The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium

In Italy, the most powerful political figure of the last decade, Silvio Berlusconi, was convicted of tax fraud, although there seemed to be little likelihood that he would ever spend a single day in prison. The government was a fragile coalition of cats and dogs mashed together after two months of political gridlock. The rising new party, the Five Star movement, was led by a former comedian turned blogger who called himself Beppe Grillo—Jiminy Cricket. Trust in government had declined to 15 percent.

The emergence of anti-establishment parties like Five Star over much of Europe signaled the exasperation of the public with democratic politics as usual. These parties originated in the bipolar fringes of the political spectrum, or else came from nowhere, yet all shared a radically different set of claims from those of the mainstream right and left: their promises were all about blame and punishment. The enemy they wished to eliminate were capitalists, bankers, immigrants and foreigners, the EU. Some insurgent parties, like France’s National Front and Greece’s Coalition of the Radical Left, actually hovered on the threshold of power. Others, like Britain’s UK Independence Party, were substantial enough to horrify the elites. In every case, the utopian projects of high modernism and the timid intervention of late modernism were rejected in favor of a politics of pure negation.

In the US, government failure at times resembled a preemptive strike on the public. Leaked classified documents revealed that the National Security Agency had placed billions of mobile phone and web communications, including those of American citizens, under surveillance. In May 2013, the IRS admitted that it had targeted President Obama’s political opponents for audits in the run-up to the 2012 elections, and had consistently denied tax-exempt status to groups associated with the Tea Party. At airports and Federal buildings, typical interactions placed members of the public in the role of suspects and supplicants before the armed power of the state. Nervousness on the part of government could be gauged by the urge to militarize: the Department of Education, NASA, and the Fish and Wildlife Service each funded their own SWAT teams. The belief that Big Government posed the greatest threat to Americans was by no means a Tea Party eccentricity: in one December 2013 poll, 72 percent of

respondents were of this opinion. ³⁴

Failure pervaded the most basic functions of government. In October 2013, the American public watched while their elected officials in the executive and legislative branches failed to agree on a budget. For 16 days, until a budget was finally cobbled together, the federal government staggered about in a zombielike state of semi-existence. In the following month, after three years of preparation, the technical and procedural elements of the president’s health care law crashed and burned at the moment of takeoff. Public support for the program nose-dived in parallel—to 36 percent in one January 2014 poll. ³⁵ Other traditional government activities, like border control and the postal service, seemed to have embraced failure as their mission.

Our political system—let’s call it by the proper name: representative democracy —was buckling under the stress of constant failure. At the same time that politicians were blamed for displaying unprecedented levels of partisanship, voters were said to be abandoning the Democratic and Republican parties “in droves,” and 60 percent of Americans, according to one survey, believed that a third major party was needed. ³⁶ There was no contradiction in these reports. Together, they accurately depicted the rupture between the public and the people it kept electing to office. Public trust in government during JFK’s time fluctuated between 70 and 80 percent. By 2013, at the start of President Obama’s second term, trust had reached a level worthy of Silvio Berlusconi: 19 percent. ³⁷

As I review this depressing litany of failure, the key question is whether it could have been otherwise. Even if government claims have been excessively ambitious, it may be that government capabilities can achieve some level of success on some of the great issues that have troubled democratic politics for a century, and so satisfy, to some degree, the heightened expectations of the public. If the answer is yes, then we must ask more pointed questions about the competence and good faith of democratic governments. If the answer is no, however, we face an even more disturbing possibility: that democratic politics are fought over issues that democratic governments have no power to resolve.

Finding the boundaries to government action has been considered the business of ideology. I intend to come at the question from a different direction. My guide will be Paul Ormerod, a British economist with a gift for statistical analysis. ³⁸ In

Why Most Things Fail, Ormerod’s abiding interest was to understand human action in the framework of complex systems. An action can be an individual decision or a government program. A complex system can be a company or a nation. For analytical purposes, it’s all the same. The heart of the matter, for Ormerod, was how closely an actor’s intention matched up with the results of his action.

His title gives the answer away. Ormerod has found no obvious connection between the results of actions in a complex environment and their stated intentions. That holds true for you and me, for corporations like Apple and Google, and for the Federal government. Most things fail, because our species tends to think in terms of narrowly defined problems, and usually pays little attention to the most important feature of these problems: the wider context in which they are embedded. When we think we are solving the problem, we are in fact disrupting the context. Most consequences will then be unintended.

Ormerod’s findings are by no means definitive, but I consider them extremely persuasive. He has moved the argument about the boundary conditions for government from the realm of ideology—that is, of morality and politics—to that of possibility, of a more realistic understanding of how humanity interacts with the world. Morality and politics should begin where Ormerod concludes: with the possible.

This isn’t remotely the case today. Political life in democratic countries revolves around ambitious intentions and claims of competence which will fail, necessarily, on first contact with reality.

The same can be said for business, with one crucial difference. Ormerod compared the failure rates of companies with the extinction rates for species: “The precise mathematical relationship which describes the link between the frequency and size of the extinction of companies,” he wrote, “. . . is virtually identical to that which describes the extinction of biological species in the fossil record. Only the timescales differ.” ³⁹ Consider the implications. Companies intend to survive, indeed to thrive, and act on those intentions. They research the market environment, draft strategic plans, seek to maximize their advantages and minimize their weaknesses. Yet, ultimately, their failure rate is “virtually identical” to the random pattern of animal extinction.

The difference is that failing companies go out of business and are replaced by new companies, while government accumulates failure, making it, systemically, much more fragile.

Ormerod examined the performance of democratic governments on those issues that perennially engaged their ambitions: what I have called their claims to competence. Take unemployment as an obvious example. Every contemporary government has claimed the ability to reduce unemployment. The architects of the stimulus bill passed in 2009 claimed that it would save or create 3.5 million jobs and significantly lower the unemployment rate. It would do so by spending a lot of money. Of necessity, that has been the chosen economic tool of government. Since World War II, Ormerod notes, governments have absorbed a much larger chunk of the national output in pursuit of worthy goals such as full employment. In Britain, where excellent statistics have been kept from the Victorian era onward, the size of the public sector as a proportion of the economy has doubled since 1946, compared to the period 1870–1938. Yet the difference in the average unemployment rate before and after the expansion of government was statistically negligible.

A similar historical trajectory described every wealthy democratic country, including the US. The public sector grew enormously, while long-term unemployment rates remained unaffected. The stimulus cost nearly \$800 billion, but its effect on unemployment, if any, was still a subject of debate. “Whatever benefits may have arisen from this massive increase in the role of the state, reducing unemployment, the primary cause of poverty, has not been one of them,” Ormerod concluded. ⁴⁰

Another clear-cut issue was crime. Enforcing the law and preserving the security of persons and property has been a basic function of government since the Bronze Age. You would expect that as governments grew in wealth and reach, the crime rate would decline, but in fact the opposite occurred. Between 1960 and 1980, the US crime rate tripled. Today, after strict enforcement of “three strikes and out” laws and the accumulation of an all-time high prison population, the crime rate remains double what it was in the years following World War II. Britain and the major countries of continental Europe, involving a variety of economic models and attitudes toward law-breaking, have also seen sharp spikes in their crime rates. An analyst from Mars, unblinkered by ideology, might conclude that the efforts of democratic governments to prevent or reduce or punish crime appeared largely disconnected from actual crime rates. ⁴¹

A parallel disconnect existed with regard to poverty, income inequality, and geographical segregation along class, ethnic, or religious lines. Democratic governments for decades have labored mightily, and spent immense amounts of money, to raise citizens out of poverty, redistribute income more fairly, and integrate neighborhoods to promote cohesive communities. Despite these persistent exertions, little has changed. At best, poverty, inequality, and segregation have endured unchanged. In most cases, conditions have worsened. Results failed to match intentions.

For Ormerod, government failure was an inescapable consequence of the human condition. Even Homo informaticus, with his smart devices and connectivity, was a very limited organism when it came to processing information. Actors within a complex system—even expert actors, armed with doctorates and reams of scientific research, and wielding the awesome power of the state—were blind to the perturbations caused by their actions. The component parts of such systems interacted in mysterious and fundamentally unpredictable ways. A mild racial preference at the individual level, for example, could result in marked racial segregation at the system level. ⁴² Singling out a section of the system as a “problem” to be solved by government action propelled a chain of unintended, and usually undesired, consequences. No matter what strategy or technology was applied, the future continued to hide behind a veil of uncertainty. Prophecy and control were illusions.

Humans, whether acting as individuals or making collective decisions in companies or governments, behave with purpose. They take decisions with the aim of achieving specific, desired outcomes. Yet our view of the world which is emerging is one in which it is either very difficult or even impossible to predict the consequences of decisions in any meaningful sense. We may intend to achieve a particular outcome, but the complexity of the world, even in apparently simple situations, appears to be so great that it is not within our power to ordain the future. ⁴³

This description of reality makes a hash of many modern assumptions: that science and technology can penetrate the future, for instance. Or that given enough information, any problem can be solved. Or that social relations can be rationalized according to some visionary principle. If Ormerod is right, most democratic contests today are fought over phantom issues, and democratic politicians, to get elected, must promise to deliver impossibilities. If, in truth, they have displayed excessive partisanship, it may be because team play between political organizations—the tally of wins and losses—retains a reality to which they desperately cling, as a drowning man will clutch a bit of floating debris.

If it isn’t within our power to ordain the future, an irresistible temptation will be felt by political actors to confuse progress with the negation and condemnation of the present. That has already transpired with the sectarian public. From Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park, the public has rejected the legitimacy of the status quo while refusing to get involved in spelling out an alternative.

A preference for negation as a political style has begun to spread among the very people who are responsible for the preservation of the political status quo. For this paradoxical development, much of the responsibility, I believe, falls to President Obama, whose sectarianism from the heights brings him back to my story.

BARACK OBAMA AND THE JOYS OF NEGATION

The hypothesis of the revolt of the public, if true, must have profound consequences for the conduct of government. Hierarchy, slow to respond and easy to surprise, has lost the argument in the information sphere before it began. Trust and legitimacy have bled away from those whose task it is to summon the collective will to action. Rulers everywhere are pale, trembling prisoners of their own rhetoric. Democratic rulers, for purely historical reasons, are condemned to propose ambitious projects and assert extravagant claims of competence: that’s the way the game is played. But the game of democracy is now at war with reality. The result has been persistent failure.

There is a democrat’s dilemma that is no less perilous than the dictator’s. Politicians must promise the impossible to get elected. Elected officials must avoid meaningful action at all costs.

In JFK’s time, the public and the elites averted their gaze from the emperor’s nakedness. In contrast, we paraded the failures of President Bush in Iraq and President Obama with the stimulus in the manner of defeated chieftains at a Roman triumph. Democratic life, as I write these lines, has been reduced to the exhibition and contemplation of the emperor’s naughty bits. A way out of the utopian ambitions of modern democracy was needed, for democratic government to subsist.

All this by way of explanation for the rise and resurrection of Barack Obama.

The president has been mocked by opponents for having “community organizer” on his resume, but that work aligned him, from the first, with the rhetoric and self-image of a rebellious public. The community organizer is expected to expose, denounce, whip up indignation. He dwells constantly on the many injustices of the established order, and he demands change on a heroic scale. The change itself is pushed off to some other responsible party—usually, a government agency. The organizer deals in negation, not action. The president’s vision of democratic government can be described in similar terms. ⁴⁴

Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency in 2008 as an insurgent from the Border, but it was clear that, initially, he wished to govern from the Center by implementing big programs in the tradition of FDR and LBJ. This was a tricky pivot, and, as I have shown, the president never managed to pull it off. The programs he espoused became a drag on his popularity. Those that were implemented into law, like the stimulus, sparked the Tea Party uprising that dismantled his ruling coalition in the 2010 mid-term elections.

At this critical juncture, the president took the measure of the changed landscape and adjusted his ambitions accordingly. Whether by plan, or, as I think more likely, by temperament, he resumed the posture of a righteous outsider calling out a corrupt establishment. He distanced himself rhetorically from the power of his office, from the Center, and abandoned the claims of competence and heroic projects that had led his administration to failure and defeat.

Few observers, then or now, have grasped how deeply against the grain of history this approach was. American presidents are supposed to be doers and achievers—masters of legislation, policy, and politics. President Obama seemed uninterested in fitting into that mold. He had risen on a tidal wave of hostility against authority, and he had been smashed down when he, in turn, was perceived to be the authority. The public was angry and disgusted with government. Henceforth he would be the voice of that anger and disgust. The veteran community organizer would embrace and reinforce the public’s distrust of the established order.

The president became chief accuser to the nation. Liberated by the partisan divisions in Congress from the need to pursue a positive legislative program, he wrapped himself in the warm blanket of combative rhetoric, and turned his back on the strenuous give-and-take of democratic politics.

Between 2010 and the presidential elections in 2012, a large number of issues and episodes earned President Obama’s condemnation. All fit a politically divisive “wedge” profile: racism in the shooting of Treyvon Martin, economic injustice and the inequities of the market system, putative violations of the rights of women, immigrants, gays. In a remarkable political maneuver, the president’s reelection campaign ignored his achievements in office and portrayed him, once again, as an insurgent battling the status quo. His opponent, Mitt Romney, found that his career as a successful businessman assigned him to the millionaires’ cabal that really ran the country. The president, as accuser, could shrug off the burdens of incumbency. Two years after the disaster of the Tea Party revolt, Barack Obama won reelection with relative ease.

The broad features of the Obama style can be identified in an address to Planned Parenthood delivered on April 26, 2013: that is, six months after he had been reelected and was as free as any American political figure ever can be to speak his mind. The president first selected a divisive issue—in this case, abortion and birth control. He then framed the subject in terms of vague but powerful forces that wished to trample on the rights of ordinary citizens.

So the fact is, after decades ofprogress, there’s still those who want to turn back the clock to policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century. And they’ve been involved in an orchestrated and historic effort to roll back basic rights when it comes to women’s rights.

Forty-two states have introduced laws that would ban or severely limit access to a woman’s right to choose . . .

In North Dakota, they just passed a law that outlaws your right to choose, starting as early as six weeks, even if the woman is raped. A woman may not even know that she’s pregnant at six weeks . . .

That’s absurd. It’s wrong. It’s an assault on women’s rights. ⁴⁵

You would expect the president to argue at some length against each of these egregious injustices, name the culprits, and announce a White House strategy to defeat those who wish to turn the clock back to the 1950s. But this is precisely where President Obama differs from his predecessors. Despite the apparent severity of the assault on women’s rights, few specifics and no plans for action were mentioned. The health care law got a nod, together with a plea to the audience, community organizer-style, that they “spread the news” about the program, but no connection was made to the effort to roll back basic rights. The president offered his accusations in a manner that was curiously detached, more descriptive than argumentative.

He concluded with these words: “I want you to know that you’ve also got a president who’s going to be right there with you fighting every step of the way.” The battle and even the battleground appeared to be rhetorical, but the implication seemed to be that, without his accusatory voice, the anti-women forces would conspire in the shadows and triumph.

An even more striking example of President Obama’s embrace of negation was found in remarks he delivered before another friendly audience at the Center for American Progress, on December 4, 2013. Again the subject chosen was a wedge issue: this time, economic inequality. The president began with an admission of the vast chasm separating the public from their government.

. . . between a reckless shutdown by congressional Republicans in an effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and admittedly poor execution on my administration’s part in implementing the latest stage of the new law, nobody has acquitted themselves too well these past few months. So it’s not surprising that the American people’s frustrations with Washington are at an all-time high. ⁴⁶

The president, however, believed that the public’s frustrations were not merely the result of transient political events. They had deep structural causes. Economic inequality and lack of mobility drove the public’s anger and despair.

America, the president noted, had once been a land of economic opportunity, in large part because of the vast programs of his high modernist predecessors, from Lincoln to LBJ, on which he heaped much nostalgic praise. “But starting in the late 1970s,” he continued, “this social compact began to unravel.”

As values of community broke down, and competitive pressure increased, businesses lobbied Washington to weaken unions and the value of the minimum wage. As a trickle-down economy became more prominent, taxes were slashed for the wealthiest, while investments in things that make us all richer, like schools and infrastructure, were allowed to wither.

. . . And the result is an economy that’s become profoundly unequal, and families that are more insecure.

As in the Planned Parenthood address, President Obama’s villains in the story of inequality remained shadowy and nameless. It was unclear from the president’s words whether the businesses that lobbied Washington did so from malice or necessity, and no explanation was offered for the decline of community values and the rise of trickle-down ideas. But the forces of selfishness, though nebulous and undefined, were powerful enough to transform the tenor of American life from opportunity to degradation. Once his rhetoric moved into accusatory mode, the president turned specific:

So the basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed . . . this increased inequality is most pronounced in our country, and it challenges the very essence of who we are as a people. . . . The problem is that alongside increased inequality, we’ve seen diminished levels of upward mobility in recent years. A child born in the top 20 percent has a 2-in-3 chance of staying at or near the top. A child born in the bottom 20 percent has a 1 in 20 chance of making it to the top. . . . statistics show not only that our levels of inequality rank near countries like Jamaica and Argentina, but that it is harder today for a child born here in America to improve her station in life than it is for children in most of our wealthy allies—countries like Canada or Germany or France. They have greater mobility than we do, not less. . . . The decades-long shifts in the economy have hurt all groups: poor and middle class; inner city and rural folks; men and women; and