In his article The Upside of Nationalism in the on-line version of In These Times, Davis Sirota explains how America-first fervor could be the driving force behind economic populism. Such ideas in the days of global markets need to be scrutinized very carefully. Is he whistling in the dark or does he have an answer to some of our economic woes?
You don’t need to listen to presidential speeches or watch party attack ads to know that full-throated nationalism is now lodged in the ideological center of American politics. Look at social networking expert Valdis Krebs’ January chart to see what we—the royal We—are reading. Krebs amassed data from Amazon.com, examining what other titles buyers of conservative and liberal political books purchased in 2007. Most of this "also bought" data showed buyers of one liberal book buying other liberal books—and conservatives doing the same on their side.
Come look and see what he is talking about.
David Sirota's article The Upside of Nationalism in In These Times on-line examines how the America-first fervor could be the driving force behind economic populism. For a long time the slogan "America First" sounded like some right wing call to blind patriotism in harmony with "my country right or wrong". Here is a new way of framing these ideas that fits into the progressive agenda very well.
Sirota points out that Krebs' chart showing the polarization of American readers has two books in the middle ground between the two warring camps.
Krebs’ chart, which draws a line connecting each "also bought" book, looks like a dumbbell, with two big clusters on the right and left—a cliché of the media’s "polarized America" meme. However, right in the middle are two books that both liberals and conservatives purchased: War on the Middle Class and Independents Day by Lou Dobbs, America’s most famous nationalist.
As economic anxiety grips America, the controversial CNN anchor vents history’s conservative and liberal expressions of contemporary nationalism—an ideology built around a self-interested, America-first fervor. When Dobbs tilts right, he rails against undocumented immigrants and "broken borders," tapping into nationalism’s law-and-order pride and its xenophobic-tinged desire for cultural stasis that typically spikes during recessions. When he goes populist, he is the only major TV journalist in America to express nationalism’s disdain for global economic policies written by, and for, a transnational elite.
As evidenced by his surging ratings, Dobbs reflects powerful mass emotions. And thanks to the presidential election, some of those emotions may forge a political mandate. The key word is "some," because the GOP nominee will be Arizona Sen. John McCain. Unlike most congressional Republicans, McCain has shied away from the anti-immigrant edge of today’s nationalism, effectively shoving the most extreme immigration positions off the presidential stage, at least in 2008.
Thus, today’s nationalistic sentiment will likely crystallize as economic nationalism—good news for progressives.
Is this just whistling in the dark or are we about to find a pony along with all that manure? Clearly, our economic problems will not go away while we produce less and less here in our country. Clearly until we have jobs paying a living wage for everyone, economic justice is a long way off. During the New Deal that problem was solved by realizing that waiting for the capitalists to do something constructive instead of circling their wagons was not the way to go. FDR came up with programs that put people to work in spite of the big business greed empowered reluctance to do anything. Then there was the war, of course. This time we really don't want WWIII as an economic stimulus even though the other side seems to be moving in that direction by the day.
Specifically, how will rhetorical populism be cobbled into a concrete agenda, and how can economic nationalism be successfully legislated? The answer is in how we trade, tax and spend.
With regard to trade there is a three pronged approach that appeals to Sirota.
First, a proposal by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) would make new trade agreements harder to pass "unless they are accompanied by a more thorough financial analysis," as the Washington Post reported. Their bill would end the practice of flying blindly into the free trade abyss by forcing the government to provide estimates of potential job losses with any trade pact. (That’s right—Congress currently makes trade policy without even asking what the consequences are.)
Second, for pacts that do pass, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) is developing a proposal that would give nonprofit groups and individuals the same enforcement powers that corporations currently enjoy. Ellison floated a truncated version of this concept during the 2007 debate over the Peru Free Trade Agreement, arguing that if a trade deal gives a corporation the right to sue in international courts for enforcement of investor rights (copyrights, patents, intellectual property, etc.), then individuals and advocacy organizations should also have the same right to sue for enforcement of other rights (labor, environmental, etc.). A Democratic administration could incorporate this forward thinking into the core text of any future trade pact.
Finally, there are the concerns about foreign economic influence. The 2006 brouhaha over a Dubai company attempting to buy a group of American ports focused the public’s attention on the larger issue of state-owned companies and investment funds buying up large segments of the American economy. Today, these sovereign wealth funds hold $2.5 trillion in assets, and Morgan Stanley estimates they could hold $17 trillion within a decade. Many fear that these state-controlled entities, which often operate in secret, could use such assets as a political weapon.
The key is in new regulatory legislation that will oversee international economic transactions. This is in harmony with the analysis put forward by Robert Reich in his book Supercapitalism. You can read more about this in It's a systems problem. Robert Reich: Supercapitalism
The next area is the reframing of the "Tax and Spend" mantra.
Since 2004, when Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) lambasted "Benedict Arnold" companies that move jobs and operations overseas to avoid taxes, tax reform in the name of economic nationalism has become a staple of Democratic Party orthodoxy. Now, that orthodoxy has a bill name. The Patriot Corporation Act, a bill sponsored by Obama, would provide tax advantages and federal contracting preferences to companies that maintain their operations and employment base in the United States. This renewed effort to legislatively distinguish—and target—companies based on geographic employment and tax decisions started in 2002 with two little-noticed bills.
Back then, Connecticut tool company Stanley Works was making plans to exploit a tax loophole and officially reincorporate in Bermuda to avoid paying U.S. taxes. The story spurred a local outbreak of economic nationalism, and, in response, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) passed a high-profile amendment banning federal contracts from going to companies that perform such "inversions," as they are called.
At the same time, Reps. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas) forced a House vote on their bill to ban the government’s Export-Import Bank from continuing to subsidize companies that are simultaneously reducing their domestic workforce and increasing their foreign workforce.
Both initiatives were ultimately killed, as was Sanders’ follow-up in the Senate in 2007, when he authored legislation to prohibit companies that announce mass domestic layoffs from receiving H-1B visas that allow them to import foreign workers at lower wages. The rise of economic nationalism could help these kinds of spending limitation bills make a big comeback—and not just in Congress.
Can we use the inherent nationalism already boiling up in the population to spearhead moves toward economic justice? It would seem that as we reframe the failed memes of the right we need to concentrate on tapping into the public's preprogrammed responses and channel them into support for a progressive economic program.
Admittedly, the term "nationalism" can elicit legitimate fear. The impulse to prioritize the home nation over everything else has an ugly side, one that at least some members of the media seem interested in stoking, as shown by the recurring hysteria over Obama’s multinational and religious heritage. Indeed, in February, Time’s Mark Halperin advised Republicans to "emphasize Barack Hussein Obama’s unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism."
But as with most impulses, nationalism is really value neutral. It can be used for both horrific and terrific causes, and today’s political tectonics suggest the chance for the latter to ascend over the former.
Progressive populism has proven to be an electoral force nationwide. Congress and state legislatures are designing an agenda that turns today’s economic nationalism into a legislative program.
Last month, a coalition of progressive groups launched a national antiwar campaign to make the public see Iraq War spending as the cause of the recession and underinvestment here at home—a nationalist, America-first message at its core. And because the war is sending so much money overseas, Republicans attempting to appease their "fiscal conservative" base could be increasingly unwilling to obstruct measures that reduce corporate welfare and redirect taxpayer resources to the homeland.
In short, American politics is perfectly aligned to help progressives use nationalism for our economic agenda.
For those of you who do not know David Sirota David Sirota is a senior editor at In These Times and a bestselling author whose newest book, "The Uprising," will be released in June of 2008. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network -- both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is at www.credoaction.com/sirota.