Speaker 1: What if the Great Recession isn't to blame. So called
Speaker 1: populists have thrived in the aftermath of the two thousand
Speaker 1: seven to two thousand nine financial and economic crisis, but
Speaker 1: as economics the sole cause of the challenge to what
Speaker 1: we have come to call the liberal democratic order, our
Speaker 1: guests this week argues not there are other forces at work.
Speaker 1: After all, the nine year economic expansion gets heat for
Speaker 1: not generating a lot of wage growth. But it's not
Speaker 1: entirely terrible either. There's something else going on, and it's
Speaker 1: not just Facebook or Cambridge Analytica either. Welcome to Benchmark,
Speaker 1: the show about the global economy. I'm Genus Smilik, an
Speaker 1: economics reporter at Bloomberg News in New York, and I'm
Speaker 1: Daniel Boss, economics run and editor at Bloomberg feut In.
Speaker 1: Joining up us this week is Bill Galston from the
Speaker 1: Brookings Institution in Washington, author of the new book Anti Pluralism,
Speaker 1: The Populous Threat to Liberal Democracy. He's also a columist
Speaker 1: at The Wall Street Journal and was an advisor to
Speaker 1: former President Bill Clinton. Bill. Welcome, good to be here.
Speaker 1: So it's not just about their session in its aftermath.
Speaker 1: What is the popular strivel about it's partly about economics,
Speaker 1: but we have to understand what about economics it's about.
Speaker 1: The Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti wrote a terrific book in
Speaker 1: called The New Geography of Jobs, in which he pointed
Speaker 1: out that the knowledge slash innovation economy is having the
Speaker 1: effect of boosting large, diverse cities because innovation turns out
Speaker 1: to be a social process and not a solitary process.
Speaker 1: So more and more of the economic growth in advanced
Speaker 1: industrialized economies is being sucked into metropolitan areas, and increasingly
Speaker 1: smaller towns and rural areas and former manufacturing towns in
Speaker 1: particular are being left farther and farther behind. So the
Speaker 1: fundamental economic driver, in my judgment, is the new spatial
Speaker 1: geography of growth. But on top of that we have
Speaker 1: the sense of cultural displacement that many people are now experiencing,
Speaker 1: and the tip of that sphere is immigration and its consequences.
Speaker 1: Sounds like the recession might need better pr Are you
Speaker 1: saying the recession has become a kind of proxy or
Speaker 1: a trojan horse for other issues that perhaps wouldn't get
Speaker 1: a hearing in truly fabulous economic times. Well in truly
Speaker 1: fabulous economic times. People tend to be in a pretty
Speaker 1: good mood. I can remember the last of those, in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen nineties in the United States. You were
Speaker 1: in the White House there. Well, I'd left the White
Speaker 1: House after Bill Clinton's first term, but I was certainly
Speaker 1: there to admire the consequences of those policies, and unemployment
Speaker 1: was way below four percent. Economic growth was robust. The
Speaker 1: fruits of that growth were widely shared. But we still
Speaker 1: even then had intense controversy about the issue that I
Speaker 1: think is the heart of the matter now, which is immigration.
Speaker 1: Because immigration, for a lot of people is the trifecta
Speaker 1: of woes. They see it as displacing them from jobs,
Speaker 1: as putting a ceiling on their wages. That's the economic dimension.
Speaker 1: They see it as a security threat, both because of
Speaker 1: increased crime from drug gangs and things of that sort,
Speaker 1: although that's greatly overblown, and also because as things now
Speaker 1: stand in the world, it's seen as a potential source
Speaker 1: of terrorism. But third, and most importantly, I think it's
Speaker 1: seen as the v vehicle of cultural displacement. People see
Speaker 1: immigration as changing the fundamental character of their countries, not
Speaker 1: just the color of their countries, but the character of
Speaker 1: their countries, and they feel increasingly marginalized in a country
Speaker 1: where for generations they were the center of the story.
Speaker 1: Now they're peripheral to the narrative, and they don't like
Speaker 1: it now. People who are friendly to broader immigration will
Speaker 1: often bring up the fact that members of the white
Speaker 1: working class are People who are anti immigration often trace
Speaker 1: their origins to say, Ireland, Scotland, Poland and Nordic region. So,
Speaker 1: I guess, what do you think impoldens people to feel
Speaker 1: uncomfortable about current ways of immigration, even if their existence
Speaker 1: in the United States kind of owes to a wave
Speaker 1: of immigration that happened in the past. Well, it's a
Speaker 1: very good question. And one of the most familiar things
Speaker 1: you have to say about the United States, and we
Speaker 1: say it with a measure of pride, is that we
Speaker 1: are a nation immigrants. That being said, we are a
Speaker 1: nation that's gone through spikes of immigration followed by reactions
Speaker 1: to those spikes. And we saw it with the Irish
Speaker 1: in the eighteen forties, we saw it with the Chinese
Speaker 1: in the eighties, and we saw it with Southern European
Speaker 1: Slavs and Jews in the nineteen twenties, and in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty four we enacted restrictive legislation that slammed the immigration
Speaker 1: gates shut, where they remained for forty one years. So
Speaker 1: we are a nation with a mixed history on immigration.
Speaker 1: And let me give you the most recent historical cycle.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty five, when we reopened the gates of
Speaker 1: immigration after forty one years, first generation immigrants constituted four
Speaker 1: point seven percent of the US population. Today, that figure
Speaker 1: is three times as high and is rapidly approaching the
Speaker 1: highest share of first generation immigrants ever recorded in American history.
Speaker 1: So it's not entirely surprising that this issue has reached
Speaker 1: critical mass. Now. Some of these groups, the Irish, Italians,
Speaker 1: Paul's many of these groups are traditionally associated with generational
Speaker 1: support for the Democratic Party. How is what you're describing changing?
Speaker 1: That these groups white working class voters shifted away from
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party some time ago. There's a long history here.
Speaker 1: In the wake of the cultural revolution of the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: the anti Vietnam War mobilization of the late sixties and
Speaker 1: early seventies, the white working class felt increasingly distant from
Speaker 1: the emerging new currents within the Democratic party. So Republicans
Speaker 1: have regularly gotten majorities of the white working class vote
Speaker 1: for most of the past half century. What has happened
Speaker 1: recently is that white working class voters, particularly in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: have begun to respond much more strongly to these cultural signals,
Speaker 1: and their turnout, which was relatively low, soared in twenty sixteen. So,
Speaker 1: just to give you the numbers, Mitt Romney, no one's
Speaker 1: idea of a populist, got sixty two of the white
Speaker 1: working class vote in twelve. Donald Trump, who is most
Speaker 1: people's idea of an American populist, four years later got
Speaker 1: sixty seven percent. But turnout in the white working class
Speaker 1: rose by nearly ten percentage points between twenty twelve and
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. And that was the election. It was intensity
Speaker 1: and not just preference. Now, one of the things I
Speaker 1: found really interesting in your book was the role that
Speaker 1: elitists playing all of this. Can you describe to me
Speaker 1: a little bit about what you mean when you say
Speaker 1: elitist and sort of what what is their role in
Speaker 1: a liberal democracy? Uh? Where to begin. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: modern elites, the elites of the current day, who constitute
Speaker 1: a reference point for either approbation or or intense disapproval.
Speaker 1: What we're talking about now is not so much the
Speaker 1: ultra rich business people. We're talking about highly educated professionals
Speaker 1: who have the kinds of mobile skills that equipped them
Speaker 1: to succeed in the new global knowledge economy. They are,
Speaker 1: as I said, highly educated. And it turns out that
Speaker 1: education is not just a key to economic opportunity, it
Speaker 1: also shape a fundamental outlook on life. The more educated
Speaker 1: you are, the more comfortable you are with change and
Speaker 1: dynamism and diversity, the less wedded you are typically to
Speaker 1: quote unquote traditional values. It's not as though you have
Speaker 1: no place. You're not nowhere. If you're highly educated, you
Speaker 1: tend to flock together in large, diverse metropolitan areas. And
Speaker 1: people with less education believe that elites not only don't
Speaker 1: understand how people with lesser lower levels of education and
Speaker 1: income are living, but really don't understand how they're thinking. Either. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: elates us certainly getting a lot of flak at the moment.
Speaker 1: But as the immigrant at this table, let me just
Speaker 1: position the question this way. Isn't America about aspiration? I
Speaker 1: mean I was born in Australia. I didn't need to
Speaker 1: come hire into accracy. I didn't need to come here
Speaker 1: for freedom of worship or freedom of speech. I'm here
Speaker 1: because of the aspirations that America office. What's wrong with
Speaker 1: aspiring to be an elite. Nothing, as long as the
Speaker 1: people who come after you have the same opportunity. The
Speaker 1: problem that we have right now is that upper middle class,
Speaker 1: professionalized elites have become self replicating to some extent. They
Speaker 1: are able to use their stable families, their high income,
Speaker 1: their networks, their understanding of how the system works to
Speaker 1: position their children for success in turn, and so there
Speaker 1: is unfortunately less mobility between the working class and the
Speaker 1: upper middle class than there used to be. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that we've hardened into a cast system, but I
Speaker 1: will say this. First generation immigrants are more are likely
Speaker 1: to experience the advantages of aspiration then are incumbent members
Speaker 1: of the white working class whose ancestors have been in
Speaker 1: this country for two or three or four generations. And
Speaker 1: so you, as an immigrant, are an excellent example of
Speaker 1: what keeps the American dream alive. And I would go
Speaker 1: so far as to say that at the heart of
Speaker 1: the American dream is the experience of first and second
Speaker 1: generation immigrants and after that it becomes a much more
Speaker 1: complicated story. Interesting. Now, one of the ideas in your
Speaker 1: book is that non college educated Americans who lost in
Speaker 1: the hope in the future longed instead for an imagined
Speaker 1: past that insurgent politicians promised her a star. I found
Speaker 1: that line to be really interesting. Why is it an
Speaker 1: imagined past? What do you mean by that? Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, I should say that it was not entirely imaginary.
Speaker 1: There was a period during which the manufacturing economy in
Speaker 1: this country was much larger as a share of the
Speaker 1: total workforce. Indeed, not just as a share. We have
Speaker 1: lost thirty of our manufacturing jobs since the turn of
Speaker 1: the century, so there's there's been a there's been a
Speaker 1: very big change. But people imagine that they lived in
Speaker 1: a period without demographic change, without cultural change, that they
Speaker 1: lived in a period in which life in the industrial
Speaker 1: workforce was a bed of roses. If they know anything
Speaker 1: about the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties, they will know
Speaker 1: how many people got their heads cracked in order to
Speaker 1: earn and then keep the right to organize. So what
Speaker 1: we're really talking about is a period between n and
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy when the United States bestrode the world like
Speaker 1: a colossus. The rest of the world was flat on
Speaker 1: its back, much of it had been destroyed by the
Speaker 1: Second World War. Are and we have taken those extraordinary
Speaker 1: twenty five years, that quarter of a century as our
Speaker 1: benchmark ever since. And it wasn't ordinary. It was exceptional.
Speaker 1: And I think we've been mourning its loss now for
Speaker 1: two generations. But we can't go back to it because
Speaker 1: it was the fruit of unique circumstances. Bill, Is this
Speaker 1: such a thing as America anymore? Or are we just
Speaker 1: a series of tribes living within the boundaries of a state.
Speaker 1: Is that something you pointed in your work. Yes, indeed
Speaker 1: it is. And tribalism in America is really nothing new.
Speaker 1: I can remember back for fifty years when political machines
Speaker 1: in the big cities were alive and well, and they
Speaker 1: always constructed their electoral tickets based on the demography of
Speaker 1: the cities. So in big cities like New York, you
Speaker 1: had an Allion, you had an Irishman, you had a Jew,
Speaker 1: and subsequently you had an African American and then an Asian.
Speaker 1: And that was what a balanced ticket was. It wasn't
Speaker 1: balanced ideologically, it was balanced ethnically. So ethnic identification, particularly
Speaker 1: for people not too far removed from their immigrant forebears,
Speaker 1: has always been part of American politics and American culture.
Speaker 1: And I can look at previous previous parts of American
Speaker 1: history when it was as fundamental as it is now.
Speaker 1: So America is not a tribal it's plury tribal. And
Speaker 1: on top of that, pluralism is a set of institutions
Speaker 1: and organizing principles. So the real question that you're posing
Speaker 1: is whether Americans have lost faith in those institutions and
Speaker 1: organizing principles. And to that, I would say not really.
Speaker 1: And I say that based on recent survey research in
Speaker 1: which I've had the opportunity to play a part. About
Speaker 1: a year and a half ago, a two years ago,
Speaker 1: a bipartisan voter study group was organized, and they just
Speaker 1: put out the most recent in this series of reports
Speaker 1: about two weeks ago, and it found that support for
Speaker 1: the organizing principles of American constitutional democracy is still very high. Indeed,
Speaker 1: it's somewhat higher than it was just a few years ago.
Speaker 1: You could even argue that the experience of this president
Speaker 1: has forced many Americans to recall what it was that
Speaker 1: attracted them to this country in the first place, and
Speaker 1: what it is that guarantees their liberties now. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, populism obviously emphasizes homogeneity over heterogeneity here,
Speaker 1: at least it seems it does to me. Is that
Speaker 1: statement correct in you know, how do you see that
Speaker 1: changing in America going forward, given that we do have
Speaker 1: sort of this populous wave. That is the most fundamental question.
Speaker 1: And that's why I entitled my book anti Pluralism, because
Speaker 1: I meant that as the grave woman of my core
Speaker 1: charge against contemporary populism. That is, it does tend towards homogeneity.
Speaker 1: When populaces say we the people, they typically don't mean
Speaker 1: we all of the people. They usually mean we our
Speaker 1: kind of people. And they tend to marginalize from the
Speaker 1: civic body people who are unlike them in ethnicity, or religion,
Speaker 1: or you name it. And this drive towards homogeneity in
Speaker 1: the face of increasing pluralism is I think the central
Speaker 1: threat of populism. The other is unbridled majoritarianism, which is
Speaker 1: impatient with constitutional restraints and impatient with gary of teas
Speaker 1: of rights for individuals and minorities. You put those two
Speaker 1: things together, majoritarianism and a restrictive definition of the people,
Speaker 1: and you have it seems to me the most fundamental
Speaker 1: threat to the liberal constitutional order that the West is
Speaker 1: seen in quite some time. Internal threat, I should say,
Speaker 1: there are lots of external threats that we could talk
Speaker 1: about as well build your book, and many that dwell
Speaker 1: on the conflict between populism and the established order tend
Speaker 1: to have the US and Western Europe as their framework.
Speaker 1: Yet there are newer democracies in very heavily populated parts
Speaker 1: of the world that are wrestling with their own challenge
Speaker 1: from populism. Those countries have grown pretty well economically in
Speaker 1: the past ten years now in the face of it.
Speaker 1: That would endorse your argument that it's not just about economics.
Speaker 1: But these countries also haven't had historically high levels of
Speaker 1: immigrant Asian edith. So what's going on here? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: as the Polish Asians say in our nation's capital, thank
Speaker 1: you for asking. I used at the beginning of this
Speaker 1: interview the umbrella phrase cultural displacement. There are different ways
Speaker 1: in which people can experience cultural displacement. Immigration, I think
Speaker 1: is the principle, though not only way that it has
Speaker 1: been experienced in Western Europe, in the UK and in
Speaker 1: the United States. But let's take a country which is
Speaker 1: reeling under an anti democratic populist onslaught, namely Turkey. The
Speaker 1: founding principle of Turkey was the exclusion of Islam from
Speaker 1: public life. Turkish constitution was structured along the lines of
Speaker 1: the French constitution, and Islam and traditional mores were seen
Speaker 1: as like we're seen as obstacles to modernization, political modernization,
Speaker 1: economic modernization, social modernization. But the fact that it was
Speaker 1: excluded from a share of Turkish public life didn't mean
Speaker 1: that it had gone away. It was always there in
Speaker 1: the smaller towns and rural areas. And what Mr Arnowan
Speaker 1: has done is to crystallized generations of resentment that more
Speaker 1: traditional Turks and more pious Turks outside the big cities
Speaker 1: felt about their values not being seen as legitimate in
Speaker 1: public life. Interestingly, I've just been reading a new biography
Speaker 1: of Hungary's Victor Orbon, and it turns out that Orbon
Speaker 1: and his closest associates came from Hungary's hinterland, and they
Speaker 1: grew up resenting in even as students. They resent resented
Speaker 1: the sense of superiority that urban elites exuded visa vi
Speaker 1: those from the countryside who are seen as bumpkins, somehow
Speaker 1: less sophisticated, less up to the minute, and are to
Speaker 1: want to I meant Orbon has been able to mobilize
Speaker 1: those sentiments against the more liberal and pro European sentiments
Speaker 1: in Hungary's major urban areas. That's the fundamental dynamic, and
Speaker 1: you see it everywhere. You see the same thing in Poland.
Speaker 1: By the way, Poles have experienced almost no immigration, but
Speaker 1: you know, what you have is a mobilization of Polish
Speaker 1: traditionalism and especially Catholicism against parties that identified with EU
Speaker 1: and sort of secular internationalist values. So what's the solution
Speaker 1: to all of this? Do you see a resolution or
Speaker 1: an end in sight? Well, to extent that this is
Speaker 1: based on public policy, I think that people who are
Speaker 1: liberal internationalists are going to have to find more common
Speaker 1: ground on contested issues like immigration. They are going to
Speaker 1: have to compromise with forces that they do not agree with.
Speaker 1: If you know, if we and I'll use that term,
Speaker 1: we simply say, uh, our way is the way of
Speaker 1: the future, the wave of the future. We will triumph
Speaker 1: in the end, and we're simply going to hold our
Speaker 1: ground and wait for you people to die, which is
Speaker 1: a reasonable summary of one strand of thought in the US,
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party, the demographic triumphalists. Then we're going to
Speaker 1: be stuck in this morass for a very long time.
Speaker 1: So number one, and I've i've, you know, I've laid
Speaker 1: out a pretty detailed program for how to do this.
Speaker 1: Get the issue of aigration off the table to the
Speaker 1: greatest extent possible. Number two, understand that the economic challenge is,
Speaker 1: you know, is not something you can read off the
Speaker 1: income distribution tables. It has to do with economic geography.
Speaker 1: And urban America must do everything in its power through
Speaker 1: public policy to reach out to non urban America and
Speaker 1: integrate it into American civic life in the same way
Speaker 1: that Franklin Roosevelt did in the nineteen thirties with programs
Speaker 1: such as rural electrification. And finally, a lot of populism
Speaker 1: is driven by impatients at a gridlock political system that
Speaker 1: seems unable to act. And yet many of these people
Speaker 1: send representatives to Congress, like say, for example, the Freedom Caucus,
Speaker 1: who have zero interest in legislating everything. People say they're
Speaker 1: tired of gridlock. At the Tea Party, which was an
Speaker 1: early manifestation of what you're talking about is not remotely
Speaker 1: interested in governing. I'm not going to argue with you,
Speaker 1: but those who are interested in governing have to get
Speaker 1: together across partisan and ideological lines and govern. If I
Speaker 1: may put in a brief advertisement for another one of
Speaker 1: my ventures other than this book, I'm I'm one of
Speaker 1: the co founders of an organization called No Labels, which,
Speaker 1: over the past ten years has been working very hard
Speaker 1: to develop a force within the two party system that
Speaker 1: can get people from the center left to the center
Speaker 1: light uh to cooperate and legislate together. We've put together
Speaker 1: a bipartisan caucus in the House of Representatives of twenty
Speaker 1: three Democrats and twenty three Republicans who have made common
Speaker 1: cause on a number of important legislative initiatives, and if
Speaker 1: the leadership would ever allow them to get to the floor,
Speaker 1: you might actually see a return to more sensible governance.
Speaker 1: How big a problem is that sensible governments is a
Speaker 1: nuanced thing, embracing the complexity of the world and the
Speaker 1: nitty gritty required to legislate. These are not simple things.
Speaker 1: These are nuanced things. People are just getting shouted at
Speaker 1: from the extremes is what you're talking about even possible. Well,
Speaker 1: a late governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, the father
Speaker 1: of the current governor of New York, once said, you
Speaker 1: campaign in poetry, you govern in prose. Not a bad prescription.
Speaker 1: So the problem was that Hillary Clinton campaigned in prose.
Speaker 1: There weren't a lot of readers who stuck around to
Speaker 1: the second page. And on that happy note, we're going
Speaker 1: to wrap up this week's edition of the Bloomberg Benchmark podcast.
Speaker 1: Check back each week or dive into the depths of
Speaker 1: the years ago. I'm Genus Smilets and you can follow
Speaker 1: me at Genus Smilet. I'm ten of the Mosque. You
Speaker 1: can follow me at Moss Underscore Echo. Thanks star guest
Speaker 1: Bill Galston, so you can follow at Bill Galston and
Speaker 1: to our producer Magnus Hendrickson. Thanks also to friend Chess, THEA. Leavie,
Speaker 1: Head of Podcasts,