As we watch the Obama Administration work through the very real accumulated challenges faced by the United States, it’s becoming more and more apparent that this administration is very consequentialist in its decision making, that its primary current goal is to get us out of the mess the economic system is in, and that it weights other important values much lower, at least for the time being. So, we see its avoidance of the issues of investigation and prosecution of the Bush Administration’s rather clear violations of both domestic and international law. And we also see its avoidance of the issues of economic justice as fairness in the outrageous payouts of unwarranted and profligate bonuses in the Merrill Lynch and AIG cases. Evidently, its consequentialist calculations haven’t factored in the costs of ignoring the violence done to Justice in its priorities. As Jimmy Carter once said, “Life is not fair.” But, after all, this is no excuse for people not being fair in the way they conduct public policy. The issue is: how long can one ignore considerations of Justice as Fairness when pursuing another urgent goal such as National Security, or Economic Recovery? Not forever, I’m afraid.
Right now, the sense of Justice of Americans is terribly violated by the treatment the Banks and AIG are receiving at the hands of this administration. Everyone agrees in principle that the financial system must be saved, and the economy must recover. But doing these things at the cost of all fairness and equity considerations is sticking in everyone’s craw. Somehow, President Obama must salvage a reconstructed financial system, while not violating our sense of Justice too seriously. That is we must have pragmatism and at least a modicum of Justice. I’m afraid that means giving the financial community that bears most of the responsibility for the crash its due for its poor performance — removal from power and influence in the recovery process. That means letting people like Tim Geithner and Larry Summers move on to other pursuits and replacing them with folks like Joe Stieglitz, Paul Krugman, Jamie Galbraith, Robert Reich, and Robert Kuttner, who are not so sympathetic to Wall Street, and who will restructure the Banks and AIG, clean them up, sell them off to the private sector once they are whole again, and prevent any more bonus payment and junket outrages flung in the face of those who are unemployed and in foreclosure.
President Obama may not see this because he is an extraordinarily pragmatic and disciplined person who can and will suppress his own feelings as necessary to keep working toward what he perceives is an over-riding goal. But many others among us are not like this.
The President should understand that this difference is not necessarily a mark of irrationality or lack of pragmatism. But rather, it is an unwillingness to be so single-minded in pursuit of a goal that other important values are foregone, and to be insistent rather on the pursuit of goals in the right way, so that progress and justice are both achieved. I think President Obama is much preferable to all of his predecessors, since, at least the early days of Lyndon Johnson, and he was certainly our best realistic choice in the last campaign season; but, right now, his problem-solving orientation is too narrowly focused on material ends and too distanced from considerations of Justice. This is not just a a problem of principle, but, also, in the end, it is not pragmatic, because his lack of attention to Justice as Fairness is costing him political capital, and is beginning to threaten his whole agenda. He has to recognize that true pragmatism is not value free and that Justice must also be served if political capital is to be maintained. Roosevelt knew that, and somehow with all his vaunted pragmatism, he also managed to provide more Justice to Americans than perhaps any of his predecessors since Lincoln. Obama needs to follow his path, and he must start now before it is too late.