Fifty-two years later, the Ford Fusion has become a
top-selling automobile. Stylish, sleek, relatively inexpensive, the 2010
model was awarded the Motor Trend Car of the Year and the hybrid
version of the Fusion was recognized as the 2010 North American Car of
the Year Award. The new 20013 Ford Fusion represents the second
generation of the car, a thoroughly re-designed model that was
unveiled at the 2012 North American International Auto Show. Since its
introduction in 2006, the Fusion has sold over one million vehicles.
Both of these automobiles have been manufactured by the same company,
but the contrast could not be greater. The Edsel illustrates the kind of
a poorly designed, poorly-performing vehicle that was the result of
arrogant and unimaginative corporate groupthink and planning. By
contrast, the Fusion is emblematic of the future of automobile
manufacturing, based on a desire to provide consumers with an extremely
dependable, fuel efficient and attractive alternative to European and
Japanese manufactured cars.
In some important
ways, the Ford Motor Company, and its experiences with these two very
different automobiles, serves as a metaphor for the current state of
American politics. The GOP today - as exemplified by their Presidential
candidates - is dominated by those who profess a nostalgia for the
America of the 1950s. They express a preference for limited government,
low taxes and a truculent foreign policy .Their nostalgia, however, is
not reality-based..
In the 1950s, economic inequality
was significantly lower than today, median incomes, in terms of real
purchasing power, higher, and the share of taxes paid by corporations and
wealthy Americans was greater. Robert H. Frank, a Cornell University
economist, reported in a New York Times column ["Income Inequality: Too
Big to Ignore," October 16, 2010] that, during the decades after World
War II, incomes in the United States rose rapidly and at about the same
rate - approximately 3 percent a year - for employees at all income
levels. As a consequence, America had an economically dynamic middle
class; its roads and bridges were well maintained; and Americans as a
whole were optimistic as investments in infrastructure and public goods
increased. In that era of relative economic equality, Frank noted, that
public support for infrastructure - paid for by taxes - enjoyed wide
support.
By contrast, Frank notes that, during the
past three decades, as the economy has grown much more slowly,
America's infrastructure has fallen into grave disrepair.
Simultaneously, all significant income growth has been concentrated at
the top of the scale with the largest share of total income going to
that top 1 percent of earners.
It is also
important to remember that President Eisenhower, despite the bellicosity
of John Foster Dulles and other members of the GOP's lunatic fringe,
was able to disengage this country from the Korean War. He was also able
to keep the United States out of any major confrontation with the
Soviet Union by a combination of diplomacy, some-ill considered covert
action that later had disastrous consequences, and the use of concerted
multi-lateral alliances such as NATO.
At
the end of his second term, President Eisenhower warned against an
ever-growing military-industrial complex and observed that, "Every gun
that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in
the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those
who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending
money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its
scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all
in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a
cross of iron."
Because of their inability to apply
the facts of the past to the needs of the present, today's GOP have
become the Edsel of American politics. If President Obama and the
Democratic Party want to become the future model of American politics -
the Fusion, as it were - they must not be intimidated by the rhetoric
that endorses austerity, trickle-down economics and a passive role for
government in the face of increasing misery.
The
Oxford University philosopher, Thomas Hill Green, challenged the
conventional wisdom of his day - classical liberalism with its laissez-faire prescriptions - with the argument that, in a democracy, government must be used
as a positive instrument for the public good. Green's advocacy of an
activist government, his disavowal of extreme individualism and his
communitarian politics were subsequently endorsed by A.D. Lindsay who
insisted that the purpose of the state is "to serve the community and in
that service make it more of a community."
"Modern
liberalism" as articulated by Green and Lindsay, if embraced by
Democrats, can provide a firm foundation for a creation of a new and
resilient progressive tradition. It would also offer tangible evidence
that, even in politics, it is still possible to learn from past
mistakes, triumph over political inertia, and offer a coherent vision
that can persuade a majority of citizens that their greatest needs will
not remain unmet.
