Thomas Frank Eats a Sandwich with Seymour Hersh

Recently Seymour Hersh interviewed Thomas Frank over lunch. During the meal Hersh and Frank said a good many things of interest, but I thought Frank particularly nicely summed up Bill Clinton's legacy, referring to him as "the pivotal figure of our times. Before he came along," not least because he converted "the market-based reforms of Reaganism" (i.e. neoliberalism) from a subject of controversy to the "accepted consensus wisdom" as he "completed the Reagan agenda in a way the Republicans could not have dreamed of doing--signing trade agreements, deregulating Wall Street, getting the balanced budget, the ’94 crime bill, welfare reform," as he even "almost got Social Security partially privatized." Frank also noted that what Clinton did became a model for his counterparts abroad, with this including Tony Blair's "New Labour."

Interesting, too, was Frank's consideration of the consequences of his quarter century of writing on these matters "with little effect." In his view the reason the effect has been so slight is "because politics isn't book learning," but rather "a clash of grand forces . . . industry and labor . . . social movements . . . money," while admitting the pessimism of the view he allowed that "the only lessons that get learned these days are the ones that flatter the powerful players involved."

All too true--and anyone presuming to think about politics in any serious way forgets it at their peril.