How are we Doing?
America’s Hidden Success: A Reassessment of Twenty Years of Public Policy.
by John E. Schwarz.
Norton. 208 pp. $12.95.
On A day-to-day basis, bad news is what makes the headlines. I have no idea whether gloom and doom actually sell newspapers or magazines, but there it is. Do we get a bumper harvest? Farmers threatened with ruin. Inexpensive electronic gadgets available? That throws U.S. workers out of work. People living longer? Incidence of cancer on the rise. It seems that every silver lining comes accompanied by a big black cloud.
The constant exposure of American readers to bad news sooner or later saps the adrenalin, and at least some of us begin to refuse to believe the message even when it is true. Others remain eternally credulous. In a democratic republic, where citizens have real responsibilities, both reactions can be deeply unfortunate. Citizens’ expectations matter, and what we think about public policies and how we evaluate their effectiveness matter too.
What we need in order to think competently about public affairs is a little less panic and a little more perspective, a chance to remind ourselves of fundamental facts that influence the way we live and the policies we pursue. The best and most serious public discussions provide that sort of perspective. A good example is America’s Hidden Success by John E. Schwarz, an able and broad-gauged political scientist from the University of Arizona.
I am especially pleased that a fellow political scientist has written this book. On the whole, it is difficult to convince most people of the social usefulness of political scientists. People have their own ideas about politics on which they pride themselves, and from their standpoint there is very little need for criticism, more information, or so-called professional analysis from so-called professionals. By supplying an unwanted service our profession gets a bad name, and it is no wonder that when one or more of our colleagues breaks into the big time or the limelight, we get to read about them in more socially acceptable disguises: “historian” Henry Kissinger, “historian” Doris Kearns, “urbanologist” Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Strangely enough, the very lack of a strong demand for what political scientists do better than most people constitutes an argument in favor of the contributions they occasionally make to public discussion. When they are operating at their best, political scientists can bring the canons of objectivity and dispassion to sharply contested topics, can seek out and present relevant evidence, and can sometimes help to move public policy-making toward sounder premises of action.
America’s Hidden Success attempts a careful assessment of the contribution of federal programs in the post-Eisenhower era (1960-80) to the overall welfare of the nation. Debate on this subject, as we all know, is hot and heavy. Partisanship and ax-grinding are so prevalent that it is difficult for those of us who are relatively uninformed about the underlying data to get our bearings. One would think that under ordinary civil rules of discourse, participants in debate ought to be entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts. Increasingly, however, debates in the national arena over all sorts of public policy—from arms control to affirmative action—do not obey ordinary civil rules of discourse.
In the case of the range of public policies that Schwarz considers—medical care, housing, welfare, employment, health, environmental protection, economic growth—discourse has been especially unedifying. From the Right we have had blanket condemnations of governmental action on grounds of fraud, waste, and abuse. Government, it is said, doesn’t solve problems: it is the problem. Debaters on the Left have trashed governmental action on the grounds that it is feeble, ineffective, not enough. Both sides accuse the government of repressiveness. Ideologues on both sides have thus had reasons to avoid a serious look at evidence. Both sides have vested interests in emphasizing failure, and in preventing public discussion from focusing on what might be learned from successes, if any.
Fortunately, not all discussions of these issues have consisted of sheer static. Schwarz draws eclectically from studies written by serious students from all across the spectrum, as well as from official statistical sources, in putting together his case for the proposition that there are in fact successes in the overall picture:
The politics of the post-Eisenhower years, “the failed policies of the past,” provided unprecedented numbers of new jobs for Americans, raised the nation’s real income at rates of growth favorable [compared] to those of the past, reduced poverty significantly, assured that Americans would not grow more widely separated in the proportions of income they received, and in those many ways helped the nation adjust to the challenge of the crowded generation. And all these results were achieved without the alleged wild or uncontrolled expansion of the public sector.
It is nevertheless the case, as Schwarz argues, that public-sector activities did play a significant part in achieving many of these results—notably the reduction of poverty. He says that the expansion of the economy in general did not reduce poverty among Americans during the 1960’s and 70’s as much as governmental programs did. He offers a plausible explanation for this finding: a lot of American poverty is structural, built into the lives of people who are unable to participate in general economic prosperity because they are too old to work, or too young, or too sick, or trapped by fundamentally uncorrectable circumstances in bad jobs. For these millions of people, governmental programs worked far better—Schwarz says five or six times better—than economic expansion in reducing poverty.
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It is interesting to me that Schwarz does not mention politics very much in this book, and he scores no particular partisan points. The accomplishments he discusses occurred during the “post-Eisenhower” era, a period in which Democrats occupied the White House for twelve years and Republicans for eight. I believe Schwarz’s tactical judgment in not assigning praise or blame to any particular set of politicians is sound. The sources of public policy are extremely complex, and it is a bad habit—which Schwarz does not have—to attribute to a particular President the causation of all sorts of events simply because they occur during his Presidency.
Instead, Schwarz focuses on such causes as the creation during the late 1940’s and 1950’s of what soon enough became a “crowded generation” of new entrants into the work force, a problem that no other industrialized nation faced:
In the fifteen years following 1965, the immense growth in the numbers of workers—29 million—amounted to more than half the entire labor force of Japan, or, indeed, surpassed the total labor force of France or West Germany.
Thus the real story of the American post-1960 era, as Schwarz tells it, was that the American economy grew and absorbed a great many of the “crowded generation” into the productive work force. Although unemployment did rise, so did employment, and sharply. And although this rise did not directly benefit the structurally poor, it did help produce tax revenues that financed the reduction in poverty.
There are some useful reminders in all this. As we compare the United States with other political and economic systems, we sometimes forget what a difference size makes. Our problems are bigger than those of most nations because we are bigger. We are trying, and in the main succeeding, at operating the largest democratic politico-economic system—open, competitive, varied—known to history. Part of our openness lies in our readiness to listen to self-criticism. Part of our variety lies in the fact that some people are genuinely disadvantaged and deserve help. And a significant conclusion is that many of these people have gotten the help they needed. Schwarz puts some of this into the sort of context that seems to me well suited to the improvement of public discussion and the improvement also of the minds of his readers.
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