Logic: If Abstract is Bad, and Concrete is the Antonym of Abstract, We Need More Roads

New GOP House can't govern with rhetoric alone

They just can’t stand it that the GOP message is resonating. Where was this disgust with the abstract in 2008, when an entire presidential campaign was run with two words? What about when Pelosi’s House decided they “ha[d] to pass the bill to find out what’s in the bill?”

By E.J. Dionne Jr.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011; 8:00 PM

Edmund Burke, one of history's greatest conservatives,

It also bears mentioning that Burke was an 18^th Century Brit/Irishman. He was therefore not bound by the constraints on governmental powers enshrined in our Constitution.

warned that abstractions are the enemy of responsible government.

There should be a rule against liberals citing conservatives. They virtually always misinterpret the quote. Then again, they would have to. If they fully understood the meaning of conservatism, well, they wouldn’t be liberal.

"I never govern myself, no rational man ever did govern himself,

Note: Burke is talking about governing himself. In case EJ missed elementary civics, the House of Representatives doesn’t govern anything (except, somewhat ironically, itself). It legislates.

by abstractions and universals," Burke wrote. "A statesman differs from a professor in a university; the latter has only the general view of society; the former, the statesman, has a number of circumstances to combine with those general ideas."

Note: the ideas, often packaged together into a single “ideology,” inform the response to circumstances. While there is a feedback loop, sound judgment does not allow a circumstance in a vacuum to alter ideology. This is why flip-flopping is a pejorative in American politics.

Alas for all of us

Count me out of the “us.” I don’t want to be involved in any “us” with you, EJ Dionne, Jr.

and for American conservatism in particular,

Remember the last time we took liberals advice on what was best for American conservatism? We got the debacle of McCain for President 2008.

the new Republican majority that took control of the House on Wednesday is embarked on an experiment in government by abstractions.

By this point, a lack of specificity in Congress is a precedent bordering on tradition, not an experiment.

Many in its ranks pride themselves on being practical business people, but they behave as professors in thrall to a few thrilling ideas.

Business is not about subordinating ideas to circumstance. Look at one of the most effective businessmen of the past ten years: Steve Jobs. Jobs is a rigid ideologue who believes that Apple’s role is to change the world by doing things his way. So too does Mark Zuckerburg, who has consistently turned down lucrative buy-out offers. It was the opportunist, Rupert Murdoch, who bought MySpace and saw its’ value plummet. Meanwhile, Facebook is going public at an obscene revenue multiple that has made Mr. Zuckerburg the world’s youngest billionaire (even if he did foolishly give buckets of his money to Bill Gates’ absurd wealth-is-guilt billionaire money drive.) The point is, great success is based in the risk of adhering to your principles, not the safety of acceding to expediency.

Their rhetoric is nearly devoid of talk about solving practical problems - how to improve our health care,

Repealing Obamacare does improve healthcare.

education

Not an important issue right now. Plus, that should be a state/local issue anyways.

and transportation systems,

Very much not an important issue right now, but this still should be a state issue too.

or how to create more middle-class jobs.

By cutting taxes. Truly, we don’t need 1800 page bills for these things. What’s more, we certainly don’t have to adjudicate the merits of 1800 page bills in the public sphere because the left just throws out misinformation anyways. See: Obamacare debate. We’re still arguing about whether death panels exist. They will, because sooner or later, bureaucrats will have to ration care.

We know that cutting taxes increases job growth. We know this not only because empirical evidence bears it out, but also because lowering the tax rate lowers the cost of capital (Yes, necessarily. It’s part of the formula.) and increases both the number and the profitability of acceptable projects in which a company can reinvest profits. These expansions are literally the definition of growth, and growth is the single greatest factor in job creation.

Instead, we hear about things we can't touch or see or feel,

Like global warming? Count it!

and about highly general principles divorced from their impact on everyday life.

Lower taxes and cut spending is abstract? I feel taxes every time I see my paycheck. Then I write an angry letter to Joe Biden expressing my strong displeasure. I figure he has the most free time to respond.

Their passion is not for what government should or shouldn't do but for "smaller government" as a moral imperative.

I don’t see the point here. There is only one valid debate for politicians to be having right now: “is that the role of the federal government?” The idea that using government as a blunt instrument to enact social change of indeterminate merit is, of course, a moral issue. This is because every program the government engages in requires the government to either confiscate the cost from taxpayers or delay confiscating the cost from taxpayers through the federal debt. Of course, liberals like Dionne don’t see federal revenues as confiscated from the taxpayer; they see it as the government’s money. Therein lies the moral imperative.

During the campaign, they put out a nice round $100 billion in spending cuts from which they're now backing away.

They shouldn’t. $100B is a good start.

It is far easier to float a big number than to describe reductions for student loans,

Here’s a question: are student loans the role of the federal government? Are these among the powers of Congress enumerated by the Constitution? Could the private sector provide student loans more efficiently? I think the suggestive manner in which I ordered the questions conveys a self-apparent answer.

bridges,

Bridges? Really? You want to talk about bridge policy? Very well, I’m strongly opposed to bidding high on a leading ace. (I don’t play bridge, so I may have sacrificed coherence for that pun.)

national parks

I still don’t really get why we have to spend any money on national parks. They’re basically wildlife refuges. Just let them be.

or medical research.

Again, is medical research the role of the federal government? Are these among the powers of Congress enumerated by the Constitution? Could the private sector engage in medical research more efficiently?

Republicans promised they would "repeal and replace" President Obama's health-care law, but the only thing on the schedule is repeal. They provide no alternative.

There’s no point right now. Health care was never the crisis the Obama Administration made it out to be. Some 60% want the law repealed. By offering a replacement, you are effectively engaging in two arguments at the same time.

Then again, is health care regulation the role of the federal government? Are these among the powers of Congress enumerated by the Constitution? Could the private sector engage in the health care industry more efficiently?

A leadership that promised a more open process highhandedly slammed the door on any amendments to its repeal bill.

There’s a difference between enacting new legislation and getting rid of the bad old legislation. Obamacare was the single biggest issue in this last election.  Every legislator and candidate had the opportunity to hold debate directly with the American people. The American people said no.

Most Americans rather like the new law's ban on insurance discrimination against those with preexisting conditions and the provision allowing parents to keep children on their health insurance plans until age 26.

No, most Americans think infantilizing twenty-somethings is condescending. Not to mention that the polling data for these proposals looks at the offers in a vacuum without cost estimates. It’s like asking a kid if they want candy without telling them that it costs their entire allowance. Actually, it’s less innocent than that. It’s more like a hooker picking up a guy without revealing that he’s going to have to pay afterwards.

But there will be no votes on those parts of the law because attention to those inconvenient "circumstances" Burke discusses would divert attention from the great, abstract scarecrow of "Obamacare."

How is a piece of legislation an abstract? Obamacare is a series of laws and regulations that work in consort to produce a massive industry-killing powergrab for the federal government. Keeping provisions of the bill is both unpopular and needlessly complex.

There is nothing wrong with reading our Constitution as part of the new Congress's debut. It's a good Constitution.

James Madison thanks you for your approval.

But note that conservatives would much prefer to pronounce various liberal initiatives "unconstitutional" - again, in the abstract –

How is deciding that the individual mandate in Obamacare violates the Constitution abstract? The Constitution is concrete. Obamacare is concrete. Their conflicts must necessarily also be concrete.

than to say whether they are for or against minimum-wage

Which minimum wage laws? Not only is this painfully vague, but this hasn’t been relevant in almost a decade. For the record, minimum wage laws are feel-good nonsense offered up by condescending suits. Minimum wage jobs are for high school kids. No one earns the minimum wage for more than six months. Even in recession, the bargaining power of workers allows job-seekers to demand in excess of the minimum wage for virtually any job. By raising the minimum wage, however, you would put downward pressure on hiring and lead more people from minimum wage to welfare.

and environmental laws,

Which environmental laws, Mr “I hate how Republicans talk in abstractions?”

Medicaid

What Republican over the last 20 years has opposed the existence of Medicaid? The issue is always the expansions to Medicaid and cutting waste, fraud, and abuse—which are rampant—from a massive bureaucracy. Oh, and which changes to Medicaid is the object of your abstractions?

and a slew of other initiatives that never crossed the minds of those who wrote our foundational document.

The Founders were concerned with creating enduring principles. While they understood that they would be ill-equiped to govern 250 years in the future, they also understood that certain principles are timeless. If their verbiage or perspective became outdated, they also gave the legislature the mechanism to recreate the Constitution in ways as large or small as they wanted.

The Founders couldn't conceive of Facebook, either.

This is a completely worthless sentence, unless you’re abstractly arguing that we should regulate the internet.

And that other perennial abstraction, "excessive regulation," is easier to assail than specific rules that make our air and water cleaner or financial transactions more transparent.

Of course. FinReg was 2300 pages of regulations. To go through all of them would require a week of nonstop TV coverage or a paper much, much better than the Washington Post.

Here are a few:

--a council of unelected financiers, the “Financial Stability Oversight Council” was given the authority to take over financial institutions that they deem a risk. They have no oversight and an unlimited budget. Do you really want to dig into this one?  I can scream “nationalization” really really loud. Try me.

--Derivatives now must be traded on exchanges, instead of OTC. Anyone who understands derivatives thinks this is crazy. Exchanges work well for derivatives like options and futures, but forwards and swaps—the vast majority of the derivatives market—are entered into between two consenting parties that need no exchange. The swaps market is so large-scale that it’s virtually impossible for a private investor to engage in the market, and even less likely that a private investor would be injured by deceptively risky contracts. They have lawyers and financiers for that. You want to try informing the public why a swap is different than a future, go right ahead, but most people understand that the government injecting itself into a private transaction between businesses is a bad idea. It need not be more complicated than that.

--The credit rating agencies, such as Standard and Poors, Moodys, and Fitch, must report to the SEC Office of Credit Ratings. I wonder whether they’ll be honest with us about Fannie and Freddie’s ratings.

--and of course, the SEC’s virtually universal right to offer exemptions to anything and everything. Is there a better way to promote cronyism between K Street and Wall Street?

Intelligent legislators

Subtle. Of course, you’re not implying that Republicans are unintelligent, are you?

know that human beings sometimes cut corners. They recall what James Madison, another conservative hero, said in Federalist 51: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

“Cutting corners” is not what Madison was talking about. He was talking about malevolence, not laziness. Murder is different from incompetence; theft is different from negligence.

As Madison knew, men aren't angels, but the professors in Congress seem to believe that another great abstraction, "the free market," can obviate the need for messy and complicated statutes.

Yes, Dionne is really advocating for messy and complicated laws?

We hear much debate over how Obama and the Democrats should deal with the Republican House and beefed-up Republican ranks in the Senate. The primary task should be a relentless campaign to move the public discussion from the abstract to the concrete:

I’m counting this as a tacit admission that liberal ideology is unpopular.

from doctrine to problem-solving; from "smaller government" to the specifics of what government does;

A piece of advice: leave the catered brunches out of it when you describe what government does.

from "budget cuts" to the impact of reductions on actual programs.

If there are fewer USDA employees, we won’t be able to effectively and ethically mete out lawsuit settlements…oh wait.

And paradoxically, because Obama is a former professor himself, he may be especially well-suited to call the bluff of the new professoriate in Congress. He knows better than most the dangers posed by an excessive devotion to abstractions.

Really? He owes his election to it. That and White Guilt. You would think he’d be more attuned to the benefits, not the dangers.

But the media also have a responsibility.

The marching orders have been laid out. Look out!

If journalism in a democracy is about anything, it is about bringing the expansive rhetoric of politicians down to earth and holding them accountable for how their ideas translate into policies that affect actual human beings.

Now that Republicans are in office, the media has a responsibility to hold politicians accountable? Where was this lust for specifics in the health care debate, when Obama derided the notion of more debate as laughable obstructionism? Where was the thirst for the concrete during the campaign of 2008 when the only things we remember now are the words “hope” and “change?” Where was the zeal for ethical reportage when avowed socialists were appointed to prominent positions in the White House?

It may be easier to report windy speeches about "liberty" and "entrepreneurship" than to do the grubby work of examining budgets, regulations, programs and economic consequences.

Seriously, change “liberty” to “hope” and “entrepreneurship” to “change” and you have a conservative snippet from 2008 that would have Dionne scoffing for days.

But journalists surely want to be more than stenographers.

The question is whether or not journalists’ role is to be more than stenographers. It seems they only seem to think so when the liberal flag is in retreat.

Michael Oakeshott, another great conservative philosopher, declared: "It is the mark of all intelligent discourse that it is about something in particular."

Well, that knocks this article off the pedestal of intelligent discourse, as it has been entirely about randomness and clearly hollow cries for specifics. Dionne even went so far as to ask for specifics on how Republicans feel about “environmental regulations.” Care to narrow it down, EJ? Can you give me a hint?

Let's encourage the new professors who would govern us to deal with particulars and not just their ideological dreams.

In other words: abandon your ideology, stray off your message, give up your campaign promises, and get bogged down in the minutia at a time when America needs bold leadership.

Sorry, EJ. We don’t pay our politicians to be subject-matter experts on everything that crosses their desk. Their job is to be informed, but apply a consistent and predictable ideology to the tasks of the day and promote their decisions to their constituents. If they want to negotiate in the margins, that’s great, but it all comes from an over-riding set of deeply held beliefs. These beliefs aren’t trivial. To the contrary, these beliefs are proof that our politicians are engaged in trying to explain the complexities to themselves and to us, and trying to define rules from which we can reasonably extrapolate. These beliefs are proof that our politicians still give a damn.