Aside from the schoolwide snowball fight in the Duke Gardens, last week’s most anticipated event—by far—was Friday night’s discussion between Senator Bernie Sanders and Reverend William Barber II. While the event was postponed because of the Senator’s schedule, its eager anticipation on a progressive campus was not surprising, especially because it would feature two of the leading voices in the fight for a fairer economy.
According to some polls, Senator Sanders is the most popular politician in the country, with an approval rating of roughly 55 percent. That figure is even higher among millennials. Throughout his decades of public service, he has spoken out against increasing income inequality and declining economic opportunity. Emphasizing these themes, his 2016 campaign reflected the anger many Americans felt at both the government and the financial industry after the Great Recession. In our polarized political climate, it was not surprising that proposals to break up banks and enact single payer health care gained significant traction among voters.
Yet in areas central to his agenda, Sanders’ policies offer simplistic solutions to complex and challenging problems. While many politicians stretch the truth or spin facts, Sanders’ inability or unwillingness to appreciate nuance, and his penchant for personally attacking those who challenge his policies is troubling, particularly for a politician so admired by our generation.
Take the Senator’s economic proposals made during the 2016 campaign. In an interview with the editorial board of The New York Daily News, Sanders appeared to have difficulty answering basic questions about his proposals. For instance, while he repeatedly criticized the fact that no CEO’s were prosecuted after the financial crisis of 2008-2009, he seemed unable to articulate what laws were actually broken. His ideas seemed to come more from “The Big Short” rather than from any serious policy knowledge.
Sanders also predicted unrealistically that his economic proposals would increase annual growth by over 5 percent over the next decade. As the Nobel Prize winning liberal economist Paul Krugman pointed out, such rosy predictions ignore economic history (raising long-run growth dramatically and over a sustained period is difficult), as well as changing demography. Mr. Krugman was not alone. In an open letter to the Sanders campaign, four previous Chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers—three to President Obama and one to President Clinton—expressed concern over “extreme claims” that “cannot be supported by the economic evidence” made by Sanders.
Rather than responding to these concerns, Sanders embarked on an effort to impugn the character of those economists, as well as that of Hillary Clinton, referring to them as “establishment” and insinuating that they cared more about Wall Street than working families. A lack of knowledge about basic policy issues is bad enough for someone running for president. But ad hominem attacks indicate a willingness to scapegoat, rather than to critically assess policies that have enormous implications.
Education is another area where Sanders continues to peddle unrealistic ambitions. While reducing tuition and student debt is a worthy goal and one that should be pursued, leading academics have concluded that his proposal to make all public colleges and universities tuition free is both politically infeasible and economically unsound. Many states would oppose this plan since it would create winners and losers among them. States would need to contribute one-third of the revenue needed to make tuition disappear (the federal government would supply the rest), which would require either tax increases or diverting existing resources away from other state priorities such as health care, infrastructure, and K-12 education. While tuition-free college is a great sound bite, the obstacles are insurmountable—a fact revealed by careful analysis.
And on trade, Sanders channels raw populist anger instead of offering substantive policy solutions. In criticizing trade deals such as NAFTA and the Trans Pacific Partnership, he has raised reasoned concerns about the effects of structural economic change on some workers. Yet, he neglects to mention that the U.S. has a trade surplus in manufactured goods with 20 countries in which it has trade agreements, and that after NAFTA was signed, the U.S. added 17 million jobs and unemployment dropped from 7 percent to 4 percent. Furthermore, his emphasis on renegotiating trade agreements—highly unlikely—obscures policies that should be pursued, such as strengthening the domestic safety net and adequately funding job training programs for workers laid off.
While Sanders has admirably advocated for higher wages, affordable and accessible health care, and commonsense policies to combat climate change, his brand of politics seems to champion “pie in the sky” objectives over pragmatic solutions. And while long, his political career boasts few legislative accomplishments. Promising unachievable outcomes and being unwilling to pursue incremental change contradict what I’ve learned at Duke as a public policy student, where classes focus on understanding tradeoffs and seeking sensible solutions to pressing issues.
As the Editorial Board recently wrote, politics is about more than simply catchy slogans and internet memes. Our political process requires citizens to be informed and engaged, and to choose candidates who will champion necessary causes, rather than seek to divide. And our democracy demands that politicians work within the political process—even with actors who may hold odious views—to achieve practical goals that improve the lives of their constituents.
I have written about President Trump’s pathological lying. While there is not an equivalence between Trump’s untruths and Sanders’ oversimplifications, both signify the troubling popularity of demagogues who offer facile and unrealistic solutions to complex problems and disregard inconvenient truths. In a democracy, a dose of populism is healthy, as it projects vision and helps to ensure accountability. Yet populism becomes problematic when it morphs into scapegoating—whether it be immigrants, Muslims or CEOs.
I hope the talk can be rescheduled, as having Sanders and Reverend Barber would provide a fantastic opportunity. Yet if Sanders is able to come, those attending the event, as well as his many campus supporters, should consider essential leadership qualities. Political leadership requires understanding the possible, forging solutions among competing actors, and being honest with voters, not peddling fairy dust and promising the unachievable.
Max Labaton is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs on alternate Wednesdays.
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Max Labaton is a Trinity senior and a Managing Editor of the Editorial page. His column runs on alternate Tuesdays.