Who Wants to Provide a Full-Throated Defense of Labor Unions?

Harold Meyerson repeats the common belief that Michigan's rushed-through anti-union law was meant to punish unions for daring to attempt to protect collective bargaining through a constitutional amendment:

In Wisconsin, a union-initiated effort to recall Republican governor Scott Walker, who had pushed through the legislature a law stripping public-sector unions of collective-bargaining rights, failed badly at the polls. In Michigan, after voters (in the same election in which they gave Obama a clear victory) decisively rejected a union-initiated ballot measure that would have enshrined collective-bargaining rights in the state constitution, the Republican legislature passed, and Republican governor Rick Snyder signed, a right-to-work law in the cradle of American industrial unionism. What makes these defeats more bitter was that both involved unforced errors—actually, the same unforced error—on labor’s part. On the evidence of polling, many union leaders and political directors believed from the start that the Wisconsin recall and the Michigan ballot measure were fights that could not be won, but their cautions went unheeded by well-intentioned unionists in both states. It’s not clear that Snyder, who had previously disavowed any interest in enacting a right-to-work law, would have changed his mind had the measure not been put on the ballot and defeated, but its defeat certainly set the stage for the Republicans’ sudden and unheralded push for right to work during the legislature’s lame-duck session.

Did it also "set the stage" for their trying to cram through "open carry" legislation? For their attempting to cram through anti-abortion legislation? If you take a step back and look at the reactionary legislation of Michigan's lame duck session, the only reasonable takeaway is that the Republican Party had the bills prepared, ready and waiting, and that the only thing that changed following the election was that they no longer had to lie about their intentions. If Governor Snyder can be assumed to have had a change of heart, rather than it being inferred that he has been telling his party, "Wait until after the election", I expect that the change of heart had a lot more to do with the defeat of his emergency manager legislation than it did with the pro-collective bargaining amendment.

There's something else to consider: even if the Republican party passed its right-to-work law as petty revenge for the proposed collective bargaining amendment, they hid that intention through the election. It's correct to suggest that the amendment never had much of a chance, but it would have had a much greater chance of passing had the Republicans announced, "If this fails, we're going to make Michigan a 'right-to-work' state", or "We plan to cram through anti-union legislation in the lame duck session." I have encountered several people who voted against the proposed amendment on the basis that it was overreaching who have expressed that had they known what the Republicans were planning they would have voted for the amendment despite its flaws.

But it's important to remember something else. Even with the Republicans lying about their intentions due to their fear of a public that supports the right to unionize, they understand that many people who favor protecting the right to organize are not big fans of unions. They recognize that for the most part, whether we're talking about the state or federal level, the Democratic Party is of a similar mindset - to the extent that Democratic administrations may have pursued policies that slowed the demise of organized labor, they supported other policies that contributed to the loss of union jobs. Democrats have overtly rejected a German-style approach to labor organization. Under the best of circumstances, labor unions would not have had an easy time over the past half-century, but nobody's been trying to make it easy for them.

What of the unions themselves? Over the past fifty years, Michigan has had six governors. Four were Republican. Neither of the Democratic candidates emerged from unions. When the unions have managed to advance candidates with strong union ties... things have not gone well at the ballot box. Michigan's Democratic U.S. Senators are similarly pro-union, but not out of the unions. That is to say, the public at large seems to have long wanted to maintain something of an arm's length relationship with the state's unions. If history's lesson can be trusted, about the worst thing that could happen for the Democratic Party, two years from now, would be for the unions to dominate the nomination processs and election campaign.

When you ask people to make the case for unions, some will start with a history of the labor movement and point to the abuses of management, past, present and overseas. Some will talk about the importance of protecting the rights of workers in an imbalanced relationship, or of how weak U.S. labor laws are as compared to other countries while suggesting that the job and workplace protections we have emerged in no small part from the efforts of the labor unions. But you almost never encounter a full-throated defense of unions. It's in fact pretty rare to encounter somebody who, perhaps reluctantly but often quite willingly, admits to the problems associated with organized labor even as they defend the role of unions. Here's something else that's interesting. One faction that is heavily invested in the debate has done a terrible job of defending labor unions and organized labor. I am speaking, of course, of the unions themselves.

Governor Snyder can't make a case for his right-to-work law, so we get stories about jobs supposedly flooding into Indiana, or the suggestion that becoming a right-to-work state is actually good for workers and labor unions. You know what? If the "solution" to Michigan's economic woes is to add a handful of low-wage jobs to the economy, part of the race to the bottom that leads to Michigan's economy being indistinguishable from that of Mississippi, I don't consider that to be a good thing.

Flint has gone a great job adding non-union, low wage jobs - telemarketer phone banks. Is that the future Snyder wants for Michigan? Because if his model is Ann Arbor, this anti-union stuff is at best a distraction. I admit that my perspective is skewed by wanting good governance, healthy communities, the availability of good schools, good jobs, and the like. If you look at the states with the worst economies, the worst per capita incomes... Republican strongholds.

Thomas Friedman on Competition with China

Sometimes you have to wonder where Thomas Friedman's head is....

To visit China today as an American is to compare and to be compared. And from the very opening session of this year’s World Economic Forum here in Tianjin, our Chinese hosts did not hesitate to do some comparing. China’s CCTV aired a skit showing four children — one wearing the Chinese flag, another the American, another the Indian, and another the Brazilian — getting ready to run a race. Before they take off, the American child, “Anthony,” boasts that he will win “because I always win,” and he jumps out to a big lead. But soon Anthony doubles over with cramps. “Now is our chance to overtake him for the first time!” shouts the Chinese child. “What’s wrong with Anthony?” asks another. “He is overweight and flabby,” says another child. “He ate too many hamburgers.”

That is how they see us.

Here's the thing, Tom: When a state-run organizaton presents a state-approved, state-sponsored caricature of how its own citizens compare to those of other nations, even before you take notice that it's a communist, totalitarian state, the idea is not to convey "Here's what you already think." It's to convey, "Here's what you should think." In the context of the film at issue, if a chubby American whose idea of exercise appears to be putting on his Rolex in the morning or getting in and out of his Lexus SUV happens to be in the audience, nodding in vigorous agreement, all's the better.

You know what else? You don't have to go to China to hear that story. More than two thousand years ago Aesop wrote a version, the Tortoise and the Hare, which (believe it or not) was not intended as a wake-up call to us. (Granted, Ancient Greece did fall.) In terms of "Wow, look at those really big buildings," China's not the first totalitarian state to want to show off its prowess through massive building projects and it won't be the last.

That's not to discount China's role as a global economic competitor, or the problems we face at home. Friedman highlights problems faced by both nations,

The Chinese system is autocratic, rife with corruption and at odds with a knowledge economy, which requires liberty.

and

There is absolutely no reason our democracy should not be able to generate the kind of focus, legitimacy, unity and stick-to-it-iveness to do big things — democratically — that China does autocratically. We’ve done it before. But we’re not doing it now because too many of our poll-driven, toxically partisan, cable-TV-addicted, money-corrupted political class are more interested in what keeps them in power than what would again make America powerful, more interested in defeating each other than saving the country.

Friedman brings out his inner G.W. Bush ("If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator"), suggesting that China's system of government has resulted in the "average senior official [being] quite competent". His thesis, however, is internally inconsistent - in his own words there is a reason we can't "do it now" - our flawed and corrupted political system.

Friedman also quotes an Indian entrepreneur. Although it's not clear, I believe he's referring to an entrepreneur who is developing businesses in India, as opposed to the United States. And that entrepreneur sees democracy as part of the problem,

For democracy to be effective and deliver the policies and infrastructure our societies need requires the political center to be focused, united and energized. That means electing candidates who will do what is right for the country not just for their ideological wing or whoever comes with the biggest bag of money. For democracies to address big problems — and that’s all we have these days — requires a lot of people pulling in the same direction, and that is precisely what we’re lacking.

But that's not really, true, is it. India had a business boom based neither on those aspects of democracy nor upon a broad sharing of its new wealth with the public at large. As compared to the United States it has a serious problem with corruption and success in business can mean bribing a lot of people. Not so long ago, Friedman was lecturing us that we needed to prepare for our flat-Earth race against India, now it's apparently the U.S. and India against China. When you're in a race to the bottom for who can hand out the best business environment for sweatshops - no worries about labor laws, western-style environmental regulation, or paying taxes sufficient to help support a fully developed city or state - democracies will always lose to totalitarian states.

There are a couple of points worth making about what Friedman sees as our corrupt political culture. First, as bad as things are right now, they've been worse at various points in our nation's history. Second, if everybody pulled together and decided, "The government must have sufficient revenue to build quality infrastructure that will carry us through to the 22nd century, must reinvent higher education, must make large, bold investments in research and innovation," we would be left with a big question: How do we pay for all of that? It's easy if you're China - as long as the money keeps rolling in, the government can skim what it wants right off the top. Here it would require tax increases - and let's be blunt, the hyper-wealthy elites of our nation, people like Thomas Friedman, simply won't get on board with that.¹

Sure, Tom's willing to pay an extra 50 cents per gallon to fuel up his hybrid SUV, but only if everybody in the nation also has to pay the new tax. He's not shown any inclination to offer up any of his extended family's wealth, or to scale back his own lavish lifestyle. Not that Friedman's hypocrisy makes him any less correct than, say, carbon-burning, mansion-dwelling Al Gore; but I would be more enthusiastic when he made this type of argument if it didn't smack of, "Now everybody pull together - pick me up and carry me across the finish line before the burgers get cold."

I would suggest that for his next column Friedman approach this issue from a different angle. Rather than telling us what we need to do - things that, frankly, would likely get massive voter approval if funded, he should do us the favor of telling us exactly where the money will come from.

Update: Harold Meyerson makes some observations about China, and the role of large U.S. companies in both its growth and its status as a competitor, that Friedman appears to consistently overlook:

Consider the debate in Congress about whether to impose tariffs on Chinese imports if China continues to depress the value of its currency. Roughly 150 House members, including 45 Republicans, have authored a bill to do just that, and the Ways and Means Committee will take up the bill on Friday. Unions and some domestic manufacturers support the bill. But a large number of American businesses, in a campaign coordinated by the U.S.-China Business Council, oppose it.

Now, there's nothing un-American in opposing the legislation as such -- far from it. Support for and opposition to tariffs are both as American as apple pie. The question here is whether the 220 corporations that belong to the council -- household names such as Coca-Cola, Bank of America, Ford, GM, Wal-Mart, Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, J.P. Morgan Chase, Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Boeing -- are already so deeply invested in China as manufacturers, marketers or retailers that buy goods there to sell them here that their interests are more closely aligned with China's than with America's. Revaluing China's currency would be helpful to domestic U.S. manufacturers, their employees and the communities where those employees live and work, but America's largest companies have long since ceased to be domestic.

Given the explosive growth of the Chinese economy, it's a safe bet that every major U.S. corporation will devote greater resources to building, buying and selling there. But China, unlike the Obama administration, truly is guided by an ideology alien to most Americans -- Leninism -- and wields far greater control over what U.S. corporations can and can't do there than the U.S. government does over what corporations can and can't do here. Our leading companies' economic interests, and those of their Chinese hosts, whom they cross at their peril, are increasing likely to pit them against proposals that diminish China's edge, however obtained, in global competition.

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1. As a member of the Pulitzer Committee, did Friedman vote in favor of Kathleen Parker's award? Because, it should be noted, she's presently endorsing propaganda of a different sort, applauding the notion that we can have "smaller, more caring government, one that remembers us". Why am I instead reminded of the television edit, "Forget you."

Political Projection

Much of the reaction to President Obama by his supporters (in some cases, former supporters) reminded me of the Perot campaign. Seriously. Ross Perot ran on a platform of change - the Reform Party - and a substantial number of voters rallied behind him even though, beyond a few stated policy positions, it wasn't particularly clear what he stood for. His personality-based campaign proved vulnerable to personality-based attacks, and some shrewd manipulation caused him to display a level of paranoia that made him appear less than suitable as a President, but large numbers of people voted for him anyway. Sure, some percentage of the vote was a protest vote, anticipating that he would lose, but it seems reasonable to infer that the majority of his voters the first time around (18.9% of the popular vote) and a significant majority the second time around (8% of the popular vote) wanted him to serve as President.

Barack Obama was a more serious, credible candidate than Ross Perot, but he benefited from a similar ambiguity. People weren't sure what he stood for, and were eager to project their own political wants and needs onto him. Even when he made clear statements of policy, many of his followers seemed happy to either ignore the statement or rationalize how he was "just saying that to get elected". Yet as we've since seen, for the most part, when you look at a clear policy statement from Candidate Obama, nine times out of ten it's what he's done as President. The stuff that's less clear? That, I believe, was a savvy response to his followers. He understood the psychological phenomenon at issue, and was happy to have it work to his benefit. The Republicans attempted to take him down with character attacks, but those resonated mostly with voters who were predisposed to believe them (i.e., Republicans).

There's another side to this coin, and that's to build a candidate who fits a paradigm. The Republican Party did this to a degree with Ronald Reagan, and made it an art form with G.W. Bush. Take an unknown man with an empty résumé who has the proper political pedigree, and manufacture a public image that just happens to correlate to what opinion polls say voters want from a President. Lots of props and costumes. Push the image hard during the run-up to the nomination process, make sure the nomination process is more of a coronation - you don't want dirt on the crown - and you end up with a viable candidate. With image being as important as it is in a modern political campaign, who can be surprised that G.W.'s carefully manufactured, managed and marketed image prevailed over Al Gore's?

But you can't build a real movement on projection. Consider, for example, Ross Perot's "Reform Party". When you put Perot's supporters together in a room and told them to find their commonalities and create a platform, it just wasn't going to happen. They were united in their concern about the economy and to some degree in big picture solutions, and they all wanted change from the status quo, but that's where the commonalities ended. It was a movement that could not support a party. President Obama built his movement from within the party but, despite the expectation of many of his followers that it would happen, the party is not part of his movement. President Obama is having a hard enough time getting his own party to advance his stated agenda, and never had a chance of implementing the type of radical change that many of his supporters want. Obama can be faulted for allowing people to believe he was "that powerful", but if you look at either the history of the Presidency or Obama's prior legislative history, there was no reason to believe that radical change would or could occur.

When Harold Meyerson complains that Obama is not tapping into his progressive supporters in order to effect more significant change, I think he's overlooking a couple of things: first, how much progressive change was incorporated into the House healthcare reform bill, and second, that no amount of progressive pressure was going to make Joe Lieberman an honest man. (And it wasn't just Joe Lieberman.) Moreover, the progressives who "could have been" mobilized for Obama have different priorities - they may feel neglected, but that's probably better than offending them by insisting that they accept a legislative agenda that they may not share, even as their own pet causes are left behind. It's less that Obama needs to rally his progressive supporters, and more that they need to coalesce, demonstrate themselves as a serious, coherent political movement, and pressure him.

At the cartoonish end of this is Richard Cohen, who informs us that President Obama "is a lean man of ideological clay who has let others mold his image", with a bottom line that's "forever on the move". He complains that Obama "lacks both an ideology and the pipes" to get past the "ideological yellers". But the reality is, if you've been willing to look, there's never been a big mystery as to who Obama is, and if you've been willing to listen there's never been a big mystery as to what he stands for. He's actually done a respectable job advancing his agenda, far better than most Presidents in their first year, and it isn't at all clear what Cohen thinks he could have accomplished by yelling louder.

One suspects that Cohen falls into the camp of people who is disappointed that Obama's reality does not match his own projection; but for somebody who's supposedly politically attuned to the point that he has a Washington Post column, the fault for that has to be placed squarely with Cohen. Cohen can't muster consistency, quoting Yeats to inform us that "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity", right after stating that Obama should be louder and more passionate and implying that Obama's sole motivation is vanity.

In many ways, the oddest recent editorial touching on this subject is from David Brooks. Taking a perspective even less clueful than Cohen's, Brooks describes "tea partiers" as being largely a reaction against the educated class, and comes perilously close to describing its members as angry, bitter and clinging to their guns. (Dan Larison has responded to Brooks' poll-based arguments, and you can find more details about the poll here).

Over the course of this year, the tea party movement will probably be transformed. Right now, it is an amateurish movement with mediocre leadership. But several bright and polished politicians, like Marco Rubio of Florida and Gary Johnson of New Mexico, are unofficially competing to become its de facto leader. If they succeed, their movement is likely to outgrow its crude beginnings and become a major force in American politics. After all, it represents arguments that are deeply rooted in American history.

And I would not be surprised if Sarah Palin manages to become the leader of the movement and the first Presidential candidate of the "Tea Party Party". But with due respect to Brooks and his talk about how unnamed candidates in hypothetical contests line up against each other, this is the Reform Party, take whatever. The tea party movement can't be taken seriously until it coalesces, yet any effort to cause it to rally around a full political platform or a specific political leader is likely to cause it to shatter.

Brooks compares the tea party movement to the hippies of the 1960's, the feminists of the 1970's, the Christian Conservatives of the 1980's - all of whom did affect the political culture, but not as political parties. Despite the fact that the tea party movement is viewed more positively than either political party, it's future lies in either allying with the Republican Party (a party that is actively trying to coopt its energy and ideas) or by running to the right of the Republican Party - something that's likely to precipitate a plunge in both its membership and its poll numbers.

The biggest problem for those who want to hitch their political stars to the "tea party movement" is that it may have peaked too soon. After three more years of defining themselves by what their against, and failing to articulate anything that they're for, I'm not sure how much energy will be left in the movement. Teaming up with politicians who are too weak, too polarizing, or too unpopular to succeed within the Republican Party, also, doesn't seem like much of a recipe for success. History is full of movements and parties that had momentary political success, and even had significant influence on the dominant political parties, yet quickly faded into oblivion. President Obama won't be running for reelection as an enigma, as his record will be plain enough for even Richard Cohen to understand. Similarly, the tea party won't succeed if it fails to to coalesce around a set of ideas and principles (a platform), and history suggests that it won't survive that process.

Take it From One Who Knows....

Michael Gerson chastises,

Some may accuse such moderates of lacking in boldness or ambition. It is better than lacking in responsibility and good judgment.

And he should know; he's lived his professional life both ways - sometimes simultaneously.

Contrast Harold Meyerson, who knocks down the irresponsibility that passes for "centrism" in today's politics.

Blaming The Public

In relation to Iraq, I recall the position of "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf as set forth in his 1993 autobiography:

From the brief time that we did spend occupying Iraqi territory after the war, I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit - we would still be there, and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of the occupation. This is a burden I am sure the beleaguered American taxpayer would not have been happy to take on.

George H.W. Bush similarly opinined in 1998,

We should not march into Baghdad. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero. Assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerilla war, it could only plunge that part of the world into ever greater instability.

On Monday, George W. Bush expressed,

Pulling the troops out would send a terrible signal to the enemy. Immediate withdrawal would say to the Zarqawis of the world and the terrorists of the world and the bomber who take innocent life around the world: 'the United States is weak.

Yet, despite the Bush Administration's protestations, this war was sold to the American people as something that was going to be short and easy. I'm not sure quite how that sale was made - but I think it would have been better made with a candid discussion of the true costs and burdens of invading, occupying, and the attempted reinvention of Iraq. Granted, the sales pitch would have been less convincing, and it is possible that in the end the American people wouldn't have bought into a war that they knew would be this difficult, this protracted, and this expensive. (I'm sure that at least Donald "Democracy is messy" Rumsfeld would have accepted the will of the people, right?)

We now have columnists like David Ignatius suggesting that, in regard to the war, the President is tone deaf. Or Harold Meyerson all-but calling the war plan a failure. But we don't seem to have any reflection upon the fact that had the Bush Administration respected the American people enough to tell the truth from the beginning (say what you will about whether they believed WMD's were present; the truth I'm talking about is that of the difficulty and cost of the post-war) we would either have made the informed commitment to stick with the project despite those risks and costs, or we would have chosen not to invade. Either way, we would be better off.[FN1]

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FN1. The case is sometimes made that it isn't a question of whether "we" are better off, but is a question of "bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people". We have yet to do that, and may never accomplish such a goal. The moral weight of that argument, and the counter-argument that the aftermath of invasion could be no better or worse than life under Hussein, is something that should have been thoroughly discussed and considered in the pre-war period, as a factor in the nation's informed choice.

Wages Fall... For The Masses

In today's Washington Post, Harold Meyerson observes:

Since July the average hourly wage increase for the 85 million Americans who work in non-supervisory jobs in offices and factories is a flat 3 cents. Wages are up just 2.1 percent since November 2002 -- the slowest wage growth we've experienced in 40 years. Economists at the Economic Policy Institute have been comparing recoveries of late, looking into the growth in corporate-sector income in each of the nine recoveries the United States has gone through since the end of World War II. In the preceding eight, the share of the corporate income growth going to profits averaged 26 percent, and never exceeded 32 percent. In the current recovery, however, profits come to 46 percent of the corporations' additional income.

Conversely, labor compensation averaged 61 percent of the total income growth in the preceding recoveries, and was never lower than 55 percent. In the Bush recovery, it's just 29 percent of the new income coming in to the corporations.

So who is doing extraordinarily well in this recession? As you might expect, corporate executives. Whether in the United States, Australia, or Britain, corporate executives behave pretty much like third world tyrants who treat their national treasuries like a personal cookie jar. (Which is, no doubt, why they are so much more deserving of tax relief than the working classes who have suffered terribly in this recession and continue to suffer in the jobless recovery.)

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