Notwithstanding dalliances in other fields, I’m a policy wonk.
But I will pontificate (often incorrectly) on politics when asked, which is what happened in this interview about the electoral impact of the coronavirus.
My basic point is that Trump is much better than the average Republican about “controlling the narrative.”
In other words, he doesn’t allow the media to frame issues in a way that is adverse to his interests.
Given Trump’s Jekyll-Hyde approach to economic policy, I have mixed feelings about his Jedi-like ability.
But I will point out why narratives are so important in public policy.
- History books are filled with inaccurate and nonsensical stories about the Great Depression being caused by capitalism and being cured by FDR’s New Deal. In reality, statism deserves the blame. Bad policy by Hoover helped start the Depression and bad policy by FDR helped extend the Depression.
- More recently, people have been subjected to an erroneous story that capitalism and greed caused the 2008 financial crisis. As I mentioned in the interview, that’s grotesquely inaccurate. The crisis was caused by easy-money policy by the Federal Reserve and misguided subsidies from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Since I’ve shifted to my comfort zone of public policy, I’ll also say something about trade.
One of the big risks from the coronavirus is that it will weaken global trade. Which led me to mention in the interview that hopefully Trump might learn from this growing crisis that expanded trade is good for prosperity.
Though I admit I’m not very optimistic given his mercantilist perspective.
P.S. Textbook discussions of “robber barons” and “sweatshops” are other examples of how bad narratives lead to distorted history.
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Image credit: Gage Skidmore | CC BY-SA 2.0.
