The Best and the Brightest II

David Halberstam's The Best and Brightest is one of the great books of the past half-century on the problems and faults of American democracy. It documents our top young educated elite who delivered us into the quagmire of Vietnam, and just as importantly how they were for a long time held from accountability by the anti-democratic structures built into the post-war national security state. The book chronicles the universal human weakness of hubris, but just as importantly, shows how the checks and balances of the American system failed. Today, we could use The Best and Brightest II focusing on the great economic liberalization of the past three decades. It would tell the story of Milton Friedman, James Baker, Bob Rubin, Alan Greenspan, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers et al. It would show once again the great failings of hubris and unaccountable power.

One main character in the second book would be Jeffry Sachs. The exemplary "whiz kid" of the new era, who has left a trail of destruction across Bolivia, Poland, and Russia. Alexander Zaitchik in the old, The Exile has an excellent synthesis on Sachs and his role in Russia in a review of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine:

Sachs scripted Russia’s shock-therapy program and stood by Yeltsin’s side throughout his assault on the country’s nascent democracy in the name of the reform agenda. Even before the massacre of 1993, Yeltsin had suspended democracy during his “year of special powers.” Klein reviews the story of how, starting in late ’91, Yeltsin gathered a team of Russian reformers led by Yegor Gaidar known as Russia’s Chicago Boys. Together with Sachs, they crafted a Friedmanite blueprint of radical privatization, price liberalization, and free-trade policies. These shocks were to be administered as quickly as possible on an already dazed public.

When parliament voted to repeal Yeltsin’s special powers and end the experiment (as happened in Poland), Yeltsin’s response was to abolish the constitution and dissolve parliament, moves that started the crisis culminating in his bloody shelling of the White House. The western media duly fell in line behind Yeltsin “the reformer”. Klein describes the ease with which the major papers dismissed elected Duma members as suffering from “a Soviet mentality” (The New York Times) and even of representing “antigovernment” forces (The Washington Post).

Western editorialists had called for a Russian Pinochet, and they got one, although in reverse order. In Klein’s words: “Pinochet staged a coup, dissolved the institutions of democracy and then imposed shock therapy; Yeltsin imposed shock therapy in a democracy, then could defend it only by dissolving democracy and staging a coup. Both scenarios earned enthusiastic support from the West.”

And both scenarios buttress the thesis of Klein’s fascinating book: That sweeping neoliberal reforms are generally not possible in democracies. Which is why powerful boosters of such economics rarely have much use for democracy in any meaningful sense of the word.

Of course nothing succeeds like failure in our contemporary political class, and after throwing Russia into a decade of literal hell, insuring us their enduring animosity, Sachs ends up a tenured professor at Columbia trying to recast his image as advocate for the world's poor. Which I suppose would be ok if Columbia didn't let him off campus, but Sachs continues to pop-up. Yesterday, he was on a British program(tx zh) with fund manager Hugh Hendry and Gillian Tett of the FT. Hendry gives Sachs a smackdown he so richly deserves. But notice how the neo-defender of the poor, immediately dismisses any idea of bondholders taking losses and with a great grin approves the austerity measures now being undertaken in Europe and soon to be imported here. Even Ms. Tett takes issues with Mr. Sachs defense of failed capital. Understand, this debate is about one of the most important issues facing this country in the next few years.

The Best and the Brightest II would focus on the unaccountability of power in the United States. If power is unaccountable, there is no self-government. Democracy, despite what our economists and political class think, really does have immense value.