REFORM, REFORM, REFORM!

We need a Teddy Roosevelt-style Reform Movement

Democrats are in the midst of a useful process of introspective re-evaluation of where the party went wrong and how to get back on track. While it is fashionable in some corners of the internet to discourage these efforts as pointless pontificating, I disagree. It is an important, organic process in which thousands of ideas and proposals get a public hearing. Some will be bad, some good, nearly all will be incomplete, but the process is healthy and worth doing. Now is the time for exploration and experimentation so that the party can find “product-market fit” in advance of the next election.

To that end, a few of us have been working together on an initiative to advance a more powerful economic message on the center-left. Voters tend to prefer Republicans over Democrats when it comes to the economy. This fact is an electoral anchor around the necks of Democrats and must be fixed if Democrats are going to get back to winning elections. As the great James Carville said, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Unfortunately, rebuilding economic trust is no easy task. Voters perceive Democrats as disproportionately focused on equity and fairness rather than wealth creation or hard work and personal responsibility. If your top priority, as a voter, is to be able to make more money for your family, you will likely prefer an ethos of economic freedom and growth rather than one of redistribution.

Four Objectives of a Better Economic Approach

For Democrats to convince voters that they are a better choice on economic matters, they need an approach that accomplishes four objectives:

1. Actually have an economic vision. Right now Democrats don’t. It’s a muddled mix of promoting free trade, being pro-labor, fighting corporate greed, taxing wealthy people, not taxing normal people, and supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is a laundry list, not an economic vision. Effective visions help voters instantly internalize the direction of a political movement. Laundry lists don’t. Without a clear, punchy vision, Democrats can never hope to change voter perceptions.

2. Stay true to the good parts of the Democratic brand. When corporations conduct a rebrand they do not completely disregard current or past brand realities. Rather, they integrate the most valuable aspects of the existing brand into a better, forward-looking one. Similarly, Democrats must keep the good parts of their economic brand, such as fairness-for-all, while jettisoning the harmful parts, such as vague talk of “equity” or anti-growth agendas.

3. Meet voters where they are. A punchy economic vision is useless if it is not popular with a majority of voters. For example, Bernie Sanders thinks capitalism needs to go. The clarity of his vision is excellent - and that clarity alone managed to galvanize huge support - but he cannot realistically build a winning majority with that vision. Democrats need a vision that voters actually want.

4. Lead with conviction. Whatever direction Democrats go, they need to do it with more conviction. Democrats have prioritized “agreeableness” to a fault. They are often so worried about not upsetting their own coalition that they fail to boldly advance good ideas. Democratic politicians would be well-served to be more mission-driven and less concerned with being inoffensive. Having mission-driven moral conviction tends to build voter support, not undermine it.

Teddy Roosevelt-Style Reform Movement

We believe that the best solution to this set of criteria is a Teddy Roosevelt-style economic reform movement.

This reform movement would reorient every aspect of the economy in service to upward mobility for the American worker. It is an optimistic approach that cherishes the American Dream, but recognizes that our nation is failing to fully realize that dream. It demands aggressive reform to make it happen.

We call it a Teddy Roosevelt-style reform movement because of the unique and fitting way that Roosevelt captured the nation’s imagination during times that share striking parallels to our current moment.

At the beginning of the last century, the nation was struggling with the effects of a sudden industrial revolution. Rural areas felt left behind. Income inequality was surging. Powerful mega corporations went unchecked. Foreign immigration was surging. The working class felt under siege. Into this stepped Teddy Roosevelt and his Square Deal reform movement. As a centrist reformer, he was not on the side of capital or labor, but on the side of fairness for “all people.”

Roosevelt led a national effort to make the economy work better for average Americans. He broke up monopolies, championed workers and women’s rights, enforced healthier standards in the meat packing industry, preserved public lands, and created smart regulations to ensure the economy best served the interests of all Americans.

He led this reform movement without becoming hostile to the private sector. He celebrated the successes of business leaders and their societal contribution:

“Great fortunes have been won by those who have taken the lead in this phenomenal industrial development, and most of these fortunes have been won not by doing evil, but as an incident to action which has benefited the community as a whole. Never before has material well-being been so widely diffused among our people.”

However, he also recognized that all this growth came with unfair downsides that must be addressed with a common sense approach:

“Of course, when the conditions have favored the growth of so much that was good, they have also favored somewhat the growth of what was evil. It is eminently necessary that we should endeavor to cut out this evil, but let us keep a due sense of proportion; let us not in fixing our gaze upon the lesser evil forget the greater good. The evils are real and some of them are menacing, but they are the outgrowth, not of misery or decadence, but of prosperity--of the progress of our gigantic industrial development. This industrial development must not be checked, but side by side with it should go such progressive regulation as will diminish the evils. We should fail in our duty if we did not try to remedy the evils, but we shall succeed only if we proceed patiently, with practical common sense as well as resolution, separating the good from the bad and holding on to the former while endeavoring to get rid of the latter.”

Roosevelt was able to do what so many of our politicians struggle to do: hold two concepts in their head at the same time without losing the central narrative. He championed a robust private sector that was made even better through progressive reforms.

The Importance of Reform

While Democrats cannot produce a Teddy Roosevelt on demand, the party can adopt the mission-driven reform movement that he championed.

The “reform” framing is particularly important in order to fix one of Democrats’ biggest brand problems: being seen as the “status quo” party. This is not an unwarranted perception. Democrats have been all-too-eager to play the role of protectors and defenders of institutions. The major problem with that approach is that voters have lost faith in institutions. They see an economy that seems to always favor the wealthy, rising unaffordability that adds insult to injury, and a government that seems incapable of moving fast and effectively to remedy these problems.

By becoming the “status quo” party, Democrats are implicitly - and sometimes explicitly - telling voters that their concerns are unwarranted and that everything is fine. That is untenable.

In contrast, a reform movement allows Democrats to hold on to the ideals of American institutions while recognizing that those institutions have come up short. It enables Democrats to be principled agents of change to reclaim the American Dream. This strategy will likely become even more appropriate as Trump continues to appoint unqualified loyalists throughout his administration.

Politics aside, the most important reason for a reform movement is that reform is actually what is needed right now. Big corporations do use regulations and market power to protect themselves and prevent change, which unfairly prevents innovation. Regulations have become excessively onerous and restrictive, slowing growth and deterring new business entrants. And the government has become ineffective at building big things or solving big problems.

We need a reform movement that spurs growth and unlocks opportunity for a new and broader set of Americans. It requires a good growth agenda that grows the economic pie while ensuring that growth comes from the bottom-up.

As Teddy Roosevelt, himself, said, “These sentences should be carefully pondered by those men, often very good men, who forget that constructive change offers the best method of avoiding destructive change; that reform is the antidote to revolution; and that social reform is not the precursor but the preventive of socialism.”