Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/1997/10/15/pearson_on_the_little_guy.php
Wednesday, October 15, 1997
Dartmouth College must have gone wild when it was announced that our very own Robert Reich '68 was to be a cabinet secretary.
Not one of those dinky departments like Energy or Agriculture either, but a big one like Labor. Finally, a Big Green alumnus besides Dr. Seuss for brochures. Georgetown may have gotten the Presidency. Al Gore may be a Harvard man. The Secretary of Labor, though, skulked around the Hop. Imagine. A few untimely deaths and we'd be the alma mater of the Leader of the Free World. It could happen. Gore already has a pretty necrotic appearance and Clinton's childhood fondness for pork products hasn't abated an iota. Maybe Dartmouth's chance for a President wasn't buried with Daniel Webster in 1852. A school can dream, can't it?
Reich was just an obscure analyst fourteen years ago when he addressed a reunion of the College class of 1935. After his tenure as Clinton's first Labor Secretary, he is now a figure of national prominence. The celebrated alum, famous for his undergraduate crusades against fraternities, was recalled to Hanover on Saturday night to address 'The End of Work.'
The first in an evening of half-truths was delivered to Reich's audience even before he took the podium.
The distributed biography of the distinguished speaker cited his tenure as a professor at Harvard, a post he never held. When Reich severed his ties there, he exited with the same title with which he entered, 'Lecturer.'
As many commentators have pointed out, this is far from a trivial distinction. The low esteem in which Reich's colleagues held him evidently prevented his promotion. It seems, at least at the time, Reich's intellectual credentials and deportment were considered noteworthy by few outside of Parkhurst Hall.
Reich's selection by his old law school chum Bill Clinton to be Labor Secretary redeemed the College's faith and erased all that Cambridge ugliness.
The Dartmouth administration has undoubtedly been atizzy with the news of the current ability of the United States economy to rip through the fiscal year like Reich's former boss through a bag of Fritos. As the propaganda surrounding his visit made clear, the Parkhurst posse finds little to contradict its theory that the ferocity of the current economic climate is due solely to the ferocity of its own cherished alum.
Unfortunately, the current economic climate has rendered Reich's standard spiel (and economic ideology) obsolete. Unemployment is at the sub-5% level, with no accompanying inflation. Levels below 6% without the devaluing of the dollar were, until recently, nearly universally deemed impossible.
While the American economy roars, our competitors, Japan and Europe, bumble along, simply unable to keep pace. In a climate such as this, the contrarian leftist role Reich relishes is unlikely to find much of an audience.
If the economy tanks, Reich may be able to resurrect his more interventionist rhetoric for use on the inevitable TV segments on the plight of the American worker. In the meantime, he remains obligated to resort to the same flaccid schtick he gave on Saturday night.
At the conclusion of his speech, a woman did question Reich on the report in the Daily Dartmouth that he was a candidate to replace President Freedman.
Reich brushed the suggestion aside. I would submit, however, that he was wrong not to entertain the idea. Though never a college administrator, Reich is nonetheless prepared for the position.
At Brandeis, where he is currently on staff, Reich cashes a scandalously inflated salary in exchange for little more than the occasional meandering public address. That sounds remarkably similar to the job description of one James Oliver Freedman.
Such a hire would not be quite so dramatic a leap, given the permanence of Dartmouth's hospitality towards Reich.
When he was wallowing in the lower depths of academic obscurity after he graduated from law school and before he became Labor Secretary, the College rewarded Reich with speaking engagements and lavish honoraria, a tradition that has continued proudly ever since.
If Dartmouth's treatment of Reich has been constant, however, Reich's treatment of the national economy has not. Judging by his speech on Saturday, Reich's response to his departure from the greased halls of power has been to move away from his traditional doctrine, and towards the center.
Reich's usual rhetoric is a wandering melange of a few bland statements about globalization, some quaint bits of sentiment for the little guy, and question time. These concepts were remarkably absent from Reich's Saturday address.
Has Reich abandoned them completely? He hinted at them with praise for training programs in Michigan and elsewhere which he viewed as successful adaptations to the global marketplace. Any bolder shift in Reich's ideological agenda will have to wait.
Reich's lecture, ultimately, was disappointing. Reich's analysis has never been so conventional as what he presented on Saturday. Though he has little formal economic training, Reich usually confronts unabashedly traditional economic thinking. He is a man with the temerity to christen one of his books The Work of Nations, a take-off on Adam Smith's most seminal of social science texts. A Reich speech without his trademark blather about 'investing in people' is like Reduced Fat Oreos. If you are going to consume swill, you want to go full-bore, nothing left out.