Author James Piereson Responds

I appreciate these two thoughtful reviews by Steven Hayward and Will Marshall.  Each has forced me to think and reexamine my arguments.  I understand that there are rival partisan views of the current scene—that some Democrats see Republicans as extreme and President Obama as a moderate, and that some Republicans see Obama as an extremist and themselves as practical reformers.  There is little point in trying to settle those arguments here; perhaps the voters at some point will settle it for us.

Mr. Marshall is right that I don’t spend much time in the book analyzing the Clinton presidency and the general peace and prosperity of the 1990s—but that’s because I see the Clinton presidency as an extension and consolidation of Republican policies of the 1980s. President Clinton lurched leftward in his first two years in office, despite his narrow electoral victory.  He and Democratic leaders in Congress were eager to reverse the policies of the Reagan years. In 1993, Clinton raised taxes and sought to spend the extra revenues on a laundry list of make-work programs, slashed defense spending, and tried to reorganize the health-care system. When the voters rebuked him in the 1994 midterm elections, he retreated to the political center, where he (but not Democratic Party advocacy groups) was more comfortable. Clinton went on to balance the budget (in cooperation with the Republican Congress), allowing interest rates to fall and the stock market to surge. He silenced the cultural leftists in his administration (his wife among them). He signed a far-reaching welfare-reform bill in 1996 (which he had previously vetoed).  He even said that the era of big government was over (and many wish that he had been right).  Had he not moved to the center, Clinton may well have lost the 1996 election; or he might well have been convicted by the Senate in his 1999 impeachment trial.  His move to the center was responsible not only for his political survival, but also for the prosperity of the mid- to late 1990s.  And it is why Bill Clinton remains a popular figure today. For a brief time, he added new life to the postwar consensus by trying to build upon the advances of the 1980s.  

We have moved on since then. Economic growth has slowed; inequality has surged; middle- class incomes are stagnant. Meanwhile, those close to Wall Street and government continue to do well.  President Obama has led the Democratic Party further to the left; in response, the Republican Party has moved further to the right.  It is doubtful that a Bill Clinton could be nominated as a Democratic presidential candidate today. He is now viewed as too much of a pragmatist, conciliator, and consensus-builder in a climate in which each party proposes solutions that the other cannot abide.  In part, each has gone back to old “standby” policies that are not likely to work in the current environment—with Democrats proposing financial regulation, stimulus, and infrastructure packages, and Republicans tax cuts of the kind enacted in the 1980s.  “Been there, done that,” as a past president liked to say.  Mr. Marshall is optimistic that the nation will find a way to renew itself politically and economically in advance of a crisis that forces our hand.  Let’s hope that he is right. For my part, I doubt that he is. 

Again, I appreciate these reviews and enjoyed reading the two authors’ reflections on the major themes of my book. 

James Piereson is president of the William E. Simon Foundation and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His new book is Shattered Consensus: The Rise and Decline of America’s Postwar Political Order, by James Piereson. New York: Encounter Books. 389 pages, $27.99