It's morning in the Anglosphere

Power is decisively shifting away from fiscally conservative, socially liberal elites to fiscally liberal, socially conservative non-elites

Photo by Nikolay Avakyan on Unsplash

[The neo-populist’s] political method is based on vilification over explanation. They vilify unpatriotic executives, but the vast majority of job losses are caused by technological change, not outsourcing. They vilify overpaid C.E.O.’s, even though their pay packages have nothing to do with the stagnant wages of the unskilled. They vilify foreign governments for not living up to the rules of “fair trade,” even though developing countries could enforce every labor and environmental regulation under the sun and their workers would still be cheaper for low-skill tasks.
David Brooks, The New York Times, 11/2/2007

When societies become liberal all the way down, they neglect a core truth: For liberal societies to prosper they need to rest on institutions that precede individual choice — families, faiths, attachments to a sacred place. People are not formed by institutions to which they are lightly attached. Their souls and personalities are formed within the primal bonds to this specific family, that specific ethnic culture, this piece of land with its long history to my people, to that specific obedience to the God of my ancestors. These life-altering attachments are usually not individually chosen. They are usually woven, from birth, into the fabric of people’s being — into their traditions, cultures and sense of personhood… The great strength of the authoritarians who oppose liberal principles, from Trump to Xi to Hamas, is that they play straight into the primordial sources of meaning that are deeper than individual preference — faith, family, soil and flag. The authoritarians tell their audiences that the liberals want to take all that is solid — from your morality to your gender — and reduce it to the instability of a personal whim. 
David Brooks, The New York Times, 16/2/2024

These days our political attitudes are pretty ordinary. America, far from standing out as the champion of democracy, as a nation that welcomes immigrants, as a perpetually youthful nation energized by its faith in the American dream, is now caught in the same sour, populist mood as pretty much everywhere else… Roughly 59 percent of Americans said they believed their country is in decline… Sixty percent of Americans agreed with the statement “the system is broken”… Sixty-nine percent of Americans agreed that the “political and economic elite don’t care about hard-working people”… Sixty-six percent of Americans said that the country “needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful”… Those results reveal a political climate — in the United States and across the world — that is extremely favorable for right-wing populists. That matters because this is a year of decision, a year in which at least 64 countries will hold national elections. Populism has emerged as the dominant global movement.
David Brooks, The New York Times, 23/5/2024

We can all agree with David Brooks that CEOs and executives have been outrageously traduced. The fact that compensation for those at the top of the org chart has increased exponentially in recent decades has absolutely nothing to do with wages for lesser mortals stagnating in recent decades.   

For instance, I’m sure Alan Joyce’s well-publicised remuneration arrangements had little if anything to do with delighted shareholders wanting to reward his labour-cost-reducing initiatives.

Likewise, it’s a well-known fact that China has played by the Marquis of Queensbury rules in its unfailingly honourable dealings with the West, and any criticism of it is out of order. It goes without saying that no corporate executive (or third-way politician) had anything to do with the US’s industrial capacity being relocated to Asia. And surely you’re not suggesting those who measure their worth as a human being by the size of their pay packet would be open to selling their nation down the river just to line their own pockets?

Lord knows how we ended up in a situation where the Middle Kingdom has 200X the shipbuilding capacity of the nation that once revelled in its reputation as the arsenal of democracy. But I’m sure that’s not going to be an issue if China does decide to take Taiwan. Perhaps, Milo Minderbinder-style, the Chinese Communist Party will be entrepreneurial enough to sell the American navy the battleships they’ll need to break the blockade.      

And it’s not even worth dignifying with a response the charge that “liberals want to take all that is solid — from your morality to your gender — and reduce it to the instability of a personal whim”. Everybody knows liberals are the very picture of sober rationality when it comes to discussing gender-related topics.   

So why would a significant majority of the electorate have such regrettably “ordinary” political attitudes?

How could they not realise that political and economic elites have endured many a sleepless night since circa 1980 tossing and turning over the fate of the little guy?

Don’t they realise the so-called “rich and powerful” have spent the last four decades toiling solely for the betterment of the common people? So why would anybody yearn for a transformative leader (think FDR or Attlee on the Left, Thatcher or Reagan on the Right) to drain the swamp?

Apparently, it’s all down to the sinister influence of shadowy ‘neopopulists’.

Neopopulism 101
I’ve long been familiar with ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘populism’, but I hadn’t heard of ‘neopopulism’ until a few days ago. The term must have been around for a while – Brooks uses it in his afore-quoted 2007 article – but it seems to have belatedly gone viral after this New York Times article – ‘A New Centrism is Rising in Washington’ – was published a couple of weeks ago

After rehearsing the standard bromides about how the Democrats have moved to the Left, the Republicans have moved to the Right, and the US has become hyperpolarised, David Leonhardt points out that there’s recently been a remarkable degree of bipartisanship – albeit somewhat behind-the-scenes bipartisanship – in Washington. Leonhardt notes that Democrats and Republicans have largely been on a unity ticket when it comes to issues such as China, Ukraine, reshoring/protectionism, infrastructure funding, electoral reforms and forcing the sale of Tik Tok.

Leonhardt's argument is that, underneath the Sturm und Drang of day-to-day partisan combat, we’ve been witnessing “the emergence of a new form of American centrism”. It would be more honest to just call it anti-neoliberalism, but I suppose you need to be diplomatic when writing for the house organ of America’s elites. Here’s how Leonhardt contrasts the new “centrism” with the old:

A defining quality of the new centrism is how much it differs from the centrism that guided Washington in the roughly quarter-century after the end of the Cold War, starting in the 1990s. That centrism — alternately called the Washington Consensus or neoliberalism — was based on the idea that market economics had triumphed. By lowering trade barriers and ending the era of big government, the United States would both create prosperity for its own people and shape the world in its image, spreading democracy to China, Russia and elsewhere.

That hasn’t worked out. In the U.S., incomes and wealth have grown slowly, except for the affluent, while life expectancy is lower today than in any other high-income country. Although China, along with other once-poor countries, has become richer, it is less free — and increasingly assertive.

The new centrism is a response to these developments. It is a recognition that neoliberalism failed to deliver. The notion that the old approach would bring prosperity, as Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, has said, “was a promise made but not kept.” In its place has risen a new worldview. Call it neopopulism.

Both Democrats and Republicans have grown skeptical of free trade… Democrats and a slice of Republicans have also come to support industrial policy, in which the government tries to address the market’s  shortcomings… These policies feel more consistent with the presidencies of Dwight Eisenhower or Franklin Roosevelt than those of Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton.

The term neopopulism is apt partly because polls show these new policies to be more popular than the planks of the Washington Consensus ever were. Decades ago, politicians of both parties pushed for liberalizing global trade despite public skepticism. In retrospect, many politicians and even some economists believe that Americans were right to be skeptical…

Many political elites — including campaign donors, think-tank experts and national journalists — have long misread public opinion. The center of it does not revolve around the socially liberal, fiscally conservative views that many elites hold. It tends to be the opposite.

Americans lean left on economic policy. Polls show that they support restrictions on trade, higher taxes on the wealthy and a strong safety net… The story is different on social and cultural issues. Americans lean right on many of those issues, polls show…

The clearest example in the Biden era is immigration. A core tenet of neoliberalism, once supported by both parties, is high immigration. Along with the freer movement of goods and capital, neoliberalism calls for the freer movement of people.

Most voters, especially working-class voters, feel differently. The soaring level of immigration during Biden’s presidency, much of it illegal, has become a political liability.

The times they are a-changing
Almost everyone reading this will have known nothing but a neoliberal world throughout their life. I’m no longer young and even I only have fading, childhood memories of a world that wasn’t the kind of fiscally conservative, socially liberal, bleakly atomised hellscape that only appeals to 10-20 per cent of the population.

(Unfortunately, it’s the same 10-20 per cent of the population that has been making all the decisions since the West’s brief post-war experiment with widely shared prosperity was snuffed out with the election of Thatcher and Reagan.)   

For four long decades, non-elites have been told they are, at best, misguided and, at worst, deplorable. Curiously, on many issues – China being the obvious one – the clever, well-educated elites have been proven comprehensively wrong and the ‘low information’ commoners largely correct.

Not before time, the wind now seems to be at the back of those who want to, for instance, stop selling China the rope they may soon use to hang us. Here’s how Leonhardt concludes his article:

For decades, Washington pursued a set of policies that many voters disliked and that did not come close to delivering their promised results. Many citizens have understandably become frustrated. That frustration has led to the stirrings of a neopopulism that seeks to reinvigorate the American economy and compete with the country’s global rivals. As polarized as the country is, its two political parties are at least trying to respond to that reality, and they have found an unexpected amount of common ground.   

As Substack superstar and Never Trumper Andrew Sullivan was fond of saying during the Trump presidency, know hope.

Update: Especially if you’re a fan of

Noah Smith

, you might be interested in his take on Leonhardt’s neopopulism thesis:

Leonhardt’s article captures many important truths about where U.S. governance stands right now. The nation’s main challenge has shifted from internal battles over culture, identity and economic distribution to external threats, and some fraction of America’s leaders and the American people are slowly waking up to this fact. I also agree with his assessment that future bipartisan initiatives will likely include more industrial policy, more security-related policy, and policies to help children.

I also think there’s one more big one that he missed — housing policy. High rents are still causing widespread discontent throughout the nation, and government action is needed in order to combat the thicket of local barriers and restrictions that have kept housing from being built. There are some very encouraging signs that housing abundance could be a focus of bipartisan cooperation in the years to come — for example, the YIMBY Act that just passed the House of Representatives.