excerpt from "listen liberal" by thomas frank

8/19/2019 Excerpt From "Listen Liberal" by Thomas Frank.

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Metropolitan Books

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“Te Meek Have Inherited” rom Love Is a Dog From Hell: Poems 1974–1977

by Charles Bukowski. Copyright © 1977 by Charles Bukowski. Reprinted

by permission o HarperCollins Publishers.

Te Introduction to Listen, Liberal incorporates several passages about income inequality that

were published over the course o 2014 in Salon, the online magazine, as well as passages

that appeared in columns or Harper’s Magazine, one rom September 2012 and one rom

September 2013. Chapter Seven includes bits o an essay that appeared

in Bookforum in the all o 2013 and also expands on Salon essays that appeared

in March 2014, August 2014, and January 2015. Chapter Eight incorporates

part o a Harper’s Magazine column or September 2012.

Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

ISBN: 9781627795395

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Printed in the United States o America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2


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Introduction: Listen, Liberal 1

1. Teory o the Liberal Class 15

2. How Capitalism Got Its Groove Back 44

3. Te Economy, Stupid 62

4. Agents o Change 81

5. It akes a Democrat 106

6. Te Hipster and the Banker Should Be Friends 124

7. How the Crisis Went to Waste 139

8. Te Deects o a Superior Mind 159

9. Te Blue State Model 176

10. Te Innovation Class 197

11. Liberal Gilt 217

Conclusion: rampling Out the Vineyard 246

Notes 259

Acknowledgments 293

Index 295

CONTENTS


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We have now observed several instances o the cycle o enthusi-

astic idealism that propels modern Democratic politics, as

well as the lagging cycle o disappointment that invariably ol-

lows it. Both cycles are highly predictable given the economicdesperation o ordinary Americans—and so is the next stage in

the process: the transer o this passionate idealism to Hillary

Clinton. It is, as they say, her turn. Afer losing to Barack Obama

in the Democratic primaries in 2008, she waited patiently or

the years to pass, serving as his secretary o state, doing good

works with the Clinton Foundation, and now she gets both to

run or the presidency and to be the vessel o liberal hopes. It

is to her that we will all soon look or our salvation.

As Hillary Clinton has no doubt noticed, the circumstances

o 2016 present a striking similarity to the ones that put her

husband in the White House in 1992. Again Americans are

outraged at the way the middle class is alling to pieces and at

the greed o the people on top. Te best-seller lists are once againlled with books about inequality. oday Americans are work-

ing even harder or even less than when Bill Clinton made

“working harder or less” his campaign catchphrase. Te way

11

Liberal Gilt


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218 HOMAS FRANK

Hillary Clinton—the way any Democrat—will play such a situ-

ation is extremely easy to guess.

“You see corporations making record prots, with CEOsmaking record pay, but your paychecks have barely budged,”

Hillary declared in June 2015, launching her presidential cam-

paign. “Prosperity can’t be just or CEOs and hedge und

managers.” On she talked as the months rolled by, pronouncing

in her careul way the rote denunciations o Wall Street that were

supposed to make the crowds roar and the nanciers tremble.

Tat those nanciers and hedge und managers do not actu-ally nd Hillary’s populism menacing is a well- established act.

Barack Obama’s mild rebukes caused Wall Street to explode in

ury and sel-pity back in 2009 and 2010; the nanciers pouted

and cried and picked up their campaign donations and went

home. But Hillary’s comments provoke no such reaction. Only

a ew days beore she launched her campaign, or example, JohnMack, the ormer CEO o Morgan Stanley, was asked by a host

on the Fox Business channel whether her populist talk was

causing him to reconsider his support or her. On the contrary:

“o me, it’s all politics,” he responded. “It’s trying to get elected,

to get the nomination.”1

“None o them think she really means her populism,” wrote

a prominent business journalist in 2014 about the bankers andHillary. Te Clinton Foundation has actually held meetings at

the headquarters o Goldman Sachs, he points out. He quotes

another Morgan Stanley offi cer, who believes that “like her hus-

band, [Hillary] will govern rom the center, and work to get

things done, and be capable o garnering support across differ-

ent groups, including working with Republicans.”2

How are the bankers so sure? Possibly because they have

read the memoirs o Robert Rubin, the ormer chairman o

Citibank, the ormer secretary o the reasury, the ormer


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LISEN, LIBERAL 219

co-head o Goldman Sachs. One o the themes in this book is

Rubin’s constant war with the populists in the Party and in the

Clinton administration—a struggle in which Hillary was animportant ally. Rubin tells how Hillary once helped him to get

what he calls “class-laden language” deleted rom a presidential

speech and also how she helped prevent the Democrats rom

appealing to “class conict” in a general election—on the grounds

that it “is not an effective approach” to the “swing voters in the

middle o the electorate.”3

rying to gure out exactly where Hillary Clinton actuallystands on po litical issues can be crazy-making. As a presidential

candidate, or example, she says she deplores the revolving door

between government and Wall Street because it destroys our

“trust in government”—a noble sentiment. When she ran the

State Department, however, that door spun on a well-lubricated

axis. As a presidential candidate, she opposes Obama’s rans-Pacic Partnership treaty, as do I; as secretary o state, however,

she helped negotiate it. As a presidential candidate in 2008, she

claimed to oppose NAFA, the rst great triumph o the (Bill)

Clinton administration; not only had she supported it earlier,

but as a U.S. senator, she had voted or numerous Bush admin-

istration ree-trade treaties.4

Te same is true nearly wherever you look. Te great impris-onment mania o the 1990s, or example: As rst lady, Hillary’s

appetite to incarcerate was unassuageable. “We need more and

tougher prison sentences or repeat offenders,” she said in 1994,

kicking off a bloodthirsty call or more three-strikes laws. On

another day, seven years later, Senator Hillary Clinton could be

ound urging law students to “Dare to care about the one and ahal million children who have a parent in jail.”5 Even the well-

being o poor women and children, Hillary’s great signature

issue in her youth, had to hit the bricks when the time arrived in


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220 HOMAS FRANK

1996 or welare reorm, a measure she not only supported but

or which she says she lobbied.6

As a presidential candidate in 2008, Hillary liked to identiyhersel with working-class middle Americans; as a lawyer in

Arkansas in the Eighties, however, she was a proud member o

the board o directors o Wal-Mart, the retailer that has acted

on middle America like a neutron bomb. As a student leader in

the Sixties, she opposed the Vietnam War; as a senator in the

Bush years, she voted or the Iraq War; as a presidential candi-

date, she has now returned to her roots and acknowledges that vote was wrong.

On the increasingly raught matter o the sharing economy—

the battle o Silicon Valley and Uber versus the workers o the

world—Hillary actually tried to have it both ways in the same

speech in July 2015. She rst said she approved o how these new

developments were “unleashing innovation,” but also allowedthat she worried about the “hard questions” they raised. Tat

was tepid, but it was not tepid enough. Republicans pounced;

they harbored no reservations at all about innovation, they

said. Hillary’s chie technology offi cer was orced to double

down on her employer’s wishy-wash: “Sharing economy rms

are disrupting traditional industries or the better across the

globe,” she wrote, but workers still needed to be protected.

Tis dutiul inhabitant o Hillaryland then rushed to remind

“the tech community” o the ties that bound them to the

Democrats: immigration, environment, and gay marriage.

Republicans? Ugh: “very ew technologists I know stand with

them.”7

imes change. Politicians compromise. Neither is a sin. Teway Hillary hersel puts it is that while her principles never

waver, “I do absorb new inormation.”8 Still, her combination is

unique. She is politically capricious, and yet (as we shall see) she


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LISEN, LIBERAL 221

maintains an image o rock-solid moral commitment. How these

two coexist is the mystery o Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“I’M GOOD, I’M GOOD, I’M GOOD”

Te one thing about Hillary that everyone knows and on which

everyone agrees is how smart she is. She is an accomplished

proessional, a brilliant leader o a brilliant generation, a woman

o obvious intelligence.

Rather than investigate her record, biographies o HillaryClinton read like high-achieving résumés. Tey tell us about her

accomplishments in high school in the Chicago suburbs, how

she was student-body president at Wellesley College, what she

said in her bold graduation speech in 1969, and how that speech

was covered by Life magazine, which was in turn excited by the

“top students” around the country who were rebelling even asthey graduated. Ten: the ne law schools into which Hillary was

accepted, her deeds at the Yale law review, how she made the

shortlist o lawyers invited to work on the Nixon impeachment

inquiry, and how she could easily have bagged a partnership at

a prestigious law rm but—in a risky gambit marveled at by

everyone who writes about her—how she chose instead to move

to Arkansas and join orces with that other prominent leader o

the Sixties generation, Bill Clinton, who had managed to com-

pile an impressive résumé in his own right.

Her biographers write about Hillary this way because her

successes in the upper reaches o the meritocracy are what make

her a leader. Indeed, Hillary talks this way hersel. In 2001,

when she was a U.S. senator rom New York, she was still tell-ing the story o how she made the hard choice between Yale and

Harvard law schools. Te theme o her 2008 presidential cam-

paign was opening the most important job in the world to tal-


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222 HOMAS FRANK

ent. As secretary o state in the Obama years, she repeated

many times her belie that “talent is universal, but opportunity

is not.” It is her motto, her credo, her innermost aith: that smartpeople are born ree but everywhere they are in chains, pre-

vented by unair systems rom rising to the top.9 Meritocracy is

who she is.

Te other persistent rerain in accounts o Hillary Clinton’s

lie is her dedication to high principle. Again, all her biogra-

phers agree on this, everyone knows it is true. Te way Hillary

negotiates between high-minded principle and the practicaldemands o the world is a theme that weaves itsel into her story

just as growth and sel-actualization avor biographies o her

husband. It comes naturally to everyone who thinks about her,

and it has since the very beginning, since her college commence-

ment speech in 1969 rebuked those who thought o politics as

“the art o the possible” rather than “the art o making whatappears to be impossible, possible.”

“Hillary always knew what was right,” declares biographer

Gail Sheehy. “Over the long haul,” observes biographer David

Brock, “she had no intention o conceding the substantive

issues or bedrock principles to the other side.” Her 2008 cam-

paign adviser Ann Lewis once described Hillary’s political phi-

losophy with this inspirational-poster avorite: “Do all the good

you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all

the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you

can, as long as ever you can.”10

“Hillary’s ambition was always to do good on a huge scale,”

writes biographer Carl Bernstein o her college years, “and her

nascent instinct, so visible at Wellesley, to mediate principlewith pragmatism—without abandoning basic belies—seemed a

powerul and plausible way o achieving it.”11

Tat’s some slippery stuff right there, but you get the eeling


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LISEN, LIBERAL 223

that Bernstein is doing his best. Afer all, describing someone’s

“ambition to do good on a huge scale” is like analyzing the har-

monies o the spheres: it’s not easy. And it gets even less easywhen Bernstein’s heroine goes to Yale Law School. Tere, the

journalist writes, “she was a recognizable star on campus, much

discussed among the law school’s students, known as politically

ambitious, practical, and highly principled.”12

As rst lady in the 1990s, Hillary Clinton went on to enthuse

about some respectable something called the “Politics o Mean-

ing” and was proled in the New York Times Magazine as “SaintHillary,” a woman who “would like to do good, on a grand scale,

and she would like others to do good as well.” In a presidential

primary debate in 2015, she announced, “I’m not taking a back

seat to anybody on my values [and] my principles.”*

I you’re like me, all this talk o rock-solid principles makes

you immediately wonder what those principles are. YoungHillary was “known” or them; she had no intention o ever

conceding them; she takes second place to nobody in honoring

them; but what they actually were is always lef unspoken. Te

“politics o meaning,” yes, we remember hearing that phrase,

but meaning what? What did it all mean?

* Maintaining her açade o goodness and moral principle has also broughtHillary Clinton occasional distress. One such instance, according to her biog-rapher Carl Bernstein, was the matter o the misplaced billing records romher lawyer days, which became such a sought-afer object during the White-water investigation o the mid-1990s. Hillary didn’t want the billing recordsmade public, Bernstein suggests, because they were—to repeat the words othe unnamed Clinton administration lawyer whom Bernstein quotes—“proessionally embarrassing” to her. Tey showed what an ordinary lie she

led. “Her law practice, or example,” Bern stein’s source continues. “Te bill-ing records are embarrassing, maybe or what they show about how she spenther time, which was not in any kind o high-minded or incredibly intellectualpursuit o the law, which is sort o her reputation, but [these were] small-potatoes deals.” (Bernstein, A Woman in Charge, p. 454, brackets in original.)


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224 HOMAS FRANK

NO CEILINGS

Nothing is more characteristic o the liberal class than itsmembers’ sense o their own elevated goodness. It is a eeling

that overrides any particular inconsistency or policy ailing—

the lousy deeds o Bill Clinton, or example, do not reduce his

status in this value system. Still, it is not merely the shrill sel-

righteousness that conservatives love to deplore. Nor is it sim-

ply the air o militant politeness you encounter in places like

Boston or Bethesda. It is more rareed than that, a combinationo virtue and pedigree, a matter o educational accomplish-

ment, o taste, o status . . . o proessionalism.

When this value system judges Hillary to be a woman o

high idealism, what is being reerenced might more accurately

be called the atmosphere o acute virtue—o pure, serene, Alpine

propriety—through which her campaign and, indeed, her per-son seems to move at all times.

I mysel got a whiff o this intoxicating stuff on Interna-

tional Women’s Day in March 2015, when I attended a Clinton

Foundation production at the Best Buy theater in New York

City called No Ceilings. Te happening I am describing wasn’t a

campaign event—the 2016 race had not started at that point—

nor was it a panel discussion, as there were no disagreements

among participants or questions rom the audience. Instead, it

was a choreographed presentation o various ndings having to

do with women’s standing in the world. But i you paid atten-

tion, it provided a way to understand Hillary’s genuine views

on the great social question beore the nation—the problem o

income inequality.Onto the stage beore us came Hillary Clinton, the Demo-

cratic Party’s heiress apparent; Melinda Gates, the wie o the

richest man in the world (the event was a coproduction with the


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LISEN, LIBERAL 225

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation); various oundation execu-

tives; a Hollywood celebrity; a Silicon Valley CEO; a best-

selling author; an expert rom Georgetown University; a NobelPrize winner; and a large supporting cast o women rom the

third world. Everyone strode with polished inormality about

the stage, reading their lines rom an invisible teleprompter.

Back and orth, the presenters called out to one another in tones

o gracious supportiveness and attery so sweet it bordered on

idolatry.

In her introduction to the event, or example, the V starAmerica Ferrera, who has appeared at many Clinton events

both philanthropic and political, gave a shout-out to the “incred-

ible women who have brought us all here today” and the “amazing

girls” whose conversation she had been permitted to join. Ten

Chelsea Clinton, who announced hersel “completely awed” by

the “incredible swell o people and partners” who had partici-pated in some event the previous day, invited us to harken to

the “inspiring voices o leaders, o communities, o companies,

o countries.”13

Tose were just the rst ew minutes o the event. It kept

on like that or hours. When someone’s “potential” was men-

tioned, it was described as “boundless.” People’s “stories” were

“compelling,” when they weren’t “inspiring,” or “incredible,”or “incredibly inspiring.” A Kenyan activist was introduced as

“the incomparable.” A man thanked Hillary Clinton or her

leadership, and Hillary Clinton in turn thanked someone or

saying that women were harmed more by climate change than

were men.

Te real star o this show was the creative innovator, thegure who crops up whenever the liberal class gets together to

talk about spreading the prosperity around more airly. In this

case, the innovations being hailed were mainly transpiring in


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226 HOMAS FRANK

the third world. “Every year, millions and millions o women

everywhere are empowering themselves and their communities

by nding unique, dynamic, and productive ways to enter theworkorce, start their own businesses and contribute to their

economies and their countries,” said Chelsea Clinton, introduc-

ing an “inspiring innovator and chocolatier” rom rinidad.

Melinda Gates ollowed up the chocolatier’s presentation by

heaping up even more praise: “She was an amazing business-

woman, you can see why we all nd her so inspiring.” Ten, a

little later on: “Entrepreneurship is really vital to women. . . .It’s also their ability to advance into leadership roles in corpora-

tions. And corporations play such a big role in the global

economy.”

Tey sure do. Te presence o Melinda Gates should probably

have been a clue, but still I was surprised when the rhetoric o

idealistic affi rmation expanded to cover technology, meaningsocial media. Participants described it as one o the greatest liber-

ators o humanity ever conceived. Do I exaggerate? Not really.

Hear, again, the words o America Ferrera:

We’re hearing these stories or the rst time because o a new

thing called social media. . . . wenty years ago, in many

communities across the world, women and girls were ofen

virtually silenced, with no outlet and no resources to raise

their voices, and with it, themselves. And that’s huge. One out

o every two people, 50 percent o the world’s population,

without a voice. Social media is a new tool to ampliy our

voices. No matter which platorm you preer, social media has

given us all an extraordinary new world, where anyone, nomatter their gender, can share their story across communities,

continents, and computer screens. A whole new world without

ceilings.


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LISEN, LIBERAL 227

“echno-ecstatic” was the term I used to describe rhetoric like

this during the 1990s, and now, two crashes and countless tech

scandals later, here it was, its claims o reedom-through-smartphones undimmed and unmodied. Tis orm o ideal-

ism had survived every thing: mass surveillance, inequality, the

gig economy. Nothing could dent it.

Roughly speaking, there were two groups present at this dis-

tinctly rst-world gathering: hard-working women o color and

authoritative women o whiteness. Many o the people making

presentations came rom third-world countries—a midwierom Haiti, a student rom Aghanistan, the chocolate maker

rom rinidad, a ormer child bride rom India, an environmen-

tal activist rom Kenya—while the women anchoring this swirl-

ing praise-est were ormer Secretary o State Hillary Clinton and

the wealthy oundation executive Melinda Gates.

What this event suggested is that there is a kind o naturallyoccurring solidarity between the millions o women at the bot-

tom o the world’s pyramid and the tiny handul o women at its

very top. Te hardship those third-world women have endured

and the entrepreneurial efforts they have undertaken are power-

ul symbols o the struggle o American proessional women to

become CEOs o Fortune 500 companies (one o the ambitions

that was discussed in detail at the event) or o a woman to be

elected president.

GOOD THINGS ARE GOOD

Tat was my rst experience o the microclimate o virtue that

surrounds Hillary Rodham Clinton. Te mystic bond betweenhigh-achieving American proessionals and the planet’s most

victimized people, I would discover, is a recurring theme in her

lie and work.


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228 HOMAS FRANK

But it is not her theme alone. Regardless o who leads it, the

proessional-class liberalism I have been describing in these pages

seems to be orever traveling on a quest or some place o greaterrighteousness. It is always engaged in a search or some subject

o overwhelming, noncontroversial goodness with which it can

identiy itsel and under whose umbrella o virtue it can put

across its sel-interested class program.

Tere have been many other virtue-objects over the years:

people and ideas whose surplus goodness could be extracted or

deployment elsewhere. Te great virtue-rush o the 1990s, orexample, was ocused on children, then thought to be the last

word in overwhelming, noncontroversial goodness. Who could

be against kids? No one, o course, and so the race was on to

justiy whatever your program happened to be in their name. In

the course o Hillary Clinton’s 1996 book, It Takes a Village,

the avorite rationale o the day—think o the children!—wasdeployed to explain her husband’s crime bill as well as more

directly child-related causes like charter schools.

You can nd dozens o examples o this kind o liberal-class

virtue-quest i you try, but instead o listing them, let me go

straight to the point: Tis is not politics. It’s an imitation o

politics. It feels political, yes: it’s highly moralistic, it sets up an

easy melodrama o good versus bad, it allows you to make all

kinds o judgments about people you disagree with, but ulti-

mately it’s a diversion, a way o putting across a policy program

while avoiding any sincere discussion o the policies in ques-

tion. Te virtue-quest is an exciting moral crusade that seems to

be extremely important but at the conclusion o which you dis-

cover you’ve got little to show or it besides NAFA, bank dereg-ulation, and a prison spree.

Tis book is about Democrats, but o course Republicans do


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LISEN, LIBERAL 229

it too. Te culture wars unold in precisely the same way as the

liberal virtue-quest: they are an exciting ersatz politics that seem

to be really important but at the conclusion o which voters dis-cover they’ve got little to show or it all besides more ree-trade

agreements, more bank deregulation, and a different prison

spree.

CHAMPION OF THE ONE TRUE INTERNET

Te Clinton Foundation event gives us context in which tounderstand Hillary’s most important moment as a maker o

policy—her our years as Barack Obama’s secretary o state.

Although her purview was oreign policy, we can nevertheless

see rom her deeds at State how she thinks and the ways she

intends to tackle inequality. Te themes should be amiliar by

now: the Internet, innovation, and getting everyone hooked upto the nancial industry.

In emphasizing these aspects o her tenure at the State

Department, I do not mean to brush off the better-known

diplomatic triumphs that Hillary Clinton engineered, like the

international effort to isolate Iran. Nor do I mean to sof-pedal

her better-known diplomatic ailures, like the cataclysmic civil

war in Libya, a conict Clinton worked so hard to stoke that the

Washington Post in 2011 called it “Hillary’s War.”14

Te concern o this book is ideas, not diplomacy, and the

rst o the big ideas Hillary Clinton proposed at State was what

she called “Internet Freedom.” Tis was to be the very “corner-

stone o the 21st century statecraf policy agenda,” according to

a State Department press release, and Secretary Clinton returnedto the principle requently. In a high-prole speech in January

o 2010, she declared that, henceorth, the United States “stand[s]


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230 HOMAS FRANK

or a single internet where all o humanity has equal access to

knowledge and ideas.” Committing ourselves to deending this

unied Internet rom all who would censor it, she continued,was a logical extension o what Franklin Roose velt had been

afer with his Four Freedoms; it wasn’t all that much different

rom the UN’s Universal Declaration o Human Rights, either.

o Clinton it was a matter o direct moral simplicity: open expres-

sion on the Internet equals reedom; evil regimes are those that

try to suppress that reedom with things like “a new inorma-

tion curtain.”15

Understanding the Internet as a orce o pure nobility is a

revered pundit tradition in the United States, and in the days

when Clinton declared humanity’s Internet Freedom, those

ideals were on the lips o every commentator. In the summer

o 2009, the Iranian regime had violently suppressed a series

o enormous street protests—protests that, the American pundit-community immediately determined, had been as much a tes-

tament to the power o witter as they were about any local

grievance having to do with Iran itsel. Te so-called witter

Revolution t neatly into the beloved idea that new communi-

cations technologies—technologies in vented or dominated by

Americans, that is—militate by their very nature against dicta-

torships, a market-populist article o aith shared everywhere

rom Wall Street to Silicon Valley.16

Ten there was the economic side o the single, unied Inter-

net, and it, too, was all about liberation. For the “people at the

bottom o the world’s economic ladder,” Hillary Clinton averred

on that day in 2010, the Internet was a savior. She declared that a

connection to it was “an on-ramp to modernity.” Te ear thatthe Internet might create “haves and have-nots” was alse, she

continued; she knew o armers in Kenya who were using

“mobile banking technology” and o “women entrepreneurs”


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232 HOMAS FRANK

just wanted to watch and listen as you did. Tey recorded

people’s calls. Tey read people’s email. Tey spied on the presi-

dent o Mexico. Tey spied on French business leaders. Tey lis-tened to the phone calls o some thirty-ve world leaders. Tey

hacked the cellphones o entire nations. Tey spied on low-level

oreign diplomats in order to swindle them at the bargaining

table.

Hillary Clinton never really had to conront these issues.

She stepped down as secretary in February o 2013, while the

rst news stories about mass surveillance appeared our monthslater.* And maybe this is the wrong way to judge her crusade

or Internet Freedom in the rst place. Maybe access to the Inter-

net was all people needed, somewhere on earth, to pull them-

selves up into prosperity.

ake the case o Western intervention in Libya, which her

State Department once regarded as something o a triumph.According to a 2011 State Department press release, the Libya

intervention showed how we could achieve “post-conict stabi-

lization using inormation networks”:

A leadership team at the ministry ormed a plan called

“e-Libya” to increase Internet access in the country and lever-

age this inormation network as a tool to grow new businesses,

deliver government ser vices, improve education, and inter-

connect Libyan society. Since the Qadda regime denied

Internet access to more than 90% o Libyans, the potential or

positive social, po litical, and economic change through access

* In her memoir o the period, Hard Choices, she rst brushes off the NSA’sspying by relating how President Obama “welcomed a public debate” on thesubject, which she suggests could never happen in Russia or China. A ewparagraphs later, she implies that her 2010 Internet Freedom push had beenmainly about privacy, which it obviously was not.


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LISEN, LIBERAL 233

to inormation networks is considerable. Te State Depart-

ment led a delegation o experts to ripoli to provide concrete

expertise in network architecture, law and policy, e-com-merce, and e-government or the e-Libya plan. It may become

a model or “digital development” through technical knowl-

edge exchange and partnerships across the public and private

sectors.19

And then: Libya sank into civil war, with armed actions, outra-

geous brutality, and eeing reugees. Making a stand or Inter-net Freedom sounded like a noble goal back in 2011—a cheap

way to solve Libya’s problems, too—but in retrospect it was

hardly suffi cient to quell the more earthly orces that roiled that

unhappy land.

“THE HILLARY DOCTRINE”

Te other great diplomatic initiative during Hillary Clinton’s

years as secretary o state was to recast the United States as the

world’s deender o women and girls. Tis was the so-called

Hillary Doctrine—a virtue-quest o the most principled kind.20

he one superpower was no longer to be an overbearing

hegemon or a bringer o global nancial crisis.Te secretary described the elements o the Hillary Doc-

trine in 2010 at a ED conerence, that great agora o the lib-

eral class. “I have made clear that the rights and the roles o

women and girls will be a central tenet o American oreign

policy,” she said, “because where girls and women ourish, our

values are also reected.”* It is, Clinton continued, “in the vital

* For what it’s worth, two o the most eminist countries in history, at leastormally, were our archenemies, the Soviet Union and communist Cuba.


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234 HOMAS FRANK

interests o the United States o America” to care about women

and girls. Here was her reasoning: “Give women equal rights, and

entire nations are more stable and secure. Deny women equalrights, and the instability o nations is almost certain.” Here

was her conclusion: “the subjugation o women is thereore a

threat to the common security o our world and to the national

security o our country.”21

I was a little bit alarmed when I heard Secretary Clinton

speak these phrases in her deliberate way. Ordinarily, the words

“vital interest” and “national security,” when combined likethis, suggest strong stuff: that the U.S. has a right to reeze assets,

organize embargoes, and maybe even launch airstrikes—in

this case, I suppose, against countries that score poorly on the

gender-equality scale.

Not to worry. Like so many o the administration’s high-

minded initiatives, this one turned out to be pretty mundane: theHillary Doctrine was concerned largely with innovation, with

oundations and private companies who would partner with

us to do things like “improve maternal and child health,” “close

the global gender gap in cellular phone ownership,” “persuade

men and boys to value their sisters and their daughters,” and

“make sure that every girl in the world has a chance to live up to

her own dreams and aspirations.”22

Above all, the Hillary Doctrine was about entrepreneurs. It

was women-in-business whose “potential” Hillary Clinton wished

to “unleash”; it was their “dreams and innovations” that she

longed to see turned into “successul businesses that generate

income or themselves and their amilies.”23

Let us note in passing that, although the Hillary Doctrinesounded idealistic, it actually represented no great change in U.S.

oreign policy. Its most obvious application was as a justication

or our endless wars in the Middle East, which had commenced


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236 HOMAS FRANK

microlending would bring the science o markets down to the

individual. Merely by providing impoverished individuals with

a tiny loan o fy or a hundred dollars, it was thought, you couldput them on the road to entrepreneurial sel-suffi ciency, you

could make entire countries prosper, you could bring about eco-

nomic development itsel.

What was most attractive about microlending was what it

was not, what it made unnecessary: any sort o collective action

by poor people, coming together in governments or unions.

Te international development community now knew that suchinstitutions had no real role in human prosperity. Instead, we

were to understand poverty in the amiliar terms o entrepre-

neurship and individual merit, as though the hard work o mil-

lions o single, unconnected people, plus cellphones, bank

accounts, and a little capital, were what was required to remedy

the third world’s vast problems. Millions o people would sellone another baskets they had made or coal they had dug out o

the trash heap, and suddenly they were entrepreneurs, on their

way to the top. Te key to development was not doing some-

thing to limit the grasp o Western banks, in other words; it was

extending Western banking methods to encompass every last

individual on earth.25

Microlending is a perect expression o Clintonism, bringingtogether wealthy nancial interests with rhetoric that sounds

outrageously idealistic. Microlending permits all manner o

networking, virtue-seeking, and prot-taking among the lend-

ers while doing nothing to change actual power relations—the

ultimate win-win.

Bill Clinton’s administration made microlending a proudpoint o emphasis in U.S. oreign policy, and Hillary has been a

microlending enthusiast since her rst days on the national

stage. She promoted it as a orm o emale empowerment in a


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LISEN, LIBERAL 237

amous 1995 speech she made in Beijing and she supported

microlending efforts wherever the rst amily traveled in the

1990s—there’s even an exhibit on the subject at the ClintonPresidential Library that shows Hillary giving a speech in the

Gaza Strip in ront o a sign that reads, “Women’s Empower-

ment Trough Micro Lending.” In 1997 she cohosted a global

Microcredit Summit in Washington, D.C., replete with the

usual third-world delegations. Hillary’s own remarks on that

occasion were unremarkable, but those o the president o the

Citicorp Foundation were well worth remembering. Here iswhat he said to the assembled saviors o the third world:

Everyone in this room is a banker, because everyone here is

banking on sel-employment to help alleviate poverty around

the world.

At the closing session o the summit, bankers joined national

leaders singing “We Shall Overcome.”26

In the decade that ollowed, the theology o microlending

developed a number o doctrinal renements: the idea that

women were better borrowers and better entrepreneurs than

men; the belie that poor people needed mentorship and

“nancial inclusion” in addition to loans; the suggestion thatthey had to be hooked up to a bank via the Internet; the discov-

ery that it was morally OK to run microlending banks as pri-

vate, prot-making enterprises—many o the arguments that I

had heard at the No Ceilings conerence, expressed in the

unorgettable tones o international emale solidarity.

Tese ideas were the core o the Hillary Doctrine. Hillary’sambassador-at-large or global women’s issues, Melanne Verveer,

declared in 2011 that “nancial inclusion is a top priority or

the U.S. government” and announced her terrible chagrin that


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238 HOMAS FRANK

“3 billion people in the world remain unbanked; the majority o

them are women.” Hillary’s undersecretary or democracy and

global affairs, Maria Otero, came to State rom one o the big-gest American microlending institutions; in her offi cial U.S.

government capacity, she expressed her joy at how micronance

had evolved “rom subsidized microloans to a ocus on sel-

suffi ciency, to an emphasis on savings, to a ull suite o nancial

products delivered by commercial regulated banks” and how all

this had “affi rmed the capacity o the poor to become economic

actors in their own right.” Hillary hersel proudly recalls in hermemoirs how the State Department rebuilt Aghanistan by hand-

ing out “more than 100,000 small personal loans” to the women

o that country.27

Tese are ne, sterling sentiments, but they suffer rom one

big problem: microlending doesn’t work. As strategies or end-

ing poverty go, microlending appears to be among the worstthat has ever been tried, just one step up rom doing nothing

to help the poor at all. In a careully researched 2010 book

called Why Doesn’t Micronance Work? , the development con-

sultant Milord Bateman debunks virtually every aspect o the

microlending gospel. It doesn’t empower women, Bateman

writes; it makes them into debtors. It encourages people to take

up small, utile enterprises that have no chance o growing or

employing others. Sometimes microborrowers don’t even start

businesses at all; they just spend the loan on whatever. Even

worse: the expert studies that originally sparked the microlend-

ing boom turn out, upon reexamination, to have been badly

awed.

Nearly every country where microlending has been an impor-tant development strategy or the last ew decades, Bateman

writes, is now a disaster zone o indebtedness and economic

backwardness. When the author tells us that


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LISEN, LIBERAL 239

the increasing dominance o the micronance model in devel-

oping countries is causally associated with their progressive

deindustrialization and inantilization

he is being polite. Te terrible implication o the acts he has

uncovered is that what microlending achieves is the opposite o

development. Even Communism, with its Five Year Plans,

worked better than this strategy does, as Bateman shows in a

tragic look at microloan-saturated Bosnia.28

Tere’s a second reason the liberal class loves micronance,and it’s extremely simple: microlending is protable. Lending to

the poor, as every subprime mortgage originator knows, can be

a lucrative business. Mixed with international eminist sel-

righteousness, it is also a bulletproo business, immune to

criticism. Te million-dollar paydays it has brought certain

microlenders are the wages o virtue. Tis combination is thereal reason the international goodness community believes that

empowering poor women by lending to them at usurious inter-

est rates is a ne thing all around.29

GLOBALIZED COMPASSION MARKETS

he only entrepreneur who really matters here—Hillaryhersel—did extremely well by doing so much good. Compa-

nies needing a stiff shot o whitewash ell over one another to

enlist in her State Department’s crusade or “Solutions or

Good.”30 Te investment bank Goldman Sachs “partnered” with

the State Department in 2011 to give out business school scholar-

ships to women entrepreneurs rom Latin America. Te ollow-ing year, Clinton’s old riends at the low-wage retailer Wal-Mart

announced a $1.5 million gif to State’s Women Entrepreneur-

ship in the Americas program (“the effort will support the dreams


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240 HOMAS FRANK

o up to 55,000 potential women entrepreneurs,” the company

boasted).31 Exxon was on board, too, helping State to register

women-owned businesses in Mexico.Te gure o the emale third-world entrepreneur, rescued

rom her “unbanked” state by Wall Street–backed organ-

izations, mentored by her riends in the American proessional

class, expressing hersel through social media—to this day it

remains among the most cherished daydreams in the land o

money. Everyone is inatuated with her—the oundations, the

State Department, the corporations. Everyone wants to have hispicture taken with her. Everyone wants to partner with every-

one else to advance her interests and loan her money.

he proessionals’ antasies blend seamlessly one into

another. Te ideas promoted by the Goldman Sachs “10,000

Women Project,” or example, are not really different rom

those o Hillary’s own Vital Voices Foundation or Coca-Cola’s“#5by20” initiative or even the conscientious statements you

nd in State Department press releases. People move rom one

node o this right-thinking world to another and no one really

notices, because the relocation signies no meaningul change.

Tey give one another grants and prizes and named chairs;

they extol one another’s ideas and books; they appear together

with their banker pals on panel discussions in Bali or maybe

Davos; and they all come together to x Haiti, and then to x

Haiti again, and then to x Haiti yet again.

Hillary hersel eventually moved rom State to the Clinton

Foundation, where she presided over a dizzying program o

awards or the usual people, grants or some genuinely good

causes, and the organizing o great spectacles o virtue like theone I attended in New York, a costly praise-o-rama eaturing

many o the very same people who worked or her in govern-

ment.


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LISEN, LIBERAL 241

What I concluded rom observing all this is that there is

a global commerce in compassion, an international virtue-

circuit eaturing people o unquestionable moral achievement,like Bono, Malala, Sting, Yunus, Angelina Jolie, and Bishop

utu; gures who travel the world, collecting and radiating

goodness. Tey come into contact with the other participants

in this market: the politicians and billionaires and bankers

who warm themselves at the incandescent virtue o the world-

traveling moral superstars.32

What drives this market are the buyers. Like Wal-Mart andGoldman Sachs “partnering” with the State Department, what

these virtue-consumers are doing is purchasing liberalism off-

sets, an ideological version o the carbon offsets that are some-

times bought by polluters in order to compensate or the smog

they churn out.

At the apex o all this idealism stands the Clinton Founda-tion, a veritable market-maker in the world’s vast, swirling

virtue-trade. Te ormer president who stands at its head is

“the world’s leading philanthropic dealmaker,” according to a

book on the subject.33 Under his watchul eye all the concerned

parties are brought together: the moral superstars, the billionaires,

and o course the proessionals, who organize, intone, and advise.

Virtue changes hands. Good causes are unded. Compassion isradiated and absorbed.

Tis is modern liberalism in action: an unregulated virtue-

exchange in which representatives o one class o humanity

ritually orgive the sins o another class, all o it convened

and acilitated by a vast army o well-graduated American

proessionals, their reassuring expertise propped up by bogussocial science, while the unortunate objects o their high

and noble compassion sink slowly back into a preindustrial

state.


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242 HOMAS FRANK

WHAT’S MISSING FROM THIS PICTURE?

One o the motis o that Clinton Foundation event I attendedon International Women’s Day in 2015 was the phrase “Not

Tere,” a reerence to the women who aren’t present in the

councils o state or the senior management o powerul corpo-

rations. Te oundation raised awareness o this problem by

producing visuals in which ashion models disappeared rom

the covers o popular magazines like Vogue, Glamour , SELF ,

and Allure. According to a New York Times story on the subject,the Clinton people had gone to a hip advertising agency to

develop this concept, so that we would all understand that

women were missing rom the high-ranking places where they

deserved to be.

Tere was an even grander act o erasure going on here, but

no clever adman will ever be hired to play it up. InternationalWomen’s Day, I discovered when I looked it up, began as a

socialist holiday, a sort o second Labor Day on which you were

supposed to commemorate the efforts o emale workers and

the sacrices o emale strikers. It is a vestige o an old orm o

eminism that didn’t especially ocus on the problems experi-

enced by women trying to be corporate offi cers or the views o

some mega-billionaire’s wie.

However, one o the things we were there in New York to

consider was how unjust it was that women were underrepre-

sented in the C-suites o the Fortune 500—and, by implication,

how lamentable it was that the United States had not yet elected

a woman president.

Tere was no consideration—I mean, zero—o the situationo women who work on the shop oors o the Fortune 500—or

Wal-Mart or Amazon or any o the countless low-wage employ-


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LISEN, LIBERAL 243

ers who make that list sparkle. Working-class American women

were simply . . . not there. In this estival o inclusiveness and

sweet affi rmation, their problems were not considered, their voices were not heard.

Now, Hillary Clinton is not a callous or haughty woman. She

has much to recommend her or the nation’s highest offi ce—or

one thing, her knowledge o Washington; or another, the

Republican vendetta against her, which is so vindictive and so

unair that I mysel might vote or her in November just to show

what I think o it. A third: her completely average Midwesternsuburban upbringing, an appealing political story that is the

opposite o her technocratic image. And she has, afer all, made

a great effort in the course o the last year to impress voters with

her eelings or working people.

But it’s hard, given her record, not to eel that this was only

under pressure rom primary opponents to her lef. Absent suchpolitical orce, Hillary tends to gravitate back to a version o

eminism that is a straight synonym o “meritocracy,” that is

concerned almost exclusively with the struggle o proessional

women to rise as high as their talents will take them. No ceilings!

As I sat there in the Best Buy theater, however, I kept think-

ing about the innitely greater problem o no oors. On the

train to New York that morning I had been reading a book by

Peter Edelman, one o the country’s leading experts on welare

and a ormer riend o the Clintons. Edelman’s aim was to docu-

ment the effect that the Clintons’ welare reorm measure had on

poor people—specically on poor women, because that’s who

used to receive welare payments in the days beore the program

was terminated.Edelman was not a an o the old, pre-1996 welare system,

because it did nothing to prepare women or employment or to


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LISEN, LIBERAL 245

wood stars who talked about social media; emale entrepreneurs

rom the third world; and, o course, a trucked-in audience o

hundreds who clapped and cheered enthusiastically every timeone o their well-graduated leaders wandered across the screen

o the Jumbotron. Te perormance o liberalism was so realis-

tic one could almost believe it lived.

excerpt from "listen liberal" by thomas frank

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