Robert Reich, a former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton and now a popular commentator, has taken the U.S. business community to task for not showing appropriate alarm over the rise of the Tea Party. While CEOs of Fortune 500 companies have been vocal in their criticism of the Obama administration, Reich decries the “deafening silence” regarding the clear and present danger presented by Tea Party-backed candidates who appear poised for election to Congress.
Sounding the klaxon on behalf of the business community in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal today, the left-of-center Berkeley public policy professor warns that Tea Partiers are targeting “the central institutions of American government.” Sixty percent of Tea Party adherents, he frets, want to overhaul or abolish the Federal Reserve Bank (as opposed to a mere 45% of the general population who would do so). Tea Partiers would not only cut taxes but abolish the Internal Revenue Service. They still rail against the Wall Street bail-outs. And one Tea Party supporter denounced GE as an “opportunistic parasite” for taking federal subsidies for clean energy.
Such thinking is dangerous and deluded, Reich suggests.
“Underlying all this is a deep underlying suspicion that big government is in cahoots with big business and Wall Street, against the rest of America. … Business leaders should be standing up to this dangerous idiocy.”
Where could members of the Tea Party have gotten the idea that Big Business and Big Government are in cahoots?
Maybe they read Reich’s own book, “Supercapitalism,” written in 2007, just before the birth of the Tea Party movement. For one, I read the book and extracted much value from it. Indeed, I cited Reich in my own book, “Boomergeddon.”
To quote from Reich’s chapter, “Democracy Overwhelmed”:
Americans are losing confidence in democracy, as are many inhabitants of other democracies. … [A] likely cause is the expanding role of money in politics — especially money coming from large corporations. … That money is a by-product of the very feature of supercaptalism that has led to its economic triumph — intensifying competition among firms for consumers and investors. That competition has spilled over into politics, as corporations have sought to gain competitive advantage through public policy. The perverse result has been to reduce the capacity of democracy to respond to citizens’ concerns.
Reich then proceeded to track the growth of campaign spending, the surging number of registered lobbyists in Washington, D.C., the increase in the money spent on lobbyists, the rising number of lawyers registered with the D.C. bar, and the revolving door between presidential and congressional staffs and lobbying firms — much of it paid for with corporate money. He continued:
The demands of corporations seeking to influence the policy process have grown as competition among them has intensified. It has been like an arms race: The more one competitor pays for access, the more its rivals must pay in order to counter its influence.
Reich then quoted chapter and verse: Microsoft and Google, Wal-Mart, the offshore oil and gas drillers, the American Gaming Association, the airline carriers, the drug companies, the food processers, the telecom companies, and more. “Everyday politics within legislatures, and departments and agencies of government has come to be dominated by corporations seeking competitive advantage,” he wrote. “Most new legislation and regulation is at the behest of certain companies or segments of industries.”
In sum, Reich’s world view is very similar to that of the Tea Partiers, who see Congress and the government as serving special interests, not the citizenry. Admittedly, the Tea Partiers’ critique may be somewhat broader than Reich’s: They also see labor unions, issue-oriented Special Interest Groups and even government agencies as among the self-serving groups that fix the rules and redistribute wealth at the expense of the general population. In that sense, the Tea Party view is somewhat more nuanced than Reich’s. But, like Reich, Tea Partiers see big business as a prime agent in the corruption of the democratic process.
One thing I had always liked about Reich was that he seemed more intellectually honest than most of his peers in the punditocracy. I have recommended “Supercapitalism” as essential reading to my conservative friends. But this latest op-ed is a disappointment. Labeling as “idiocy” views so close to his own represents the triumph of tribal liberalism against a perceived enemy than an appeal to logic and reason. What a shame.
