It's not just the economy, stupid

WORLDVIEW:AS POLITICAL cliches go, it's not quite as tiresome as "events, dear boy, events", nor as trite as "all politics is local", but few political slogans in recent years have been at once as persuasive and misleading as "it's the economy, stupid".

The phrase that began as one of three slogans on the wall of Bill Clinton's campaign headquarters during the 1992 US presidential campaign has subsequently been adopted by many as a fundamental truth about elections everywhere. But as conservative commentator Bill Kristol points out in the current issue of the Weekly Standard, it was not even true in 1992.

“The Clinton campaign was about much more than the economy,” he writes.

“It was about ‘ending welfare as we know it’, for example, and putting government on the side of those who ‘work hard and play by the rules’ – all of this part of a broader redefinition of the Democratic Party away from the failed liberalism of Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. And the collapse of the Bush administration in 1992 was also, as it happens, about much more than the economy, which was in fact coming back strong in the fall of that year.”

No US presidential election since then has been solely about the economy either. Al Gore failed to succeed Clinton despite a booming economy (although there were other factors that helped to determine the final outcome of that contest).

George W Bush rode a wave of patriotic fervour to win re-election in 2004, notwithstanding his economic mismanagement. And Barack Obama owed his victory in 2008 to many factors beyond the state of the economy, among them his promise to end partisan squabbling in Washington and to usher in a new era of hope and change.

But the myth persists and the latest politician to fall victim to it is Mitt Romney, who has based his bid to secure the Republican presidential nomination on the assumption that this year’s election will be fought solely on economic issues.

A candidate with little personal charm, a weak instinct for campaigning, and a political tin ear, Romney has presented his experience as an investment fund manager as his top qualification for the White House. With the economy in a mess, who better to fix it than a man who understands how to turn around an ailing business?

Unfortunately for Romney, the US economy is starting to look decidedly less sickly than before and Republicans now fear that Obama will face the electorate in November with a credible claim to have put the country back on the road to recovery.

Meanwhile, social issues such as contraception, abortion, gay marriage and religious freedom have crept back on to the political agenda, boosting the fortunes of Romney’s socially conservative rival, Rick Santorum.

Beyond the presidential race, Occupy Wall Street and its partner protests throughout the US have helped to radicalise a generation that recognises that a return to economic growth alone will not address the fundamental problems of an economic system that increasingly appears to serve the interests of a dwindling few rather than society as a whole.

On the other side of the political spectrum, the Tea Party movement is less concerned with economic growth than with the relationship between the individual and the state and the proper interpretation of the constitution.

It’s not only in the US that a narrow focus on macroeconomics has led political leaders astray – and in some cases helped to precipitate their downfall. As BBC journalist Paul Mason notes in his excellent new book on the recent global revolutions, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere, in 2009 economic growth in Tunisia was 3 per cent, in Egypt 4.7 per cent and in Libya 6 per cent, and all three countries were growing at a faster pace in 2010. Beyond the headline figures, however, lay worrying trends, notably a ballooning of youth unemployment.

“As Arab dictators have now learned to their cost, youth unemployment is not just any old statistic to be offset by high growth, high oil prices, or a pat on the back from the IMF. It destroys human capital and spreads bitterness across society,” Mason writes.

Russia’s economy grew by 4.3 per cent last year and is expected to grow by 3 per cent in 2012 – modest figures by that oil-rich country’s recent standards but more impressive than most in the West. Yet opposition to Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency is growing more strident – not enough to prevent him winning the election but sufficient to cast doubt on his ability to stay in power for a further 12 years.

In China, consistently huge levels of economic growth and rising living standards have served to radicalise rather

than appease the new

industrial working class – a counter-intuitive phenomenon that has long been observed by revolutionaries around the world.

The 200 million Chinese factory workers, miners and construction labourers who are described in the current issue of the New Left Review as “the most dangerous class on the planet” may be focused on demands for better pay and conditions. But their struggle, like the protests in Europe, Russia, the US and the Middle East, is not only about economic injustice but about individual human dignity.

The pattern is similar everywhere and the message to politicians is the same: it’s not just the economy, stupid.

Denis Staunton is Deputy Editor