High Life on the Potomac
I am not
now--and never have been--a fan of Robert Reich's economics or politics.
Fourteen years ago, I said in a review of one of his books:
This book has three
elements: a description of the terrible present state and future prospects of
the American economy, a theory of the causes of that dreadful condition, and a
prescription for rescuing us. The description of our condition is grossly
exaggerated. The theory of the causes of the alleged condition is inadequately
supported. The prescription is, with some exceptions, unpersuasive.
Reading
his new book, Locked in the Cabinet (Alfred A. Knopf; 338 pages; $25),
about his four years as secretary of labor from 1993 through 1996, I find that
he has not changed his mind--or I mine--even though his new book gives us a
closer look at Reich the person than the earlier ones did. He does not come
through as particularly admirable. He is self-righteous and self-pitying. He is
unfair, often in a petty way, to people with whom he disagrees--notably, for
some reason, Alan Greenspan. And his treatment of Bill Clinton, his longtime
friend who made Reich a national figure by appointing him to the Cabinet, is,
if not exactly disloyal, surely unseemly. Clinton comes through, in Reich's
account, as an amiable man, a good politician, and a great preacher, who is
nonetheless unprincipled, indecisive, and overwhelmed by the responsibilities
that come with the presidency. He is the kind of person least qualified to be
president and most likely to become one. There are plenty of people other than
Reich who could have told us all that. The president's pal didn't have to do
it--or he could at least have waited until Clinton was out of office. But, as
the saying goes, they all do it.
Iput all these negatives up front so that my friends won't
think that I have gone off my rocker when I say I enjoyed much of Locked in
the Cabinet and ended it feeling sorry for Reich. The book has two
interwoven parts--a policy part and a life part. The policy part I find
inadequate and unconvincing. The life part I find fascinating. The story in the
policy part goes like this:
Reich came to Washington with
a policy for relieving the suffering of the American worker. That policy
included stronger unions, corporate responsibility, a higher minimum wage and,
most important, more federal spending on--or, as he would say, federal
investment in--job training and retraining. Reich's four-year effort to get
this policy adopted was largely defeated by the opposition of Wall Street, Big
Business, rich people in general--and their hirelings or dupes in the
government. The main instrument they used for defeating him was a call for
obeisance to a false god, Balancing the Budget. So our hero leaves the
battlefield with his head bloody but only slightly bowed.
What value
you assign to this story depends on how valid you think Reich's policy is. If
his policy would have been the salvation of the American worker, the story of
its defeat is a tragic drama. If the policy was mistaken and would have been
ineffective anyway, there is no drama, no tragedy, no hero, and no villains. In
that case, his endless kvetching about training and the rest of it is a bore to
the reader, as I suspect it sometimes was to the president.
But aside from relating a few anecdotes, Reich
makes no effort to demonstrate the validity of his prescription. He could
hardly do so in a book like this one. The issues are complicated and difficult.
Job training is an example. That the federal government should support job
training is not a new idea. The Kennedy administration was taken by that idea
35 years ago. Since 1962 the federal government has spent $180 billion, in 1997
dollars, on job training and employment programs. Probably at least $1 billion
has been spent on research to evaluate these programs, trying to measure their
benefits and costs. My understanding of the conclusion of all this research is
that for male workers, there was no net benefit and for female workers, very
little. Reich may have reason to dispute that conclusion. But to explain that
and convince the reader of it would require sophisticated analysis of a mass of
data and would be an entirely different book from the collection of personal
reminiscences he has produced.
If
readers bypass all that, however, and remind themselves not to enter into
policy debate with the author, they will find the other part of the book--the
life part--interesting, enjoyable, and valuable. This part is about what it is
like to be a Cabinet secretary. What does he do all day? What, if anything,
goes on at a Cabinet meeting? How can the administration's economic officials,
all presumably on the same team, meet for hours to talk about the budget
without getting one step forward? How does one prepare for and behave at a
congressional hearing? What do people talk about, and eat, at Washington
receptions and dinners? How does it feel to address a meeting of hostile
lobbyists, or to meet the press, or to appear on television with Jay Leno? And
so on.
Idid not share all Reich's experiences when I was in the
government. But I observed such life enough to say that his picture is
realistic. (I was, however, shocked when he said that the cabins at Camp David
were "mildewed." Things must have gone down a lot after the Nixon
administration.) He tells this story with a vividness that I did not expect of
him, with insight, some irony, and touches of gallows humor. There are much
better books by former members of the Cabinet--George Shultz's, for
example--but none that I know of that is so rich in personal detail.
This book
is not a road map for improving the American economy. It will probably have no
effect on future elections or public policy. But that is not the important test
of a book. This one can give readers pleasure and amusement, and also help them
understand a little better the world we live in. I have learned, mainly from
talking with taxi drivers, that everyone's life is interesting if you know
enough about it. That is true of Cabinet secretaries as well as of taxi
drivers.
So, why am I sorry for Robert Reich? It is
certainly not because he failed to get most of his policy proposals adopted. It
is because he did not enjoy his life in Washington. His four years here were
the most exciting part of his whole life and could have been the happiest part
of his professional one. But he got no pleasure from it. He was so determined
to maintain his self-image of moral superiority that he could not relax to
enjoy his Washington experience. I feel that after it was over, he realized he
may have missed something. In the epilogue, on Page 334, he says, "[M]y job was
the most fascinating and rewarding I could ever hope for." But in the preceding
333 pages, derived from notes taken during his four years in office, we have
the picture of an angry and unhappy man. That is why I am sorry for Robert
Reich.
