The declining belief in the “American dream” is the story presented in New York Times journalist David Leonhardt’s new book, Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream. The book is part political science and part history, and helps explain the current troubling U.S. political situation.
The current rise of the right in the United States and European countries is dismaying to many. In the U.S., those of us not charmed by Donald J. Trump can be mystified about his appeal to many of our compatriots. For one, I am at a loss to understand or explain the attraction or even the entertainment value of his long rants at his rallies.
One aspect of the appeal of the right’s siren call, though, has been glaringly obvious: the failure of liberalism to deliver for the working class. The growing disparity of income over the past decades has generated anger and unpleasant political consequences. This is the theme of Leonhardt’s book.
Leonhardt begins by praising the glory years after World War II, which were marked by government investments in infrastructure (e.g., the interstate highway system) and education (e.g.the GI Bill, the reaction to the Sputnik scare), the increasing power of labor unions, and improvement, albeit slow, on race issues. However, later in the last century and continuing in the current one, things shifted. Republican policies, especially starting with the Reagan Administration, hastened the decline of the labor movement, and generally benefitted the more wealthy. Government investment declined, with the idea that a “rough and tumble” capitalism with less government intervention would best serve the country. On the Democratic side, Leonhardt argues that there was an emphasis on social issues and the professional elites dominating the party paid too little attention to working class concerns such as crime and visible job losses due to immigration. Democrats de-emphasized the useful government role in the economy, with Clinton famously saying that “the era of big government is over.”
I generally agree with many of the points the book makes, but there are some important developments that I think it misses. For example, in tax policy, the book makes no mention of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which was a Reagan Administration initiative but enacted with bipartisan cooperation and enthusiasm among many Democrats in the Congress. This legislation strived to tax various sources of income equally and to make the Internal Revenue Code fairer. It has been mostly undone in subsequent years. For example, the current difference in tax rates for favored investment income, including long-term capital gains and most dividend income, and those for ordinary income is contrary to what the Tax Reform Act was trying to do. An analysis of the initial success and subsequent political failure of this initiative would have been useful.
In addition, Leonhardt could have provided more discussion concerning Social Security and Medicare. Much of the current public discussion is misleading, with, among other issues, sleight of hand being played regarding confusing government accounting issues. Leonhardt is well qualified to cut through the debates on these issues and to discuss the real motivations of those advocating changes to these programs.
Because the book is U.S. focused, it does not discuss that a growing disparity of income and the rise of the right have also been taking place in European countries. The postwar history of Europe is different from that of the U.S., as have been government policies. This suggests that something more general has been afoot in both continents fueling growing inequality of income and the migration of some of the working class from the left to the right. (In Western Europe, the postwar left had been much further to the left than in the U.S.) Of course, a comparative politics study of the rise of the right would be another book.
It is interesting to note that under President Biden, some of the “third-way” Democratic policies have been effectively jettisoned. Biden is in favor of using tariffs and tax incentives to promote a type of industrial policy favorable to the environment. Also, he is wary of the Chinese and is not averse to using tariffs and other measures. Leonhardt believes that this is warranted.
As far as whether the right will be successful, it is anyone’s bet about whether it will be in the U.S. for the short-term. Unlike other western countries, the U.S. has political arrangements that are currently helpful to the right, such as the unrepresentative U.S. Senate and the Electoral College. On the other hand, it has a political culture that is wary of the extremes. It is reasonable to think that ultimately the right will fail, but it may take longer than many of us would wish.
Even though, as I have argued, this book does not provide a complete view of how we have arrived at the current state of affairs, I can strongly recommend it for its analysis and the interesting history it presents. Moreover, it is well written and engaging. Whether or not one agrees with the author in general or on particular points, it provides the reader with a better understanding of how we have arrived at our current situation and provides information and analysis that should serve as fodder for thinking about current problems
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