David Brooks and Lou Dobbs Are Both Losing

David Brooks, Lou Dobbs, and their massive egos may not realize this, but we do not have to choose between their flawed economic visions for American and the world.

But their little Pinstripe Catfight this week does help illustrate the weaknesses in both their arguments.

Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, kicked things off Tuesday, declaring and lamenting that "Lou Dobbs is winning."

...his message is winning. Month by month the ideas that once prevailed on the angry fringe enter the mainstream and turn into conventional wisdom.

Once there was a majority in favor of liberal immigration policies, but apparently that’s not true anymore, at least if you judge by campaign rhetoric. Once there was a bipartisan consensus behind free trade, but that’s not true anymore, either...

...Once upon a time, the fact that hundreds of millions of people around the world are rising out of poverty would have been a source of pride and optimism. But if you listen to the presidential candidates, improvements in the developing world are menacing. Their speeches constitute a symphony of woe about lead-painted toys, manipulated currencies and stolen jobs.

And if Dobbsianism is winning when times are good, you can imagine how attractive it’s going to seem if we enter [a] serious recession ... the political climate could shift in ugly ways.

Last night on CNN, Dobbs eagerly exploited the opening:

Those elites appear terrified of truth and me ... None other than the house organ of the country's liberal establishment, "The New York Times," allowing one of the columnists to declare that "Lou Dobbs is Winning."

...Brooks and his fellow elitists can't quite admit reality when it's abundantly clear to everyone that their bankrupt ideas have failed, that the orthodoxy is not getting it done, and in fact, are contributing to the destruction of what's left of our middle class and the promise of this great nation for millions of Americans.

Corporatists, free traders, illegal aliens, open borders, amnesty advocates simply don't care about the quality of life for millions and millions of working men and women, our middle class in this country and those who aspire to it.

Those elites have bribed, intimidated political leaders into silence, spending $2 million on lobbying, even outright betrayal of working men and women and their families, and of course, rejecting the rule of the majority in favor of the elites who have, through some endowment of DNA, a superior view to all of the people of this country and all of it in the name of faith-based economics, so called free trade policies and of course amnesty, no matter what the will of the people.

However, Brooks and Dobbs are both wrong. The Dobbs message is losing.

Economic populism is certainly winning. As Robert Borosage observed after the 2006 elections, Democrats won with "populist campaigns, indicting Republicans for being in the pocket of the drug and oil lobbies ... The costs of Republican corruption fed into the economic pressures on working families. And this trumped the threat of higher taxes...."

Our news release announcing the results of an election night poll detailed the national direction: "By a margin of 17 percent, they consider government regulation more helpful than harmful ... And by two to one, they want government to protect jobs with fair trade policies and to take the lead in moving us towards alternative energy, rather than relying on private investors to make the choices."

Dobbs calls himself an "independent populist." But he did not lead the country in this populist direction. He's just seeking to ride the populist wave and link it to his long-standing anti-immigrant campaign.

He brazenly lumped in "illegal aliens" with "corporatists" who "don't care about the quality of life for millions and millions of working men and women, our middle class in this country and those who aspire to it."

Of course, those "illegals" who committed misdemeanors to come here are working men and women -- risking their lives, often suffering exploitation from those corporatists, just to make ends meet.

While Brooks thinks Dobbs is succeeding based on "campaign rhetoric," the fact is years of loud anti-immigrant rants, equating the exploiters and the exploited, has done nothing to reverse public opinion. The American people supported pathways to citizenship for illegal immigrants last year, and still do.

Further, Republican attempts to blunt the Democrats' populist campaign in 2006 with anti-immigrant ads backfired, driving away Latino votes without gaining any white votes.

While Dobbs sought to imply that Brooks' attack hailed from the "liberal establishment," the conservative Brooks was in fact trying to use Dobbs' ugly hatred to sully growing liberal populist sentiment.

In particular he insinuated that "free" trade is working it's magic to reduce global poverty.

Brooks doesn't mention that the United Nations (the folks leading the effort to eradicate poverty) is concerned that we won't meet the goal of cutting extreme poverty in half by 2015. What improvement we've seen is largely concentrated in China and India. We're not seeing much improvement in Africa and Latin America. (Sorry NAFTA.)

The UN supports the lowering of trade barriers for developing countries, but not blindly.

A UN review (PDF file) of the first 10 years of its poverty effort noted that, "many low-income countries that had pursued primarily growth-oriented development strategies found themselves facing rising inequality and
worsening poverty" and "[t]he higher the level of income inequality, the less impact economic growth has in reducing poverty at any given rate of growth." In turn, it concluded:

...policy decisions aimed at poverty reduction and eradication should also be targeted, rather than simply relying on the trickle-down effects of broad economic and social policies to promote economic growth
and development.

Meanwhile the Bush Administration and other developed nations have not followed through on pledges to the UN to provide sufficient aid to reach anti-poverty goals.

Brooks, unsurprisingly, has tried to spin Bush's stinginess as visionary, just as he spins the failures of current trade policies.

He pooh-poohs the massive influx of toxic toys, instead of offering alternative trade policies that lift up labor, environmental and safety standards and make the global economy work for everyone.

Which, along with stronger aid, would cut down on illegal immigration -- good jobs in home countries negate the need to risk lives in the desert crossing the border.

Brooks seeks to puncture populism by assuring that America's economic "fundamentals" are solid, never bothering to mention our own rising inequality and poverty (not even a mention of the mortgage crisis).

While Dobbs seeks to exploit populism to bolster his anti-immigrant campaign.

Neither offers a comprehensive populist economic vision, where our government stands for working families and the impoverished and against irresponsible, detrimental corporate behavior -- both in America and abroad.

Which is why neither Dobbs nor Brooks is winning.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future