“BE IT RESOLVED, THE FUTURE OF WESTERN POLITICS IS POPULIST, NOT LIBERAL”
As a former Lincoln-Douglas and Policy-Forum Debater while attending Jupiter High School, and a teacher of Speech and Debate while working at South Broward High School, I was excited to see an ad for The Munk Debates in my Facebook feed about the above resolution between Steve Bannon and David Frum.
Rather than drawing out who the winner was, I’ll say that it was without question Steve Bannon.
You can see why in my below tracking of the debate.
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Steve Bannon’s first words presented a compelling narrative.
Etiological stories are powerful as they allow for an organic depiction of various actors and values and as it allows the audience to quickly project themselves amongst the group of actors described.
Bannon’s choice was all the more poignant – he describes the people arrayed in the White House speaking to the president during the 2008 financial crisis that caused numerous deleterious social, political and economic across the world. Bannon thus establishes his view of the driving concern of the modern populist movement – seizing power from a transnationally oriented economic elite – the party of Davos. The framing of the story allows the viewer, within the first minute, to either identify yourself as a member of this group – or as someone that has been affected by it.
Bannon then goes to define populism, as understood in this particular moment, to be equivalent with economic nationalism. Economic nationalism, as propounded by Bannon in this instance and shown by his expressed disdain for Richard Spencer, does not care about race, gender preference, sexual orientation or religion.
After a fawning show of respect for Bannon, Frum’s opening speech proceeds to develop a Manichean framework that he will develop throughout the debate. There is a choice between “renewal and destruction; freedom and unfreedom” in this given moment and to side with Frum is to side with the former. Populism is defined as Bannon and Trump and allude them to
I think that Frum made a lot of very unusual statements. For one, he says: “We are here to show that who are who are parents and our grandparents were.” and then states that the same fights that they fought are ours as well. This claim is made without a substantiation, and for those like myself that are deeply versed in American history this appears baseless.
Another aspect of Frum’s case that was peculiar and unpersuasive in their mobilization was his choice of political allusion.
Besides Donald Trump being president, the only other historical events that Frum cites are the Poppy Day and Kristallnacht. While rhetorically powerful points to mention, the bright line showing the connections between the 1918 and 1940 and the present is not. Frum doesn’t just make this poor allusion, but doubles down on it by making an extended point about how it is that Populism divides with more hints to Nazism and Fascism. To reinforce this construction of “the present populists are an echo of former 1940s villains” he then goes on to cite a number of current foreign politicians – which the audience is unlikely to be familiar with – to reinforce his claim that populists are crooks rather than giving substantive examples. Frum’s then fumbles with a prolix description of how those in the current White House are just interested in destroying things (apparently he’s not familiar with Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism & Democracy and the notion of creative destruction) and then is unable to define what the “one assumption” that the new populism is based on because he has gone over in time.
Bannon’s retort that Frum is just smearing the populist movement and stating again how it was that it is previous government politics that drove people to become more politically involved allows him to deflate quickly deflate the case. By putting into context and then ending with a joke related to Trump’s poll numbers, he humanizes himself. More than that, he expands on his narrative, citing Hillbilly Elegy – a book that connects sociologically the deindustrialization of the United States with the opioid crisis.
Steve Bannon cites this as well as the $7 trillion dollars’ wars spent in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the infusion of capital as the motivating factors for why so many people abandoned the traditional Democratic and Republican establishment. He then relates the traditional economic concern for the “Little guy” as the basis of traditional American (settler, colonial) civilization. By following up with the rhetorical point on Canadian’s Commonwealth status gains him extra points given the audience.
One of the points that I think Bannon would have benefitted by responding to Frum’s comment is when he impugns the ethics of Trump for extracting profits from his businesses – as this is a form of financial inducement. While outside the proscribed constraints of the topic – “Be it resolved, the future of Western Politics is Populist Not Liberal” it would have been worthwhile to point out how the Clinton’s liberal policies helped them turn from poor county lawyers to billionaires. Say what you will about Breitbart, some of their reporting, such as on the Clinton Foundation, is worth-reading journalism.
Frum’s rejoinder round two begins with a torturously long admission that Liberal democracy is in crisis, but then claims that “the failures of a good system are not a reason to turn to an evil one.” Another binary sans substantive policy discussion. He states that there is a need to “renew and repair,” but rather than giving any substantive description of what those mean, their correlative in the American social body, or how to address the issues perceived as ills. He instead goes on to bloviate about how inclusiveness is important. After Frum sits down to another round of speech-halting applause, a class on why closing a speech with such a sentiment is bad rhetoric because of the opening it provides the opposing side is then provided by Bannon.
He responds by postulating the fundamental need for the Populist movement to convert others to its position or die as a directive forced in the governance of America. This and his follow up drastically undercuts Frum’s projection of it as xenophobic, racist or religiously intolerant. The succinct 3-part definition that Steve then gives definition to Populism/Economic Nationalism via specific items of Trump’s policies: economic nationalism, America-first security policies and deconstruction of the administrative state.
Given that a significant portion of Frum’s speeches are reminiscing about the political acumen of Bannon and referred to him as a “fiery tribune of Populism” it, functionally debunks Frum’s construction of the operating principles guiding the modern U.S. populist movement.
Bannon states that what is needed is an economic order that does not orient itself to the maximization of shareholder value, but of citizenship value. As someone that’s admittedly not familiar with the writings of America’s Modern Populist Movement, I was rather shocked by this. Bannon directly counters another of Frum’s positions by refuting the notion of populism as “mere destruction” by pointing out that the new NAFTA trade deal that was just organized helps develop a manufacturing hub that will be able to counter East Asia.
Frum tells a long tale meant to highlight how Trump is clumsy and his trade advisor doesn’t have any peer reviewed articles, then makes an introduction of two news terms he wants to introduce to the debate – nationalism and globalism. Describing several cases of one population harming another for various, such as pollution or military action and climate change he makes a national socialist (i.e. Nazi) smear rather than interrogating these new terms in detail and then claims that peace and prosperity are liberal ideas. Since Frum has already admitted by non-rebuttal of earlier of Bannon’s claims that he was a “conservative” involved in all of the government decisions that he now rues – to me this was a shocking admission. Not only does this disprove his claim, but it also shows from to be an unprincipled character as he did not leave in protest of the “illiberalism” that went on in the name of liberalism.
Having myself studied the history, institutions and policies of the EU myself in a graduate seminar at FAU, Bannon’s rejoinder is exactly what I would have responded with to this Frum’s turn of the debate topic from populism and liberalism to globalism and nationalism. Bannon asserts the longstanding tradition of a state within specific geographically definable national limits, and describes the chilling sentiment by many people about the foreign imposition of rules and also the rule by foreign unaccountable agents in some ways over the conditions of their lives. Citizen empowerment is populism. Bannon points to the supply chain changes as positives, as well as states movements to maintain their sovereignty. Bannon also states an eminently quotable phrase. “We have socialism in the United States for the very wealthy, and the very poor, and a brutal form of Darwinian capitalism for those everybody else. The devil gets the hindmost.” Millennials are like serfs in their non-ownership, 20% behind where their parents were in a gig economy without careers.
In another one of Frum’s unfit forensic formulations he responds to Bannon by claiming that “Trump’s economy is the same as Obama’s, but with more tariffs, more inflation and higher interest rates.” Given the impact these three factors have on the totality of America’s economic activity – this is a strange formulation. Substantive descriptions of continuity are absent. After this poorly made point, Frum gives a self-negating formulation – stating that the populists attempts to bring manufacturing back via tariffs shows that they “don’t know what they want” and that “hate doesn’t build”.
Bannon counter’s Frum’s hate point by pointing out that Trump’s first act of travel to visit foreign dignitaries in Saudi Arabia to have discussions on how to eradicate Muslim extremism, how does the Arab world come together to stop Iran, and in some ways advise towards the development of a peaceful social modernity. I think a worthwhile point to include here would have been to point to the massive amounts of fences that have been put up in Europe over the past two years to show provide a counter-factual to Frum’s construction of Europe as “less hateful”. I’ve heard Bannon talk about “the signal and the noise” in other interviews, and he closes the rejoinder by making it.
The debate is then here interrupted by the moderator so that he can ask specific questions. While they are tangentially related to the topic and are generally interesting, I think the moderator failed to sufficiently keep the debate within the framework of the resolution.
Frum claims Trump won in large part by appealing to people’s desires to have a better healthcare system that costs less money, a point which Bannon places back on his lap by stating that it was the Republican establishment that fumbled there, having requested to take this part of leadership over and not being able to follow through. Bannon responds by furthering the definition between establishment Republicans and Populist Republicans by talking about tax rates – which Bannon wants to increase for those that are making more than five million dollars a year. Bannon excuses Trump as getting his “sea legs”
Frum’s competency criticism of Trump seems shallow given the context of the 2016 election – wherein a political outsider who does not follow all of the pre-established paths paved by moneyed interests is governing in a new manner. Individual mistakes are endemic to any such process and while it’s true about his past similar denigrations aren’t now made about the character of Bill Clinton for his failed push for single player health insurance.
Bannon shows that much of this friction stems from contrasting Trump’s policy of quantitative tightening – something not desired by all economic sectors – with Obama’s of qualitative easing as well as a new national security policy that seeks to ensure that America’s allies are paying for their protection as otherwise the burden falls on U.S. taxpayers to the tune of trillions of dollars.
After another faltering deference to Bannon’s biography, this time to his military record, Frum’s response is to give the unsubstantiated claim that by demanding more of their NATO partners, Trump is selling the United States. It’s a weird statement given the lack of context provided, and Bannon shows his smarts by not responding to the claim and instead going back to NATO and national security and then relates this spending to an expressed desire not to be an Empire or an Imperial power expending “deplorable lives” in foreign theaters of war but a Revolutionary Power.
Frum’s rejoinder here about race seems shallow and following this he starts going on about how Bannon and Trump are “selling the country to the Russians”.
While Bannon does not go into detail about this, given the effects of global climactic change will have on the Arctic trade routes over the next 20 years (I am deeply pessimistic about U.S. politicians ability to enact legislation that will allow for the reaching of targets for cutting emissions) there will likely be a major shift in U.S. and Russian trade, collaborative resource extraction projects and military interaction (as more bases are planted to protect the routes) I was hoping that he would. Suffice to say as the questions continue from the moderator Bannon comports himself with equanimity even though the questions are loaded against him. Being familiar with the shocking statistical increase in White Nationalist murders and assaults across the country I found his claim that the left was worse to be disingenuous, even if I could agree with him that attribution of such people’s actions cannot be honestly placed solely at Trump’s feet.
Frum’s closing is weak. He falters at two points in making his points and can again only make an appeal based on poorly-explained historical precedent that populism will fail. When Frum states that “Liberal democracy is stronger than it looks because human kindness and decency is stronger than it looks.” I can’t wonder what he’s referring to as he’s agreed with so many of Bannon’s understanding of politics from Bush II to the Obama. He then goes on an extended diatribe reiterating the binary terms by which he has referred to throughout the debate which – given what speech acts have transpired better the orators – rings hollow. Frum has simply agreed to so many earlier points that I read the caricature he presented of Trump and other populists as disingenuous. When Bannon opens his response with describing David Frum’s speech as “Very good, and irrelevant”. It certainly matched my own assessment. Bannon’s assessment that the future will either be left or right populism, i.e. Bernie Sanders/Jeremy Corbyn or Trump/Bolsonaro is also my reading of the current moment. As evidence to the anti-institutional sentiments of this moment in history, Bannon points out how none of the “traditional” Republicans – backed as they were by think tanks and major donations by billionaires – were able to beat Trump. Giving a final emphasis to his point by alluding to other major upheavals in the U.S., Bannon states that it is the fourth turning moment and therefor it has to be the time of populism. Though I would not have understood the depth of what he meant by this had I not already ready The Fourth Turning, it was still a well-enough explained concept that it related to the resolution in a powerful manner.
At the end of the debate, for all the reasons describe in my comments above, I believe that Steve Bannon won the debate.
That said, I’m surprised that Facebook didn’t consider as part of their collaborative production with the Debate forum a scorecard on their website. It’d be an interesting to see how people actually tracked and responded to the debate. A little bit more pre-planning would have made for more interesting results that that which was given.
In a last bit of commentary related to the debate I have to admit being curious as to the protest that the moderator alluded to in the opening. After doing a little bit of digging online, I was amused to learn that one of the organizations that was involved in the demonstration outside and that may be responsible for the protestor interrupting Bannon was none other the front group for the Venezuelan State in Canada: The CPC and the Hugo Chavez Front. I find this to be yet another example of Orwellian Irony given that the economic goals of their Bolivarian project are actually pretty aligned with that of Bannon’s Economic Nationalism and that both projects – via different methods – are involved in re-writing/re-interpreting the law in radical ways.
