I have been recently engaged in an exchange of emails with a dear old friend with whom I share what might be called fundamental liberal-humanistic political-social values that extend back to our shared days in graduate school. He comes from a military background; my own, while certainly not military has been neither pacifist nor pacific. Despite our shared values and enduring friendship we never took each other’s specific views and policy perspectives for granted. Our current somewhat Talmudic (he is a “son of Abraham”) exchanges flow from contrasting opinions about the current president that we mutually supported with relief and hope. I need not remind readers of these pages that I have lapsed into serious disappointment with Mr. Obama and what I regard as almost betrayal of his campaign “promises.” My friend and fellow liberals (and maybe others in that cohort has well) have remained more hopeful and optimistic. Our differences, mostly about Afghanistan, reflect those more widely debated amongst liberals in what appears to be a threatening fissure in the Obama “base.” While it is nothing in form or substance like the querulous internecine ruptures in the Republican party, it is nevertheless disconcerting in that we must remember that no party knows how to lose elections and surrender political power quite like the Democrats. Mr. Obama was able to close our often-wandering ranks with a message of hope and change and not being George Bush. But in less than year a substantial number have demurred, while others, like my friend find reason to hold their ranks.
As I have engaged in this contesting of positions I have been reminded of spirited debates that took place in my graduate seminars in Planning Theory. That aspect of the study of urban planning dealt with the relationship between the empirical epistemology of planning and alternative courses of action. Of late I have been wondering just where (and how) our current president would have come out in the give and take of my seminars. But first let me, without being too didactic, lay in a bit of necessary background.
With varying degrees of rationality and success, everybody plans, including (though it can seem hard to believe at times) governments. But whether it is done by individuals, or governments, planning and decision-making involves pretty much the same six steps: 1. Identification of goals, needs and problems; 2. Research and Analysis of all relevant knowledge and information; 3. Consideration of alternative courses of action; 4. Selection of a best or optimum (plan) action,; 5. Determining implementation of the selected plan; 6. Evaluating the outcomes of the decision (orn planned course of action).
This is sometimes called, aptly, the “Rational Approach,” because, to be rational, one must attempt to link appropriate means to desired ends.** Applicants of this model often try to be “comprehensive” in the scope of the knowledge they seek (theoretical knowledge*), as well as in the interests (public or corporate, for example) they wish to serve, but there are considerable limits to the public interest. But the features of this approach apply in some, though varying, degree to other decision-making models. Could Obama be considered a practitioner of the Rational Model? Well, he talks like one. He uses factual information and speaks in a manner that connects, putatively, means that are appropriate to ends. Rationalists tend to like big, integrated policies and plans—the one’s that get right-wingers screaming “socialism.” But before you think Obama might be a Rationalist, consider that he is often referred to as a “pragmatist.”
A pragmatist might better fit the “Incrementalist Approach” of decision-making. This model is the prime competitor of the Rational Approach. Sometimes referred to as “disjointed incrementalism” and even “muddling through” its is actually a derivative of observations of the way in which the political process—as we know it—influences decision-making. Rather than rational (large-scale) plans and policies, the incremental approach calls for (and alleges that the political process will only tolerate) partial and tentative decisions. Among its features are that decisions emerge from a process of political bargaining called “partisan mutual adjustment” (sounding a bit more like Obama?); that intuitive and ideological features influence the way in which decisions are arrived at; that there is no universal public interest; that formal knowledge is incomplete (sound like the global warming deniers?). Hence this model alleges that short-term, experimental, and non-serial (not connected) policies and plans are the result of a process that is government more by politics rather than by intellectual processes and formal knowledge. In incremental decision-making sometimes the ends end up justifying the means. Does this sound a lot like the process that produced the anemic Health Plan? I think I could make a more compelling case that Obama is an “incrementalist.”
But don’t start printing up “Obama is an Incrementalist” signs just yet (although it would confuse the hell out of those “teabaggers”). There are a couple of other models we used to debate in my seminars that Mr. Obama might fit into.
Back in the turbulent 1960s, when Obama was but a wee lad in Hawaii (not really a part of America) or Indonesia (Abdul’s Madrassa for Crotch-Bomber Training), there emerged in various social policy disciplines what was called the “Advocacy Approach.” This approach is modeled somewhat on the legal process (so Obama should appreciate this one). It alleges that there are many different interests in the city or society (hence, not a universal public interest), and that these interests deserve their own “representation” in the public decision-making process. Moreover, it alleges that there might be several different types of policy or legislation, representing the interests of different groups, such as different minorities, and like “affirmative action.” Ah, you’re thinking ACORN, right. Exactly. Or those days when Obama was doing the Republican-disparaged “Community Organization” in Chicago. That’s advocacy. But, alas, Mr. Obama seems to honor that approach far more in rhetoric than he does in his decisions. Sure, he is president of everybody, not just the under- or not-represented. So it is probably easier for him to work with Wall Street rather than all those Main Streets, and to hold off to when it is more politically-suitable to get rid of DADT and DOMA. No way, José, no how, dude, sorry Rachel Maddow, Barack’s no Advocate.
Well, and if he’s no Advocate, he sure as hell is not turning out to be a “Radical Decision-Maker,” the last model I will discuss. I only include it because it is what we had the audacity to hope we were hearing in the campaign rhetoric of Mr. Obama; it was my type of liberal’s political wet dream.
Radical planning is not so much a model; but a critique not only of status quo public decision-making, but also takes the point of view that society is in need of root level, or fundamental structural change. Like, for example, admitting that K Street political lobbying is nothing more than high-level bribery and bought influence, and needs to be outlawed. Not just some prissy reform that says a retired or defeated congressman has to wait a year before getting in on the big time pay-off to being a lobbyist. Admit we have endemic corruption, and root it out of the system. Now that’s radical decision-making. Do not allow the consolidation of banks, health care insurance companies, energy companies, media, and defense industry, into huge corporate cartels that are collusive, unaccountable and “too big to fail.” We Radical Liberals say that a true leader must address these issues at the root level, at the level of capitalism and the stupid incipient fusion of church and state, at the level of what it does to our humanity, to our environment and, of course, our system of government. You either deal with the rats and the rot, and get back to our true principles, or go in the direction Mr. Obama seems inclined to take us—down the greasy shute of Fascism Lite.
So what kind of decision-maker is our president (he asked rhetorically)? Well, he was brought up in the Rational tradition; facts, models and theories do seem to matter some to him. But he is more a compromiser, an appeaser, and proving to be more of a political animal than we thought with that “bi-partisan” bullshit he is always feeding us. No, he’s mostly a cautious Incrementalist. Even though his base was heavily constructed from groups that believed he would advocate for their causes and interests, he is clever enough to know that he can (as he has) abandon them because they have no where else to go. He doesn’t need to be an Advocate, so he isn’t.
The Radical Obama might just be a cannabis-fueled concoction that the rest of us fashioned out of four-decades of disappointment and watching the decline and stagnation of American society.*** Ironically, we Liberals (Rad and soft) and Progressives are drifting back into our malaise, personally doing reasonably well with the system we scorn because it will not be miserable for our progeny. In this regard, in obedience to the craziness of American politics, we are a standard deviation to the left, as our “breatherens in disaffection,” the Teabaggers, are a couple of standard deviations to the right. Indeed, we are arriving even at the same semiotics. They feel the teabag represents their politics. We feel the teabag represents Obama’s politics; but Obama’s teabag, alas, is empty.
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© 2010, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 1.9.2010)
*This does not mean “hypothetical,” which is what many people mean when they use the word “theoretical,” which they do not understand means a set of laws or propositions that purport to represent a phenomenon or class of phenomena.
**That is where the knowledge comes in. If you don’t know what causes what (if I do x, then y results), then you are in a non-rational position, it’s “the lady or the tiger.” If you do know what means will produce a desired end, and do something contrary, then you are irrational (and probably a Republican).
***Yes, we can show this empirically if you want to call us on it.