Los Angeles Times - December 2, 2007
Opinion
The gentry liberals
They're more concerned with global warming and gay rights
than with lunch-pail joes.
By Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel
fter
decades on the political sidelines, liberalism is making a comeback. Polls show
plunging support for Republicans and their brand of conservatism among young,
independent voters and Latinos. But what kind of liberalism is emerging as the
dominant voice in the Democratic Party?
Well, it isn't your father's liberalism, the ideology that defended the
interests and values of the middle and working classes. The old liberalism had
its flaws, but it also inspired increased social and economic mobility, strong
protections for unions, the funding of a national highway system and a network
of public parks, and the development of viable public schools. It also invented
Social Security and favored a strong foreign policy.
Today's ascendant liberalism has a much different agenda. Call it "gentry
liberalism." It's not driven by the lunch-pail concerns of those workers
struggling to make it in an increasingly high-tech, information-based,
outsourcing U.S. economy — though it does pay lip service to them.
Rather, gentry liberalism reflects the interests and values of the affluent
winners in the era of globalization and the beneficiaries of the "financialization"
of the economy. Its strongholds are the tony neighborhoods and luxurious suburbs
in and around New York, Washington, Boston, San Francisco and West Los Angeles.
Just as the number of industrial workers and traditional middle-class
households has declined, the ranks of the affluent class have grown. From 2000
to 2005, the number of millionaires in the U.S. rose 26%. Meanwhile, households
with incomes of more than $100,000 a year were the most rapidly growing income
category, according to Ogilvy & Mather demographer Peter Francese. From 1994 to
2004, the number of six-figure-income households jumped 54%.
Although many of the newly affluent are — as is traditional — politically
conservative, a rising number of them are turning left. Surveys done by the Pew
Research Center indicate that an increasing number of households with annual
incomes greater than $135,000 — the nation's top 10% — are moving toward the
Democrats. In 1995, there were nearly twice as many Republicans (46%) as
Democrats (25%) in this category. Today, there are as many Democrats (31%) as
Republicans (32%).
The political upshot is that Democrats now control the majority of the
nation's wealthiest congressional districts, according to Michael Franc of the
conservative Heritage Foundation.
In part, this is because the Democratic gains in the 2006 elections were in
affluent districts once held by the Republicans. In Iowa, for instance, the
three wealthiest districts now send Democrats to Washington, and the two poorest
are safe Republican seats.
Perhaps the best indicator of the growing political power of gentry liberals,
however, is their ability to generate campaign contributions. Chiefly drawing on
Wall Street, Hollywood and the Silicon Valley, this year's Democratic
presidential candidates have raised 70% more money than their GOP counterparts,
according to the Wall Street Journal. The securities industry, which awarded
Republicans 58% of their campaign dollars in 1956, gave the GOP only 45% in
2006. In the newest sectors of the securities industry, most notably hedge
funds, Democrats are favored. This year, hedge fund managers have given 77% of
their contributions to Democrats in congressional races, reported the Journal.
Gentry liberalism is not an entirely new phenomenon. Its intellectual roots
can be traced to historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s 1948 book, "The Vital
Center." Schlesinger himself was the archetype of the gentry liberal. A product
of Harvard University, he was as comfortable in the fashionable precincts of
Manhattan's Upper East Side as he was advising presidents in Washington.
Schlesinger was suspicious of the traditional liberalism of President Truman,
who baldy appealed to the basic interests of returning middle- and working-class
veterans of World War II.
In "The Vital Center," Schlesinger dismissed both the then-largely Republican
business class, as well as mainstream Democratic politicians like Truman,
because he thought they were too craven in their appeals to middle- and
working-class interests. He believed that government should be in the hands of
"an intelligent aristocracy" — essentially men like himself — whose governance
would be guided by what it considered enlightened policy rather than class
interests.
Since the 1960s, the intellectual class epitomized by Schlesinger has grown
many times over. Academic liberals have become something of a political power in
their own right. College campuses constituted the largest single base of
contributors to the 2004 presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry. Professors
are among the highly compensated and pampered professional cadres of the
knowledge economy — which also includes lawyers, engineers, doctors, wealth
managers, investors and other educated professionals — that make up the ranks of
gentry liberalism and flatter the politicians who advocate its positions.
Gentry liberalism has established a strong presence on the Internet, where
such websites as MoveOn.org and the Huffington Post are lavishly funded by
well-heeled liberals. These and other sites generally focus on foreign policy,
gay rights, abortion and other social issues, as well as the environment.
Traditional middle-class concerns such as the unavailability of affordable
housing, escalating college tuitions and the shrinking number of manufacturing
jobs usually don't rank as top concerns.
But gentry liberalism's increasingly "green tint" distances it the furthest
from the values and interests of the middle and working classes. Leading gentry
liberals, whether on Wall Street, in Hollywood or in Silicon Valley, are among
the greatest scolds on global warming. They justifiably excoriate the Bush
administration for its overall environmental record, but some of them — movie
stars, investment bankers, dot-com billionaires — are quick to insulate
themselves from charges that their private jets or 20,000-square-foot vacation
homes in Nantucket spew prodigious amounts of carbon dioxide. Repentance
typically includes the purchase of carbon "offsets," parcels of rain forests,
hybrid vehicles or solar panels.
The gentry liberal crusade to tighten U.S. environmental regulations to slow
global warming could end up hurting middle- and working-class interests. U.S.
industry needs time and incentives to develop new technologies to replace
carbon-based energy. If it doesn't get them, and an overly aggressive
anti-carbon regime is instituted, the shift of manufacturing, energy and
shipping jobs to developing countries with weak environmental laws and
regulations could accelerate.
Ignoring these potential Third World environmental costs would result only in
shifting the geography of greenhouse gas emissions without slowing global
warming — and at a terrible cost to jobs in the U.S.
The ascent of gentry liberalism remains largely unchallenged, in part because
of the abject failure of the Republicans to address middle-class aspirations in
a serious way and in part because of the absence of a strong pro-middle-class
voice among Democratic presidential contenders, with the exception of former
Sen. John Edwards. As a result, Democrats are unlikely to stop, let alone
reverse, the current economic trend that dispenses major benefits to
gentry-favored sectors such as private equity firms, dot-com giants and
entertainment media.
Over the last half a century, liberals have moved from strong support for
basic middle-class concerns — epitomized by the New Deal and the G.I. Bill — to
policies that reflect the concerns and prejudices of ever more elite interests.
As a result, neither party speaks for broad middle class concerns.
The nation deserves better than that.
* * *
Fred Siegel, a professor at the Cooper Union for Science & Art, is the
author of "The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American
Life."
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