“What does he or she stand for?”
As Americans, we constantly ask that question, as it provides a foundation upon which we can construct a narrative about ourselves or someone else. We find this particularly convenient when we need to establish opinions about others, particularly those who reside in the public sector. There is a communal relationship in sharing a set of beliefs or standing for the same thing as another person, a connectivity that the harsh realities of life does not provide for. Therefore, there is a certain level of confusion and frustration in those rare instances when the answer shot back at us is that “he or she stands only for themself.”
One recent example of this conscious acceptance of egotism is that of economist Larry Summers. Ultimately, he has proven one thing very clearly in his ongoing controversial role as a public intellectual: Larry Summers faith and belief system stems entirely from his own ego. It is a truth that confounds those who base their beliefs in partisanship and ideology. It is this qualities that explains Summer’s continued success one that allows him to place his fundamental belief in the power of his own pragmatism and rationality as a means to resolve any public problem. Its also this reality that makes his very existence a seeming ongoing experiment of the modern public intellectual, a case study in the contradiction of an individual whose belief in his own intellectual capability serves equally an ability to adeptly resolve issues rivaled only by the set of issues created by his apparent lack of any semblance of social or political tact.
Therefore, while the substance of his argument and intelligence is entirely from the classic conception and stereotype of the intellectuals, his style, and the implementation of that substance, is decidedly anti-intellectual. The relationship between the two is noted by Professor Stephen J. Mack:
“What is sometimes identified as anti-intellectualism is in fact intellectual—that is, a well articulated family of ideas and arguments that privilege the practical, active side of life (e.g., work) over the passive and purely reflective operations of the mind in a vacuum. “
In terms of measuring public opinion, this combination has led to an immense amount of anger and scrutiny. Still, this combination, as well as his stubborn adherence to his own ego and intelligence rather than meekly siding with partisanship or punditry, which has become commonplace for lesser intellects in modern society, that makes his independence and constant criticism and skepticism invaluable, despite his style and personality. He is, in many ways, the essential public intellectual within the increasingly polarized forum of public debate and decisionmaking. His role as instigator once again follows Mack’s definition of the enduring role of the public intellectual:
Trained to it or not, all participants in self-government are duty-bound to prod, poke, and pester the powerful institutions that would shape their lives. And so if public intellectuals have any role to play in a democracy—and they do—it’s simply to keep the pot boiling. The measure of public intellectual work is not whether the people are listening, but whether they’re hearing things worth talking about.
The greatest quality of Summer’s intellectualism is not his stubborn attachment to his beliefs once they are crystallized, but instead his ability to maintain a certain neutrality and flexibility in choosing which ideology he adapts to serve as the foundation for those beliefs. If an intellectuals’ first allegiance is to the “life of the mind,” the radical changes and shifts that the term “life” implies, must allow for radical changes and shifts in ideology. Applying this analogy to real-world examples, one finds that the hatred and vitriol directed at Summer’s from different ideologies is the product of an intrinsic emotion not all together different from that felt by a spurned lover.
In this sense, Summer’s is the consummate economist, fiercely independent from the type of ideological loyalty derived from anything beyond rational evidence and numerical realities. While in recent years the public has embraced the cold rationalizations of what I would describe as “Pop” economists like Steven J. Leavitt or even to an extent a Malcolm Gladwell, Summer’s does not have the luxury of operating with the same inane and distant issues as those above. Summers application of harsh pragmatism regarding issues that effect the every day lives of the American people make him prone to anger. His natural detachment often turns than anger to disgust. While publicly allied with liberalism, Summer’s most notable quality is his relative ideological and political shiftiness. Despite his more recent alliance with solely Democratic administrations, first Clinton and then more recently the Obama administration, his own economic ideology has swung quite notably and publicly from Keynesian to Friedmanite, and then again more recently, post collapse of 2008, acutely back to Keynesian. An appropriate and equally puzzling analogy would be if Governor George Wallace had chosen to follow his infamous, life-changing, acceptance of integration with another reversal adamantly back to segregation just a few years later .
In his 2006 obituary to Milton Friedman, before the world had any semblance of an understanding of derivatives or “credit default swaps”, and TARP was still merely something placed over a baseball field, Summers explained his substantial transformation as such:
Not so long ago, we were all Keynesians. (“I am a Keynesian,” Richard Nixon famously said in 1971.) Equally, any honest Democrat will admit that we are now all Friedmanites. Mr. Friedman, who died last week at 94, never held elected office but he has had more influence on economic policy as it is practiced around the world today than any other modern figure.
This reversal in many ways led to the intense period of deregulation during the 1990s, which he played a central role, leading ultimately to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which many, most significantly Obama himself, has a specific precursor to the global economic meltdown of just a few years ago. It serves as just one specific example among many that help define the exceedingly tenuous relationship between Summers and his supposed Democratic counterparts. While the specific transgressions of this relationship are numerous, it is quite incredible to consider the fact that he was always welcomed back.
Still, it would be intellectual dishonest to claim his relationship closer with the ideals and language of the Republican party. Upon his reintroduction to the Liberals and Democrats of Washington as Obama’s sage on all matters economic, Summers changed his tune again regarding his strong endorsement of government intrusion and bailout of the free market despite his inherently opposite viewpoint and policy enforcement just a few years earlier:
Summers responded by quoting John Maynard Keynes, whose economic theory calling for massive government spending became identified with Roosevelt’s New Deal and is at the heart of the Obama administration’s stimulus plan. “Keynes famously said of someone who accused him of inconsistency: ‘When circumstances change, I change my opinion’,” said Summers, raising his heavy-lidded eyes at the reporters as he quoted Keynes’s kicker: ” ‘What do you do?’ ” The implication, not so subtle, is that smart people are not dogmatic—stuck in one narrow ideological groove —but rather open-minded, flexible and intellectually alert—able to change with the times.
In many ways, this is as close as Summers will get to admitting a mistake or being wrong, which he rarely does. While Alan Greenspan admits to fundamental flaws in his own financial worldview during the 90s, a move as introspective and self-critical an admission as you will ever see a political figure make, Summers, meanwhile, still refuses to use the comfort of hindsight to explicitly correct himself.
So then, we return back to the conclusion about ultimate belief in his capabilities as the force driving his ideology. Removed from the contentious forum of politics, his ill-fated tenure as president of Harvard further cemented this conclusion, containing perhaps the most insightful and telling controversy Summers has faced in his ongoing role as public intellectual. In this particular instance Summers stated at a conference that, among two other separate possible hypothesis, one reason causing fewer woman than men to become professional Scientists and Engineers was due to innate biological differences, specifically in mental aptitude, between the two genders. His argument was formulated within a quintessential framework of economic analysis, based testing scores and other statistics that seemingly provided evidence backing up this claim. Yet, his unwillingness to understand the possible social consequences of that statement revealed once again a social flaw that makes him ill fitted to serve in a society dominated by political correctness and a 24-hour news cycle. Still, despite the inability to demonstrate social tact, was this not a perfect example of the public intellectual pursuit of pragmatic solutions to solve a legitimate and pressing problem? As another Harvard Professor, Steve Pinker commented in his defense of Summers:
“Good grief, shouldn’t everything be within the pale of legitimate academic discourse, as long as it is presented with some degree of rigor? That’s the difference between a university and a madrassa.”
An inconvenient truth for public intellectuals is that the application and steadfastness of ones belief in a public setting where it might contrast strongly with public opinion or with traditional modes of thought is the only conceivable way to achieve a level success. A stubborn belief and adherence to your individual hypothesis and conclusions often is condemned, as is consistently the case with Summers. Instead, however, it should not only be accepted, but also applauded, if you follow Mack’s understanding of a public intellectual role as a constant instigator and critic within the framework of American Democracy. It is for this reason that President Obama, the undisputed crown jewel of modern intellectuals in politics, has such a reverence for summer’s, whom he calls “A thought leader.”
In many ways, Summers political career is something of an extension from the past. A revival, filling the void left by another public intellectual prone to public vilification, former Secretary Of Defense Robert McNamara. Beyond their obvious superficial similarities (Harvard educated, Economists with forays into the private sector and more than one administration followed by posts at the World Bank) they shared a common bond in their shared unpopularity among their peers, intellectuals from the largely liberal world of academia, many of whom felt sense of betrayal. While Summer’s apparent blunder regulating the markets might pale in comparison to McNamara’s blunder with Vietnam, they were both borne from a stubborn independent intellectualism, as well as the shared notion of perpetually existing as the smartest men in almost any room. This ego is equally distasteful as it is essential, the single quality that is required for a passive and inert intellect to propel towards action in the public sector. In their emphasis of rationality, both seemingly used an approach of reason rather than emotion, a notion deeply rooted in the greatest intellectual movement in recent history, the Great Enlightenment. This ultimate adherence to rationality and ego causes behavior that disturbs a large selection of people.
It is for this reason that, taking the analogy of “spurned lover” a step further, each time Summer’s leaves the confines of Cambridge and reemerges in the uncertain world of Washington, the public seemingly inevitably faces the same barrage of recycled articles, featuring comments from the same politicians, describing “the New Larry Summers” or the “Reeducation of Larry Summers.” In many way, this has the feel of the constantly jilted lover introducing yet another romantic savior to an increasingly skeptical group of friends, repeating again and again that “this time will be different,” with the hopes that he or she might actually believe it themselves. This is the way we the people choose to rationalize a public intellectual whose central ideology is that of his own ego.
Yet, that same bloated ego can help societal, economic and political issues, despite its lack of decorum in doing so. Perhaps this “maverick streak,” to use a common quote from the current political lexicon, should be embraced for what it is. Whether or not you agree with his ideology, and or certainly whether or not you are comfortable with his intentionally brusque style, his style of public intellectualism, active, independent, stirring the pot one controversy at a time, a “skeptical aggressor,” has an essential role in American politics going forward, as rationality gives way to the inefficient nature of knee-jerk partisanship.
theporkgrinder 