 |
 |
|
145. "Riding a Whirlwind," Society, Vol. 19, No. 3 (March- April,
1982), pp. 29-35. Policy research and advocacy is a process, an integral part of the total societal-political give-and-take, not a set of isolated events. In his daydreams, a policy researcher formulates a fine new idea, whispers it in the ear of the president, and sees him order his staff to "go" with it. In reality, viable policy ideas are not born full-grown; their development requires a process of research, consultation, formulation, and reformulation. Access to key policy makers is in itself a process, especially when significant matters are at stake, with one or more gatekeepers screening and many others asking to review, comment, and affect the "input." If ignored or circumvented, they will tend to oppose the policy ideas, as part of their attempt to preserve their opportunity to participate, their status, and their power. Once the policy maker is reached, any new idea competes with scores of others, old and new; moreover, the policy maker faces constraints: economic, legal, ethical, and political. In his book The RAND Corporation, Bruce L.R. Smith provides a memorable description of the year-long struggle RAND faced when it was trying to share a policy idea with the Air Force brass, even though in those days RAND was exclusively an Air Force handmaiden and the idea was vital for the future of the Air Force--and the country. All this holds for those policy researchers who have institutionalized access to the policy process, who are looped in. Outsiders who seek to promote policy ideas uninvited, especially without backing by an organized societal group, lobby, or pressure group, will usually find the process even more tortuous. Those who choose to travel this road should understand that as a rule they are in for a long haul. Certainly this has been my experience over two decades of policy research and advocacy. It was a long way for many of us from the first articles against the war in Vietnam and the first teach-ins to the termination of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In the early sixties Charles Osgood and I suggested unilateral initiatives to reduce the psychological tensions of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, based on the notion that they would trigger unilateral responses (as distinct from prenegotiated, multilateral ones). Initially, these ideas were rejected with a mixture of questioning of our loyalties and flat denial of the practicality of the ideas. Two years later, President Kennedy embraced them (in his Strategy for Peace speech). The series of psychological initiatives which followed led to the first major U.S.-U.S.S.R. d‚tente and, in turn, opened the door for multilateral agreements on arms reduction, but it took nine more years before SALT I was agreed upon in 1972, and SALT II is still not ratified. Many other policy ideas others and I formulated fared much less well, of course. they got no place at all. All this gave me precious little preparation for the whirlwind which resulted when a policy idea I formulated suddenly took off shortly after I put it together. What follows is an account of the perils of occasional success, much rarer than the pangs of prolonged struggle and failure. The idea concerned the reindustrialization of America. Briefly put, it suggested that the United States in the late seventies was an underdeveloping nation, with its economic development in reverse gear, slipping back a bit each year on many key indicators, including economic growth, capital per capita, productivity, and savings. While some attributed the erosion to excessive government intervention and the revolution of entitlements, I suggested that it reflected two decades or more of overconsumption and underinvestment in both the public and private sectors; not only did public consumption grow, but high dividends and lavish labor settlements (e.g., in the steel and auto industries) left insufficient resources for investment and innovation. The country could continue to drift and underdevelop, or deliberately choose to go slowly. However, if instead it sought to return to a high and rising standard of living, social services, and defense, a decade or more of restoring the infrastructure (transportation, energy, human capital) and capital-goods sectors (equipment and plants) would be required. Reindustrialization involves not a return to the nineteenth century, but evolving modern-day equivalents, such as solar heaters and dataphones. And for practical and ethical reasons, it would have to be more socially responsive than the first industrialization. Still, economic growth would again be accorded high priority. Evolution of an Idea I developed the concept of reindustrialization as a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution in 1978-79. Although Brookings has three strong programs, it is dominated by economists and is best known for their work. Daily interaction with them made me more aware how different sociological perspectives are from their analyses of the economy, and above all, how divergent the public policies which follow. What they argued for and what made sense to me were considerably at odds. Thus, my reindustrialization memo was aimed as much at the economists as at the policy makers, especially those in the White House. (In the Carter administration, many of these were Brookings people.) I am not saying that I was fight and they were wrong, but that we looked at the same world through divergent lenses. I delivered my first findings at a Franklin Foundation Lecture Series at Georgia State University; the main outline was later published as "Choose We Must" in Bramlett and Mescon's The Individual and the Future of Organizations. Enter the mass media, offering the shortest route from outsider-policy-research to the inner circles of policy making. A local press report about my Georgia talk triggered a query from the Wall Street Journal's representative in Washington, and on June 25, 1979, it published a front-page report on my reindustrialization thesis. "The hard truth is that the once mighty U.S. economy, following years of neglect and overuse, is aging and tired. . . What's required, in the view of an increasing number of experts, is a long-term commitment to rebuilding America's industrial base ... Some of the most provocative thinking comes from a sociologist rather than an economist--Amitai Etzioni." Being told that one out-thinks the economists is a psychic reward, the kind that keeps policy researchers going in the long haul, toward the rare occasions of acceptance and acclaim. While this one story did not firmly put reindustrialization on the map, the next one did. The Eastern Shuttle between Washington and New York is a meeting parlor; I often found myself conducting business meetings on Eastern's wings. This time it was with the columnist Joseph Kraft. We talked about this and that and reindustrialization. Next thing, Kraft's syndicated column spelled out and promoted the notion--without any reference to its source. (When I discussed this with Kraft later, he explained that since our exchange, I had joined the Carter White House staff, and he did not want to embarrass me by citing my prior views.) Kraft is not to be faulted, in my judgment. The mass media, policy researchers ought to note, work on different assumptions than does academia. While not to footnote, that is, not to accord proper credit to sources, is a cardinal sin in academia, in the mass media there are no footnotes at all, and everybody is "borrowing" from everybody else. Weekly magazines employ cadres who clip and file daily press items which are soon incorporated into the weekly "rewrites." The New York Times alone is the source of scores of stories in other newspapers, often without any attribution. When Business Week was preparing a special issue on reindustrialization (June 30, 1980), Lee Walczak, Washington representative, collected reams of materials from me and interviewed me at length. He even reported in Business Week (June 2, 1980), "Within the Carter camp, the reindustrialization issue, still in the study stage, is being examined by an informal interagency group. Separate papers on reindustrialization policy are being prepared by Amitai Etzioni, who has been quietly at work for months on the problem in a White House office." He continued with a concise summary of the thesis. But when the special issue appeared four weeks later, no credit was given. Indeed, Business Week started its special issue with a statement suggesting that its editors developed the idea. Following a discreet inquiry, Business Week later acknowledged my role. In an ad in The New York Times (January 12, 1981), Business Week pointed out that after it had promoted the idea, Forbes "apparently overcame its initial reservations and published an article by Dr. Amitai Etzioni, who first suggested the concept." In March 1981, in its special "American Renewal" issue, Fortune recognized my contribution: "Concern about America's competitive situation is much in evidence, but it remains freefloating, not attached to any particular program. The talk of reindustrialization' reflects awareness of a problem rather than focus on a remedy. Sociologist Amitai Etzioni, who put the word into circulation a few years back, had something sensible in mind. He perceived that the U.S. had let its industrial base deteriorate relative to those competing nations, and that rebuilding would require changes in attitudes and policies. But once in circulation the word lost specific content. . ." But this was atypical. Usually no such credit is to be expected. Recently, when the new head of the Office of Management and Budget under the Reagan administration called for declaration of a national emergency to get a new economic program quickly off the ground, no reference was made to Henry Kaufman, the financial sage who previously had argued for precisely that. And so it goes. Within the government, acknowledgment of sources is even less common. All but the most senior people write memos their bosses sign as if they composed them; as a rule it is safe to assume that what A says is not what A conceived, studied, or formulated. When it is otherwise, this is treated as a unique event, as when Reagan is reported to have written his own inaugural address. Sometimes initials on the copies of a memo allow one to trace it to its origins, in case additional input or verification of details is desired. Often, who really composed the memo is informally known but nowhere recorded. My first in-the-White-House reindustrialization memo was drafted as a memo to other White House staff members from the Special Assistant to the President to whom I was reporting. It was only after this initial memo received a quite cool reception that I was encouraged to promote the idea on my own. The trouble was that economic policy was not my turf, and sensitivity to turf was considerable, to put it mildly. My excuse for dealing with reindustrialization varied according to those I was trying to interest in the idea, but as a rule, it was an emphasis on behavioral data and concepts. Thus, in several memos to and in meetings with Stuart Eizenstat (Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs and Policy), Alfred Kahn (Adviser to the President on Inflation), Curtis Hessler (Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy, Treasury), Hedley Donovan (Senior Adviser to the President), and others, I emphasized the need for a "gestalt." I pointed out that in recent statements by the administration "many items--each of merit--are listed next to each other without any unifying theme to provide a meaning or context, like a shopping list: Maintenance of CETA,' followed by Humphrey-Hawkins legislation,' followed by Urban Assistance and Community Development,' all with no meaning to most." I then suggested that "restoring America to economic vigor," reindustrialization, justified in its own right, provided such a theme. On one occasion, I tried an end run via the speechwriters. I first talked to a staff person dealing with them, Bob Myers, and later drafted some choice paragraphs for Carter's favorite, Rick Hertzberg. I was trying to get the ideas into a proper presidential speech, preferably the State of the Union message, which would legitimate the theme and provide a policy cue. Although this had previously been achieved by others, by this time an improved management system, introduced by Al McDonald, had the staff check suggested items for speeches against established policy. When no such ground was found for my reindustrialization ideas at the time (December 1979, January 1980) my paragraphs, themes, and "gestalts" were dropped. Meanwhile, to my mixed chagrin and delight, other presidential candidates picked up the idea from Kraft's column. First, Governor Jerry Brown, during a meeting with Washington Post editors and writers, called for the "reindustrialization of America." He stressed the need for greater collaboration between government and business, for more planning, for use of credit and tax incentives for reindustrialization. He added, "we have an environment, we have a technological base, an then we have a human pool of capital that is not being trained and mobilized for the kind of work that we have to do." He suggested that we reduce consumption, shift capital to more investment ("environmental, technological and human"), and "use both the public and private sector. use changes in credit, changes in the tax law, changes in the regulatory process" to help improve our competitive position. Next, Senator Edward Kennedy called for an American Reindustrialization Corporation, to launch a massive public and private Marshall Plan providing grants, loans, and subsidies to businesses and individuals involved in revitalizing the economy. Funds were to come from Congress and from borrowing in capital markets, with an initial budget of about $1 billion. John Anderson, as well as other Republican candidates, did not use the term "reindustrialization," but described agendas that, in one way or another, come close to the reindustrialization thesis. Besides gaining prominence in the political arena, reindustrialization as a theme caught on in intellectual circles as well. In early summer 1980, the Nashville-based U.S. Industrial Council Educational Foundation announced that a $1000 prize would he awarded to the winning one-thousand-word essay on the reindustrialization of America. In June, the President's Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties met in Los Angeles for a reindustrialization "talkathon." In September, the Congressional Institute for the Future, along with the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future, sponsored a "Congressional Roundtable on Emerging Issues" on reindustrialization. The Wall Street Journal cracked, "If you close your eyes and throw a dart at a map of the U.S.A., it would land at a place where someone is holding, a seminar on reindustrialization." Life found this line one which "characterized" 1980. Inside the Carter administration a struggle of sorts evolved between lower-level ambitions and higher authorities, left-liberal pockets and a conservative majority. The economic policy of the Carter administration was basically conservative. It sought to curb inflation by voluntary guidelines which curbed wages more than prices. did not limit dividend payments at all, and encouraged high interest rates. When this did not work, a recession was deliberately triggered, although economists were quite clear that the resulting massive unemployment would yield little inflation relief. Desperate attempts were made to balance the budget, increase defense expenditures, and curb the growth of some social programs while trimming others. This line had the support of the main economic policy makers, including the Secretary of the Treasury, and the chief architect of economic policy for the administration, William Miller; the head of OMB, James McIntyre, and, to a somewhat lesser degree, Charles Schultze and Alfred Kahn. The only liberal one of the five "principals" of the Economic Review Group was Stuart Eizenstat. The president was viscerally and intellectually committed to the conservative perspective. It was widely known that he felt very strongly that a balanced budget was the way to fight inflation, and hence all those who wished to explore other ideas were under the gun from the start. (When, as the 1980 recession deepened, some liberals toyed with the idea of tax cuts which could stimulate business and create jobs, McIntyre got wind of it, and a presidential directive was issued not to consider, plan, or talk about tax cuts.) On a lower level, among the principals' deputies--and their aides--there was a greater interest in liberal solutions and in reindustrialization. For instance, VanDoorn Ooms, OMB Assistant Director for Economic Policy, was much less fanatically committed to balancing the budget than his boss, McIntyre. And Curtis Hessler, Miller's Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy, and his Deputy, Richard Syron, were much more open-minded about reindustrialization than Miller himself. Liberal Assistant Secretary of Labor Arnie Packer wrote several memos in favor of industrial policy, and promoted it through articles in the press and in reports to an interagency task force. I promoted reindustrialization in countless meetings and lunches, and in a White House staff briefing. In the months that followed, as the campaign heated up, the terms "reindustrialization," "industry policy," "revitalization," and "supply-side economics" were thrown around at a fast clip. Under the heading "Reindustrialization's Poor Record," a British executive, R.H. Frierson, attacked "industrial revitalization" in a Wall Street Journal article, on the basis of the bad experience of Britain and others in lavishing support on lame-duck industries, a typical failing of "industrial policy." "Some use [reindustrialization] as a synonym for resuscitating industries. Others assume it means marshalling capital for new businesses," reported Paul Blustein in a Wall Street Journal news story. Robert J. Samuelson used the terms interchangeably in the National Journal. Joel S. Hirschhorn of the Office of Technology Assessment wrote that to "reindustrialize America" requires a "Marshall Plan," a "national industrial policy." And so it went. The irony of the success story of reindustrialization is that as politicians rushed to embrace it and editorial writers, other intellectuals, and social scientists, to explore it, every one projected into it his or her preferences. As Fortune put it, the word "became an empty bottle into which each user pours his own meaning--sometimes mostly fizz." And often I found, both in White House briefings and in the media, that the concept was rejected for what it was not, or embraced for the opposite of what it contained. I tried, somewhat frantically, like a person caught in a whirlwind, to protect the concept. I kept remembering other success stories, in which policy researchers or policy makers launched an idea only to see it so perverted in the process that they did not recognize it when it was put into effect. (Hubert H. Humphrey wanted a Peace Department to counteract the War Department; out of that idea came the meek, nearly irrelevant Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Paul Lazarsfeld tried to launch a School for Project Directors out of which came the excellent but very different Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.) I launched a blitz of memos and meetings trying to protect the concept. I also surfaced in the press (after a year of self-imposed embargo) and published articles in The New York Times, Forbes, The Washington Post, and the National Journal, as well as a series of press interviews, to explain how reindustrialization differs from supply-side economics and industrial policy. My mood at the time is captured in the opening sentence of my June 29, 1980, New York Times article: "As the proud father of the thesis of reindustrialization, let me rise to its defense. Its potential is currently being clouded by the limitations of industrial policy,' a remote relative, and misintroduced as the son of the post-industrial society, not its ancestor. The Real Reindustrialization "Supply-side" economics assumes that what ails the economy is mainly an excessive level of politicization, reflected not merely in the polity's use and allocation of an unduly high proportion of GNP and in excessive regulation of private decisions, but also in the revolution of entitlements, in attempts to deal with all social and many personal needs via the polity rather than the market. Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol have articulated this position, as has Milton Friedman. The remedy which follows is to reduce the scope and intensity of the polity as much as possible, by releasing resources to the private sector, deregulating, and letting the market do its wondrous things. Arthur Laffer and Kemp-Roth are the most radical; they hold that the revenue lost via monumental tax cuts will be restored by the higher tax yield of a more productive economy. Other radical conservatives, like Milton Friedman, are satisfied to cut government expenditures and taxation drastically, without assuming a proportionate gain in tax revenues. This approach is wholly non-targeted. It sees no need to direct, aim, or guide the economic resources released to the private sector in any particular way. Indeed, freeing them to go wherever the market will take them is the kernel of the approach, which would let private demand work its way and the private economy respond by increasing its capacity to supply what the demand seeks. At the other end of the spectrum of positions is the notion that, far from being reduced, the polity's role should be intensified. Here the diagnosis is that, compared to other highly successful economies, especially West Germany and above all Japan, American institutions provide insufficient guidance and support for the private economy. The market, it is implied or openly stated, has shown its inability to invest enough in new plants and equipment, to innovate and compete. Executives have grown risk-shy and dividend-happy. Steel mills, auto plants, the textile and rubber industries are crumbling; computers will soon face a government-orchestrated attack from Japan, to which our industries' response will be divided. According to this liberal view, correctives are to be found in emulation of "Japan, Inc. " In other words, the solution lies in government-guided collaborative efforts, with government bureaucrats and technologists serving as the taskmasters and sources of analysis, tax incentives, capital, and informal if not outright direction. Recent attempts to turn around the U.S. auto and steel industries, following the suggestion of tripartite committees, are viewed as American dry-runs. Beyond this, the advocates of this highly targeted approach see the Department of Commerce transformed into a Department of Trade and Development, with a desk and a committee for each industry, from ball bearings to industrial diamonds. The trade desk would analyze the industry assigned to it--say, shoes--to determine whether it is a "winner" or a "loser, " whether it has a promising future in terms of productivity, exportability, technology/innovations, labor intensiveness, and other good things in life. The designated winners would be showered with government-provided subsidies, loans, loan guarantees, tax incentives, a measure of protection (as in a trigger price or import quotas), R&D write-offs, and what not. The losers would be buried. (Well, the term used is to "sunset" them.) The government might provide the workers with retraining and "trade adjustment assistance" to help move them from parts of the country where the losers congregate (Detroit, Pittsburgh) to where the winners roam (the Sunbelt, coal states). This policy might be called "national planning," but as the term tends to raise fears of creeping socialism, most of its advocates avoid the label. Instead, the term "industrial policy" is in favor. Critics raise three major questions: (1) Do we have the analytic capacity to determine correctly who will be a winner, who a loser, or will we misidentify industries and sink vast amounts of public resources into tomorrow's Edsels? (2) Will our polity, in which the government tends to be weak compared to business, labor, and local communities, especially when these work together for their Chrysler, be able to channel resources to those who merit them by some rational analysis, rather than to those who have political clout? (3) Is the country--both voters and leaders--willing to accept more politicization, less reliance on the marketplace? Between supply-side economics on the right and industrial policy on the left stands reindustrialization. the concept that what ails the country is overconsumption, both public and private, and underinvestment, resulting in a weakened productive capacity. Signs of deferred maintenance and lack of adaptation to the new environment of expensive energy can be seen in most of the elements which make up the infrastructure (such as transportation, communication, power, R&D) and the capital-goods sectors. The suggested cure is semi-targeted: release resources to the private sector, but channel them to the infrastructure and capital-goods sectors, away from either public or private consumption. For example, the funds released through across-the-board tax cuts might well be used mainly to spur private demand for consumer goods and services (gasoline, for instance), with little rejuvenation of productive capacity. On the other hand, if the resources released are guided to the productive sectors of the economy--not to specific industries--by allowing accelerated depreciation, for example, for those who replace obsolete equipment, or who change to equipment which is more energy-efficient, the released resources will revitalize, without determining which will benefit: steel or textiles, rubber or rails. The polity will set the context, the market will target. Similarly, providing tax incentives for greater R&D expenditures spurs on all such efforts; no government trade desk or tripartite committee needs to decide which R&D project is desirable. And if productivity-based incentives enable workers to share directly in renewed economic growth, Washington need not be involved in determining which workers are eligible; this is best done by management and workers within each corporation. Critics suggest that reindustrialization will return the country to the nineteenth century and focus on "basic" rather than post-industrial high-technology industries. The prefix "re" does point to a return, but it should not be taken too literally. A return to a strong infrastructure and capital-goods sectors does not require a return to the same mix of specific industries. Thus, communication satellites and dataphones could do the job of the Pony Express and the Morse telegraph, and slurry pipelines instead of barges might carry coal. The return implied is to Iii,,her investment and innovation in the productive sectors, not to anachronistic details. Reindustrialization does favor mitigating the criteria of "comparative advantage," though, with considerations of developmental economics, social responsiveness, and national security. Studies of developmental economics show that a measure of government-provided incentives and support, even short-term import limitations, is often essential for developing a new industrial base; the same might hold for renewing one. Social considerations urge us not to export all blue-collar work to Third-World countries we have plenty of unskilled labor of our own. National security requires us not to grow so dependent on imported coal, steel, and ship-building that we are unable to withstand interruptions or boycotts. Reindustrialization thus stands between supply-side economics and industrial policy; it is semi-targeted, and the context it seeks to advance is a stronger productive capacity. Carter Joins In The whirlwind did not subside, of course, while I stated and restated the argument for my conception of reindustrialization. If anything, it spun even faster as the presidential campaign moved toward its climax. By May 1980, all the candidates had signed up for one or another concept of reindustrialization--except my candidate, Jimmy Carter. Carter was not doing too well at that time. As inflation and unemployment continued to rise, his approval rate had dropped to an unprecedented low of 20 percent, despite promises to balance the budget, and Senator Kennedy was challenging him in the primaries. The Carter administration now became more actively concerned about labor's support. The White House and the AFL-CIO had previously negotiated a "national accord" which called for close consultation with these unions on matters of short- and long-run economic policy. This now led to two specific ideas. One was the creation of a national reindustrialization board, to be co-chaired by Lane Kirkland and Irving Shapiro, which would formulate general policies; that never got off the ground. Second, two industry-specific tripartite committees were activated to help the auto and steel industries, especially hurt, to turn around. Once the Kennedy threat was overcome, these ideas were incorporated into a new economic policy package, to face Reagan. It put heavy emphasis on a tax cut for business, in contrast to the traditional focus on individuals. Although, historically, two-thirds of revenues lost in tax cuts had gone to individuals, and the GOP was calling for dedication of 85 percent to individuals, the Carter plan was going to award 55 percent to business, 45 percent to individuals. In particular, business was to benefit from accelerated depreciation of new equipment, machinery, and plants, to motivate it to throw out obsolescent or energy-inefficient items. Carter's plan mixed some elements of reindustrialization with some of industrial policy. Reducing labor costs (by offsetting part of business's contributions to social security) or encouraging replacement of obsolescent plants and equipment (by faster tax write-offs) was reindustrialization--and that was where the big bucks were to go. Retraining workers and thus reducing resistance to technological innovation was also reindustrialization: so was the reindustrialization board, which was intended to increase the general collaboration among business, labor, and the government. Touches of industrial policy were to be found in the suggestion of investment tax credits to ailing firms (especially aimed to help steel). in plans tailored to help auto manufacturers, and in the industry-specific tripartite committees. Carter unveiled much of this package late in the election campaign, in his address on August 28, 1980. He was thus the last to embrace the reindustrialization theme. Until about two weeks earlier, the higher reaches of the White House had continued to resist the theme, on the grounds that it might imply new expenditures, larger deficits, and had clung to the hope that pushing a balanced budget would take the wind out of the Republican sails--and be virtuous, too. Only as the possibility of balancing the budget became ever less credible, and the upbeat themes of the opposition made Carter's program appear dull, did Carter and his cabinet publicly embrace reindustrialization, without much enthusiasm. At the last minute, though, they changed the label. In the preceding memos and meetings and minutes, "reindustrialization" was commonly used. But just before the August 28 speech, someone pointed out that the term was identifiable with one professor. "Renewal" was then suggested, but after Secretary of Commerce Philip Klutznick pointed out that "renewal" smacked of the liberal, unpopular urban renewal programs, "revitalization" became the label. Reaganomics is more ambitious than reindustrialization. It seeks not merely to restore the productive capacity of the United States but also to reduce inflation, balance the budget, substantially increase military spending, and change the social profile of the government by doing less for groups which traditionally were Democratic constituencies (such as the poor, minorities, and labor) and more for groups closer to the Republicans (big and small business, and the farmers). If the 1981 Reagan American Recovery Act is evaluated narrowly, from only a reindustrialization viewpoint, some of it is highly beneficial, some counter-productive, and much is left undone. Productive features include new incentives for savings and investment, especially the change in IRA and Keogh rules, as well as the reduction in capital gains tax, accelerated depreciation, and support for more private R&D. All-Savers Certificates are a costly bail-out for the Savings and Loan Associations and channel resources to residential housing, which economists count as "investment" but which are not productive assets. Changes in leasing rules are a reward for inefficient or failing corporations. Nothing has been done to secure workers' sharing in gains in productivity or to fashion an energy policy--at least one aimed at other infrastructure elements, especially transportation. Emerging somewhat dizzy from this experience, I conclude, to paraphrase the dictum, that success has a thousand families, failure is an orphan. You can easily claim failed policy ideas as your own; you cannot secure those which the polity, the intellectual community, and the media adopt. They will carry your concept their own way, mixing elements and ideas. You may enjoy seeing your idea bandied about and elements of your thinking embraced, but do not expect, even under the most favorable circumstances, to see your idea protected or given a full test of what you think should be tried. And while this may rile you, on second thought you will realize that it is in the nature of a pluralistic, democratic society; only in a tyranny of technocrats could it be otherwise. Strongly as I believe in reindustrialization as I conceived it, not as it has been confused with industrial policy and blended with supply-side economics, I would rather ride a whirlwind than be part of a technocracy. Amitai Etzioni is University Professor at the George Washington University and director of the Center for Policy Research. A Senior Adviser at the White House in 1979-1980, he, is the author of numerous books, including The Next Years: An Immodest Agenda, forthcoming from McGraw-Hill.
|
|
The Communitarian Network |