For all the years of the Bush administration the drumbeat has sounded that the economy—or more precisely the supply and demand for jobs—is a puzzle, but I'll tell you otherwise. A Feb. 2004 Philadelphia Inquirer front-page story asserted that the executive branch is powerless to influence the quantity of jobs available in America, what with the influence of offshore outsourcing, an intractable Congress, and the impenetrable logic of long-term business cycles.
Some would have us believe that we are at the mercy of an immovable force, but nothing could be further from the truth. Hardly a powerless pawn, the executive branch is actually the single most important means for the US to surmount such challenges. To liberals this was abundantly proven during the last administration, as record surpluses were amassed; to its detractors, the last administration was simply the beneficiary of the Internet boom… a once-in-all-history financial windfall.
Believe whichever version of reality you wish, but the bottom line is this: the conservative values that are currently determining our country’s direction are unsuitable—counterproductive actually—to the new global dynamic of international competition among countries. In recent years, with the unrelenting trend toward global free trade, the rules that govern corporate competition increasingly apply to countries… but conservative policies fail in the heat of this competition.
In contrast to the notion that the administration is only a fringe player in the game of job creation, its guidance determines three key factors in steering the ship toward either more jobs or fewer. The presidency, more than either the legislative or judicial branches, chooses between 1) short-term and long-term goals, 2) self-interest or shared, synergistic interests, and 3) conservative or innovative directions. Let’s examine each item.
The single most important value judgment made by any administration is its bias toward either short-term or long-term values. Short-term values mean plundering our natural resources and employing fiscal devices that sell our future short in the hope of quick pain relief. These very strategies, mainstays of the current administration, would be dismissed as financial suicide in today’s corporate boardroom. Liberals by contrast believe that every dollar—tax dollar—directed toward protecting the environment or using it more efficiently, repays itself many times over.
On the count of choosing between self-interest and shared interests, the conservative agenda has recently shown itself to fall decidedly on the mean-spirited side, casting a distinct vote in favor of not being “our brothers’ keepers.” Increasing the gap between haves and have-nots might have been a bearable strategy during the late 1900’s but this is a new millennium. Just as companies have learned that synergy is the magic oil that makes capitalist organizations hum smoothly, so too must we as a country. For instance, the liberal point of view is that we are all paying for healthcare no matter who writes the checks, rich or poor. Not coincidentally, the single most important thing we can do to foster job growth—no, it’s not the elusive myth of retraining—is to get employers out of the healthcare business. Only the executive branch can provide the leadership to effect such change by rallying the whole of government toward comprehensive healthcare coverage. (I personally believe that healthcare must be split into three problems [prevention, acute care, catastrophic/long-term care] because it's too big to be solved as one.)
Finally there is the balance between conservative and innovative forces. Conservative leadership offers a federal government that leads only militarily (and when it serves its purposes, moralistically). Liberal leadership, on the other hand, is associated with “programs,” known by other names such as activism or progressivism. Though not identical to the business world’s notion of innovation, these liberal values inarguably result in new things happening… new things that enhance everyone’s health, pull the poor up from the bottom, and push business to new levels of safety. While it’s nice that these things make the world a better place, the importance is that they return more wealth to society than they consume, keeping us at the forefront of global competition despite automation and offshoring.
Deride this as idealism if you want, but that is exactly what the executive branch was created for. Only individuals can have ideals, and our founding fathers knew enough to place one at the top, for tough times such as these that call for nothing less
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