Today (July 29) is Alexis de Tocqueville’s birthday. His theory of comparative government is, more or less, things are usually getting and worse. He’s the mean between Obama, who said, thanks to me, things have been getting better and better, and Trump, who said that things have been getting worse and worse–although they can get great again, if you elect me. Last night, Hillary Clinton, in her own way, tried to take the Tocquevillian middle between Obama and Trump, presenting here self as the responsible moderate, a progressive Republican.
Michael Bloomberg, who distinguished himself as a hugely competent mayor of New York and as an eloquent, entrepreneurial, and technocratic billionaire, gave a most persuasive speech endorsing Hillary Clinton as infinitely preferable to the “con man” Trump. He gave the best case against Trump heard at the convention, and Bloomberg’s willingness to be a prime-time advocate of Clinton deserves to be big news.
Reiham Salam urges us to remember, however, that Bloomberg also endorsed Obama, although he thought Romney would probably be better at running the country. Romney humored too much the meddlesome social conservatism that undermines personal responsibility and is bad for business. No sensible person should care about someone else’s reproductive or marriage choices, and religious liberty needs to be confined by our constitutional rights.
One reason Bloomberg can’t be confused with a libertarian, however, is that he has so many opinions — including many that generate public policies — about how other people should behave. Part of Bloomberg’s scheme for giving New York good government was various policies — such as outlawing huge sodas in movie theaters — that would “nudge” ordinary people in the direction of responsible behavior. His is one form of the way Puritanical America is playing itself out these days. He’s hugely judgmental and prohibitionist when it comes to health and safety and rather intolerant of those who would put the soul before the body. But he’s unconcerned with the issues that animated the original Puritans, most of which have a foundation in the Bible.
Well, that’s not quite fair: The original Puritans were all about the egalitarian effects of good government. And so is Bloomberg. Government should also be effective at law and order and public education, both of which benefit us all. In those respects, Bloomberg is like the progressive Republicans of previous generations, those who were, in many ways, the secularized intellectual heirs of the original Puritans. That moderately progressive faith owed little to the Christians and even less to socialism. Can we say that the Democrats are morphing in the direction of Rockefeller Republicans?
Bloomberg’s criticism of the Democrats is that they’re sometimes too hostile to business leaders and the facilitation of entrepreneurship in their taxing and spending policies. He might be right, despite the unprecedented economic leftism of the Democratic platform, that such criticisms don’t apply all that much to the Clintons or even President Obama. Certainly, on those issues, Hillary Clinton (like her husband) is far more conservative than either Trump or Sanders and somewhat more conservative than Obama.
And Salam is right that, despite outliers such as the Koch brothers and the Wall Street Journal, that the Democrats are now the party of the rich and the sophisticated as such, and that the effectual truth of Trump is to accelerate the movement in that direction. Even the Kochs might end up voting Clinton this time.
The way the Democrats have of veiling that inconvenient truth to the Sanders voters is to push unity against the horrific threat to civilized decency that is the person Trump. No socialist could, of course, vote for a fascist, and Bernie is being true to himself by being on board to defeat Trump, even at the expense of allying with the loud and proud billionaire Bloomberg.
But this might be a pretty unstable alliance. Certainly if Trump were a more credible character, he would pick up a lot more Sanders supporters. It stands to reason that Clinton’s ticket to a big win is being the only respectable candidate, but the polls aren’t so clear on that right now. It’s always the case that Trump definitely self-destructs . . . tomorrow.
It also might be true that Hillary Clinton will turn out to be a very effective president. As Ruy Teixeira writes in the WSJ, it could be her policies might work in producing “equitable growth” or saving capitalism from some of the inegalitarian effects of the present stage of the division of labor. She is more prudently focused on growth than either Sanders or Trump, as is any progressive Republican. She will advance the competency and diversity agenda of the Wall Street/Silicon Valley crowd, while perhaps winning the consent or grudging acquiescence of lots of initially hostile ordinary folks in some Bloombergian manner.
What about foreign policy? There she’s a progressive Republican, more or less, too, which is why experts concerned with continuing responsible American leadership in the world — the neocons of old, for example — are getting aboard Team Clinton too.
I’m not saying this will happen, but I disagree with Carl Scott on the issue of whether she’s doomed or even likely to serve only one term. I mean by disagreement to be close to the opposite of good news.
It also might be very difficult for the Republicans to return to pre-Trumpian conservatism. More on that soon.