Tea and Superficiality

I have this mantra that I am sure annoys the hell out of the students in my policy class: “It’s more complicated than that.” It is part of my effort to explain that policy decisions frequently have consequences beyond those that we can easily identify–beyond the superficial issues that pundits exploit for ratings and politicians employ to agitate their bases.

The auto bailout was a perfect example, and in his column today, Brian Howey does a great job of explaining why the policy choice was not the simple matter of “bailing out losers” that Tea Party activists and libertarians evidently believe it was.

As Howey writes

“In December 2008, I attended a hearing in Indianapolis where economists from the Brookings Institute predicted that a collapse of GM and Chrysler could cost the state 150,000 jobs — not just at GM and Chrysler but also at companies like Cummins and hundreds of auto supplier companies scattered in small towns and large across the state.

The multiplier impact from such a collapse could have been devastating. Not only would toolmakers, engineers, assemblers and molders be jobless, but thousands of restaurants and service businesses would have been devastated. Even foreign automakers in the state such as Honda, Toyota and Subaru would have been negatively impacted, because they draw on the same suppliers as GM, Ford and Chrysler. While Indiana has a troublesome and persistent 9 percent jobless rate today, a collapse of GM and Chrysler would have brought a second Great Depression to Indiana. We easily could have seen the jobless rate double or more.

Indiana Republicans were conspicuous in their indifference. Gov. Mitch Daniels warned of the U.S. government throwing “good money after bad” and said the domestics should emulate the Japanese companies. He later castigated the U.S. Supreme Court for the way it acted on Obama’s forced expedited bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler. Treasurer Richard Mourdock, with Daniels cheering him on, tried to thwart the Chrysler merger with Fiat. Republican candidates up and down the food chain derided the Bush bailout.”

Howey’s larger point was political: that the success of the bailout puts Indiana “in play” this November. (I’d add to that the recent passage of Right to Work legislation, which certainly has energized the Democratic base.) But whether Obama wins or loses the state, Howey’s description provides a “teachable” moment for those open to such lessons.

Modern industrialized societies are complex mechanisms. Very few things are as simple as they may once have been (or seemed). A dim recognition of that reality–and the increasingly obvious cultural changes generated by our growing diversity and rapid technological advances–are a not insignificant reason for the national hissy fit being thrown by folks who don’t want to be confused by the damn facts.

Ideologies of all sorts are increasingly incompatible with evidence and complicated realities. If ideologies win out–and it doesn’t much matter which ones–we’re all going to be in a world of hurt.