Friday, November 26, 2010
By Richard Parker and Katherine Allen
McClatchy-Tribune
With their victory in the mid-term elections, Republicans now share more than power with Democrats. They share the exact same problem that felled House Democrats. It isn’t just a policy problem, though — not the deficit, taxes or even the economy.
Instead, it is a deeper, more profound, structural political problem: the problem of constantly rising — and unfulfilled — expectations. America, once a stable place where such expectations were routinely fulfilled, is now a comparatively unstable nation where they go unmet. This is the vexing but largely unspoken reality with which Republicans and Democrats alike will grapple. And likely fail.
In political science, academics have long studied the conditions that lead to turmoil, indeed, even to revolution. The primary pre-condition is rising expectations. It is when a citizenry is prepared for one life — with the benefits of education, infrastructure and a growing middle class — only to be greeted by a harshly different, disappointing reality. When this becomes a way of life, the politics of a given nation become inherently unstable — and the conditions for revolution can then become ripe.
America is not, of course, in the midst of revolution, regardless of which side of the partisan divide you occupy. But our politics are increasingly unstable. In a single two-year cycle, voters sweep one party to power just to replace it with the other. This is a relatively new phenomenon. In the 54 years from the end of World War II through 1999, the House and Senate changed hands just five times. However, these chambers have collectively flipped five times — just since 2001.
The instability of our politics mirrors the instability of our times. Just consider the chronology of man-made disasters in the first decade of this century: the 2000 stock market collapse and recession, the horrific events of 9/11, the resulting economic downturn, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the disastrous response to Katrina, the corrosive occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the 2008 financial crisis, the ensuing global recession and continued record levels of joblessness. All in 10 years.
Americans, as a result, have lost their footing. This is not a knock on the virtues of America and certainly not its people. But our political and business leadership have fashioned a world — in part through the process of globalization — that is simply and inherently unstable, unpredictable and even volatile. Conditions can change from one minute to the next. And the sheer inter-relatedness of the global economic, financial and political fabric makes any single problem hard to isolate, let alone solve.
Americans, as a result, are more than justifiably angry at their political system; they are justifiably fearful of the future and even the present. If there is a prevailing wind it is one of uncertainty: where the next job will come from, what the next tax hike will be, what it’s going to take to keep a roof over their heads, keep businesses running and ensure children are headed for a prosperous future.
Unfortunately, that is the greatest unmet expectation of all now: the belief in upward mobility, that our lives are better than that of our parents and that those of our children will be better still. Opportunity and upward mobility are the twin pillars of the grand American bargain. Just 41 percent of Americans say they are better off now than they were five years ago — the lowest level in 50 years, according to the Pew Institute. Nearly a third says they are worse off — also the highest in a half-century.
Median family incomes
Why? Median family incomes more than doubled from 1947 to 1977, in inflation-adjusted dollars. Over the next 20 years, those incomes grew just 20 percent while the earners in the top one-tenth of one percent saw their incomes increase fivefold in the same period, soaring from less than $2 million in the late 1970s to $10 million in 2009. Home ownership is now falling to its lowest level in a decade. And politics? Some $4 billion was spent on this election. No matter which party wins power, it is hard not to conclude that we simply have the finest government money can buy.
And it is hard not to wonder if our children, as a result, will inherit life in a second-rate power. Ironically, the day after the election, as Republican and Democratic politicians alike positioned and preened, the World Bank reported that China’s economic outlook calls for steady 10 percent growth per year. Goldman Sachs calls China the “bright spot” in the global economy.
Politicians have an unfortunate habit of raising people’s expectations with cheap and easy promises. President Obama loftily promised to change, well, everything. Republicans have promised to repeal everything the president has done. But the policy solutions Democrats and Republicans currently offer are just sops thrown to satisfy interest groups and neither addresses the underlying problem. Unfortunately for both parties, theirs is a recipe for failure, frustration and continued turmoil.
Richard Parker is a journalist in Texas, a former Knight-Ridder national correspondent and the former associate publisher of The New Republic magazine. Journalist Katherine Allen contributed to this article. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune.
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