Obama preaches the neoliberal gospel - and reinforces the Republican Party's economic narrative

And, appropriately enough, does it on the op-ed page of Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal in Toward a 21st-Century Regulatory System 01/18/2011.

Now, I'm all for a 21st century regulatory system. Unfortunately, the neoliberal prescription for that looks a lot like the 20th-century one, circa 1925.

Obama's op-ed isn't some Calvin Coolidge rallying cry to declare, "The business of America is business." (One of Silent Cal's most famous sayings.)

But it's a great illustration of the problem on which George Lakoff has been harping for years now. The Republicans since 1980 with Reagan's election to the Presidency have done a good job from their partisan perspective of defining the conceptual "frames" in which political issues are discussed. The Democrats, on the other hand, often play into those Republican frames by either pandering to them or arguing against them from an overly defensive posture. What the Democrats need to do, he argues, is work on defining a larger vision to offer an alternative framing of political issues. Jerry Brown used a frame for his California gubernatorial inaugural speech earlier this month of community: community effort, shared community obligations, common goals, citing the philosopher Josiah Royce's concept of "loyalty" and the classic American symbol of community effort, the wagon train.

Obama in this editorial adopts a neoliberal (Washington Consensus/anti-regulation) frame that reinforces the Republican ideology of free-market fundamentalism. Obama's version isn't exactly Calvin Coolidge. But the Republican position today is to a large extent that of Silent Cal, especially when it comes to consumer-friendly regulations on private businesses.

The problem with Obama's op-ed is not that what he says is bad. On the contrary, it's vintage Obama: high-minded, inclusive (something for everyone), sensible, pragmatic. In other words, transactional not transformative. Consumer advocates and Heritage Foundation deregulation zealots can pick and choose phrases to use in support of their advocacy. The problem with it is that a Republican President or Congressional leader could easily have given the same speech because there's nothing in it to offer an alternative Democratic "frame" that envisions positive governmental action to protect the public interest as itself constructive and virtuous and necessary. Here's a sample:

Where necessary, we won't shy away from addressing obvious gaps: new safety rules for infant formula; procedures to stop preventable infections in hospitals; efforts to target chronic violators of workplace safety laws. But we are also making it our mission to root out regulations that conflict, that are not worth the cost, or that are just plain dumb.

For instance, the FDA has long considered saccharin, the artificial sweetener, safe for people to consume. Yet for years, the EPA made companies treat saccharin like other dangerous chemicals. Well, if it goes in your coffee, it is not hazardous waste. The EPA wisely eliminated this rule last month.

But creating a 21st-century regulatory system is about more than which rules to add and which rules to subtract. As the executive order I am signing makes clear, we are seeking more affordable, less intrusive means to achieve the same ends - giving careful consideration to benefits and costs. This means writing rules with more input from experts, businesses and ordinary citizens. It means using disclosure as a tool to inform consumers of their choices, rather than restricting those choices. And it means making sure the government does more of its work online, just like companies are doing.

His saccharin example is a good rhetorical device, because it gives listeners - especially TV pundits and star columnists with exceptionally short attention spans and little patience for actual analysis - a good example to use in support of either deregulation or pragmatic regulation.

But there is no example of when government regulation successfully protected the public from a risky product in the face of heavy business lobbying to use it. No any larger argument as to why that is not only necessary but a positive good.

He's talking about a project to review regulations, so we'll have to see what actually emerges from it to judge how constructive it has been, or not. On his example of using disclosure to protect consumers through the magic of the Free Market, we need to remember that the level of public disclosure on which Obama was insisting during the BP oil spill crisis was grossly inadequate. And in two of the most important debates the last two years over regulation to protect consumers and the public interest - regulating high-risk financial derivatives and protecting homeowners from illegal and predatory foreclosure practices - his Administration came up very short.

Yes, it's better than the Republicans: see Dave Neiwert, It was inevitable: New tea-partying Republican senator thinks child labor should be legal C&L 01/14/2011.

But it's not good enough to generate and encourage the kind of progressive view of regulation that we actually need in the US.

Tags: barack obama, obama administration, us economy