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Talking with a senior citizen about the 2010 midterm election, I was intrigued by her agreement with me; my views are perhaps too unusual for widespread agreement.  We were both just shaking our heads on how the local republican US House candidate won at 63 or 65% even though so many people disapprove of Congress.  I looked at the NYT map of the US House districts and realized that many incumbents won in spite of the fact that only something like 12% of Americans approve of the job Congress has been doing. Strangely, many more Americans are voting for their incumbents.  odd. Perhaps the voters are simply creatures of habit. The senior citizen and I were shaking our heads not only because of this discordance, but also because local unemployment is so high and yet the anti-government (anti-unemployment-compensation) party candidate won the US House seat so handily.  Moreover, we were amazed that people have apparently ignored the need for more or better regulation—a need evinced by the financial crisis of 2008 and the BP explosion of 2010.

Voting for the de-regulation party (presumably because of the “out of control spending”…even as Bush spent $1 tillion of borrowed money on his wars and $800 billion on the bank bailout).  Obama’s only real spending was $800 billion on economic stimulus (which admittedly should have been for a CCC jobs program rather than paid to infrastructure contractor companies). I contend that Obama should have cut checks to the unemployed and to home-owners under water and in foreclosure (preventing foreclosures would have been good not only for the banks’ toxic balance sheets, but also for the supply/demand of the housing market!), rather than to infrastructure contracting companies and banks. Even so, Obama’s weakness does not justify voting for the de-regulation party. Voters should have been primarily oriented to the big picture … the failure of extant government regulation … and thus the need to strengthen regulation rather than to get rid of regulation … as evinced by the financial crisis and the BP explosion. The complicity of private enterprise in these two catastrophies was utterly lost on the voters who supported the Republican surge in 2010.  They may well have had other reasons, including how Obama spent the bailout/stimulus money. However, I contend that those voters missed the big picture: the big banks and big oil companies (as well as the health insurance companies) need to be regulated more, not less.

The fact that we almost lost our financial system and the Gulf of Mexico makes “But I’ve always voted Republican” not good enough.  Not good enough at all.  I suppose it is the politics/election/voting as usual that stands out for me as particularly odious this time around. I am appealing not for the Democratic Party (as its leaders have sold out to the banks, oil companies, and defense contractors), but, rather, to the public good.  To be sure, $13 trillion in US Government debt is itself a systemic risk evincing a severe imbalance in the American system of governance. However, voting to cut spending (after $1.3 trillion has already been spent on the wars—focusing on the unemployed) while urging tax cuts for the rich demonstrates a partial (or inconsistent) approach to taking the deficit seriously.  Given the size of the deficit in 2010, both spending cuts (including the military!) and tax increases are necessary.  The competing desire not to depress the economy mitigates both spending cuts and tax increases.  Even given the need to juggle these competing objectives (i.e., reducing the deficit and not putting a drag on the economy), I contend that the primary concern ought have been what lessons we could and should have drawn from the financial crisis of 2008 and the BP explosion in 2010—in other words, that business is more “the problem” than is government. I submit that the primary lesson should have been that we ought not to rely so much on private companies and the market mechanism—that government regulation is both currently flawed and necessary.  A de-regulation party is not interested in strengthening regulation or its enforcement because business wants less regulation.

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 and the near loss of the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, electoral politics as usual look banal in this context; even the perennial “tax and spend” debate looked small in 2010 relative to the near misses we had experienced in the previous two years.  Obama’s agenda was a mere speck in comparison to the near catastrophies we had witnessed.  The primary lesson I draw from the midterm elections of 2010 is that too many voters were still “voting as usual,” like cows chewing the cud.  The senior citizen with whom I spoke said, “Well, the fact that people have always voted a certain way … well, that’s just not good enough now.” I replied, “I completely agree.”

The Founding Fathers who fashioned the US Constitution believed that a virtuous and educated electorate is vital for a republic to be sustained.  This requirement is perhaps nowhere more salient than in how the voters react to systemic risk occasioned by near-catastrophies. Put another way, had it not been for government, the near-catastrophies would most likely have become full-fledged catastrophies (especially in the case of the financial system in September, 2008).  After that crisis, Alan Greenspan admitted in Congressional testimony that he had realized that his laissez-faire market philosophy contained a fatal flaw (involving volitility).  It is sad indeed that the de-regulation, big-business party surged less than two years after Greenspan’s comment.  Given the crisis of September, 2008, and the ensuring recession, the 2010 midterm elections should have been like the 1932 election rather than the 1994 election. That it was not indicates to me that lessons were not learned.  Sadly, at least in the American context, averting catastrophe is not sufficient for lessons to be learned.  Perhaps it is only human nature to act on minor issues and overlook the big picture; electoral campaigns are certainly oriented this way. Even so, voting for a de-regulation and big-business party simply does not make sense just months after BP and Halliburton cut corners to save time and money at the expense of safety (discounting the destruction of the Gulf) and just over a year after big banks created fraudulent mortgages with hidden ARM rate increases and went on to sell securities and allowing some of them to be rated AAA. I do not believe that memories can be even so short. Perhaps big business has manipulated the American campaigns without us realizing it. If so, we are complicit nonetheless for not recognizing it and just saying no.