The Simpletons: David Brooks, Thomas L. Friedman, and the Banal Authoritarianism of Do-Something Punditry
5th December 2011
Matt Welch takes out the garbage.
Consider for a moment the paradoxical pain of being a best-selling political pundit so successful that American presidents don’t just seek but heed your advice. You have lobbied in your columns for the commander in chief to deploy your signature catch phrases, and he has. You have, in times of both crisis and sloth, advocated robust federal action in the name of national “greatness,” and the people in power have mostly followed suit. You have been flattered by invitations to the White House and pecked at by lesser partisans, yet you’ve maintained your critical distance in the patriotic spirit of post-ideological problem solving. All this influence and success, and somehow the country still sucks.
Do something. Is there a two-word phrase in politics more loaded with disguised ideological content? Embedded within is both an urgent call for powerful government action and an up-front declaration that the policy details don’t matter. The bigger the crisis, the more the urgency, the sparser the detail. On September 30, 2008, in a classic of the do-something genre, Brooks argued that the Troubled Asset Relief Program should be rammed through Congress over public objections because the federal government needed “to give people a sense that somebody was in charge, that something was going to be done.” Did that “something” involve buying up toxic assets? Introducing or relaxing certain banking regulations? Taking over or winding down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Not important. “What we need in this situation,” Brooks declared, “is authority.”
In 1948, President Truman campaigned, successfully as it turned out, against the ‘do-nothing Congress’. Since Teddy Roosevelt parachuted into the Presidency, the motto in Washington is ‘Do something, even if it’s wrong.’ And that’s what has gotten us into the fix we’re in today — because when Washington ‘does something’, the odds are overwhelming that it will just make the situation worse. But they still do what they do, because they are essentially a one-trick pony. No matter is too trivial or irrelevant to the established purpose of the Federal government to escape the notice — and the attention — of Chuck Schumer or Al Franken. No matter is so clear-cut that John McCain or his comedy sidekick Lindsey Graham won’t want to craft some sort of compromise that only spends half as much (which we still can’t afford). No politician in the history of the United States, so far as I am aware, has had the courage to say ‘I’m here to keep somebody worse from causing the sort of trouble someone in this office could so easily cause.’ I would vote for such a person.
December 5th, 2011 at 12:06
“Do Something” is a typical management activity. In fact, you can often tell which boss is a good one by how well he/she avoids this sort of reaction.
The problem with Washington is that they believe that they are in charge; they are management, not representatives. Doing “something” for each and every media-churned crisis gets you in the news and thus provides free publicity. As with Hollywood, all publicity is good publicity and the biggest fools keep getting roles/elected. The perception is that if you stay in your office and quietly do your job, you will be replaced.
December 5th, 2011 at 15:10
You can thank the Invisible Hand for all of that. Congressmen know on which side the bread is buttered, and that perception is often more powerful than reality.
Therefore, they do what is in thier own best selfish interests, i.e., getting re-elected. It’s a good, capitalist solution. Adam Smith would be proud.