Current mood:	working
Current music:	Depeche Mode, "Lilian"

I'm So Bored with the U.S.A.

Now we say that the function of a [kind of thing]--of a harpist, for instance--is the same in kind as the function of an excellent individual of the kind--of an excellent harpist, for instance. And the same is true without qualification in every case, if we add to the function the superior achievement in accord with the virtue; for the function of the harpist is to play the harp, and the function of the good harpist to play it well.

--Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1098a10

One hears the question a lot: Is the President doing a good job?

I recently overheard the following exhange in the faculty lounge at one of the schools where I teach:

Faculty Member #1: ...So what do you actually think of Obama?

Faculty Member #2: I think he's really naive.

FM1: Wha--naive?! The guy is a constitutional law scholar! What more can you ask for in a President's qualifications?!

FM2: Exactly, he's a law scholar; the guy doesn't know anything about economics!

These two gentlemen are, of course, arguing at cross purposes. But regardless of whether either or both of them is correct, it raises an interesting question: What is the President's job?

The Constitution is quite clear and concise on this matter:

Section 2 - Civilian Power over Military, Cabinet, Pardon Power, Appointments

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

Section 3 - State of the Union, Convening Congress

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

Essentially, the President is the head of the executive branch: s/he ensures that the Laws of the land are "faithfully executed," and is the chief commander of all military forces. S/he takes an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" to the best of his/her ability; Faculty Member #1 is correct in assuming that a distinguished constitutional law scholar is unlikely to be "naive" when it comes to this job.

But, for all that, is Faculty Member #2 any less correct? Letter of the law aside, do we not--by common practice, if not by oath or writ--treat the nurturing and protection of the national economy as the President's chief job? Is this not one of the main bases for most approval polls? Is this not one of the key areas of discussion during the election season, and one of the major factors influencing our votes? We in fact take this for granted to the extent that my question here may itself strike some of you as naive. But ask yourself: what is the legal basis for assuming that the President's job has anything to do with economic health?

These questions have come up for me because I've just recently finished reading Foucault's lectures from 1978/79 on the rise of neo-liberalism in Germany and the United States (collected in the misleadingly-titled The Birth of Biopolitics). Neo-liberalism essentially comes down to the idea of using the market as a limit/control on--and a privileged test site for--the power of the state. By opening more and more domains to "market forces," the power of the state is limited. And by using the market as a test of the government, the efficiency/inefficiency of the state can be guaged. The role of the government within neo-liberal ideology is then to act as a supporting framework for the economy, bringing a strong "free market" into being.

What's more interesting still is that ordoliberalism--a strong influence on neo-liberal theory--reverses the classic order of legitimation between government and economy: In a medieval town, for example, the market exchange was conducted under the legal authority of the government. The King basically guaranteed the legitimacy of the market. Within ordoliberal theory, however, this idea is reversed: so now the legitimacy of the government is derived from the market!

The problem was: given a state that does not exist, if I can put it like that, and given the task of giving existence to a state, how can you legitimize this state in advance as it were? How can you make it acceptable on the basis of an economic freedom which will both ensure its limitation and enable it to exist at the same time? This was the problem . . . which constitutes, if you like, the historically and politically first objective of neo-liberalism. (The Birth of Biopolitics, p. 102)

Inasmuch as we take this sort of reasoning for granted, it seems to be (as Foucault suggests at the end of his lectures) that we carry on any political debate in this country always-already within neo-liberal ideology. That is to say, neo-liberalism constitutes the basic field of available debate; within American politics one only takes up positions inside that field. Furthermore, however, unlike Europe--where liberalism, ordoliberalism, and neoliberalism have each been forced to emerge as critical movements against a radically different background of assumptions--in America neo-liberalism has simply further developed the liberalism upon which the country was founded:

That is to say, liberalism played a role in America during the period of the War of Independence somewhat analogous to the role is played in Germany in 1948: liberalism was appealed to as the founding and legitimizing principle of the state. The demand for liberalism founds the state rather than the state limiting itself through liberalism.

Second, for two centuries . . . liberalism has, of course, always been at the heart of all political debate in America. [. . .]

Finally, third, in relation to this permanent ground of liberal debate, non-liberalism--by which I mean interventionist policies, whether in the form of Keynesian style economics, planning, or economic and social programs--appeared, especially from the middle of the twentieth century, as something extraneous and threatening inasmuch as it involved both introducing objectives which could be described as socializing and also as laying the bases of an imperialist military state. . . . Hence the ambiguity, or what appears to be an ambiguity in American neo-liberalism, since it is brought into play and reactivated both by the right and the left. (218-9)

This also goes a long way toward explaining, I think, why Americans tend to think that liberals are leftists (and, occasionally, even that all leftists are liberals!).

All of this, for me at least, builds toward a larger question: What is the role of the state? At least inasmuch as American politics is taking place within a field bounded on all sides by liberalism (even albeit in its various forms), it is crucial to see that all parties are in agreement about most of the essential aspects of this answer. The so-called "big government vs. little government" dispute of the American right versus the American left; the debates over social welfare policies; the ongoing disputes over executive privilege, etc.; all of these are simply matters of working out the details to an answer given in advance: They are disagreements not about the role of the government, but its efficiency. It's a question I'm not going to get further into right now, but expect it to be lurking in the background of some of my posts over the next few months...