. Its not hard to see that demonization = more ratings. Putting others down is the easiest and quickest traidtional way for people to feel better about themselves.

I personally could list a whole plethora of things the government spends my money own that I dont think should even be considered. 40 billion a year towards military promotion from the Pentagon, continued occupations in ANY country at all militarilly, and a secret spy organazation that commits the most evil of acts (barbaric torture is just the tip of the iceberg) under the thickest layers of protection (including lame duck emotional arguments like "just doing my job" being promoted by the president) to name a few.

[Bill Shireman - Huffpost Blogger]

Good points - putting others down IS the quick short cut to raising yourself over them, without having to do anything. And I often wonder why so many criticize current government spending, yet seem to believe that the NEXT spending will be free of special interest influence.

[Peji]

Here's the thing...ba­ck when Mr. Bush, Jr. was president there was precious little sitting down with the "other side" and things swung so far out of balance that progressives are having to spend a lot of time, energy and money just to bring them back to center.

The truth is that much of the tea party rhetoric was nonsense inspired and inflamed by the conservative media and the US corporatocracy to try to halt the return to center. Most of those protesting have actually been hurt by the policies of the last 8 years but are allowing themselves to be manipulated by fear-mongers throwing around scary words like "socialism" to hide conservative financial criminal behavior under a veil of patriotism; in doing so they are fomenting hatred and dangerous anarchy.

[obimon62]

Mr. Shireman,

Thank you for bringing some sanity to the debate. Too many people on the left have missed the main point as you so eloquently pointed out:

"....The tea parties tapped a genuine fear that the trillions being spent by government right now will be wasted - and that we and our children will be paying the cost for generations.

Is that fear so unjustified?

Let's face it: government's record for spending money well is - to say the least - really, really bad....."

There is a genuine need for the economic stimulus, the bailout of the financial system, the investment in green energy, education, and health care for the future. But we have to do it in a fiscally responsible manner. The current economic crisis was created by too much debt, too much debt on Wall Street, too much debt on Main Street.

Debt is the problem, not the solution. Dumping the debt on future generations is not only irresponsible, it is immoral.

[dynwitch]

Bill: I would have agreed with you just one week ago. Then I saw the ugly, hatefilled, bigoted, disgusting signs the tea partiers were holding. Some of those images will never leave my head. For the rest of my life I will see those images every time I go to vote and the word "Republican" pops up on the machine. It will remind me to never, ever again push the button next to any candidate whose name carries the word "Republica­n." If the so-called "head" of America wants to ever again sit down with the "heart" and hold a dialogue, it will have to start taking an honest look at itself and do some changing. Not just a name change (although that's going to be necessary at this point). Not just a new and more youthful image. A solid, honest change that involves some self-criticism, a realization that they have some deep, deep problems, and a willingness to genuinely address those problems, not just paste a bandaid over them or make lame excuses for them. Until that happens, I will NEVER again even think about "sitting down" with these people.

[Cat401]

You write this with so much pain....bu­t I do agree with you. The sign they held were so painfully to think about.

[Bill Shireman - Huffpost Blogger]

I can fully understand - I walked through one of the tea parties and was confronted with the same signs. It made my stomach ache. It's very, very difficult. But we have to realize that not everyone was carrying the hateful signs - some of those carrying the hateful signs may have sensed that there was something wrong with what they were doing - and that fearing and ultimately hating them back will simply make matters worse. At the airport after the event, I kind of triggered a debate with three old-line anti-Obama conservatives waiting for the same late flight. We battled at first, but eventually found common ground, and ended up understanding each other. Without walking through it I never would have reached that point.