Razib beat me to the punch in profiling the rising desi-pundit Reihan Salam. We first mentioned Reihan on SM a few years ago when he, as a blogging neophyte, held a guest spot on Daniel Drezner’s prominent blog & raved about PunjabiMC and H&K. Since then, his footprint has grown both through his own blog as well as via coauthoring a provocative new book, Grand New Party which advocates a sort of Natalism to “save” the Republican Party.

Reihan classifies himself as –

Rawlsekian neoconservative singulatarian meliorist humanist neoliberal infosocialist Viridian postliberal incrementalist.

SM Favorite Razib heard Reihan speak recently and characterized him this way –

WITNESSING Reihan Salam speak off-the-cuff feels like some intensely demanding, habit-forming new spectator sport. While he’s in full rapid-fire, animated flow, the rapt listener remains completely engrossed, delighted by his insights, analysis, and wide-ranging references, wowed by his effortless formulations and disarmed by his wry asides.

…So, who is Reihan Salam? If you don’t know of him yet, you will. Salam is an American-born son of Bangladeshi immigrants, Harvard graduate, prominent political blogger and journalist, and now co-author of a serious and fast-selling political manifesto Grand New Party.

To add that he also blogs about pop culture doesn’t begin to describe the man’s breadth or curiosity. He has long posted original poetry and rap lyrics on the web and steeped himself in pop music, both Japanese and Anglophone.

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p>I picked up Reihan’s Grand New Party (co-authored with Ross Douthat) last week and found it interesting. There are a lot of reviews on the web and I suspect many folks on both sides of the aisle will actually find the book surprisingly centrist. The book is derived from an article he wrote for the Weekly Standard and argues that the real voting “center of gravity” of the country is the trying-to-be-self-sufficient, nuclear family. Policies which help ensure “affordable family formation” drive this group at the polls and have provided the often overlooked component in past elections.

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p>Salam and Douthat’s analysis reminds me of a very family-centric voter taxonomy that I came across. Some folks might find the broad categories insulting, but hey, it’s politics and people get bucketed all the time –

1. Single – Stereotype: self-indulgent single yuppies / Odyssey folks like myself & much of SM’s readership
2. More $$$ than kids – Stereotype: Murphy Brown, DINKs & “winner’s circle” yuppy enclaves like SF, Palo Alto, NYC, etc. No matter how expensive the city, bad the schools, high the crime rate, etc., they’ve got the $$$ to “insulate insulate insulate” while still enjoying the cultural attractions of places like downtown SF.
3. Underclass (aka more kids than $$$ or spouses) – Stereotype: welfare moms & inner cities (for ex., in SF Bayview/Hunters Point); Britain’s NEETs ; the government becomes a family surrogate of sorts providing an extreme form of “insulate insulate insulate” against the economy, health care costs, etc.
4. Middle Class / Working Class (aka kids, $$$ & spouses in rough balance) – Stereotype: Middle America, suburbia, and beyond; every home is a castle ; what my mom wishes I was ; David Brooks (whom Reihan worked with) profiled the group thusly –

   Their personal identity is defined by parenthood. They are more spiritually, emotionally and physically invested in their homes than in any other sphere of life, having concluded that parenthood is the most enriching and elevating thing they can do. Very often they have sacrificed pleasures like sophisticated movies, restaurant dining and foreign travel, let alone competitive careers and disposable income, for the sake of their parental calling.

Of the 4, the first 3 generally vote Democrat while the last provides the “base” that Salam & Douthat assert swing the balance between the GOP and Democrats in elections — they are the Hank Hill Demo-publicans. As with any aggregation, there are exceptions that prove the rule (I’m in category (1), for ex. So are Reihan & Razib, for that matter; And clearly there are very successful single parents out there.). If you buy the buckets, then it’s pro-working class family policy that ultimately sways these folks. As they note –

Since 1968, these voters have provided the ‘silent majority’ that elected Nixon, the ‘Reagan Democrats’ who gave the Gipper his landslides and the ‘angry white men’ who put the Gingrich G.O.P. over the top in 1994. … Yet after each Republican triumph, this working-class constituency … has become disillusioned with conservative governance and returned to the Democratic column.

My own libertarian tendencies find the book’s policy prescriptions a tad too spendy. BUT, I do recognize Reihan’s argument that there are important differences between pro-family govt intervention and “liberal” spending policy. The former is about encouraging independent families while the latter is more about long term government service provision. For ex., is the long term aim of govt health care reform cheaper insurance or a single payer system? (clearly, there are many shades of grey). As Razib notes –

Salam and Douthat outline a project of the centre-right which makes conservatism more explicitly pro-family in a concrete manner with the aid of government incentives, an alternative both to the social democratic future which many left intellectuals are proposing, and the minimal state conservatism which is now the orthodoxy on the right.

Arguably, the crucial recurring problem for Dems is that too many of their (1)’s & (2)’s conflate (3) and (4) as both victims. The (4)’s – folks who take their self sufficiency very seriously – quite correctly consider themselves vastly different from (3) and resent the condescension from (2)’s – thus resulting in the “angry white men”.

That distinction is in part why Salam and Douthat praise the Clinton administration (and scorn Ken Starr) in a way that may surprise hard core Republicans. Clinton saw virtue in (4) & didn’t talk down to them from an ivory tower. For ex., Welfare Reform under Clinton (+ a GOP congress!) explicitly told (4) that the govt was trying to stop subsidizing (3). NAFTA sure helped stock those exurban big box stores that make family life easy & affordable and, OMG, those (4)’s actually like Wal-Mart much to the chagrin of (2)’s.

“The main way I form friendships, and I don’t think I’m alone in this regard, is by drawing on this shared stock of lowbrow cultural references”Now whether you agree / disagree with Reihan (or for that matter, if your political model basically boils down to “Republicans = Rich, Old, White, Racists” or “Natalist is code for Nativist” ), I credit Salam with some original thinking, analysis, and writing about a subject so far outside of his daily experience. Reihan grew up in NYC and between Stuyvesent, Harvard and the DC analyst scene, he certainly cavorts with quite a few of the (1)’s and (2)’s and yet intelligently writes about (4)’s.

Razib’s profile provides some examples of this background –

Dr. Jesse Shapiro, now an economics professor at the University of Chicago, was Salam’s classmate at both the elite Stuyvesant secondary school and Harvard University. At Stuyvesant, where Salam was president of the debate team, Shapiro recalled an episode which hinted at both Salam’s rhetorical forthrightness and intellectual depth. The former US Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, had been invited to address the student body. After his remarks, young Salam rose to ask a question, making a precise reference to an argument in one of Reich’s books. Reich was shocked that such a young man was so familiar with his work, but Salam matter-of-factly responded that he was a “fan” and had read all of Reich’s major writings.

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p>Although his sorta spastic youtube channel might make you think otherwise, he also appears to have a pretty impressive background in the arts –

According to Cary McClelland, a classmate who directed a theatrical troupe which spent summers in Britain, Salam brought the same intensity to his acting as he did to his social and political interests. Though occasionally Salam took a serious turn in productions such as King Lear, his forte was improvisation and comedy.

A professional actor who was active in the same troupe, Emily Sophia Knapp, predicts that Salam’s creative ventures will always remain an avocation, an ingredient in a full, rich life. According to Knapp at Harvard, Salam was an active member of the Signet Society, an exclusive club with a brief to foster the arts.

For example – here Reihan explores the classic elite vs. mass “signaling” theory on the evolution of cultural norms –

For Pierre Bourdieu, the cultivation of taste was a key way elites entrenched their power. By devaluing cultural styles embraced by the vast majority, and by embracing highly exclusive cultural forms that take a lot of time and money to fully appreciate (classical music, opera, etc.), elites create high barriers to scrappy strivers who want to reach the commanding heights of society.

…My brief forays into elite America have frequently involved extremely long conversations about the popular television sitcom Martin, which starred comedian Martin Lawrence as a fast-talking radio DJ and as an unpleasant, hirsute, “round-the-way” girl named Sheneneh. The main way I form friendships, and I don’t think I’m alone in this regard, is by drawing on this shared stock of lowbrow cultural references.

Fascinating, eh? At the tender age of 28, Reihan’s career as a public intellectual is just getting started and I hope we’ll see more / hear more from him over the years.

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Obama’s reaction to a chunk of Grand New Party –

The book doesn’t mention Obama by name, but it contains one of the best summaries of [Obama’s] economic policy that I have read. The authors describe a new-model liberal consensus that weds “the free-market centrism of the Clinton years to a revived push for European-style social democracy.” This neoliberalism, as they call it, wouldn’t involve the big-government programs of the postwar years, but the government would come to play a larger role in the economy and would redistribute much more income from the rich to everyone else. “This is, in many respects, a deeply un-American solution to the problems facing our country,” the authors write, “one that would emphasize dependence over self-sufficiency and bureaucratic condescension over self-help.”

…During my recent conversation with Obama, he mentioned Sam’s Club Republicanism in a different context, and I asked him if he had read “Grand New Party.” He hadn’t, he said, so I read him the line about dependence and condescension and asked for his reaction.

He said it made him think of Warren Buffett, an Obama supporter, who, if anything, might argue that he wasn’t going far enough to change the tax code. “If you talk to Warren, he’ll tell you his preference is not to meddle in the economy at all — let the market work, however way it’s going to work, and then just tax the heck out of people at the end and just redistribute it,” Obama said. “That way you’re not impeding efficiency, and you’re achieving equity on the back end.” He continued by saying that he thought there was some merit in Buffett’s argument. But, he said: “I do think that what the argument may miss is the sense of control that we want individuals to have in determining their own career paths, making their own life choices and so forth. And I also think you want to instill that sense of self-reliance and that what you do will help determine outcomes.”

Cool to see Reihan & Ross making waves