I think we should be doing more to ameliorate poverty in America, but I don't really think appointing a cabinet-level poverty-fighting guy would accomplish much to that end. The country badly needs sensible energy policies, but merely having a Department of Energy doesn't accomplish that, any more than the Department of Transportation's existence necessitates sound transportation policy. To fight poverty effectively, you need effective poverty-fighting policies -- the precise details of the org chart don't really matter, it's not the kind of thing where the ins-and-outs of the chain of command are going to have a huge impact. If a new cabinet member is the symbolic manifestation of a substantive policy shift, then great. But if it's a symbolic substitute for really changing anything, then who needs it. Cabinet status isn't a magic powder that solves problems on its own.
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The Poverty of Cabinet Appointments
05 Apr 2008 02:16 pm
Comments (21)
If the primary function of our national government was not transferring wealth from younger, poorer, people to wealthy and middle class old people, then doing more to ameliorate poverty in America would be easier. How about starting by ending the disincentive to hire in the form of a more than 15% FICA tax on the first dollar in wages paid? It could be replaced with a substantial tax on hydrocarbons, and a reduction in wealth transfers to rich old people.
MLK III is an embarrassment who deserves to be ignored. He and his brother have collected six-figure sinecures from the King Center in Atlanta for years while letting that museum fall into shabby disrepair. At least his brother Dexter is more honest about pimping his father's legacy for profit. Check out his the Malibu digs. If memory serves, the WSJ reported that Dexter was collecting a salary for full-time work at the King Center while living in full-time in Malibu.
The first comment is a little unfair, there is something to be said for a specific person tasked to deal with an issue, especially one that is as deparmentally cross-cutting as poverty. This does smack a bit of electioneering, but nonetheless, the idea is not completely moronic.
Everyone believes that something needs to be done about poverty.
Unfortunately, the announcement had nothing to do with addressing the problem.
The announcement was a political strategy to try and lock up the Edwards endorsement before the NC primary.
Oh please. Everyone knows appointing a Czar is the most effective way to win a metaphorical war. The drug war and war on terror have been very successful since czars were appointed to oversee them. The war on poverty will be no different.
I agree with al - the approach is exactly backward, and has the potential to create more obstacles than solutions if the policies coming from the office are developed in isolation. My larger concern is the nomenclature around this announcement. The last thing we need is a "War on Poverty." Much like the War on Terror or the War on Drugs, it frames the problem inappropriately - as something that can be either won or lost with a definite beginning and end - when in fact we need a nuanced approach that integrates across policy positions, and can be measured in incremental improvements on multiple metrics over time. Sadly, nuance does not sway the casual voter... hence the pandering.
the idea is not completely moronic.
Agreed. Remember the good old days when the head of FEMA (in its own right, not as a part of DHS), was a cabinet-level position?
Cranky Kate, you know that we already fought a war on poverty in the Sixties, right? It was a pretty mixed bag (people like Al and Fred hated it then, continued to hate it, and built an electoral coalition around, among other things, that hatred for welfare liberalism that succeeded in 1980, and with which we still live today.)
Al, in a rare moment of non-sophist lucidity, has a pretty good point that changing an org chart doesn't _necessarily_ do much.
On the other hand, if that kind of organizational change is also driven and accompanied by a holistic/global approach and the political will to solve any particular problem (in this case poverty), one can imagine greater success.
I'd be interested if anyone knows how, say, the UK's Minister for Environment, or the Quebec provincial minister for Sport, do at their respective jobs.
There's two issues here: cabinet posts and "War on X's."
Here's my take on the War on X's:
Conservatives attacked New Deal policies by blaming them for rising crime (with some racism thrown in for good measure). As a response, liberals used a crime narrative to pass social welfare policies (War on Poverty -- cause poverty causes crime). That failed politically. Then more war on crime-like things were ushered in.
The best and brightest aren't our political heroes anymore; it's "tough" people with executive-like powers like death-penalty-administering-Governors and vigilant prosecutors and torturing presidents.
I think this stuff might be changing though, Cranky Kate -- it's like there's been a separate war on governing competence that makes people excited for Mark Warner and Governor Romney other technocrat-like politicians.
About the position though: more lefty agencies and positions are always good. Government agencies, even in administrations hostile to their cause, have a certain inertia of their own. They make things more difficult for the opposition (EPA comes to mind). Make 100 more Cabinet positions; it's good politics.
Especially in cases where a problem is interdisciplinary, like poverty, you often need a coordinator. For instance, the difference between a National Security Advisor and the Secretary of Defense, is that while the SECDEF is in charge of managing a set of bureaucratic machinery and programmatic tools -- like the 1st Marine Division, the National Geospatial intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Army Corps of Engineers -- the National Security Advisor is charged with engaging national security as a day-to-day strategic problem, and coordinates with all the different "tool managers" to develop and oversee the implementation of a solution.
Having a cabinet-level poverty-czar, will allow us to take a new look at all the tools for fighting poverty, repurpose some of them, and overall do a much better job of coordinating action.
Of course, you have to have an appreciation for the power of budgets, presidential face-time, and the underrated importance of the ability to get your calls returned to understand the value of why being cabinet-level is important.
Pretty much the sole reason for Johnson's "War on Poverty" label was that at that time, something like 75% of voting age Americans had some consequential memory or intimacy with World War I, World War II, or Korea. In the public mind at the time, War wasn't just about big explosions and dead mofos, instead it was in equal part about mass mobilization, full leveraging of national resources, and raising national expectations to insist on results now.
To say in a political context, in 1965, that you were going to go to war on something, meant that you were going to centrally coordinate, mobilize lots of people, spend lots of money, and achieve noticeable results in a relatively short period of time. So, war equalled focused collective action. Post-Vietnam, we became fascinated by Eastwood's Dirty Harry and Bronson's Deathwish, and our sense of "war" became much more individualized, less rooted in collective action and oriented toward a revenge and a darker "long twilight struggle" narrative.
I'll see your Poverty Czar and raise you a Prosperity Czar. Or, to get away from our American penchant for Russo-Cesarian nomenclature, I'll propose to coronate a Prosperity Prince, or a Fürst of Fortune.
Howzat? Can I be President now? :-)
vigilantes of poverty
My youth has been outed - I was not around for the first War on Poverty, and had forgotten that it was actually labeled as such - the War on Drugs was my first. My point still stands though - Wars are either won or lost, at which point they end. Framing poverty as something that can be eradicated for good, like Polio, wraps the wrong framework around the problem and creates unrealistic expectations amongst the people who, to dry_fish's point, expect concrete results from mass mobilization. If we call it the wrong thing now, we'll think about it wrong forever, and ultimately come up with the wrong solutions - that's my fear.
I'm swayed on the Czar (or Prince) point - maybe that is what's needed to get the sustained levels of attention required to see results. But I still worry that the holistic/global approach necessary for this to work (@Ben Cronin) could be undermined by carving out a cabinet level position. It puts someone in a position of fighting for resources against the groups with whom they should be engaging.
Fred writes: "MLK III is an embarrassment who deserves to be ignored. He and his brother have collected six-figure sinecures from the King Center in Atlanta for years while letting that museum fall into shabby disrepair. At least his brother Dexter is more honest about pimping his father's legacy for profit. Check out his the Malibu digs. If memory serves, the WSJ reported that Dexter was collecting a salary for full-time work at the King Center while living in full-time in Malibu."
I'm sure it wounds you and all the other Bush-gobblers deeply when the children of famous men "pimp" on the legacies of their fathers, Fred.
By the way, are you still beating your wife and abusing your kids, or have they finally gone to the shelter?
The last thing we need is another anything czar. I'd rather see the next president eliminate the "Homeland Security" department (what the hell does Threat Level Orange mean anyway?) and end the "war on drugs".
Government agencies, even in administrations hostile to their cause, have a certain inertia of their own. They make things more difficult for the opposition (EPA comes to mind).
This is such a beautifully cynical piece of reasoning that I'm almost tempted to give up my good-government, pragmatic instincts to support the idea.
While the "Give Tyro Money Department" is unlikely to ever make it to a cabinet-level agency, appointing a Potentate of Poverty Policy sounds like something that could be useful to entrench in the DC culture.
C. Northcote Parkinson famously demonstrated that cabinets become ineffective as they increase in size, and if the number of cabinet positions comes to equal 20 or more, the cabinet will not longer have any real power. If you have an issue you want handled effectively, don't ask for a cabinet position for it, at least not at this stage of the evolution of the republic.
http://ruslib.com/DPEOPLE/PARKINSON/parkinson.txt
So currently, who speaks on these matters, on a national level? Who is responsible at the cabinet to bring these matters to the attention of the administration? Who, on the inside, with access to power and decison making capability, is acting on behalf of this wide-ranging portfolio? It's only politics as usual if we expect so little from our next government. If our cynicism derails our willingness to consider that just maybe, it can be done better, then we're all brilliant, sophisticated and doomed.
In a more rational world, the Secretary of Labor would be seen as a key poverty fighter.
Comments closed April 19, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Matt is being way too kind here. the major problem with a poverty czar is not that it's a stupid addition to nomenclature and not much else but that there can't be such a thing as a separate department to fix poverty. the idea implies that poverty is apart, in policy terms, from housing, urban development, education, transportation, justice, etc. etc. when in reality it's the loose ends and failings of policy hollistically that have the effect of not addressing or in some cases exacerbating poverty. but then, she knows this. and is just pandering to john edwards... badly.
Posted by al | April 5, 2008 2:42 PM