Matt Yglesias

Life at the Bottom

Chris Bertram, in the course of knocking Bill Clinton’s accomplishments, argues:

There is a criterion that any progressive government ought to meet. It is one that I might quibble with in a seminar but not in life. A progressive (left, liberal, social-democratic government) ought to alter social arrangements so that they work significantly more to the benefit of the the least-advantaged members of society that they did when that government came to power. Well, The Wire is fiction, and I’ve never visited the West Side of Baltimore, but did Clinton make a difference in places like that? And are the Valleys of South Wales less (or more) hopeless places than they were ten years ago?

Not only is The Wire fiction, but it’s set during the Bush II years and based heavily on reporting that David Simon did in the Reagan-Bush years. In the real world, violent crime dropped substantially in American cities during the nineties. And then there’s the poverty rate. Consider this data from EPI’s report “Reversal of fortune: Economic gains of 1990s overturned for African Americans from 2000-07″:

Again, things got better during the nineties. Did they get as good as they ought to be? No. But if the trends that existed during Bill Clinton’s administration has continued for eight additional years instead of being reversed, things would be much better than they are today.

Meanwhile, Bertram derides “‘in the circumstances’ excusing” on behalf of both Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. But the circumstances are importantly different. In the American context, you can’t change the laws more than congress will agree to change the laws. The positions Clinton outlined were consistently more leftwing than the positions adhered to by the median members of congress (conservative southern Democrats in 1993-94 and conservative Republicans in 1995-2000). If Clinton had staked out a bolder, more leftwing position, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Conversely, had congress enacted Clinton’s health care plan, we’d say that Bill Clinton was, along with FDR and LBJ, one of the three great architects of the American welfare state. That didn’t happen, but not because Clinton was too much of a sellout — it happened because congress wouldn’t approve his proposal.

That made for a disappointing administration in many respects, but not for lack of trying on the part of the administration. And despite Clinton’s difficulty in enacting large-scale semi-permanent institutional change, his tenure in office really did make life much better for people at the bottom.

Congress Matters

It seems a bit unseemly to criticize an article that quotes me as an expert but I thought this one element of a basically good article is a little bit off base:

Then there’s the question of how hard Democrats will push their activist philosophy, particularly in a period when the budget deficit is at record levels and resources are scarce. The answer hinges greatly on the enigmatic figure of Barack Obama, who variously displays leftist and centrist sides. [...]

“We will find out if he is a new Franklin Roosevelt or a new Bill Clinton,” [David] Boaz said.

Roosevelt of course presided over the greatest expansion of government economic power in U.S. history. Clinton adapted to conservative dominance by declaring in 1996 that the era of big government was over.

For starters, I think this is a misinterpretation of the Clinton administration. If the health care bill that the Clinton administration authored, pushed for, and staked its presidency on had passed you would say that FDR, LBJ, and Bill Clinton were the three main architects of the modern welfare state. Because the bill didn’t pass, the institutional legacy of the Clinton years is considerably more moderate than that and the Clinton administration is instead remembered for its responsible stewardship of national affairs. But that’s because congress blocked the bill not because of Clinton’s moderation.

In general, it’s important to understand the way the American institutional framework works. Clinton was, throughout his presidency, more liberal than the median member of congress and substantially more liberal than the 41st most conservative Senator. Under the circumstances, even if Clinton had been more left-wing than he was, it’s not clear how much of a difference this would have made on domestic issue. Similarly, whatever you make of Obama’s place on the centrist-liberal spectrum, he’s clearly going to be to the left of the 41st Senator no matter what happens in November, and, indeed, he’ll very likely be to the left of the median member of the House (currently Tim Mahoney).

Take a look at this chart that I found in Andrew Gellman’s book and on his blog:

By all indications, the safe thing to assume about Obama is that he’s a pretty typical Democratic legislator. Maybe he’s more like the typical Democratic Senator, or maybe he’s somewhat more liberal like the typical Democratic House member. But either way, a typical Democratic legislator is going to be more liberal than the median voter, more liberal than the median member of congress, and, indeed, more liberal than the median Democratic Party voter. And all the same is true of a Republican president, as it would be very difficult for an ideological outlier to secure his or her party’s nomination. The result of this, though, is that domestic policy outcomes are unlikely to hinge crucially on the relatively subtle differences between mainstream Democratic Party politicians. Rather, the views of relatively conservative congressional Democrats are likely to be decisive. There’s a tendency to attribute FDR’s and LBJ’s achievements to something inherent to their character or their approach to governing, but the truth is simply that in 1933-34 and 1965-66 you had a lot of liberals in congress so a lot of liberal legislation passed.

Presidential leadership matters, of course, but it can’t manufacture voters out of thin air. If Senators from “right-to-work” states decide they don’t want to vote for EFCA or Senators from oil, coal, and automobile producing states decide they don’t want a serious climate change policy, there’s no way for the White House to somehow pull the wool over their eyes and trick them into doing so.

Bill Kristol, Feminist

Bill Kristol, well-known feminist, criticizes what he terms “the Democrats’ glass ceiling.” His implication is that sexism is the only possible motive for picking Joe Biden over Hillary Clinton and he wants to make mischief along these lines.

I’m glad to see Kristol’s newfound passion for these issues. I notice that, for example, The Weekly Standard doesn’t seem to have seen fit to comment at all on Lilly Ledbetter’s court case or the subsequent legislative effort it inspired. But maybe now that Clinton’s plight has tugged at his heartstrings Kristol will make sure that these kind of oversights don’t happen again. Right? I mean, it’s not possible that Kristol is anything other than sincere in raising this issue.