Shopping for Support
Down the Wrong Aisle
By Sebastian Mallaby.
Op-Ed Columnist washingtonpost.com August 28, 2006
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(By Tim Boyle -- Getty Images) |
Once upon a time, smart Democrats
defended globalization, open trade and the companies that thrive within this
system. They were wary of tethering themselves to an anti-trade labor
movement that represents a dwindling fraction of the electorate. They
understood the danger in bashing corporations: Voters don't hate
corporations, because many of them work for one.
Then dot-bombs and Enron punctured corporate America's prestige, and Democrats
bolted. Rather than hammer legitimately on real instances of corporate
malfeasance -- accounting scandals, out-of-control executive compensation and
the like -- Democrats swallowed the whole anti-corporate playbook.
To see the difference between then and now, just look at the Clintons. In
the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hillary Clinton sat on Wal-Mart's board; and
when Sam Walton died in 1992, Bill Clinton lauded him as "a wonderful family man
and one of the greatest citizens in the history of the state of Arkansas.''
Campaigning in the New Hampshire primary that year, Bill Clinton came proudly to
the rescue of a local company called American Brush Co. by helping it become a
Wal-Mart supplier.
Times change. Last year Hillary Clinton returned a campaign contribution
from Wal-Mart, even though she had no compunction in banking a check from Jerry
Springer. The nation's most successful retailer, which has seized the
opportunities created by globalization to boost the buying power of ordinary
Americans, is now seen as too toxic to touch. But a trash-talking TV host
is acceptable.
Clinton is not alone in this. The stiff-necked Joe Lieberman, who holds
fast to his principles on the Iraq war, recently abandoned his centrist economic
credentials by appearing at an anti-Wal-Mart rally. No matter that
Lieberman once served as chairman of the business-friendly Democratic Leadership
Council. Now he proclaims his determination "to wake up Wal-Mart and say,
'Treat your workers fairly.' "
After Lieberman, a senator from Connecticut, stepped down as chairman of the DLC,
he was succeeded by Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana. Well, Bayh recently showed
up at an anti-Wal-Mart rally, too, as has Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who is the
current DLC chairman. The Wake Up Wal-Mart campaign bus, which is
trundling across the country on a 35-day tour, ensnares prominent Democrats in
almost every state it passes through. Harry Reid, the Democrats' Senate
leader, appeared at an anti-Wal-Mart event on Saturday, and Sen. Joe Biden and
Gov. Bill Richardson popped up at earlier stops. When the campaign bus
reaches Washington state on Labor Day, both Washington's Democratic senators are
expected to greet it.
How can supposedly centrist Democrats defend this betrayal of their principles?
Some claim that their beliefs are consistent, but that the company has changed:
The Wal-Mart of the early 1990s mainly bought American, whereas today's
irresponsible monster buys cheap stuff from China. But this argument
merely illustrates how far Democrats have come. Since when did the party's
centrists believe that trading with China is evil? It was the Clinton
administration that brought China into the World Trade Organization.
Other Democrats reaffirm their centrist credentials while calling upon Wal-Mart
to pay workers more. "We are not here today because we are anti-business,"
Bayh asserted in Iowa recently as he demonstrated against Wal-Mart -- a
contention that the retailer's shareholders, who have spent millions defending
their brand against Wake-Up Wal-Mart, may have a hard time swallowing. But
the idea that Wal-Mart pays below-market wages is false. Otherwise nobody
would work there.
Hillary Clinton and Sen. John Kerry have attacked Wal-Mart for offering health
coverage to too few workers. But Kerry's former economic adviser, Jason
Furman of New York University, concluded in a paper last year that Wal-Mart's
health benefits are about as generous as those of comparable employers.
Moreover, Clinton and Kerry know perfectly well that market pressures limit the
health coverage that companies can provide. After all, both senators have
proposed expansions in government health provision precisely on the premise that
the private sector can't pay for all of it.
The truth is that none of these Democrats can resist dumb economic populism.
Even though we are not in a recession, and even though the presidential
primaries are more than a year away, the DLC crowd is pandering shamelessly to
the left of the party -- perhaps in the knowledge that the grocery workers
union, which launched the anti-Wal-Mart campaign, is strong in the key state of
Iowa.
For a party that needs the votes of Wal-Mart's customers, this is a questionable
strategy. But there is more than politics at stake. According to a
paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research by Jerry Hausman and Ephraim
Leibtag, neither of whom received funding from Wal-Mart, big-box stores led by
Wal-Mart reduce families' food bills by one-fourth. Because Wal-Mart's
price-cutting also has a big impact on the non-food stuff it peddles, it saves
U.S. consumers upward of $200 billion a year, making it a larger booster of
family welfare than the federal government's $33 billion food-stamp program.
How can centrist Democrats respond to that? By beating up Wal-Mart and
forcing it to focus on public relations rather than opening new stores,
Democrats are harming the poor Americans they claim to speak for.
smallaby@washpost.com
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