American Silence
… or why Big Ideas have a different impact in German and American Public Debate
What propelled the United States to go to war into Iraq and what kept the American Public from realizing its mistake? In my classes here at Cambridge the theme of the “failed war” transcends every lecture – from “History of International Relations over “War and Society” to “US Foreign Policy” – and it is astonishing to see how uniform the view is in academia.
The class “US Foreign Policy” is held by Dr. Stefan Halper. Dr. Halper has worked with several White House administrations and has been Campaigning with several Republic Presidential Candidates. He also wrote several books about US Foreign Policy, his recent one being “The Silence of the Rational Center” which he co-authored with Jonathan Clarke.
The two authors address many issues related to US-Foreign Policy. More specifically, they discuss how, in American Past and Present, Big Ideas framed public opinion, silenced experts, distorted media coverage of events and led to policy decisions which were not always optimal – to say the least.
There are extensive reviews (for instance here and here) of their book. I just want to go into four things that I find very interesting: their assessment of the role of arts in framing the Big Ideas, the impact of the Political Economy to allow Big Ideas to streamline a public debate, the role of media in distorting the public debate, and the role of Think Tanks to evaluate policy decisions resulting from Big Ideas. And finally, I want to say what from the point of view of the Republicans needs to be done to regain a little bit of grounds in the political debate – a thought inspired by a recent visit of Grover Norquist to Cambridge.
Arts and Big Ideas
Halper and Clarke mention several famous 19th century paintings that prominently featured the Big Idea of Westward expansion across the American continent. One is John Gast’s “American Progress“. They write:
This sense – that, unlike the predatory nations of the past, American interventions are based on goodwill and sacrifice designed to share the gifts of good government enjoyed by Americans with those less fortunate than themselves, whether in the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, or Iraq – has time and again been an important dimension in American foreign policy.
Without mass media, art assumes the role of spreading public propaganda. I have discussed this in an earlier article in which I reflected on some paintings of 19th century Germany, such as the famous “Deutsche Reichsgründung 1871” by Anton von Werner.
However, the emergence of Big Ideas is not a unique feature of the United States or Germany. Everywhere across the world, nation-states (and policy-makers) search to legitimate themselves and their actions by playing to some kind of Big Idea. Even though their policies are not coherent and simply adopted to the changing circumstances, they portray their policies as part of larger system of beliefs. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his “Agenda 2010” provide a good example for this mechanism.
The difference between Germany and the USA is the public reaction to the framing of Big Ideas. In Germany the public (after WWII) has been very hesitant to follow political leaders when displaying their Big Ideas. Adenauer’s “Coalition with the West”, Brandt’s “Dialogue with the East”, and Kohl’s “Germany as Architect of the European House” all met resistance in the public debate at first, and it took some time before they met with approval.
Political Economy of a Multi-Party-System and Big Ideas
The space here is too limited to give a full analysis, but I would say there are three factors to it: party-system, media, think-tanks.
The multi-party system in Germany always encouraged public dissent from the opinion of the governmental parties because the political economy did not force them to center position. Especially the smaller parties, such as the Greens during the Kohl-Era, the Liberals during the Schroeder-Government, and now the newly-formed Linkspartei during the Grand Coalition, have acted as “Voice which begs to differ” in German public debate.
In the sixties and seventies when Liberals organized majorities in the parliament, this alternate opinion was voiced by either the Bavarian CSU or the Left Wing of German Social Democracy.
Media and Big Ideas
The second reason why Big Ideas could not have the same impact as in the US was the public media system in Germany. During my visit to the US last year, I met with a couple of political analyst and media experts in the US. From my point of view, the American Political Debates on Television are much more sophisticated and elaborated then in Germany. On all public networks, there are several popular political television shows like “Meet the Press” or “Face the Nation”. In Germany, we have had shows like “Sabine Christiansen“. Its political character and its success of superficiality I originally wanted to analyse more in detail but never managed to allocate the appropriate time to it.
Stefan Halper gives several good examples how American Media uses Big Ideas to mute experts and politicians willing to make ambiguous judgments about political events and forcing them to make black-and-white-statements where there is a lot of “grey” political material.
The transcripts of interviews with prominent politicians such as Richard Holbrooke and Henry Kissinger are a great fun to read because these experts, despite their ability to bring their points across in a public debate, are simply cut off or framed by the journalists interviewing them on Public TV. The authors write:
The American receptivity to Big Ideas [...] means that, early on, a debate [...] forces people to locate themselves within it, with this the 24-7 media reinforce audience predispositions rather than illuminating alternatives and exploring their implications.
German Media does not try to frame experts in such a way. The Public Television, funded by tax payer’s money, tries to balance the public debate, even though it always clung to mainstream opinion and was hesitant to bring radical ideas from the far left or the far right to a large audience.
Within mainstream however, or more precisely within the political range of the German Parliament, German Public Television has tried to give all sides of a debate a fair share. Whether this is due to the historical experience with German Mass Media during the Nazi-Era, I leave to Media Historians.
In any case, it is just paradox that the German public-funded television (and radio) contributes far more to a broader debate than the American privately-owned television networks stampeding alongside the public opinion (or what the White House and the Washington establishment perceive as public opinion). Despite many other similarities, like the existence of large publishing houses like Springer or Bertelsmann, the public debate in Germany is not as distorted as in the USA.
Think Tanks and Big Ideas
Last year, during my visit to the US, I had the interesting opportunity of getting a first-hand glimpse at some of Think Tanks, such as Cato, Brookings, Hudson, Institute for International Economics, Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson Centre and others. The Think Tank scene in the US is diverse and represents a large political spectrum.
In Germany, only a few “independent” Think Tanks exist, such as SWP and DGAP, and even they receive most of their funding from the Federal Government.
More important are party-related Think Tanks, such as the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation or the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation. They are often closely associated with a party and the political analysts working there have normally strong inclinations toward this party (although it is difficult to generalize on this issue). Their funding partially depends on the election results of their respective parties.
Because of the multi-party system, German Think-Tanks are less likely to produce a public debate focusing on one Big Idea only. During the course of a political debate, the different Think-Tanks assume different roles in criticizing or explaining party-politics, creating party-networks or delivering input into the parties.
While Halper and Clarke write that the American Think System has not fulfilled its promise and has failed collectively, the German System of Publicly-Founded Political Organisations seem to work fairly well to allow various opinions enter the public debate.
What can be done?
Jumping to immediate conclusions, one could say that the USA simply needs a political debate funded by public money, through public channels, public media and public think-tanks. It could be reasoned that public money is spent differently from private money.
But it is not as easy as that. Both countries have a very distinct political culture. I doubt that a system of American Public Television can in any way change the power of the Cable Networks. And without a multi-party system, there is no reason to pour more public money to the Think-Tanks.
One should maybe look at the problem from a different perspective. To fall in love with Big Ideas and receive the full end of the disaster when those Big Ideas turn Nasty Failures is maybe part of American political lifestyle. One might see the failure of the current Big Idea (“Spreading Democracy to the Middle-East”) only as the step to the next self-fulfilling Big Idea.
This could be (in reference to George W. Bush’s remark today) something along the lines of “Winning the Third World War”.
If the next Big Idea is currently being formulated, then what should Republicans do? If there is one thing to be learned from American history, then it is this: whoever frames the next Big Idea is most likely to win upcoming Presidential elections and shape policies for some time. Republicans are seen as pushing several policy failures, economic failures and strategy failures. The Democrats successfully relate a large amount of domestic and international problems to the President, his advisors and his decisions.
It is sometimes an interesting intellectual experiment to put yourself into the shoes of somebody else, regardless whether you like their politics or not. Therefore I would guess that the big challenge for the American Conservatives now is to decide how to stand in relation to the current administration.
It is not possible to admit the failure in Iraq without saying that the whole of the Conservative movement had failed to steer the Bush administration unto a better path. The American public will never believe something along the lines of “Bush was a bad president, but next Republican president will be better.” The collective failure of the Republicans to chose wisely will be a heavy burden for some time to come.
This idea became obvious to me when Grover Norquist came to Cambridge last week on invitation by Stefan Halper. He is an infamous lobbyist and coalition-builder of the American Conservatives. As a lobbyist he is highly entertaining, even though his statements are simplifying to the largest degree. As a lobbyist, it seems sometimes necessary to confuse correlation and causation.
For instance, he said that people in general move from high-tax countries to low-tax countries. While this might be true to some extent in the USA, this is certainly not true in Europe, and certainly has not been true in the past. The German Democratic Republic in East-Germany had a tax of about 25 percent, but this did not keep East-Germans to escape to high-tax West-Germany.
In any case, he as well is distancing himself from the Bush administration, framing them as crazy proponents of an unnecessary war. Regardless of whether this is true or not, he does not distance himself from the whole ill-fated project to bring George W. Bush into power. He does not admit that George Bush was a big mistake of the American Conservatives, that somebody like John McCain probably would have made much better policy decisions.
I think there can only be two real choices for the Republican Camp. Either stick with the President until the very end, or cut the ties completely. There can be no middle way. The German Conservatives under Merkel had to cut their ties from Kohl before gaining power again, the British Conservatives took more than a decade to cut their ties from Thatcher.
Their only real chance in the long-run is to make the transition to the next administration as swift as possible. They have to try to get ahead of a movement which frames disagreeing with Bush as a higher virtue of civil disobedience. New York Times columnist Frank Rich compared resisting to Bush politics to resisting to Gestapo politics in the Nazi era:
Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.
So the Big Idea of “World War III” might backfire at Bush and the Conservative Camp, if the American Public starts to believe that the aggressors of this “World War” are sitting in the White House.
November 4th, 2007 at 16:45
[...] this quote describe the ongoing detachment of the Bush-Administration from the rational center of American Foreign [...]