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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: March 2011

Delusions

The suscepitbility of today’s conservatives to conspiracy theories and mass delusions is not a new phenomenon. But it continues to amaze.
Via Dave Weigel, check out a new PPP poll showing that one-fourth of self-identified Republicans in this country believe that the once-obscure community organizing group ACORN will steal the 2012 presidential election for Barack Obama. Not “wants to steal,” mind you, or “will try to steal,” but “will steal.” That’s interesting, of course, because ACORN ceased to exist nearly a year ago. But it’s not that surprising, since ACORN played such a central role in a variety of conservative delusions, including the idea that poor and minority home-buyers caused the housing and financial crises, and the belief that Obama was not legitimately elected president. The ACORN of conservative imagination is such a total phantom that the demise of the actual organization need not interfere with it.
But of all the deluded Republicans out there, among the most in need of a reality check may be those pundits who continue to confidently predict that the great big adults of the GOP will deliver the 2012 presidential nomination to great big adult Mitt Romney. According to the PPP poll, 61% of self-identified Republicans say they would not be willing to vote for a presidential candidate who supported a state-level health insurance purchasing mandate. Only 17% said they would be willing to vote for such a candidate. Even given the ignorance of many Republicans about ACORN, I doubt Romney’s opponents are going to let very many GOP primary voters go to the polls without knowing a lot about RomneyCare.


Bowers: Wisconsin Recall Drive Rolling Fast

Chris Bowers Flags Greg Sargent’s post reporting on the even-better-than-expected pace of the effort to recall 8 Republican state senators in Wisconsin for supporting legislation to take away bargaining rights for state workers. The recall campaign has collected 45 percent of the required signatures after just 20 percent of the allotted time for the petittion drive. Bowers adds:

…That’s an excellent pace, but keep in mind there are two good reasons why it’s important to gather far more than the minimum number of required signatures.
The first reason is to make sure that in the event of challenges to the petitions, there is a comfort zone when they are filed. We need as many signatures as possible in order to guarantee that the petitions are certified and the recall elections take place.
The second reason is because signing a recall petition is a first-rate means of identifying voters for the recall election. Anyone who signs a petition can be easily targeted for GOTV operations. As such, the closer we get to 50%+1 of the votes cast in 2008 just through recall signatures, the closer victory becomes.

Bowers reports that Daily Kos will be releasing opinion polls in all 8 senate districts at 11:00 a.m. today. For those who want to donate to the recall effort, Kos has a button here.


Government As a Battleground In a War Over Resources

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This item, the fifth essay in the Demos/TDS online forum on Restoring Trust In Government, is by Thomas B. Edsall, who holds the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Chair at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. This article was originally published last October, in slightly modified form, by The New Republic.
In the 2010 election, you could glimpse the brutish future of American politics. This new age of brutishness may or may not include the Tea Party. But, even if the Tea Party dissipates, the anger undergirding it will not. The Tea Party has expertly articulated a widespread grievance: that the government is redistributing money from hardworking Americans to the idle and undeserving. Of course, this is hardly a new charge. But it takes place in a new context–an age of growing austerity, where this complaint will acquire an ever-sharper edge and battles over the scarce resources of the state will erupt in spectacular skirmishes.
Politics has, in some sense, always been a resource war–and in American politics it has usually taken the form of one political party promoting a social safety net and the other party decrying how hard-earned tax dollars unjustly finance those benefits. But, while that debate was intense, it was in some sense resolvable. For decades, our political system has been able to fund an array of social programs while keeping taxes relatively low. The American economy grew at a sufficient pace that it could rather effortlessly bankroll a state that satisfied divergent interests.
But that broad, unintentional compromise is no longer sustainable. We’re entering a period of austerity, far different from anything we’ve ever seen before. The predictions, especially the ones formulated by sober, nonpartisan analysts, are eye-popping. Earlier this year, a Congressional Budget Office report estimated that the debt as a percentage of GDP would approximately triple by 2035. Put another way, debt will come to exceed 185 percent of GDP. That’s far worse than Greece’s current perilous condition, a crisis that has been portrayed as the reductio ad absurdum of fiscal indiscipline.
Like the David Cameron government in Britain, or any number of other states across Europe, we’ll soon be forced to reckon with the fact that our economic viability depends on some combination of shrinking the state and raising revenue. If we were careful planners–and, of course, we’re not–we would begin by saving about 5 percent of GDP each year. Next year, for example, we’d have to make tax increases and spending cuts add up to about $700 billion. Over time, the total costs would prove immense: raising everyone’s tax bill by at least 25 percent (and probably a lot more than that) or eliminating about 20 percent of the federal budget (the approximate current size of Social Security, for example).
Even if you assume that a crisis is distant–or assume that we’ll avert it by letting the Bush tax cuts expire and further containing health care costs–the anxieties about deficits are already acute. Both parties are posturing to assume the mantle of fiscal conservatism, a trend that the success of the Tea Party will only exacerbate. And while President Obama’s deficit commission did not achieve any bipartisan agreement on solutions, it did help propel the problem to the fore where it will remain for the foreseeable future.
With resources shrinking, the competition for them will inflame. Each party will find itself in a death struggle to protect the resources that flow to its base–and, since the game will be zero-sum, each will attempt to expropriate the resources that flow to the other side. This resource war will scramble our politics. Each party will be forced to dramatically change its calculus and remake its agenda. And if you thought our politics had grown nasty, you haven’t even begun to consider the ugliness of the politics of scarcity.
At first glance, the Democrats have the most to lose in this new struggle. They have spent decades trying to recover their image from the excesses of the McGovern era, repositioning themselves as something more than an aggregation of aggrieved–and needy–interest groups. Even Barack Obama, the most liberal president in decades, packaged himself as post-partisan candidate, rather than as a warrior on behalf of unions or minority groups. “There’s nothing liberal about wanting to reduce money in politics,” he said during the campaign. “There’s nothing liberal about wanting to make sure [our soldiers] are treated properly when they come home.” This pitch worked well. The public basically considered him a man of the center–a perception that rested on many years of Democrats shaking off the caricature (and reality) of paleo-liberalism.
But, for all the gains the party has made, the age of scarcity risks reversing them. It’s precisely the Democratic Party’s historic base–minorities, labor, the poor–that will take the greatest hit in coming years. You can already begin to see signs of this. Even when Congress approved an economic stimulus bill in August, it coupled spending on health care and teachers’ salaries with deep cuts in food stamps. It reduced benefits for a family of three by $47 per month, according to one estimate.
Or take state government, which is really the vanguard of the crisis. The austerity hammer has fallen hard on Democratic constituencies. According the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, at least 31 states have slashed programs that provide low-income children and families access to either health care or health insurance. Peruse almost any state budget and you’ll find further shredding of the safety net. Idaho’s Department of Health and Welfare has closed nine of its 45 field offices; Georgia has cut funding for low-income family support programs by 7 percent. And that’s all merely a prelude to a looming apocalypse. In their next budgets, 24 states will face a shortfall of at least 10 percent–and it’s not hard to imagine where they will trim to cover that gap.


TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira: Public Wary of Spending Cuts, Govt Shutdown

Republicans keep acting like they have a mandate to butcher social programs and shut down the government in pursuit of that objective. But the latest Bloomberg News Poll data indicates quite the opposite, as TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira explains in this week’s edition of his ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages. As Teixeira explains:

The survey asked about a number of domestic areas and found opposition to cuts in eight different areas. Views ranged from 77-21 opposition to significantly cutting education programs to 50-46 opposition to significantly cutting funding for public television and radio.

The news for Republicans got even worse when respondents were asked about their views about a implementing a government shutdown to force spending cuts:

…By an overwhelming 77-20 margin, the public favors compromise over spending cuts to avert a shutdown rather than holding out for deep cuts even if that means shutting down the government.

As Teixeira puts it, “Conservatives may think the public is simpatico with their antispending crusade. The facts suggest otherwise.”


Build Trust By Fighting Corruption

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This item, which is the fourth essay in the Demos/TDS online forum on Restoring Trust in Government, is by David Callahan, Senior Fellow and Director of the International Program at Demos.
Attacks on government find resonance with the public not just because of claims that bureaucrats can’t do anything right or wield too much power, but also because of a widespread belief that public officials have selfish motives. That’s a big problem. As Bill Galston points out elsewhere in this forum, Americans need to see public leaders as competent and responsive in order to trust them – but also as having integrity. While making government work better may be the most important step in rebuilding trust, it is also crucial that progressives mount a new attack on corruption in government – and get credit for the successes we have already had in this area.
None of this will be easy.
Political corruption has loomed large in the news over the past few years, with a seemingly unending string of scandals – from Jack Abramoff to Charles Rangel. These high-profile scandals, along with an avalanche of smaller cases around the country, reinforce some of the public’s worst fears about government officials.
While politics is less corrupt than in most past eras, when political machines filled the public sector with cronies, there is still plenty of corruption and, at times, this issue can drive political outcomes. Public concerns about corruption following the Abramoff affair played a decisive role in helping the Democrats retake Congress in 2006 and this issue strongly influenced several recent governor races. In some states, corruption has been a ubiquitous topic in recent years, including Alabama (where four state legislators were recently arrested for taking bribes and where a former governor was convicted on corruption charges in 2006); Alaska (where six state legislators have been sentenced in felonies in the past three years); California (where a cabal of public officials looted the city of Bell); Connecticut (where a former governor, John Rowland, recently served prison time); Florida (which leads the nation in public corruption cases and where scandals have roiled Palm Beach County); Illinois (where one former governor, George Ryan, is serving prison time and another, Rod Blagojevich, is trying to stay out of prison); Louisiana (where former governor Edward Edwards recently completed a nine-year prison sentence for a host of crimes); Michigan (where former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has been charged with dozens of felonies); New Jersey (where 44 people, including three mayors and two state legislators, were arrested for corruption in 2009); New York (where a number of top political leaders including a former state comptroller and former Senate Majority Leader have faced federal charges); and Tennessee,(where four state legislators were nailed on federal charges of accepting bribes). Corruption has also shaken Capitol Hill, as a slew of legislators have faced serious charges or been destroyed by scandal – Rangel, Tom DeLay, Ted Stevens, Duke Cunningham, Maxine Waters, John Ensign, and more. In 2009 alone, federal authorities charged 1,082 individuals across the nation in corruption cases involving the public sector and convicted another 1,061.
The constant stream of corruption stories over the past few years comes on top of decades of high-profile political corruption cases including Watergate, Abscam (which sent six members of Congress to prison), the Keating Five, the House banking scandal (which led to charges against six members of Congress), the Congressional Post Office scandal and conviction of Dan Rostenkowski, the fall of House Speakers Jim Wright and then Newt Gingrich for ethical transgressions, and the appointment of six Independent Counsels during the 1990s who investigated not just Bill and Hillary Clinton, but also Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, and others. Did I miss anything? Oh, yes: The conviction of numerous lesser known federal officials of serious crimes, like Congressional members David Durenberger, Jim Traficant, Charles Diggs, and William Jefferson. There was also the Iran-Contra scandal, which kept Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh busy for seven years and resulted in charges against a number of high-level government officials.
We live in an age of political scandal and it has taken a toll. When Gallup asked respondents in a poll last October to use one word to describe government, “corrupt” was one of the top three words used. Incompetence at the proverbial DMV office is one sure way to turn Americans off to government. The recurrent spectacle of public officials heading off to prison is surely another.
Progressives are schizophrenic when it comes to corruption. At one level, we are fierce opponents of corruption and since the 1960s liberal reformers have sought to ferret out all kinds of abuses in the public sector. It is liberals who have led efforts to crack down on the poisonous effects of campaign money and insidious “revolving door” ties with industry. It is liberals who tend to blow the whistle most loudly about cronyism or the abuses of private contractors working for government. And it is progressive watchdog groups – like the PIRGS or the Center for Responsive Government – that have led the charge for stronger ethics rules, at both the national and state level, that limit the gifts and perks that public officials can receive. Looking back to earlier eras, it was progressive reformers who promoted modern civil service systems to professionalize government and insulate it from political patronage.
But there is another, less flattering side to the story. Progressives have often been inconsistent or opportunistic when it comes to spotlighting corruption and, worse, tolerant of corrupt practices and leaders. We are happy to expose wrongdoing by Republicans – think of the glee about the recent conviction of Tom DeLay – but tend to be ambivalent about cases within our own ranks. One reason that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t force Charles Rangel from his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee early on was because there was no strong demand that she do so from either the party’s base or the liberal commentariat. If a Republican chair of Ways and Means had been accused of the same gross violations of ethics, progressive bloggers would have eaten him or her alive. Thanks to Pelosi’s passivity, the drawn-out Rangel saga no doubt reinforced the view of many Americans that public officials lack integrity – and just in time for the mid-term election.
Beyond a partisan reflex to defend our own leaders, progressives can go easy on corruption because we don’t like beating up on government, which has enough powerful enemies already. That may seem to make sense, except that it often renders us mute on issues that concern the public and should concern progressive reformers. Earmarks are one example. You might think that a movement ostensibly committed to accountable government would go after secret and often wasteful pet projects of powerful legislators. Instead, progressives have tended to pooh-pooh earmarks as small change in a huge budget and have let the Tea Party frame this issue as part of a broader argument about why public officials can’t be trusted.
Another example is the flagrant abuse of pension rules that have allowed some public servants to retire with outsized pensions based on inflated salary histories. This is an inexcusable practice that drains resources away from other public priorities. Also disturbing are the deceptive accounting practices that state officials have used to play down pension obligations or the “pay-for-play” deals these officials have struck with investment funds. But you won’t find much mention of these abuses on say, the DailyKos or in a Bob Herbert column. We are, it seems, happy to let Fox News monopolize such issues and cast them in the worst possible light.
A final reason that the progressive coalition isn’t great about calling out corruption is that Democrats are too closely linked to interests involved in corruption. In an earlier era, the alleged monkey business around the government bailout of Wall Street might have been seized on by Democratic leaders. But today Democrats are so closely tied to Wall Street that it is hard for them to take on political corruption involving the financial sector and so this issue was left to Tea Party activists. (Andrew Cuomo’s prosecution of New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi for receiving kickbacks from investment funds is a notable exception.) A similar story holds around wrongdoing by public sector employees. Quite apart from the liberal reflex to defend career public servants, many Democrats are hesitant to cross public sector unions, who rank as the largest and most loyal contributors to party committees and candidates, as well to 527s that work for Democratic victories. Sure, padded pensions may be outrageous, but is saying that publicly worth ticking off AFSCME? Maybe not.
Liberals may have largely invented modern oversight of the public sector and may have led efforts to get money out of politics, but we only episodically get credit for fostering good government. Worse, we are routinely caricatured as the defenders of public servants who are more interested in serving their own interests than the public interest.


GOP 2011-12 Agenda: Union and Voter Suppression

Twenty months out from the 2012 election, the GOP’s voter suppression strategy is taking shape. By crushing public sector unions and expanding felon and student disenfranchisement, they hope to weaken Democratic turnout. While they have always supported these strategies, the margins Republicans gained in state houses in the November elections have empowered them to launch a much stronger voter suppression campaign.
There is reason to hope that their efforts to gut public sector unions will backfire, as evidenced by recent public opinion polls regarding Governor Walker’s union-busting campaign in Wisconsin. The fact that Walker exempted the three unions that supported him is proof enough that his primary objective is to disempower public unions because they have provided significant support for Democratic candidates.
In Florida, Governor Scott and his cohorts on the all-Republican Executive Clemency Board are setting a new standard for shameless partisan sleaze, with a racist twist. Here’s how Peter Wallsten’s Washington Post article explained this bit of political chicanery:

Florida Gov. Rick Scott and other Cabinet-level officials voted unanimously Wednesday to roll back state rules enacted four years ago that made it easier for many ex-felons to regain the right to vote.
Now, under the new rules, even nonviolent offenders would have to wait five years after the conclusion of their sentences to apply for the chance to have their civil rights restored.

In 2007 Florida Governor Charlie Crist initiated a measure to make civil rights restoration “almost automatic” for most ex-felons. Wallsten reports that more than 100,000 ex-felons took advantage of Crists initiative to attempt to register to vote. “Experts say many of those new voters were likely Democratic-leaning African Americans,” reports Wallsten, which likely helped Obama win Florida.
Approximately 54,000 ex-felons in Florida had their civil rights restored since 2007, before which the state restored the rights of only about 8,000 ex-felons annually, according to the ACLU.
The “rationale,” for the initiative according to a spokesperson for the Republican Florida A.G.:

“This issue of civil rights restoration is about principle, not partisanship…Attorney General Bondi is philosophically opposed to the concept of automatic restoration of civil rights and believes not only that felons should apply for their rights, but wait for a period of time in order to attest to their rehabilitation and commitment to living a crime-free life.

Howard Simon, executive director of the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sees the Republican measure a little differently. “It clearly has the effect of suppressing the vote as we go into a presidential election cycle.”
Unfortunately, the constitutionality of felon disenfranchisement has been upheld in courts from time to time, even though punishing people beyond the terms of their sentence remains a dubious proposition in a real democracy. Certainly the Florida Republicans have no qualms about making a mockery of the principle of rehabilitation in their criminal justice system. And no fair-minded person could deny that felon disenfranchisement targets African Americans, given their disproportionate incarceration rates, which numerous scholars have attributed to bias in sentencing.
In addition to the Republican efforts to crush public employee unionism and disenfranchise African American voters, Tobin Van Ostern reports at Campus Progress on the escalation of the conservative campaign to disenfranchise another pro-Democratic group, students:

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative organization linked to corporate and right-wing donors, including the billionaire Koch brothers, has drafted and distributed model legislation, obtained by Campus Progress, that appears to be the inspiration for bills proposed by state legislators this year and promoted by Tea Party activists, bills that would limit access of young people to vote.
…Charles Monaco, the press and new media specialist at the Progressive States Network, a state-based organization that has been tracking this issue, says, “ALEC is involved with a vast network of well-funded right wing organizations working to spread voter ID laws in the state legislatures. It is clear what their purpose is with these laws–to reduce progressive turnout and tilt the playing field towards their preferred candidates in elections.”

In Wisconsin and New Hampshire, for example,

Conservative representatives in the state have proposed a law, backed by Walker, that would ban students from using in-state university- or college-issued IDs for proof-of-residency when voting. If this legislation became law, it would become one of the strictest voter registration laws in the country and would provide significant logistical and financial barriers for a variety of groups, including student and minority voters.
Meanwhile, as Campus Progress reported last month, in New Hampshire, state House Speaker William O’Brien (R- Hillsborough 4) says that proposed election legislation will “tighten up the definition of a New Hampshire resident.” O’Brien claims that college towns experience hundreds of same-day voter registrations and that those are the ballots of people who “are kids voting liberal, voting their feelings, with no life experience.”

To repeat, the Speaker of the New Hampshire House says it’s OK to deny a group of predominantly young people voting rights because they are “voting liberal.” If Dems don’t make an ad about that targeting youth voters nationwide, they should be cited for political negligence. In other states,

…According to research by the Fair Elections Legal Network (FELN) and Campus Progress, in the past six years, seven states have enacted laws that disenfranchise students or make it more difficult for them to vote. This year, 18 additional states are considering similar laws, while other states are proposing voter ID laws that would depress turnout among other groups of voters–particularly those who traditionally lean left…These requirements run the gamut from requiring in-state driver’s licenses, to banning school IDs, to prohibiting first-time voters–essentially every college-aged voter–from voting by absentee ballot…

There can be no doubt at this point about the GOP’ political strategy for 2011-12: Crush unions, disenfranchise ex-felons and students — such are the often unintended consequences of voting Republican. For Dems, the challenges couldn’t be more clear: Publicize the GOP’s contempt for voting rights; Reach out to win the support of blue collar workers and energize our base constituencies with bold, populist reforms that create jobs and protect and improve their living standards.


Public Distrust of Government in an Age of Market Failures

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This item, which is the third essay in the Demos/TDS online forum on Restoring Trust in Government, is by Patrick Bresette, Associate Program Director of the Public Works program at Demos.

[T]rust is probably the moral orientation that most needs to be diffused among the people if republican society is to be maintained.” – Gianfranco Poggi, Images of Society

2011 began with a dramatically altered political landscape in which the question of trust in government hangs heavy in the air. We have just experienced an electoral cycle where anti-government rhetoric was at an all time high and public trust in government at historical lows. But puzzling contradictions roil beneath the surface of this seemingly anti-government moment. How can it be that dramatic failures in the private sector – from the Wall Street collapse to the BP oil spill – have not highlighted the essential protective and public interest roles of government? How can polls show historically low levels of trust in government AND deep support for many of the actual programs of government? How does an Election Day that saw numerous anti-government, anti-tax zealots swept into office also witness convincing defeats of tax cut proposals in Massachusetts and Colorado, and broad support for tax increases to protect public services in dozens of localities?
Do these contradictions reveal complexities in what “trust in government” actually means, and therefore what “rebuilding trust” entails?
What if the root causes of public distrust in government, and thus the clues to its rebuilding – do not exist in government per se but are more directly related to trust itself, to its fragility in the complex world in which we live, and to the damaging consequences of cynicism in our current political culture?
The notion that trust is a foundational value in a democratic society informs one of the core goals at Dēmos – to rebuild public trust and support for government and its role. We believe that without a reasonable level of faith and trust in government, our ability as a country to address the whole range of challenges and opportunities of this new century will be hamstrung. We further believe that this task must be taken on directly.
How then do we rebuild trust? And what kind of trust are we trying to restore? For trust is multifaceted; it can be based in practical and functional experiences, but it can also spring from values-based judgments that underpin a kind of trust more akin to “faith.” This latter type of trust is essentially optimistic, it springs from a worldview that believes that a fundamental trust in the goodwill of others is essential to a functioning society. Any successful effort to rebuild trust in government must address both of these kinds of trust – trust in the functions of public institutions and trust in shared purposes – trust in “how” and trust in “why.” To date, most of our approaches to rebuilding trust have focused on the practical kind–attempting only to fix the “how” of government.
In his paper “Trust as a Moral Value,” Eric Uslaner talks about this kind of practical and strategic trust: “trust is mostly conceived as a “rational” response to behavior by others. This standard account of trust presumes that trust depends on information and experience – call it ‘knowledge-based trust.’ [Thus], the decision to trust another person is essentially strategic.”
This knowledge-based notion of trust – “functional trust” if you will – underpins efforts to rebuild trust in government that focus on governmental competence. Such efforts seek to improve and modernize public programs and services as the avenue for rebuilding confidence in the functions of government and therefore, trust. It is also the motivating factor for many of the governmental transparency and accountability initiatives currently underway.
Make it Work and Trust will Follow

“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works–whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”
– President Barack Obama, Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009

This perspective – articulated well by the incoming president – accepts that much of the current distrust in government stems from people’s lived experiences with government. It suggests that we have a government that is outdated and outmoded and needs to be improved in order to rebuild trust. This approach informed the Clinton/Gore “Reinventing Government” initiative whose mission was to “create a government that works better, costs less, and gets results Americans care about.” It is also at the core of the “Doing What Works” project of the Campaign for American Progress, as their website asserts:

Opinion research shows the public does not believe government is capable of effectively and efficiently executing its responsibilities. This mistrust is a significant barrier to advancing policies to address even the most popular goals. For attitudes to change, the public first and foremost will have to see government acting responsibly and working to deliver maximum bang for the buck.

Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer raise similar themes in a recent essay titled “The ‘More What, Less How’ Government” published in the journal Democracy:

The current dissatisfaction with government is not a mere perception or marketing problem, as too many on the left still believe. It is a product problem. Government has for too many people become unresponsive, dehumanizing, and inefficient. Only when we improve government itself will our satisfaction with it improve. Unfortunately, the American discourse on government has long been frozen in two dimensions: more vs. less, big vs. small.

There is much to support this “knowledge-based” approach to rebuilding trust in government. Our own investigations point to the essential need to reconnect Americans to the actual work of government – the systems and structures that underpin the functioning of our communities and our quality of life. Perhaps a focus on competency and modernization is necessary. But it is worth reflecting on what this approach to trust-building does not address; and, with the Reinventing Government initiative as an example, whether it actually can improve trust in government.
Rebuilding trust in government through improving competency is focused on answering “how” questions – how does government function and how can it be improved. It leaves hanging in the air the “why” questions. Why government at all? Why is any particular public sector activity uniquely “public” in purpose and responsibility? These are value-based questions that ask us to consider the fundamental mission of government and its embodiment of our collective goals, objectives and even aspirations. It is hard to answer “how” and “what” questions about government if you have not answered the “why” questions as well.
For example, achieving all of the major reforms and public investments that are proposed by Liu and Hanauer, as well as those outlined in the Doing What Works initiative, will require significant political and popular support. It is difficult to see how these can be accomplished without engaging Americans in a conversation about the value and purpose of government as the grounds upon which public will and trust can – or should – be reconstructed. Where will public will for such changes come from?
Are there lessons for a “knowledge-based” approach to trust-building from the Reinventing Government initiative? Yes, and they are not all that encouraging. As Donald Kettl wrote in his 1998 Brookings report Reinventing Government: A Fifth Year Report Card: despite its “important and lasting accomplishments . . . [t]he campaign had difficulty in penetrating the public’s confidence and rebuilding trust in government (grade: C).”
There is certainly more to explore here, but despite all of the initiative’s good work to weed out old practices and to reform and restructure public agencies, it did not dramatically alter the dominant “public” narrative about government. In fact, it could be argued that it inadvertently reinforced the story of waste and inefficiency that it sought to correct. The media’s attention to the efforts of the initiative – and thus the public’s attention – focused on all the most egregious examples of wasteful spending that were being uncovered – from outrageously overpriced ashtrays, toilet seats and hammers to overlapping and duplicative governmental agencies and processes. All of the headlines were about how much waste had been uncovered and how much money would be saved–thus begging the question, “if you found that much waste so readily, how much more must there be?”
“Knowledge-based” trust building may be important, but it will not succeed alone. In part this is because it still externalizes the problem: government is still the “other,” something “out there” that must be fixed in order for us to trust it. The deeper trust deficit we face is in a shared belief – faith, if you will – in the very notion of government as an embodiment of shared purpose – in “us”, in each other.


Wisconsin Protest Shows D.C. Dems Power of Principle

Many progressive Democrats have long argued that the party fares best when Dems buck the common wisdom about conservatives having momentum and take a bold stance on critical issues, based on progressive principles. WaPo’s E. J. Dionne, Jr. makes the case exceptionally well in his column today “What Wisconsin Democrats can teach Washington Democrats.”

Washington Democrats, including President Obama, have allowed conservative Republicans to dominate the budget debate so far. As long as the argument is over who will cut more from federal spending, conservatives win. Voters may think the GOP is going too far, but when it comes to dollar amounts, they know Republicans will always cut more.
In Wisconsin, by contrast, 14 Democrats in the state Senate defined the political argument on their own terms – and they are winning it.

Dionne acknowledges that Wisconsin Republicans may win the round with their sneaky passage of Walker’s attack against on public employee unions, which Walker will sign. But Walker has branded himself, in Dionne’s words, as an “inflexible ideologue” and he and Wisconsin Republicans have damaged the image of their party nationwide with a pivotal constituency — working class voters. Further, adds Dionne,

Here’s the key to the Wisconsin battle: For the first time in a long time, blue-collar Republicans – once known as Reagan Democrats – have been encouraged to remember what they think is wrong with conservative ideology. Working-class voters, including many Republicans, want no part of Walker’s war.
A nationwide Pew Research Center survey released last week, for example, showed Americans siding with the unions over Walker by a margin of 42 percent to 31 percent. Walker’s 31 percent was well below the GOP’s typical base vote because 17 percent of self-described Republicans picked the unions over their party’s governor.
At my request, Pew broke the numbers down by education and income and, sure enough, Walker won support from fewer than half of Republicans in two overlapping groups: those with incomes under $50,000 and those who did not attend college. Walker’s strongest support came from the wealthier and those with college educations, i.e., country club Republicans.

In November, Dionne notes, working-class whites gave Republican House candidates a 30-point lead over Dems. But many blue collar Democrats still have positive feelings about unions, which have helped provide their families with decent living standards. Walker’s and the GOP’s escalation their war against unions won’t sit well with this constituency.
Dionne credits Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) with having the savvy to learn a potentially-powerful lesson from the Wisconsin Dems, and now Schumer wants to “reset the debate” over the federal budget battle in congress:

…As Schumer noted, the current battle, focused on “one tiny portion of the budget,” evades the real causes of long-term budget deficits.
Schumer dared to put new revenue on the table – including some tax increases that are popular among the sorts of blue-collar voters who are turning against Walker. Schumer, for example, spoke of Obama’s proposal to end subsidies for oil and gas companies and for higher taxes on “millionaires and billionaires.” Yes, closing the deficit will require more revenue over the long run. But right now, the debate with the House isn’t focusing on revenue at all.
Schumer, who spoke at the Center for American Progress, also suggested cuts to agriculture subsidies and in unnecessary defense programs. He proposed changes in Medicare and Medicaid incentives that would save money, including reform of how both programs pay for prescription drugs. The broad debate Schumer called for would be a big improvement on the current petty argument, which he rightly described as “quicksand.”

As Dionne concludes, “Wisconsin Democrats have shown that the only way to win arguments is to take risks on behalf of what you believe. Are Washington Democrats prepared to learn this lesson? ”


How To Restore Confidence in Government

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This item, which is the second essay in the Demos/TDS online forum on Restoring Trust in Government, is by John Halpin, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and co-director and creator of its Progressive Studies Program, and Ruy Teixeira, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and at The Century Foundation, and Co-Editor of The Democratic Strategist.
Many observers have remarked, perhaps most famously Hadley Cantril and Lloyd Free in their 1967 book, The Political Beliefs of Americans, on the disjuncture between the public’s positive agenda for government in many specific areas and its negative overall assessment of government’s performance. Cantril’s and Free’s well-know formulation is that the American public is “operationally liberal” but “ideologically conservative”. This may not be precisely the right way to put it but it does throw the paradox of American opinion on government into sharp relief.
This paradox would not matter much to advocates of active government if this operational liberalism could be easily channeled into support for worthy government programs. But it cannot. Jaundiced overall views of government consistently drag down support for government programs even in areas where the public says it wants more action. This makes it difficult to allocate sufficient resources to get the job done in these areas, which only reinforces public doubts about government effectiveness, stiffens resistance to taxation and increases sensitivity to the level of government debt. The first couple of years of the Obama administration have provided abundant evidence of this dynamic, where an underfunded stimulus, followed by a very sluggish recovery, has led to a flowering of anti-government sentiment.
For example, a May, 2010, Center for American Progress survey asked Americans “when the government in Washington decides to solve a problem, how much confidence do you have that the problem actually will be solved?” This question has been asked periodically by various news organizations over two decades, and the current results represent the lowest level of public confidence ever recorded. Just one-third (33 percent) of adults voice a lot or some confidence, 35 percent have “just a little confidence,” and another one-third (31 percent) have no confidence at all. The proportion saying “no confidence” has never before exceeded 23 percent. Simply put, Americans do not feel confident that their federal government can get the job done when it takes on a challenge. And that’s kind of a problem when government action is so urgently needed to build up our infrastructure, shepherd the transition to a clean energy economy, massively improve our educational system and much more.
The obvious solution is to bring the two aspects of Americans’ views on government more closely into alignment so that support for government action in specific areas is matched by a more positive view of government’s overall role. But how to do that?
What Is To Be Done?
Progressives generally agree that the duality of American public opinion on government is a serious problem. But that agreement does not extend to solutions.
On the broad center-left, there are three general approaches to solving the problem. First, and perhaps the most popular, is the idea that progressives must improve their communication about government. The recommended approach here is typically a combination of reminding people of all the good things that government already does and devising different language (or “framing”) to talk about proposed new initiatives. There is, however, no evidence that this approached has worked, or can work. People’s views on government are not produced mostly by the way conservatives talk about government and they will not be substantially changed by the way progressives talk about government. Their views are far more solidly based, reflecting their experience with government and their assessment of government’s output. In short, their views are rooted in the real world, not talk, and, even if unfair or mistaken in interpretation, these views cannot be dismissed as some form of false consciousness.
The second approach focuses on one aspect of the government (the deficit) and asserts that solving this problem is the key to turning around public views of government. It is true that public concern about the deficit is currently high. But enhanced concern about the budget deficit and government spending is properly understood as a symptom of the underlying failure of government to function effectively, particularly in terms of improving the economy. It is the latter that is of fundamental concern to the public, not the former.
Just how low the deficit ranks as a stand-alone problem can be seen in a couple of recent polls by CBS/New York Times and Gallup. In the CBS/New York Times poll, a miniscule 4 percent thought Congress should concentrate first on the deficit/debt problem compared to 56 percent who thought economy/jobs should come first. In the Gallup poll, 9 percent thought the budget deficit was the most important problem facing the country, compared to 64 percent who selected jobs/unemployment/the economy as the key problem.
So focusing on the deficit seems an unlikely way to restore confidence in government. Moreover, by emphasizing an abstract concept like the deficit, it shares with the first approach a belief that the public’s animus toward government is not rooted in concrete experience with, and assessment of, government action.
This brings us to the third approach: improving people’s experience with government and improving the effectiveness of government action. This may be more difficult than changing the way we talk about government and more complicated than focusing on a single number like the size of the deficit, but it could actually succeed, whereas the other two approaches are bound to fail.
This approach starts with directly reforming the way government operates, rather than shrinking it, a priority, it is worth noting, that the public shares. In the CAP survey mentioned above, Americans were asked what should be the higher priority for improving the federal government: reducing the cost and size of federal government, or improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the federal government? By a decisive margin of 62 percent to 36 percent, people said their priority is making government more efficient and more effective, not reducing its size. In the political center, where concern about deficits supposedly resides, independents (62 percent) and moderates (69 percent) both cite a clear preference for more effective government.
The CAP survey tested reactions to a strong government reform agenda (“Doing What Works”) and found very high levels of support. This agenda had three core components:
• Eliminating inefficient programs and redirecting support to the most cost-effective programs
• Evaluating government program performance and making information available to the public
• Improving the management methods and information technologies of the government