An Ideological Criticism of Bill Clinton Book

Essay for Rhetoric 2

Clinton-Keynes v. Trickle-Down Tea: An Ideological Criticism of Bill Clinton’s Plan to Get America Back in the Future Business

November 2011

Copyright 2011 Harper Nicole Anderson
If Barack Obama manages to be re-elected in 2012, he will become only the second Democratic president since FDR to be elected to a second term. (Bill Clinton was the first.) Perhaps, that is what Clinton had in mind--helping Obama win re-election-- when he wrote his recent book: Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy. Although he dedicated the book to “To the millions of good people who are looking for the chance to be part of America’s recovery and their own,” he might just as well have dedicated it to Barack Obama. For this ideological criticism analysis, I will focus on the book’s final chapter: “How Do We Get Back in the Future Business?”
How Policymakers Frame an Issue is Key
For many years, progressive critics have criticized the way mainstream Democrats have framed policy. (Conservatives argue that forward thinking individuals now call themselves “progressives” only because the right has managed to reframe the term liberal as a pejorative: big government, big spending, and big taxing liberals.) Only recently, perhaps buoyed by the Occupy Movement, has Obama begun to welcome the right’s hatred and call the Republicans out for their obstructionist tactics. While it is true that conservatives have expertly framed their issues over the years--tax and spend liberals, Second Amendment Rights, pro-life versus pro-abortion, the sanctity of marriage and so on—Bill Clinton, although not a true progressive by any measure—is one of the few Democrats that has successfully promoted centrist and center-left issues by framing the issues properly. Therefore, my rhetorical question is: In what ways can a rhetor effectively frame issues in order to persuade his audience that an existing hegemony should be reversed? I would argue that “framing” is one of the most essential elements of political rhetoric and one of the primary reasons for the conservative movement’s success beginning with the Reagan Revolution: a movement that has witnessed millions of Americans voting against their own economic self-interest. We will talk more about the hegemony of “trickle-down economics” but, first, let us look at framing.
Framing versus Engagement
In her 2007 study “Issue Framing and Engagement: Rhetorical Strategy,” Jennifer Jerit does not dismiss the importance of framing when she writes, “Conventional wisdom and scholarly research indicate that to win a policy debate political actors should frame the issue strategically.” However, she argues that engaging with one’s political opponents is even more important. After analyzing the 1993-1994 health care debate between the Clinton Administration and proponents of the status quo, Jerit concludes that the analysis shows “that engagement was more effective at increasing support for reform than framing.” Regardless of that conclusion, Jerit provides considerable evidence to support the counter argument. Just like my own favorite example that the term “climate change” should be used instead of “global warming,” Jeret points to an example of how Democrats and Republicans frame government spending: “Republicans speak in general terms, which tends to elicit a negative public reaction. Democrats, for their part, emphasize the specific groups that will benefit from federal programs.” She proposes that even though “new evidence shows the limits of framing, few scholars deny its ability to alter public opinion.” (Jeret 1) While the debate over whether framing is more important than engagement or, for that matter, any other rhetorical strategy, will not be settled here, suffice it to say that cursory research uncovered a multitude of studies that emphasize the importance of framing: “Framing and the public agenda: Media effects on the importance of the federal budget deficit,” (Jaspersona et al) “ Values, Framing, and Citizens’ Thoughts about Policy Issues: Effects on Content and Quantity,”(Brewer and Gross) and “Framing responsibility for political issues: The case of poverty.” (Iyengar)
For this analysis, I have chosen the method of ideological criticism, which, according to Foss “is rooted in basic conceptualizations about ideologies and how they function.” Fosses writes that “multiple patterns of belief exist in any culture” and have the “potential to be manifest in rhetorical artifacts.” (210) However, certain ideologies become dominant over and repress others. These ideologies become hegemonic. While I was growing up, men went to work while women stayed home. To illustrate how engrained this “ideology” was, I will relate an old riddle.
A man is involved in a fatal crash in which his father is killed. He arrives at the hospital where the chief surgeon is called to perform emergency surgery but the surgeon, recognizing the young man says, “I cannot operate on this man, he is my son.” This riddle often baffles those of my (the baby boom) generation as the surgeon, of course, is the young man’s mother. My generation assumed that the doctor must be a man: that that people accepted without question the fact that only a man could be a doctor constitutes a construct of hegemony.
The Hegemony of 1896
Before the Keynesian hegemony of the post FDR, pre-Reagan era of American politics, a Republican hegemony existed. In a brilliant and prophetic 1984 Robert Reich essay on Reaganomics, Clinton’s Treasury Secretary blasted Republican policymakers for ignoring the poor and the working class by pushing what later became known as “trickle-down” economics, writing that middle class will see nearly zero earnings growth and “the poorest one-fifth will suffer a decline of almost 10 percent, even including welfare and food stamps. Relatively speaking, the rich are growing much richer” Although not articulating it, Reich seems to be suggesting a new Republican hegemony pointing out that a similar one existed from 1896 until 1932:
This century's early Republican hegemony lasted until 1932. The "system of 1896," as Walter Dean Burnham calls it, referring to William McKinley's victory over William Jennings Bryan, destroyed two-party competition in much of the United States. for over thirty-five years the Republicans completely dominated New England and the Midwest, an area comprising just over half of the nation’s population at the beginning of the century and almost all of its industrial and financially generated wealth. Under this hegemony, poor and working-class Americans had little incentive to vote. Their votes would make little difference. The entry of poorer Americans into the electorate in 1932 was due to acute economic hardship and the promise of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that he would give them a new deal.

Reich said he deplored Democratic infighting, then went on to say:
But perhaps a greater danger is that Democrats will fail to separate themselves clearly from Republican economics, as they failed to do in 1980. The present economic boom is no boon to many of the poor and working-class voters not swarming into the electorate. The values at the heart of Republican economics have not changed. The values at the heart of Democratic economics, too, must not change.

Until Clinton and at times, Barack Obama, no Democrat—at least not any capable of being elected president-- had been able to articulate policy that separated Democratic ideals with Republican dogma as the left sadly watched as the term liberal became a pejorative and the middle class and working poor saw its income steadily erode.
Today, the hegemony that dominates the American political economic landscape is the 2011 version of supply side Reaganomics. Twenty first century trickle-down though has proved to be much more onerous than any its previous iterations. Today, virtually every elected Republican office holder in the country is forced to sign Grover Norquist’s “no tax pledge,” a pledge that promises never to vote for any measure that would increase taxes. So while the so-called 1%, those who have benefited from this hegemony continue to prosper, everyone else has seen their real income decline. And, according to Barack Obama’s December Osawatomie speech, some of the 1% pay 1% or less in taxes. Of course, he repeated the Warren Buffett story, that is, Warren Buffet’s secretary pays less in taxes than Buffet does.
Some might make the argument that Clinton halted the trickle-down hegemony when he was in the White House from 1993-2000. Having been able to deliver budget surpluses while raising taxes and overseeing one of the greatest economic expansions in American history, Clinton certainly stalled trickle-down, but he did not reverse it. Eight years of Bush and three years of Obama have seen supply side economics as strong as ever, even Obama’s much maligned-by-the-right stimulus package was chock full of tax cuts. Some astute readers might be thinking if Clinton could not reverse the trend while he served as president for eight years, how can he do it by writing a book? Well, of course, he cannot. However, his rhetoric might persuade enough people, including Barack Obama, to change the dialogue in Washington. So we will look at Clinton’s rhetoric after this brief biographical sketch.
The first facts that stood out to me when I first researched biographical data on William Jefferson Clinton, born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946 was that his biological father died three months before Clinton was born and that the 42nd president was the first Democrat to be elected to a second term since FDR. Although I was aware of the latter fact, I am rather embarrassed, being a History Major, that I was not already aware of his father dying and later, at twelve, taking the name of his stepfather, Roger Clinton (William J. Clinton)
The official White House biography describes Clinton’s tenure as a time when “the U.S. enjoyed more peace and economic wellbeing than at any time in its history.” The unnamed biographer credits Clinton with “the lowest unemployment rate in modern times, the lowest inflation in 30 years, the highest home ownership in the country's history, dropping crime rates in many places, and reduced welfare rolls.” The site also credits Clinton with proposing a balanced budget and delivering a budget surplus. (William J. Clinton)
After the failure in his second year of a huge program of health care reform, Clinton shifted emphasis, declaring "the era of big government is over." Besides welfare reform, he “sought legislation to upgrade education, to protect jobs of parents who must care for sick children, to restrict handgun sales, and to strengthen environmental rules.” (William J. Clinton)
When young Bill was in high school, where he excelled as a student, he had the opportunity to meet JFK, which led to his desire to enter public service. Clinton later graduated from Georgetown where he was awarded a Rhodes Scholar and attended Oxford in 1968. After receiving a Yale law degree he returned, in 1973, to Arkansas and entered politics. Clinton graduated from Georgetown University and in 1968 won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. He received a law degree from Yale University in 1973, and entered politics in Arkansas. (William J. Clinton)
After being defeated in a bid for Arkansas’s Third Congressional District, he married Hillary Rodham, a Yale Law School graduate. In 1978, Bill Clinton successfully ran for governor but was denied a second term, until he ran again in 1986 and was elected to another term. Chelsea, the couple’s only child was born in 1980. In 1992, Clinton was elected president and won his second term. In 1998, he was impeached by the House when Republicans claimed that he obstructed justice in his Grand Jury testimony concerning his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The Senate exonerated Clinton. After leaving office in 2000, Clinton has worked on a number of altruistic projects such as aid to victims of Katrina, the Tsunami and the earthquake in Haiti. (William J. Clinton)
William Jefferson Clinton, in his introduction, says that he wrote Back to Work because he still believes in the American ideal that people can work hard and make a nice living and provide an even better one for their children. He relates his own working experience detailing how he had several menial jobs—he started mowing lawns at twelve—working his way through college and law school. He talks about how heartbroken he is to see so many hardworking Americans in such desperate straits.
I came of age believing that, no matter what happened, I would always be able to support myself. It became a crucial part of my identity and drove me to spend a good portion of my adult life trying to give other people the chance to do the same thing. It’s heartbreaking to see so many people trapped in a web of enforced idleness, deep debt, and gnawing self-doubt. We have to change that. And we can.

He ends the introduction be declaring that America needs to get into the “future business.” Before turning to the chapter of analysis, we will take a brief look at what preceded it, starting with the title.
So let us deconstruct the title: Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy. “Back to Work” suggests at least two concepts. That Clinton has come back to work—I recall that a book reviewer calls his act of wring the book as “passive aggressive”—to help Obama frame and promote the center left agenda in a more efficient manner. Secondly, we need to get the country back to work. We need “smart government” answers the ant-government zealots. As well, everything these days needs to be smart. Smart cars. Smart phones. Smart technology. Smart government. And. Of course, “it’s the economy, stupid!” Indeed, a strong one is desired. Now let us look briefly at what leads up to the chapter of analysis.
In “Our Thirty Year Antigovernment Obsession,” (Chapter One) Clinton takes on the Tea Party—but generally avoids calling them that, framing them as anti-government activists or zealots--who attempted to blame the 2008 economic meltdown on big government and too much regulation. Clinton not only declares that that was not the case but proposes a nearly polar opposite argument: that the meltdown resulted from the banks being overleveraged and that a full scale depression was averted because the government acted and that the stimulus worked, saving the domestic auto industry and keeping unemployment levels from skyrocketing.
Chapter Two, “The 2010 Election and Its Place in the History of Antigovernment Politics” attempts to explain the Democratic loss of the House and continues to frame the Tea Party not as patriots but as antigovernment obstructionists. Clinton, then justifies “why we need government’ in the third chapter. The author then tackles the debt and, in chapter five, addresses the current state of the economy compared with the past.
In Chapter 6, the chosen one which I will now begin to analyze, the author tells Americans “we need to get our game face on.” “Armchair quarterback” politicians often use sports metaphors as framing, frequently “second-guessing” outcomes by engaging in “Monday morning quarterbacking.” An AP article discussed how the Bush administration loved to frame nearly everything using sports metaphors. While Bush, soon to leave office, said he will “sprint to the finish,” the administration defended its inability to address climate change: “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” (Associated Press) Clinton seems less enamored of the sports metaphor than Bush was, rarely employing them. That is probably a good thing as many Americans probably still suffer from “sports metaphor malaise” after eight years of Bush.
Clinton then immediately stirs patriotic feelings by framing Americans as underdogs and overachievers. “Critics have been betting on America’s demise for over two hundred years.” They scoffed at George Washington’s lack of military expertise, called Lincoln a “baboon” and later assumed that Khrushchev and the Soviet Union would bury us. Clinton--echoing a Pogo like philosophy, “we have met the enemy and the enemy is us”--posits that no one can take the future away from us, “but we can take it away from ourselves.” Again, he frames, names and blames the Tea Party: “There is simply no evidence that we can succeed in the twenty-first century with an anti-government strategy.” (Italicized by author) Clinton then lists a number of successful government interventions. He writes about FDR’s New Deal and how the US shed isolationist tendencies and mobilized for two world wars. The economic boom continued after the war as taxes remained high and led to the creation of the world’s greatest middle class until it began to unravel in the Eighties when “we began to organize our politics around the idea that government was the problem.” Without naming it, this passage evokes “American Exceptionalism,” which grew out of Manifest Destiny, concepts that are identified more with the American Right than the Left. This illustrates Clinton masterful use of triangulation. Former Clinton adviser Dick Morris explains the concept succinctly:
Take the best from each party’s agenda, and come to a solution somewhere above the positions of each party. So from the left, take the idea that we need day care and food supplements for people on welfare. From the right, take the idea that they have to work for a living, and that there are time limits. But discard the nonsense of the left, which is that there shouldn’t be work requirements; and the nonsense of the right, which is you should punish single mothers. Get rid of the garbage of each position, that the people didn’t believe in; take the best from each position; and move up to a third way. And that became a triangle, which was triangulation. (Koenig)

So by stirring the reader’s patriotism in an effort to evoke American Exceptionalism juxtaposed with the liberal concept that government is the solution not the problem, Clinton successfully “triangulates” the issue.
The rhetor goes on to say that, in 2010, the government was taken over by a group of “more radical, not conservative” anti-government activists. Clinton posits that the American people did not want radical change, they “just thought they were getting too much government from the Democrats and wanted balance,” and suggests that the Democrats and Republicans might, as in 1996, decide to work together.
In order to get people back to work, Clinton writes that the U.S. should put the $4 trillion that is being “held in banks and corporate treasuries back into the economy, “concentrate on the areas” that would produce jobs, such as in infrastructure, with a “ripple effect.” The former president suggests that we could do this by passing Obama’s American Job Act, which, given the current political climate seems highly unlikely. Clinton also proposes that banks are sitting on enough capital to end the entire global recession if they were to lend it all out. However, the banks are unwilling to lend and borrowers are reluctant to borrow. Clinton lists forty-five proposals—many merely regurgitations of Obama policy--that would get America moving, I will focus on a handful of these to analyze.
In his first proposal, Clinton theorizes that “ending the mortgage mess” would “clean up bank balance sheets, freeing them to lend.” How could anyone, with the possible exception of my housemate, dispute needing to clean up a mess? As well, the economically stressed consumers would be free to spend on normal consumption. Freedom. We all want freedom. Foreclosed homes could be remodeled into rental properties, creating thousands of jobs as well ridding neighborhoods of blight. He also suggests that all delinquent mortgages be written down to match home value and those who cannot meet these minimal payments be given an option to stay in the property by making rental payments and having the option to buy the property back later. As a further job creator, the conversion to rental property could include an “energy retrofit” that could reduce utility bills by 20%.
Next, Clinton proposes that non-delinquent government-backed mortgages be re-financed at the “current low interest rate” and to give the “Federal Reserve should give the banks an incentive to lend” by charging a “modest fee of one-fourth of one percent on bank deposits it holds.” Presumably, the small fee would be enough to encourage banks to lend rather than to allow the depreciation of their holdings. Just a small fee to get banks to lend at low-interest rates. Now, who could argue with that?
The next proposal we will look at would give “corporations incentives to bring more money back to the United States.” Clinton suggests that the US adopt ideas proposed by Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris in his book Make It in America. Contrary to popular belief, that we have high labor costs is not an impediment to regrow our manufacturing base as labor is such a small portion of cost in “advanced manufacturing.” Germany, with labor costs similar to those in the US, is the world’s most successful exporter of high-end manufactured products. Using the ideas of a “captain of industry,” a presumed member of the 1% and presumed to favor the current hegemony, is an excellent rhetorical device that establishes credibility. In the current state of affairs, however, whenever a Democrat takes a Republican idea and proposes it, it suddenly becomes a bad idea. At any rate, “Making It in America” has a nice ring to it but not quite as nice as Clinton’s proposal to “Buy American!”
“If all Americans on just one occasion spent $3.33 more on goods made here, it would create ten thousand jobs.” According to the rhetor, Diane Sawyer of ABC News has asked viewers to join her in in “pledging to buy more goods” made in America. While many Americans like me who have been buying Japanese made cars all their lives might not be ready to buy a Ford, spending less than $5 is a commitment most of us can make. So I will look for that Certified Made in America tag that Clinton talks about.
Employers know that job skills deteriorate the longer a worker remains unemployed so the jobless who have not found work in six months see their chances of finding work diminished. Clinton proposes that employers who hire the long term unemployed be given extra incentives in the way of payroll tax holidays. The rhetor argues that many of the long time unemployed are “hard-working” people who are victims of the economy who need to “be given a chance.” Framed this way, most non-Republicans might favor the proposal for an $8 billion tax credit to businesses “that hire the long term unemployed.”
Clear, Simple Straightforward Rhetoric
Having spent the much of last few weeks reading, along with Clinton, Joan Didion’s sometimes abstract yet wonderful prose, each time I picked up the Clinton book, I felt somewhat relieved by its straight-forward easy to read style. Very rarely did I have to go back over the text to discern the meaning. There might have been a couple of occasions when he lost me as when he talked about “replicating prosperity centers.” But then I just read on and determined that they are simply joint venture between government and business. (Keynes would be proud.) Clinton explains even seemingly wonkish issues such as how to clean up the mortgage mess in a simple, yet not “dumbed-down,” step by step, clear manner. Clinton’s ability to effectively explain and promote center-left policies in plain easy to understand language proves to be the strongest aspect of this rhetoric.
Smart, Green and Clean
Those of the ideology of the left and center left love to hear the words “green” and “clean” and virtually everyone of all ideological persuasions loves “smart” things. Clinton liberally spices up his rhetoric using these other buzzwords. Of course, as mentioned, "smart” is employed, in the title, but there are also smart grids and smart technology. Thankfully, Clinton does not push the mythology of “clean coal.” Instead, he proposes that forests previously used for the production of paper can be converted to provide raw materials for compressed and cleaner wood chips that can be used in place of coal. Clean-energy jobs are mentioned several times and Clinton touts L.A.’s “clean trucks” program by replacing old clunkers with newer, more efficient vehicles. The rhetor proposes tax credits for “new green-technology jobs” and lauds Michael Bloomberg for his “Green City Force.” Finally, as far as being green goes, the rhetor praises the Gates and Kellogg Foundations for creating opportunities for low-income youth in “what they call the Green Career Pathways Framework.” Other cute and memorable usages of language are Clinton’s various initiatives to retrofit various things in various ways and his plea to “insource jobs we’ve been outsourcing.” Perhaps, we should all learn Hindi and become customer service reps for Union Carbide, Bhopal.
Clinton Rhetoric Not Groundbreaking
Bill Clinton’s proposals to get America back into the future business do not break any new rhetorical ground. Although Clinton scores rhetorical points by telling his audience that they need to “clean up the mortgage mess” or that they should “make it and buy it in America,” this is the same Bill Clinton many of us have known and loved over the years. That said, Clinton’s impassioned plea to get America moving again might convince many that his proposals are sound and should be adopted. So even though this rhetoric can be characterized as vintage Clinton, it is highly effective vintage Clinton. So, at least the first part of the research question has been answered. A rhetor can effectively frame issues by presenting them in a forthright, comprehensive and clear manner using every day language. But what about reversing the existing hegemony?
Keep in mind that the research question only asked if the rhetor could persuade his audience that the hegemony should be reversed. Certainly, Clinton has done that with these proposals and his impassioned plea that we need to give our children and grandchildren a chance to fulfill the American Dream. The larger questions remain “Can this hegemony be reversed?” and “How can we reverse it?” The answer to the first question is “Yes, we can.” The answer to the second question is a bit more difficult. Clearly, rhetoric such as “Back to Work” contributed to a new dialogue that is emerging in Washington. However, a much larger contribution to this paradigm shift can be attributed to the work of thousands of people all across the country occupying the streets, the parks, foreclosed properties and, now, even Congressional offices. In his December 6 Osawatomie, Kansas speech, Barack Obama not only channeled Teddy Roosevelt, speaking in the town where TR delivered his landmark Square Deal speech a century ago, but he also repeated “Occupy” talking points as he pointed out the gains made by the 1% while the middle class continues to see income erode and, like Clinton, he decried the perception that the “American Dream” no longer exists for young people growing up today. (Obama)
Whether or not all these voices contribute to real change, of course, will be played out over the next few years. No one knows how this will turn out, including Clinton.
I don’t know how this will turn out; I just know that for more than two hundred years, everyone who has bet against the United States of America has lost. A lot of people are betting against today. I am betting that once again, in a very different world’ we’ll find a way to a “more perfect Union.” Let’s get the show on the road.

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