Neil Stockley

Obama, the debt deal and the tragedy of Generation Jones

This week’s Economist slams “western” leaders for failing to provide the strong leadership that is needed during an economic crisis.  The paper draws parallels between the state of the “west” today and Japan’s political paralysis in the 1990s.

In the early days of the economic crisis the West’s leaders did a reasonable job of clearing up a mess that was only partly of their making.  Now the politicians have become the problem. In both America and Europe, they are exhibiting the sort of behaviour that could turn a downturn into stagnation. The West’s leaders are not willing to make tough choices; and everybody—the markets, the leaders of the emerging world, the banks, even the voters—knows it.

Later, the editorial gets more personal.

Sometimes crises beget bold leadership. Not, unfortunately, now. Japan has mostly been led by a string of weak consensus-seekers. For all their talents, both Mr Obama and Mrs Merkel are better at following public opinion than leading it.

The observation reinforces my (and others’) suspicion that politicians from Generation Jones are too ready to strike a bargain when they should give a lead.  Worse, they may come up short when political courage is called for. 

President Barack Obama, born in 1961, and chancellor Angela Merkel, born in 1954, are vintage Jonesers.  So is Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron (born 1966), who has made a string of policy U-turns.  So, for that matter, is the former Australian PM Kevin Rudd, (born 1957).  Last year, Rudd made a fatal flip—flop, over the carbon tax, and that led to his defenestration.

Let’s stick with Barack Obama, the most prominent Joneser and the one in the news right now.  The political crisis over America’s debt ceiling is not of the president’s own making; far from it.  The Economist leader castigates the House Republicans for their recklessness over the debt and their delusional approach to fiscal policy.  The paper correctly lays more of the blame for the impasse at their door than with the White House.

But President Obama has now caved in and agreed to a debt ceiling deal that contains large spending cuts and no promise of revenue enhancements.  During the crisis, he has not set key principles and kept to them (for instance, no tying the debt ceiling to deficit reduction).  He has allowed the Republicans to frame the big issue as “cutting the deficit”.  Worse, a lot of the time, it’s been unclear what his bottom line is, what he values most, what he’s really there for. 

Last week, Elizabeth Drew argued convincingly that Obama is a weak negotiator, a “pushover”, and that he has acted this way because his re-election strategy is predicated on the questionable notion that in 2012 independent, centrist voters will reward him for making spending cuts. 

The president has been too ready to believe that the Republicans will “do the right thing” and that he should look for compromise, in order to appeal to the better angels of their nature.  The truth is, the Republicans have been playing a tough, ruthless game. They have spotted a chance to realise their ambitions to slim the US government right down. They also know that a weakened president, beset by economic gloom, can be more easily beaten in 2012.

One explanation for Mr Obama’s naïve approach to negotiating with implacable opponents concerns his age – in other words, the generation he comes from.  Bruce Bartlett argues that Obama has not had the tough sorts of life experiences that presidents from the World War II generation went through.  They learned the hard way that the key to dealing with tough, intransigent opponents is to always work from a position of strength.  Yet President Obama has not lived through similar experiences. (Hat tip: Paul Krugman)

Here’s another explanation.  The president has been moulded by a more ambiguous political age.  He and his Generation Jones cohorts in other “western” countries have seen the collapse of communism and state socialism.  They have also witnessed first-hand the crises of post-war Keynesianism and the triumph of neo-liberalism.  They have watched Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, baby boomers from moderate left parties, make their peace with the legacies of Thatcher and Reagan.  It worked: Clinton and Blair led their parties back into office and kept them there.  And Jonesers have seen Anglo-American capitalism start to evolve and adapt, however slowly and imperfectly, to new challenges, like the environmental crisis. 

Given this cocktail of influences, the Jonesers were never going to go all out for “big change”.  Still, they should be able to explain who they are and what they stand for.   And they should not be unable to deal with opponents who, by being more ideological, more political and more ruthless, can shift rightwards the “middle ground” that most of the Jones leaders, including Obama, instinctively search out. 

As a fully paid up member of Generation Jones, I hope that our leaders won’t end up being remembered simply as political technicians whose worldviews could most easily be described in shades of grey.  Or, as the well meaning temporisers who could be trusted to find the compromise solution to the big questions that were framed by others.  But I’m not holding my breath. 

Analytical, pragmatic revolutionaries who see both sides - understanding the leaders from Generation Jones

Do you really know what you’re getting from Generation Jones - the people who now rule much of the world?

Earlier this week, Cari Oke (a fellow Joneser) commented on how leaders from our generation are more likely than our forebears to  strive for the greatest possible agreement when political choices have to be made.

As Gen Jonesers hover on either side of the half-century mark, are we seeing the telltale signs of our empathetic natures? …  President Obama, born in 1961, is well known for his ability to see many sides of an issue and his belief that two sides can be brought together with a little help from a friend. Supreme Court nominee and Joneser Elena Kagan, born in 1960, continues to defy efforts at labeling. The best anyone can do is to call her a moderate.

For years, I’ve noticed and approved of the way “liberal-left” politicians from Generation Jones try  seriously to follow political principles that are once “idealistic” and  “pragmatic”. The obvious example, going right back to the “neoliberal” triumphs of the 1980s, are the concerted efforts to reconcile “social equity” with “economic efficiency”.  Another example is the concerted effort that has been made over the last decade or so to synthesise “economic prosperity” and “environmental sustainability”.

But then I am, after all, a paid-up member of Generation Jones who has supported the New Zealand Labour Party and now the Liberal Democrats.  And that may be one reason why I am more prepared than some Liberal Democrats to cut Nick Clegg (born 1967) some slack as he tries to frame the coalition government’s tough fiscal policies as progressive, as well as responsible.   In today’s Guardian, Nick cites his conversion over fiscal consolidation as an example of accountable politics.  Nick even says:

“I am a revolutionary but I am also a pragmatist.”

The latest example of the Jonesers’ empathetic, thoughtful but somehow ambiguous brand of politics is Australia’s new prime minister, Julia Gillard.  Born in 1961, she is the latest member of Generation Jones to take power.   Her competence and professionalism are not seriously disputed.  Nor is her ability to consult or to engage in serious dialogue on tricky policy issues.  Sounding like a true Joneser, she has promised:

“We will consult, listen and encourage people to give their best and we will work through the nation’s policy challenges with a calm, methodical and analytical approach.”

In his first weeks in the top job, prime minister Gillard has cut a deal with the mining industry over resources taxation – trying to make the government’s “fairness” rhetoric work alongside the industry’s needs. But she has come across as less than forthright over border protection and the processing of refugees.  And the commentators are now asking Gillard to explain what she really stands for and reminding us that you win elections by setting out a clear path to the future.

There’s an even bigger question around Julia Gillard – and Barack Obama and Nick Clegg for that matter.  Even if another of Cari Oke’s observations about my generation sounds a little tongue-in-cheek, it still makes for uncomfortable reading.

While watching the implosion of Joneser General Stanley McChrystal’s career, one has to wonder if the Generation Jones ability to see both sides also allows us to play both sides. Does this characteristic come back to bite us in our once bell bottom clad butts? I could argue either way.

I hope that it doesn’t bite us anywhere.  I am waiting and hoping for Barack Obama, Nick Clegg (though he’s a deputy PM in a coalition government) and Julia Gillard to use their times in the sun to deliver a politics that is new and different in its substance.  A competent, empathetic style of governance is most welcome. Using it to deliver the politics of the “soft heart” and the “hard head”, based on a more environmentally sustainable economy, would be great. 

A few more reasons why my generation isn’t saving the world

Over on Huffington Post, Will Bunch has an interesting piece  about Generation Jones, the cohort of people born between 1954 and 1965.  He argues that Generation Jones is coming to power all over the world. But he’s not satisfied that we’re trying hard enough to solve its problems.  Bunch believes that pragmatism has won out over idealism because our underlying anxiety about careers and personal economic security has left Jonesers with an innate aversion to taking risks.

The Next Greatest Generation? Hardly. The reality is that Generation Jones is showing up just in time, when the planet really does need saving — and we are blowing it, big time. The challenges faced not just by the United States but by the entire world — global warming, a deadly addiction to fossil fuels, governments addled by debt yet unable to stop spending billions on weapons — require bold, boat-rocking risk-takers, people who have looked into the abyss of humankind and are not afraid to make daring moves.

 

This is simply not my Generation Jones … We are careerists — clinging to our conviction that we can change the world not by forceful ideas but by the mere force of our own often-coddled personalities, even if the ideas and passions that once animated our humanity have been buried under pages of resumes and cover letters. 

Ouch.  Bunch goes on to describe Barack Obama and his new supreme court nominee, Eliza Kagan, as case studies of our generation’s cautious careerism and reluctance. And he wonders if the progressive ideals of Obama, Kagan other Jonsesers have now lain dormant for so long that they might never rise again.

I have argued previously that the leaders from Generation Jones need to start putting their political cards on the table and showing what they stand for and what they are going to do with their time in the sun.  That applies to leaders from the moderate left, like Barack Obama and Australia’s prime minister Kevin Rudd, and to those from the moderate right, like New Zealand’s prime minister, John Key.  All have been criticized, including by their own sides, for not being bold or visionary enough.

So I can relate a lot of what Bunch says.   I grew up in New Zealand and not the US. He may be exaggerating parts of his argument for effect.  Yet I can relate to his basic argument. When I was at secondary school, in the late 1970s, the senior teachers gave us stern lectures about how gruesome the job market was going to be.  They were correct.  By the time we got to university, unemployment had reached levels unknown since the great depression of the 1930s.  The two oil shocks added in inflationary pressures and made a grim economic cocktail.  But in my home country’s case, Bunch may be going too far when he claims that for Generation Jones, “progressive ideals were buried”.   For instance, most of our Generation Jonesers supported the ban on nuclear warships visiting New Zealand.

And I suspect that it’s more than just the graduate job market of the 1980s that has made the leaders from Generation Jones wary of taking big political risks and reluctant to embark on big policy projects.   The broader sweeps of politics and the fates of previous risk takers and visionaries have been important too.

Take Barack Obama.  He came of age during the triumph of Reagan and witnessed the death of post-war American liberalism.   American politics was fundamentally transformed during the 1980s and Bill Clinton did not try to turn the clock back – or forwards.

Kevin Rudd would have seen Gough Whitlam’s Labor government come to office in 1972 promising big shake-ups, especially in social and foreign policy.  But Whitlam and co flamed out after just three years.  When Labor returned, in 1983, they were led by Bob Hawke.  Hawke’s government achieved a great deal, especially in the economic areas.  But he branded his administration as reformist rather than radical; Hawke’s leadership style was based on the quest for consensus rather than promoting grand ideological designs. When his successor, Paul Keating, tried to paint big pictures, Australians just wanted the family snapshot.   In 1996, they showed Labor the door – and Rudd himself failed in his first attempt to enter parliament.

His opponents used to mock John Key’s lack of interest in New Zealand’s turbulent politics of the early 1980s.  But he and his Joneser senior ministers remember all too well what happened in the 1990s, when their National Party abandoned the safety of the conservative middle ground and undertook major cuts in social spending and broke the promises they had made to superannuitants (pensioners).  The fourth National government saw its popularity plummet and at the 1993 election saw nearly all of its huge majority melt away.  For many years, the memories of those years provided their opponents with a powerful political weapon.

Now for the big questions: what have Obama, Rudd, Key and the other generation Jonesers who are running the world  learned from their predecessors’ sometimes bitter experiences?  How do they plan to apply that knowledge to the massive challenges they face – most notably in saving our environment for future generations?  And how are their leadership styles different from those of the political leaders that Generation Jones watched on TV in the 1970s and 1980s?

I have a sneaking fear that, in different ways, they don’t know the answer to the first two questions and that the answer to the second is based more on electoral tactics – polls and focus groups – than a clear sense of political ideals and policy strategies. 

Let’s hope this concern is misplaced.  There may be a new cause for hope.  The UK has a new coalition government, whose prime minister, deputy prime minister and half of cabinet were born between 1954 and 1965.  Perhaps they will show us what my generation is really all about. 

The lightsabre passes to a new generation of leaders

This week, we saw a real British revolution: the handover of power from a Labour government to the Conservative-Liberal Democrat adminstration, this country’s first coalition government since World War II. 

But another transition took place this week, that may prove to be every bit as important.   The baby boomers’ generation, embodied by the outgoing Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown (born 1951) and the party’s deputy leader, Harriett Harman (born 1950), were sent packing.  

In their place came Conservative prime minister, David Cameron (born 1966) and Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg (born 1967).  They are both representatives of what the American commentator Jonathan Pontell calls Generation Jones. This cohort was born between 1955 and 1967 and they are the real children and not the “flower children” of the 1960s, part of a demographic bridge that came between the “boomers” and Generation X, born between 1968 and 1980.   

Pontell  describes Generation Jones as:

 

practical idealists, forged in the fires of social upheaval while too young to play a part.

Yes, the UK has cabinet government, not a presidential system and some of the new coalition’s key players and senior office holders are not part of Generation Jones.  The chancellor, George Osborne (born 1971) is a GenXer.   The business secretary, Vince Cable from the Liberal Democrats, was born during World War II.  Tory “big beast” Ken Clarke (born 1940) predates them all. 

But the demographic tilt is unmistakeable.  The foreign secretary, William Hague was born in 1961.  The home secretary, Theresa May was born in 1956, education secretary Michael Gove in 1967 and the defence secretary, Liam Fox, in 1961.   On the Liberal Democrat side, the chief secretary to the Treasury, David Laws was born in 1965.

And the new parliament is dominated by Generation Jones.  Dods Research has  found that 291 of the 649 MPs elected so far were born between 1955 and 1967. 

These UK politicians join other Jonesers who have reached the top of politics in recent years: Frances’s president Nicolas Sarkozy (born 1955), Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel (born 1954), Australia’s prime minister Kevin Rudd (born 1957), London’s mayor Boris Johnson (born 1964) and New Zealand’s prime minister John Key (born 1961).

What marks these leaders out is their efforts to leave behind old political battles, and, perhaps, core ideologies.  Sarkozy would rather that France forgot all about Paris in May 1968.  Key was too young to protest against the Vietnam war and, astonishingly, once said that he could not remember whether he was for or against the 1981 Springbok tour.  And, of course, Barack Obama offered Americans the opportunity to move on from the culture wars that started in the 1960s.  He came to prominence by declaring, “there is no red state America, there is no blue state America; there is the United States of America”.

But whether they stand on the moderate left or the moderate right, the leaders from Generation Jones have been less clear about defining what they stand for, as opposed to what they want to cast aside.

The UK’s new leaders seem to fit the Jones pattern.   David Cameron defined himself by breaking with Thatcherism and insisting that there is such a thing as society after all. Nick Clegg is the first leader of the Liberal Democrats who has not belonged to either the Liberal Party or the SDP.  Much of the analysis of the UK’s new coalition government has focussed on the prevailing “pragmatism” of Cameron and Clegg.  [Click here, here and here.] 

Yet there may be more to Britain’s Jonesers than pragmatic politics; the “new politics” is not value-free.  The May 2010 issue of Prospect magazine features a lengthy article about what David Cameron stands for.  The writer, Wendell Stevenson, concludes that Cameron is motivated by the need to serve and to lead but has not yet formed a clear vision of where he wants to take the country.  Cameron can point to a big idea: the “big society”, based on community and volunteerism, even if he has not been able to explain what it really means.

Nick Clegg has written and spoken extensively about:

a progressive politics [that is]  about empowerment, reducing dependency on the state, increasing social mobility through individual empowerment, releasing power from the centre politically …

Many times he has described his mission as to “change politics and change Britain.”

As an active Liberal Democrat who was born in 1962 – a Jones year — I am, of course, biased about all of this.  But no, I don’t think it’s not quite as simple as, “my leader has ideals and the Tory doesn’t”.  The two leaders seem be in broad agreement about the sorts of ideas outined above, and the experience of office will test them both, and force them to re-evaluate and re-think their ideas and their political strategies and tactics.  For now,we need to be clear about how we got to this point.

After the election resulted in a hung parliament, Cameron reached out to Nick and offered to begin talks aimed at sharing power in government.  They succeeded; the Lib Dems did very well, despite coming to the table with a poor hand.  Whatever anyone thinks of the new alliance between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, nobody can doubt that for both parties, it’s a risk of historic dimensions.  Both Cameron and Clegg have put themselves and their parties on the line to make the “new politics” a reality.

Practical idealism, or what?

Welcome to the age of Generation Jones.