Drew Westen’s excellent op-ed appears on July 1, 2012 in the Los Angeles Times. Neither Obama or Romney has articulated a vision that will appeal to Americans affected by inequality and insecurity.
Americans today aren’t interested in slogans and sound bites. They want the candidates to offer them a vision, but so far neither Mitt Romney nor President Obama has done so.
Republicans are recycling tired promises from the Reagan era, preaching a gospel of small government and fiscal responsibility. But their words ring hollow. Republicans have been sounding that theme for decades, but they’ve never put it into practice. Reagan tripled the national debt.George W. Bush nearly doubled it, and left a legacy of debt from two unfunded wars and unfunded tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy.
Voters aren’t hearing a clear message from Obama either. On the one hand, he’s pushing for more stimulus, but he is also the architect of a “grand bargain” that will cut more than $2 trillion from the 2013 federal budget, imposing the same kind of “austerity” that has proved so counterproductive in Europe.
So why hasn’t either candidate offered a clear vision that resonates with the American people?
The reason is that they have NO VISION.
America has tried the Republican “cut spending, cut taxes, and cut ‘entitlements’” and the Democrat “protect ‘entitlements,’ provide tax-payer supported stimulus, lower middle and working class taxes, tax the rich and redistribute” brands of economic policy, as well as a mixture of both approaches. Republican ideology aims to revive hard-nosed laissez-faire appeals to hard-core conservatives but ignores the relevancy of healing the economy and halting the steady disintegration of the middle class and working poor. The Republican position is about taking of the so-called “job creators,” when in fact, it is the ownership of productive capital that they are after, which by definition destroys jobs. They want to eliminate “red tape that’s strangling business” in order to further their mission to concentrate more ownership and political power. The Democrats continue down the path of “job creation” through government programs disguised as make-work and welfare, open and concealed. Both parties are heavily entrenched in government support of crony capitalism and the military-industrial complex to prop up the economy. Libertarians are basically small government advocates as well as advocates for the philosophy of letting the market take the society where it will take it. There will be winners and losers. To the losers they say “you didn’t work hard enough. It’s not my problem.” Economically, they are hard-nosed laissez-faireists. Basically, get government out of our lives so that we can have the freedom to destroy each other if that is the market outcome. Some conservative thinkers have acknowledged the damaging results of a laissez-faire ideology, which furthers the concentration of productive capital ownership. They are floundering in search of alternative thinking as they acknowledge the negative economic and social realities resulting from greed capitalism. This acknowledgment encompasses the realization that the troubling economic and social trends (global capitalism, free-trade doctrine, tectonic shifts in the technologies of production and the steady off-loading of American manufacturing and jobs) caused by continued concentrated ownership of productive capital will threaten the stability of contemporary liberal democracies and dethrone democratic ideology as it is now understood. My position is that I support downsizing government and restricting government to tasks that the private sector is not well suited to perform, and lowing taxes and debt (eventually eliminating debt). But without a policy shift to broaden productive capital ownership simultaneously with economic growth, further development of technology and globalization will undermine the American middle class and make it impossible for more than a minority of citizens to achieve middle-class status. This goal will require long-term implementation. In the meantime, as a society we will need to support the poorest until they benefit from the new opportunities for participating in the ownership of future productive capital economic growth that will generate income to free them from the slavery of low-paying jobs or welfare. That means fully embracing technological innovation and invention, knowing full well that the resulting productive capital will destroy jobs or degrade jobs. But if we can strutter financial mechanism to broaden the ownership of such, then we can provide the opportunity for a majority, not just a minority, to live an affluent lifestyle, significantly less dependent on government.
People should be shouting out “I want to be an owner, not owned by my reliance on job serfdom or welfare. The Just Third Way that I and others advocate provides the path to prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice, while preserving the private property free market economy. To realize this goal requires BOLD leadership, which thus far has not surfaced.
Neither Obama nor Romney do not or will not acknowledge the futility of “job creation,” whether government or private sector. The future direction is exponential job destroying or job degrading technological innovation and invention. And if neither can speak to this all-encompasing subject and put us on the path to prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice made possible by the “digital computerized machine” age, then they are either ignorantly ill-informed or idiots. Or possibly owned by the powerful interest that have successful hoarded the ownership of the economy’s wealth and do not want the majority to know the workings of their success.
