The American Dream in the 21st Century

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2 The Politics of the American Dream, 1980 to 2008 Michael C. Kimmage T HE AMERICAN DREAM has physics and metaphysics, a material and a spiritual component. The material component concerns wealth or well-being, with citizenship shading into ownership: One steps closer to the American Dream by buying a house or owning a car. The material component suggests class mobility or simply the pleasure of economic opportunity, a motive for immigration to America as long as there have been immigrants. The spiritual component, the metaphysics of the American Dream, is a blend of optimism and happiness , alluded to in the Declaration of Independence, in which happiness is a thing to be pursued. The American Dream could be defined as the spiritualization of property and consumption, the investment of joy and dignity in consumption and property ownership. The aristocrat would disdain this spiritualization; the Christian ascetic would fear it; and the socialist would claim that it reinforces the power of the propertied classes. In America, it is embraced. In no country is the voyage into the middle class and upper-middle class as intoxicating as it is in America, whatever statistics may say about the country’s actual class structure, actual poverty levels, and actual stagnation of opportunity. The American Dream promises immediate property and ultimate happiness, physical possessions, consumer goods, and an ensuing metaphysical joy.1 1 A helpful overview of the American dream as an idea or image in American history is Jim Cullen, The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 28 ■ Michael C. Kimmage The metaphysics of the American Dream help tell a political story concentrated in the years between 1980 and 2008. One could use the following somewhat tautological axiom as a thesis statement: The political party in closer touch with the American Dream is more likely to acquire and to hold on to power. The same cultural aspirations that aided Ronald Reagan in 1980 later aided Barack Obama in 2008. One part of this story is the rise of the Republican Party, with Reagan as its leader; another part is the decline of the New Deal coalition put together in the 1930s; and the third part is the election of Obama. In the twelve years between 1980 and 1992, the entire political spectrum in the United States was moved to the right, a national trend that began in 1980 and was consolidated by Bill Clinton, a Democratic president and pro-business progressive who declared that the “era of big government is over” (Clinton 1996).2 Clinton, a legendarily canny politician, bid farewell to orthodoxies that had guided the Democratic Party for some fifty years. If he did not wish to emulate Reagan, he was not above learning from a Republican master who had forged a winning connection between the Republican Party and the American Dream. Jimmy Carter in 1980, Walter Mondale in 1984, and Michael Dukakis in 1988—three losing Democratic contenders for the White House—had failed to harmonize the American Dream with the language and the policies of their party. They worried their way to defeat. Reagan embodied optimism about the American economy and the American future. Clinton embodied optimism, too, but he had to reverse the policies of his party to make it politically credible. Only by reducing the size of government and by blessing the virtues of consumption could Clinton benefit from the metaphysics of the American Dream. The politics of the American Dream, from 1980 to 2000, mandated optimism about the American future and enthusiasm about American-style capitalism. In 2008, with the economy in shambles and a charismatic Democrat in ascendancy, the Right finally lost its grip. The Democratic Party’s argument with the American Dream, circa 1980, has a long prehistory. What 1980 was to the Republican Party, 1932 was to the Democratic Party, the moment a charismatic leader came into his own and the moment when a new political coalition came into its own. Despite his rejection of Franklin Roosevelt’s political ideas, Reagan greatly admired the Democratic president who ruled midcen2 Clinton made this resonant statement in a 1996 radio broadcast. The Politics of the American Dream, 1980 to 2008 ■ 29 tury American politics. Reagan’s was the admiration of one professional for another, Reagan and Roosevelt being not just professional politicians but professional optimists; and Roosevelt’s optimism was indeed remarkable . Roosevelt’s biography was no rags-to-riches story; he was...