-Caveat Lector-
By Arianna Huffington
Clinton's `Don't Look Down' Economy
Filed January 11, 1999
Nineteen ninety-eight was the year of the split screen -- the
beginning of the Monica Lewinsky investigation on one screen, the
State of the Union speech on the other; the president's grand jury
testimony on one screen, the president's speech to the United
Nations on the other; the House impeachment debate on one screen,
the bombing of Iraq on the other.
Similarly, 1999 began with the impeachment split screen still going
on. But there is a much more profound split that went unnoticed
last week. The day before the president hailed December's
unemployment drop before the Economic Club of Detroit, wire reports
announced the highest layoff numbers of the decade. In fact,
December's steep cuts not only doubled November's, they broke a
longstanding taboo of not laying workers off at Christmas. Yet the
1998 total of almost 700,000 layoffs -- 56 percent higher than last
year -- went completely unremarked in the president's
self-congratulatory speech. Clearly, nothing is allowed to detract
from his version of ``morning again in America.''
``Most things are going right for our country,'' the president said
with a hubris that was chilling to anyone who had read the layoff
reports, or the Labor Department's announcement of the biggest
surge in six years in unemployment claims, or the new study of four
Northwest states that revealed more than half of the available jobs
do not pay a living wage. While the president quoted Henry Ford
looking for Americans with ``an infinite capacity to not know what
can't be done,'' 26 million Americans cannot get by without
visiting a soup kitchen or a food bank. According to Second
Harvest, the biggest national network of food banks, its clientele
is growing by 10 percent a year -- a rate not yet rivaling
Starbucks but clearly demonstrating that the two halves of our
split nation are growing further apart with each passing year.
At the end of November, ABC's ``Nightline'' profiled a community in
Chelmsford, Mass., with 2.8 percent unemployment, 1.5 percent below
the national average, but with many of its residents forced to use
the local food bank while holding down ``not one but two jobs.'' As
one of the men who had been laid off his computer job put it, he
became ``marginally employed, which is really self-employed.'' He
started calling himself a ``consultant,'' which included working at
Radio Shack.
In the meantime, his wife was juggling three jobs -- day care,
peddling World Book Encyclopedias and selling Tupperware. And they
still couldn't avoid the food bank.
``Wages are going up at all income levels,'' the president said
during last week's radio address. ``And finally the rising tide of
our economy is lifting all boats.'' Yes, he really did resurrect
that hoary chestnut ridiculed during the Reagan years by every
self-respecting liberal. And there was no trace of irony in his
voice. ``Rising tides don't lift all boats,'' Jesse Jackson said
once a long time ago. But now he's too busy holding rallies for the
president on Capitol Hill to contradict him.
While Reagan was criticized for his ``trickle-down'' economy,
Clinton is given a free pass for his ``don't look down'' economy.
Lapsed critics seem eager to hitch their wagons to the rising Dow
Jones average and oblige by not commenting on the cracks in the
foundation. It's not as if they don't know that the president's
boosterism hides another reality. Former Rep. Joe Kennedy
(D-Mass.), who has just left Congress to run Citizens Energy, said
as much last November on ``Nightline'': ``While our newspapers and
television and radios are filled with statistics about how the
unemployment rate is down, and the inflation rate is down, and the
stock market is up -- the fact is that there's another reality and
there's another America.'' But he never moved beyond generalities
to a criticism of the administration's domestic policies.
The moratorium on dissent extends beyond elected officials to
social critics like Michael Moore, whose book ``Downsize This!''
targeted the corporate and political narcissism that allowed
hundreds of thousands of jobs to vanish unnoticed. Was he still
busy pursuing Ken Starr while the president was in Michigan, only
60 miles from Moore's beloved Flint, tripping the truth fantastic?
For that matter where were the Bush brothers and all the other
``compassionate conservatives'' while the president was in Detroit
describing only one reality and only one America? After all,
doesn't the other America deserve at least a quadrant on our split
screen?
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