Mission for America

A friend of mine recently connected me with a think tank called New Consensus and, in particular, their rather stunning set of proposals for national renewal called “Mission for America.” It’s led by the folks who originated the “Green New Deal” concept, some notable portions of which ended up being enacted by the Biden Administration. It makes for heady reading. You can check it out here.

Those who are familiar with my thoughts on climate and the US Constitution know that I have an affinity for radical proposals. Incremental change is a nice norm, but doesn’t work in a crisis, especially when the normal political processes have become sclerotic. Blankets and hand-rubbing might be fine for a touch of hypothermia, but electro-cardial shocks are necessary to deal with a stopped heart.

Still, radical remedies are difficult to envision. As some have said about my constitutional rewrite project: “I like the result, I just don’t see how we can get from here to there.” Implementing the vision requires not a little faith, and—not surprisingly—such proposals often contain some “deus ex machina” (“act of God”) component. As a result, even if pitched as a specific actionable proposal, there is also a clear sense of intellectual provocation so that someone in the world of actual political engagement will at least pay attention and absorb some of the points and principles.

The gist of the Mission concept is an integrated approach to addressing the climate crisis by restructuring the US economy—across the manufacturing, financial, services, and labor sectors or, from the other end, to reset our approach to our economy by pivoting towards climate solutions. Many of the specifics have been bruited about for years (some for decades), but they are fleshed out here and—as importantly—integrated. Changes in the political mechanisms are included (even if not as radical as my constitutional proposal).

Thus, there is much to like about the Mission for America. It’s nothing if not bold. It’s comprehensive; it’s grounded on sound policy and plausible economics. Whether your priority is an economic perspective or an environmental one, you can’t solve the myriad issues without some fundamental changes and, as importantly, a set of specific plans. Hand-wringing won’t get us far and table-pounding is necessary, but only gets the ball rolling. Nay-sayers and nit-pickers need to be thanked (politely) for their concerns and then excused from the room.

I have some doubts about several of the substantive approaches. Boldness easily tips into hubris, so I’m sure that there are mistakes and overreaches; but the illusion of perfection is a sure prescription for inaction, so I’m willing to have some mis-fires. It’s essential to compare the Mission’s vision with our current trajectory, not some rah-rah “let’s all do 20% better,” incrementalism on the one hand or a simplistic utopia on the other. From that perspective the package looks pretty attractive.

For all its breadth, the Mission doesn’t directly take on the seemingly insurmountable problem of our dysfunctional political culture. The problems cut across the traditional left/right framework. Most Dems are too meek or fixated on rejecting whatever passes for Trumpism. In terms of substantive policy, MAGA-ites can’t decide whether to stick their heads into the sand or up an unsavory orifice; so you can’t even begin to have a discussion with them. On the other hand, most have no remaining hard ties to any political philosophy, so they might be flexible. It remains to be seen whether any of the “younger” Dem wannabe’s (Pete? Gretchen? Gavin?) would have the chutzpah/cojones to embrace something like this. Kamala needs something to rev up her candidacy, but she has little record of éclat. On the other hand, as I have called for a fundamental reset of our political structures (the Dems are only a bit better off than the GOP), perhaps the Mission can be the trigger for reshuffling our current configurations. Its breadth and boldness could certainly provide an opening for re-engaging the younger voters who are pretty much “over it” with regard to our current political parties/personalities.

While the proposal studiously avoids the term, there is definitely a flavor of 21C socialism underlying its approach. It’s a taboo word in US political discourse (an aversion to centralized state power (King George III) compounded by Jeffersonian yeomanry and, the highly negative example of the Soviet Union), which has distorted the entire set of words we use to talk about politics. Regardless of the language used, however, an increasingly global perspective and a more sophisticated understanding of environmental and economic  interdependency means we have to think in fundamentally different ways about how we operate as a society and the allocation of functions between the “public” and “private” sectors.

That being said, the Mission proposal is not a comprehensive guide to rebooting all our major policy issues, much less society as a whole. Perhaps there are plans for a broadened perspective in upcoming revisions. Tax, regulatory, and infrastructure issues all loom large as adjacent policy areas.

I have noted previously that history does not give us many examples of human societies pro-actively addressing their accumulating ills and looming threats. It usually seems to take a crisis to produce significant change, nostrums about “an ounce of prevention/pound of cure” notwithstanding. Assuming that there will be a window for effective/mitigatory action once the crisis gets even more dire (not at all clear!), it would be really helpful to have a bunch of plans in hand to re-orient our global culture. It would be helpful to have gone through at least some of the tire-kicking and sanity-checks beforehand, even if they’re likely to be a bit-outdated by the time we’re falling off the cliff.

So, there’s a lot of value in being bold and being specific, even if only to get real discussions moving so that we’re not starting from scratch when most folks are actually scared enough to break out of their incrementalistic shell and turn the unpleasant realities into opportunities.