The Right's Political Strategy Resembles the Left's Economics

There’s a weird symmetry between the Right and the Left. It’s difficult to articulate, but it’s becoming clearer to me now. They’re both Keynesians, only in different domains. The Left are Keynesians about economics, the Right are Keynesians about political strategy. The trouble with either is that Keynesianism doesn’t work very well anywhere it's applied.

Lest I lose my reader straight out of the gate, allow me to explain in simpler terms the defining characteristics of what I’ll call the “Keynesian Model.” This model:

1. Deals almost exclusively in macro-level aggregates.

2. Holds that these aggregates are mostly informative.

3. Information can be successfully used for macro purposes.

For example, in economics, Keynesians want to tweak or “stimulate” the economy by raining largess on particular sectors to stimulate aggregate labor demand, say.

But the trouble with this way of looking at the world is:

I. The micro-level is where most of the action is.

II. The devil of the economy is in the details of billions of individual means-ends actions, coordinations and transactions, which makes knowledge mostly local.

III. These details are far to complex to be reduced to aggregates and manipulated to positive effect.

Now, I believe the Left has figured out I-III in the political domain, though sadly not in the economic (indeed, I seriously doubt they care about the micro mechanisms of economic growth at all, as I argue here.  Keynesian policies of the Obama Administration are merely a pretext for the end of consolidating power, economics be damned. But I digress.). The point is, the right seems to be under a similar spell, except in their approach to political strategy.

I was trying to get from the abstract to the concrete in this idea and asked my friend Jon Henke. He pulled out important aspects of all this, particularly the unintended consequences:

The Left's Keynesian economic approach attempts to push and pull various elements of an economy in order to boost overall growth.  They can give the appearance of succeeding for a little while, but centralized economic decision making creates unintended and unsustainable distortions.   Reality always intervenes and the whole thing falls apart. Unfortunately, their solution for that is even more macro-economic tinkering.

But isn't that exactly how Republicans have approached politics in recent decades?   They adopt a certain policy because it shores them up with this interest group, avoid another policy because it alienates a demographic, and try to play both sides with other policies because they "can't afford to lose a seat in..."   In the short term (e.g., 2000-2004), they eked out the appearance of success (though, not much in the way of actual progress).   But then, the whole thing fell apart.  And why not?  It was an agenda crafted by political Keynesians. 

Henke, of course, has a way of getting right to the point.

As I was listening to Ramesh Ponnuru yesterday at the John Locke Foundation, it all sounded to me like so much legacy poli-sci, dealing in aggregates and opinion polls. For example: “Polling indicates…” Or “Given demographic trends, Republicans would/would not have done any better if they had emphasized X issue…” and so on. He was offering a (political) Keynesian analysis of 2006 and 2008 elections. I was looking for something more.

Now, I’m not suggesting the Right throw polling and demographics out with the bathwater. Indeed, there is a lot that’s potentially interesting and useful, especially at the intersection of macro and micro. But the Obama campaign learned to move past legacy campaign strategies and put more resources into distributed networks, GOTV armies and rigorous brand management (creation/perpetuation). In other words, the Left has been busier creating new markets for their messages and learning how to signal to voters rather than merely attempting to figure out “what they want” through guestimates about issues that reduce complex individuals into polisci blurs, subgroups and sub-subgroups. (It also turns politicians into ineffectual ghosts with wet index fingers held aloft.)

Let me be clear: just as in economics, there is some value to polling, stats and other aggregate measures in politics—particularly on the market research side of things. But in order for the Right to start winning again, they’re going to have to invest a lot more resources into alternative models that emphasize creating new markets rather than merely tapping old ones. The new model increasingly used by the Left is, paradoxically, a Hayekian one. This model is not only somewhat suspicious of aggregates, but relies more on what takes place at the micro-level. That model emphasizes means-ends behaviors, group identification, signaling, decentralization, networking, marketing and creating new demand (just like the market does). In other words, it’s much easier to create new enthusiasm for a brand than to try to read the minds of the American people from a schematic. There is no chessboard. There are only individuals. (And BTW, it's easier to coalesce around principles than to wet your finger and stick it in the air.)