The Elite Is Revolting

by dblboggie Thu Aug 04, 2011 10:12 pm

Wall Street Journal - Best of the Web Today - August 4, 2011

The Elite Is Revolting
An excursion into a universe that is nothing like our own

By JAMES TARANTO

Remember Al Gore? He's best known as the losing appellee in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Bush v. Gore (2000). But back in his day, he was a somewhat prominent politician: U.S. senator from Tennessee, 1988 presidential candidate, vice president. He even won a Grammy Award. The high point of his career was the day he almost became president. Alas, he missed his opportunity by an agonizing 17 votes in the Senate.

After retiring from politics, Gore cashed in on various global-warming schemes and became wealthy. But he missed the spotlight, so he used some of his riches to start a cable TV network and hire a former MSNBC host (albeit one who was with that network before it elevated its standards by hiring Al Sharpton) to interview him.

In one such interview Tuesday night, The Daily Caller reports, Gore talked, as he put it, "about using the wonderful digital tools that are newly available for the reinvigoration of democracy." Ah, yes! This newfangled Internet thingy is a wonder, isn't it? Whoever invented it must be a rich man.

"We need to have an American spring--you know, the Arab spring," Gore said. "The nonviolent part of it isn't finished yet, but we need to have an American spring, a kind of an American nonviolent change where people on the grass roots get involved again."

Gore made a direct appeal to somebody named Keith: "I want to tell you, Keith, this country is in trouble. Our democracy has been withering on the vine. It really has been. This has been going on for some time. But this is not an event that can be taken lightly. I know it's difficult to imagine that people who care about the values that this country was based on will rise up and get much more involved in the democratic process. But that is exactly what we need, and that is the only thing that can get our country back on the right track."

Ah yes, the Tea Party. Or not: "Not the, you know, not in the Tea Party-style," Gore clarified. To explain his objection to the Tea Party, he recited a list of left-liberal-progressive demon figures: "right-wing billionaires, the Koch Brothers . . . Fox News . . . the wealthiest Americans . . . powerful corporations and special interests . . . and the Supreme Court." He must be a corporate jet owner, or he'd have mentioned them too.

Gore exemplifies what political scientist Peter Berkowitz describes as "the ambiguity of progressivism's opinions about democracy and reform":

In the annals of American progressivism, Obama's predicament is hardly unique. Indeed, the mismatch between leaders who put forward partisan ambitions in the name of the people and majority sentiment reflects an enduring paradox with deep roots in the progressive tradition. Like Obama's new progressivism, the old or original progressivism championed a vision of democracy that sometimes conflicted with ordinary people's opinions and preferences. The old progressives often realized it and said as much, clearly and with a clear conscience. One of the distinguishing marks of the new progressivism at whose head Obama stands is the determination to conceal the gap between what majorities want and what progressive leaders want to enact in their name while insisting proudly on the purity of their democratic credentials.

To put it more succinctly if a tad less high-mindedly, Gore is calling for a revolt of the asses, not the masses. He wants the elites to take to the streets. (Hey, we're a poet, and we didn't even know it.)

The odd thing is, the prog elites are already revolting. And not just against Kochfoxspecialinterestscorporatejetowners but against their own leaders and institutions. Take former Enron adviser Paul Krugman. (Please.) In an extraordinary rant on the New York Times website, Krugman takes Obama to task for his economic leadership (or lack thereof). He quotes Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, as saying, "We do not believe that there is a threat of a double-dip recession," and responds:

For two years the White House has been determinedly cheerful, always declaring that the recovery was on track, that its policies were working fine. And all it did was squander its credibility. Maybe admitting the truth, saying that in fact we hadn't done nearly enough, would not have helped get useful legislation through Congress. But at least it would have conveyed the message that the WH was living in the same reality as ordinary workers.

Now they're doing it again. To what purpose? Do they think the markets will be reassured? Do they think consumers will be reassured? At this point, after the "summer of recovery" came and went a whole year ago?

Spin is part of politics. But sometimes you have to know when to stop.

Krugman is almost always wrong, but this is one of the other times. It reminded us, though, of something he wrote all the way back in September 2005, a few days after Hurricane Katrina:

The federal government's lethal ineptitude wasn't just a consequence of Mr. Bush's personal inadequacy; it was a consequence of ideological hostility to the very idea of using government to serve the public good. For 25 years the right has been denigrating the public sector, telling us that government is always the problem, not the solution. Why should we be surprised that when we needed a government solution, it wasn't forthcoming?

In 2005, in Krugman's view, the ineptitude of the government was a product of ideology: Men who did not believe in government were incapable of administering it competently. Well, in 2008, we elected a man who believes fervently in government. How's that hopey-changey stuff workin' out for ya? The answer is in the headline of Krugman's post from yesterday: "Hope Is Not a Plan."

Krugman's response to this is to deny that Obama is liberal or progressive at all. Krugman calls the president a "moderate conservative." These labels are relative, of course, but if Krugman lives in a country where Obama is a moderate conservative, he does not live in America.

One more look at the alternative universe comes from TheHill.com and also involves Krugman. You'll never believe whom Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is blaming for the Republicans' having (mostly) prevailed in the debt ceiling fight:

Reid appeared frustrated Tuesday afternoon that the media was not critical enough of House GOP tactics during the debt-limit debate. . . .

On Tuesday Reid read on the Senate floor an op-ed by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman that was critical of the media's reluctance to judge Tea Party tactics.

"If one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read 'Views Differ on Shape of Planet,' " Reid said, quoting Krugman. "But would that cult still rule in a situation as stark as the one we now face, in which one party is clearly engaged in blackmail and the other is dickering over the size of the ransom?

"The answer, it turns out, is yes. And this is no laughing matter: The cult of balance has played an important role in bringing us to the edge of disaster."

So here we have the star columnist for the New York Times railing against media bias as if he were the 21st century's version of Reed Irvine. If you'd fallen asleep 25 years ago and woken up to this, you really would think you were living in an alternative universe.