Bigger Picture Politics. Out of the Box Questions to Ponder.

What would a radically smaller government mean for Americans? Are free market economics on the wane? Are today's politics similar to the late 19th century?

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It occurred to me, in the wake of the recent presidential election, that it’s quite possible we’re thinking too traditionally about politics these days. That perhaps we need to expand our field of vision in order to better understand the era we’re living through. After all, it seems increasingly obvious that America is in the midst of a turbulent political realignment in which many old rules no longer apply.

What is apparent, however, is that Americans are searching for answers to something. And have been for some time. In nearly every election since 2006 (nine out of 10 times, by my count), voters have either ushered a new party into the White House or overturned control of at least one house of Congress. That’s a lot of anti-incumbent sentiment going back almost two decades.

What’s going on?

At times like this, it can sometimes help to look through new prisms. American politics is obviously undergoing a transformation, but when you’re in the midst of the turbulence it can be hard to get a clear read on what’s happening. Sometimes it’s good to consider things from vantage points that go beyond the rush of daily news.

So what follows are excerpts from a few pieces of writing I’ve stumbled across. They’re not topics that come up in most political debates, but they are things we should perhaps be thinking about. I’m not pushing any particular opinions here, but rather providing food for thought. It’s a chance to ponder a few bigger picture ideas about where American politics is today and where it might or might not be heading.

1. Is America moving past free market economics?

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy wondered recently if America was at an historical inflection point because the politics of the Trumpian right have little in common with the neoliberal economic policies that have dominated the U.S. for decades.

Democrats have long balanced support for free markets with a desire to invest in the economy to promote particular goals, such as with Biden’s recent support for funding for manufacturing and clean energy. Republicans, on the other hand, have traditionally been free market fundamentalists who have long declared that government shouldn’t intervene at all in economic decisions. Now, however, the Trump movement envisions a government that is extremely interventionist. Its policies, in fact, are a throwback to the protectionist or mercantilist systems of more than a century ago and far beyond anything seen in the West since then.

So while we’re not talking about the overthrow of capitalism here, it’s entirely possible we’re heading into a future in which both parties believe in economic interventionism, but from different perspectives — with Democrats focused more on investments in particular sectors, and Republicans leaning more toward protectionism. If so, the debate then changes from whether government should intervene in the market, to how government should intervene. And yes, that would mean the nation (or the world) is moving into a new economic era.

Along those lines, Sen. Murphy penned this essay in The Atlantic a while back, discussing Americans’ discontent with what neoliberalism has wrought and explaining why Trump’s politics of grievance connected with voters and may spell the demise of free market economics. Murphy also did a Q&A recently on the same topic with New York Magazine.

For millions of Americans—especially those who don’t live in the high-income urban mega-economies—it feels like life itself is unspooling.

This sense of dislocation is what Donald Trump’s politics of grievance seized upon … He offered easy scapegoats—immigrants, Muslims, and economic elites—to blame for the loss of meaning and economic autonomy felt by many Americans. He signaled an intent to break America apart from the world economy and the international order…

In essence, what Trump is attacking is neoliberalism. Economic neoliberalism underpins the past 70 years of Western economic and cultural order. Broadly speaking, neoliberalism argues that barrier-free international markets, rapidly advancing communications technology and automation, decreased regulation, and empowered citizen-consumers are the keys to prosperity, happiness, and strong democracy…

But then, about 30 years ago, the project started to fray at the edges. The newly global economy moved America’s well-paying jobs … overseas, but the jobs that replaced them offered lower pay, fewer benefits, and less opportunity for advancement … Social media joined us, but also bred resentment and societal fragmentation. Automation and online commerce erased our local economies, our local meeting places, and our local news sources.

And the consumerism that was supposed to fill our lives with the material rewards necessary for happiness instead left many feeling empty as our cultures and identities got swallowed up by the shapeless, antiseptic, profit-obsessed international economy. The result, today, is a very real epidemic of American unhappiness.

2. What comes next if the new administration succeeds in its goal of eviscerating many of the current administrative functions of government?

(Image via Shutterstock)

During Trump’s first term, Steve Bannon famously labeled the administration’s goal as “deconstruction of the administrative state.” By which he meant getting rid not only of regulations, but also of many of the functions of government on the federal level. While there was only minimal movement along these lines during Trump’s first term, the president-elect is sending signals through many of his appointments that he now actually means this.

But if Trump’s administration, which is rapidly filling with individuals who have ties to Project 2025, follows through on plans to deconstruct government, what would be the end result? Garrett Graff took on this question and laid out two potential scenarios for the U.S going forward if many government departments are, in fact, either gutted or privatized.

A. What if the US federal government effectively ceases to function?

The disruption planned and outlined in Project 2025 and other Trump campaign promises targets everything from privatizing the National Weather Service to ending the Department of Education to remaking the FBI to rolling back civil rights and gutting civil service protections for thousands and even tens of thousands of federal employees. It would undo, end, or spin off many of the most basic research programs and data-collection efforts the government currently undertakes…

Maybe we end up with a federal government slashed to the bone by intended cuts and a vast flood of talent leaving for the private sector, a government that offers a national military but little else.

B. And/or: Does the US become Europe?

Linguistically, the idea of the United States as a singular entity only dates to about the Civil War. For the first 75 or so years of our country’s life, language used a plural to refer to the United States … implying the US first and foremost was an amalgamation of the individual states … But what if over the next decade we watch our country slide back to being a state-first system?

At one end of the spectrum, the US over the next ten years could end up looking a lot more like Europe — a free trade and travel zone where citizens’ rights, equality, and freedoms vary widely state to state. Blue state governors and legislatures chart one course for themselves while red states chart a very different one.

Again, these are just two possible scenarios, but they are legitimate potential outcomes of a radically smaller government. No one can say what most voters would think of these possibilities because it’s a topic that never comes up in political debates. But it’s nevertheless something we should be thinking about.

3. Is American politics today akin to the Gilded Age era between the Civil War and the turn of the 20th century? If so, what does that portend?

Jonathan Martin wrote a piece for Politico on this question, which included an interview with Jon Grinspan, an historian at the Smithsonian and author of The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought To Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915.

If nothing else, the age of Trump has made abundantly clear that the post-World War II political consensus in America is over. With elections more an outgrowth of identity than a reflection of preference, the country has returned to a post-Civil War politics, when, as the saying went, people “vote as they shot” in the years after the war.

I’ve been thinking about that period for two years, since reading Jon Grinspan’s book … [which] details another period of technological disruption, high immigration rates and, yes, close presidential races with soaring turnout and anger that metastasized into violence. And he also writes about how it ended after the turn of the century, chronicling the reformers who sanitized politics into what it was until the first decades of this century.

I also wrote about the similarities between these two eras in the epilogue to Quest for the Presidency:

In many ways, today’s landscape resembles that of the early 20th century, when the second industrial revolution and various social changes caused tremendous upheaval in American society. People were leaving farms for factory jobs in cities, inequality was on the rise, the nature of work was changing, immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were pouring into the country, and new technologies were transforming old ways of life.

This is when the progressive versus conservative debate arose and new political coalitions were forged. The Democrats of 1892 were a conservative, anti-government party, but by 1932 they’d morphed into a liberal, pro-government movement. Why? Because the ground shifted. The issues changed, and so did the agendas of the major parties. Something similar is afoot today. And while we don’t know where this new road is leading, it seems probable that the Obama and Trump elections were the first shots of a coming transformation of the political landscape.

The parallels between late 19th-early 20th century America and today are becoming harder to ignore. Just as with that earlier era, the political landscape is being upended in such a way that American politics will eventually look considerably different than it does today.

But what does that mean? That’s a question to which no one has an answer.

It’s entirely possible a new reform movement will arise to reform democracy, as happened in the early 20th century. But while history rhymes, as they say, that doesn’t guarantee it will repeat itself. So it’s equally possible that the next few decades will produce not a reform movement but rather an illiberal democracy, a weakening of democratic norms, and the end of many of the roles of government that Americans have come to expect during the past century.

The thing is, we just don’t know. Which is exactly why it’s helpful to at least think about these things and to ponder a few out of the box questions as we grapple with a still-to-be-defined new era of American politics.

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NOTE: I have a few other articles and questions to explore, but in the interest of keeping things brief enough to remain interesting, I’ll save those for another post. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts, or other such ideas you’ve stumbled across, feel free to let me know.

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