"Phil Gramm Is Right?"

Last week former Texas Senator Phil Gramm got himself cashiered as John McCain's top economic adviser. "In serious consideration for ambassador to Belarus," is how the candidate jokingly described Gramm's employment prospects in a McCain Administration. Gramm's transgression? He referred to Americans as "a nation of whiners," telling the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times, "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline." Conservative columnists are now rushing to defend Gramm for telling "the truth."

According to their narrative, everything is hunky-dory in la la land. The only problem is that Americans are lazy and too prone to complain about everything. Ruben Navarrette of the San Diego Union Tribune opined, "It's true. Americans do complain a lot, and many of them have lost their appetite for competition - with immigrants, foreign countries, each other. Even in tough times, when you would think that Americans would be willing to work harder and compete for what they want, the entitlement mentality is alive and well."

Amity Shlaes agrees, believing Gramm to be a victim of what she calls "Campaign Econ." Writing in the Washington Post, she explains, "Campaign Econ says the American economy is a certain way because Americans think it is. Campaign Econ competes with real economics and often wins." Shlaes does admit, "Clearly Campaign Econ is understandable. Gas prices are ruining vacation plans and killing businesses. Many Americans have lost or are about to lose their homes to foreclosure or in distress sales. The federal government may not be talking about it much yet, but inflation plagues the country. The weak dollar is altering our everyday calculations." But people have no right to complain because, "Still, to liken the current moment to the Great Depression, or even the early 1980s, as Campaign Economists have, is to whine."

It is not good enough for Navarette that Americans work the most days and hours in the advanced world, more even than the notoriously workaholic Japanese. He is unimpressed that women have tripled their participation in the workforce in a generation. It makes no impression on him that a higher percentage of Americans have second and third jobs than any other people. He does not mention that productivity per worker has gone up 18% since 2001 while average income has gone down. No. They have no right to complain, and if they see anything wrong here they are lazy. As he puts it, "Most of all, he was right that we've become 'a nation of whiners' who find it easier to complain about our problems that to turn off the television set, get off the couch and do something about them."

For her part, Shlaes does see a problem or two here, but says that people are not allowed to complain until conditions deteriorate to the level of the Great Depression. Until then they are only whining. Hurricane Katrina was not a problem, she would tell us, because Hurricane Camille back in the sixties was worse. So what if we've lost 3 million manufacturing jobs? The Depression was worse. Stop whining.

Despite what these two pundits and their like are putting out, average people are doing what they can. They are working more, driving less, spending less and many are suffering the loss of insurance, homes or their primary job. One worker cannot much affect a corporation's strategy or the forces of macroeconomics. Those are the jobs of corporate management and the federal government.

And these have miserably failed them. It has been 35 years since the first oil crisis, and until a few months ago U.S. auto management was still hyping trucks and SUVs. Despite the example of the S & L crisis, the government in Washington followed Phil Gramm's advice to deregulate subprime lending. It gave corporate incentives to ship jobs overseas. It turned a budget surplus into the greatest deficit of all time, with concomitant effects on the purchasing power of the dollar.

There are a couple of profoundly disturbing things about the attitudes of commentators like Navarrette and Shlaes. The first is their blind elitism, a "let them eat cake" dismissal of common American's right to speak up when their lives are headed down the chute and an easy denigration of the strenuous efforts they have been making to try to reverse their fortunes. The second is a chilling misunderstanding of what democracy is. No, Ruben and Amity, it is the corporate management team who is responsible to the shareholders, not the other way around. No, Ruben and Amity, it is the government who is responsible to the American people, not the other way around. They are screwing up when the people say they are. The people know when they are hurting. They have been hard working and patient through many years of steadily worsening conditions. It is time for responsive government to actually address their legitimate grievances, not time for wealthy Washington power brokers and comfortable commentators to impugn their motives and ridicule their plight.