The NYT’s David Brooks seems to have caused a bit of a stir with his latest column, which laments what he sees as the death of neoliberalism, “a movement which, at least temporarily, remade the Democratic Party, redefined American journalism and didn’t really die until now.”
As Brooks sees it, neoliberals changed politics, apparently in stages, in the late 1980s and 1990s. “Old liberals,” Brooks argues, were “self-righteous” and overly concerned with “solidarity,” while neoliberals shook things up, challenging orthodoxies, while being “liberal but not too liberal.”
Alas, Brooks said, neoliberalism is gone. The left no longer wants a movement that “moderates and reforms,” he insists, but rather wants a “Democratic Party that fights. Their tone is much more confrontational. They want to read articles that affirm their anger.”
Over all, what’s happening is this: The left, which has the momentum, is growing more uniform and coming to look more like its old, pre-neoliberal self. The right is growing more fractious. And many of those who were semiaffiliated with one party or another are drifting off to independent-land. […]
Neoliberalism had a good, interesting run — while it lasted.
The column has spurred some terrific responses from Kevin Drum, Jonathan Cohn, Jonathan Chait, Ezra Klein, Ben Adler, and Matt Yglesias, among others, and I thought I’d pick a side.
Cohn argues, persuasively, that neoliberalism is dead, not because the left has taken over, but because neolibs already got what they wanted.
…I think that neoliberalism is a relic of its era. It was based on the premise that sometimes liberals were a greater menace to liberalism than conservatives — by failing to recognize the public sector’s fallibility, by not taking seriously middle class resentment over the use of taxes, by putting the needs of constituent interest groups above the greater public good, and so on.
But to the extent that premise was ever true — and, surely, it was true in at least some instances — it is no longer. I would argue that turning point came no later than 1994, when Newt Gingrich and the Republicans came to power, and quite possibly earlier. Others would point to the 2000 election and subsequent first year of the Bush Administration. Whatever. The point is that when the party in power has, say, declared war on the welfare state, one should probably defend said welfare state’s existence before harping on its modest, if still regrettable, flaws.
And yet, unlike my friend Ezra Klein, I’m not quite ready to say that neoliberalism failed, either. One reason it no longer seems relevant is that the liberal left, broadly speaking, has embraced some of its best teachings. Democrats now take fiscal discipline seriously — far more seriously, certainly, than the Republicans. (While John Edwards and Paul Krugman have begun a much-needed conversation about whether balanced budgets should remain the obsession they were in the Clinton years, even they recognize the need for general fiscal responsibility; it’s a question of how much and how soon.) Markos of DailyKos has, at times, been just as disdainful of interest group liberalism as the neoliberals were.
This seems right to me. Neoliberals got what they wanted policy wise (NAFTA, welfare reform, balanced budget), and just as importantly, changed the way Democrats talk about issues (emphasis on fiscal responsibility, Clintonian approach to rhetoric). As frustrating as the DLC can be at times, when it comes to specific policy proposals, I’d estimate that three out of four items on the group’s wish list would be inoffensive, if not actual welcome, to most MoveOn.org members. If so, it suggests neoliberalism has already changed the political landscape. It won and is now reaping the rewards.
What seems to bother Brooks more, however, is the rhetoric. He perceives the left, in general, as talking “tougher” than the 90s-era neoliberals. We’re less open to compromise. We’re “angrier.”
Maybe so. But as Kevin Drum explained, “After 1994 it became clear that Republicans had no interest in meeting us halfway. Instead they declared war. Conservatives like Brooks shouldn’t act surprised that eventually liberals decided to shed their introspective ways and start fighting back.”