Mar 24, 2019 5 min read

Gene Sperling thinks too great an emphasis on specifics — like Medicare for All — gets in the way of realizing some really worthwhile things, such as eventually securing health insurance for every American.

Sperling, who directed the National Economic Council under both Presidents Clinton and Obama, is a policy incrementalist.

If Bernie Sanders is a Hail Mary passer, looking to toss one into the end zone from 60 yards out, then Sperling is the guy standing on the sidelines sending in plays instructing the quarterback to hand the ball off; three to five yards at a time is preferable to a failed, if spectacular, touchdown attempt.

In the Sperling playbook, it’s better to work the ball down field, one play at a time, than waste time and energy dreaming about the Big Score.

Hail Marys hardly ever work. One plodding play at a time does work, sometimes.

In a length and wonkish essay in the journal Democracy, Sperling also proves appearances can be deceiving, for along with the cautious advice to Democrats — including the dozen or so who are running for president — to not put the pedal to the metal on things like guaranteed jobs for everyone, he lays out a thrilling (a word that should be taken figuratively, not literally) new approach to economic life in general and to the politics of economic regeneration.

In short, he’s imagined a new way to think about economics in a political context. Or maybe it’s not an old way. He quotes the past master of politics, Mr. New Deal himself, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to wit:

“What do the people of America want more than anything else? To my mind … two things … work and security… They are spiritual values, the true goal toward which our efforts of reconstruction should lead.”

Later in the essay, he quotes Martin Luther King Jr., who told the sanitation workers of Memphis at the time of his assassination, “The person who picks up the garbage is as significant as the physician… All labor has dignity.”

Sperling calls his newish formulation “economic dignity.” He explains the agreement he would like politicians to have with their constituents, especially the ones striving but failing to reach their “full potential” as citizen-bread winners:

“An economic dignity compact,” he writes, “must ensure that those who do their part are able to provide opportunity for family – and enjoy the greatest, most incalculable joys which come from that role.”

Sterling argues that every American must not only have an initial chance but a second or third or fourth opportunity “to pursue his or her potential.” He quotes George W. Bush, who said, “America is the land of second chances.”

He also takes note of the line taken by the public philosopher Martha Nussbaum: “The notion of dignity is closely related to the ideal of active striving.”

Sperling’s goal is to encourage “active striving” while providing those who strive a governmental and private enterprise framework in which their hard work will not be wasted or in vain.

The fact is that for at least a generation a large swath of Americans, including those living in rural and small-town western Pennsylvania, have been abandoned to sink or swim in their own, to pull themselves up by their frayed boot straps. At the same time, other Americans — those fortunate enough to have been born with money, social connections or brains — have flourished.

Backed by both the government (trade deals) and the capitalist marketplace (the rise of high-tech and the information-based economy), certain Americans are far outpacing millions of others who are hardly making ends meet. Their falling behind has triggered a political crisis of the first order.

“For those who happen to work in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Sperling writes, “whose factories close and communities wither … the American promise of limitless potential and second chances feels distant.”

Sperling places the white blue collar worker in his 50s in the same boat with the “low income youth from a dysfunctional school and an economically disadvantaged community.” Both are suffering the denial of opportunity, ” the chance to pursue” their “full potential and purpose.”

And both incidentally are dying at alarming rates. Sterling cites the opioid epidemic and the menace of early death, frequently by suicides, as one scourge of the care that has not been taken in regard to the well-being of middle-age, white, rural Americans. Meanwhile, gun violence and the toxicity of failure continues to take the lives of young, urban blacks.

Sperling wants lawmakers and presidents to rediscover and reinvigorate the social contract, recognizing and addressing “the great disillusionment” haunting the land: the denial of economic dignity which honest, hardworking Americans “thought they had a right to expect” – an expectation, Sperling adds, “rooted deep in the American character.”

He thinks this can best be accomplished by taking meaningful steps now, rather than wait for the stars in heaven to all fall into place. FDR’s New Deal came in waves, fashioned on the rock of public opinion and election victories and Roosevelt’s mastery of political tactics. FDR was a political opportunist with a grand vision. Oh how we could use a man like him again.

Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.