Farewell Liberalism; Hello, Managerialism

According to the old saying “If you are not left-wing at 20, you have no heart; if you’re still left-wing at 40, you have no head,” On both sides of the Atlantic, voters now seem set to endorse two middle-aged men who have long since let their heads overrule their hearts.

President Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, the charismatic leader of Britain’s Labor Party (or “New Labor” as he calls it) both once belonged to the left. Complete with bad haircuts, bell-bottoms and dreams about ending poverty, Bill and Hillary Clinton campaigned passionately for Sen. George S. McGovern. Blair, a student rock singer, joined the Labor Party and endorsed woolly causes such as nuclear disarmament and the “common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.” Now both men are running on conservative programs that would have horrified their younger, hairier selves.

The conventional explanation for this is realpolitik. Friends of the Clintons claim that at least the first couple tried. Remember gays in the military, health-care reform and the opposition they provoked? If the president had not had the political shrewdness to compromise, then a GOP victory would now be in the cards. Once reelected, with nothing to lose, Clinton may be more radical again--or so the left hopes. And there are still a few bearded die-hards in Islington who entertain similar dreams about Blair abolishing the monarchy and imposing 90% wealth taxes on the rich.

The truth is far more complicated. Whatever the pressures of the electorate, a fundamental shift has taken place in left-of-center politics. Both Clinton and Blair have swapped their earlier faith (liberalism in Clinton’s case, socialism in Blair’s) for a new, more modern creed: managerialism. Managerialism is not just a cover for their earlier, more youthful ideas. Both Clinton and Blair are managerialists to their marrow: They believe the whole point of clever people like themselves getting into government is to run things better.

This change mirrors another: the increasing importance of management theory in public life--in Britain and America. Management used to be nothing more than what competent people did. Now it is a comprehensive (if extremely mixed) body of theory, generated by professional theorists, taught in business schools, sold by consultants and applied to every corner of society--including government.

Increasingly, today’s ruling class has been schooled in management; its members went to business school or worked in businesses. One of Clinton’s earliest decisions as a New Democrat was to turn himself into an insider in this movement. He has long been a voracious reader of management books and attender of management conferences. (Indeed, it was at a conference on “total quality management” in Little Rock that the future president allegedly propositioned Paula Jones.) As governor, he first came to national attention when he introduced modern management techniques, such as performance measures, into Arkansas schools.

Clinton has carried these ideas into the White House--most conspicuously through Vice President Al Gore’s huge “reinventing government” program. The health-care plan that many liberals point to as evidence of the Clintons’ enduring idealism was also an exercise in managerialism. It was designed by a management fanatic, Ira C. Magaziner, and based on the idea of “managed competition” invented by Alain C. Enthoven, a Stanford University management theorist. Ironically, the plan collapsed partly because it represented an overdose of management. Composed by 500 health-care specialists (most of them experts in organization rather than medicine), and written in the convoluted language of modern business schools, the plan might have passed muster with a panel of MBAs, but it infuriated the politicians on Capitol Hill--who threw it out.

But even the health-care debacle did nothing to kill Clinton’s enthusiasm for management. On the contrary, he seemed more willing than ever to apply management theory to every aspect of his life. At the lowest point of his presidency, in 1995, when the GOP had stormed Capitol Hill and his popularity had fallen through the floor, Clinton spent Thanksgiving holed up with two personal motivation experts, Stephen R. Covey, author of “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People,” and Anthony J. Robbins, whose trade mark is getting his votaries to walk on hot coals.

Clinton also brought a businessman, Erskine B. Bowles, to do a time-and-motion study of his schedule. Bowles produced a business plan, “Strategic Goals for 1995,” that, among other things, resulted in the president spending 62.5% more time shaping domestic and economic policy.

It is hard to imagine the leader of Britain’s Labor Party consorting with the likes of Covey and Robbins. But, in his quite English way, Blair is just as obsessed by management as his fellow baby boomer in the White House. His triumphant speech at the Labor Party’s annual conference at Blackpool two weeks ago featured a promise that he would follow the business practice of making a compact with the customer and draw up a “10-point covenant” with the British people.

Blair has dispatched his shadow Cabinet to a series of management seminars at Oxford University’s business school, Templeton College. One of Britain’s leading management theorists, John Kay, the head of Oxford’s new business school, is a key advisor in Blair’s kitchen Cabinet.

Why have these former leftists fallen in love with management? The most important reason is the death of ideology. The end of the Cold War, the implosion of socialism and the discrediting of special deals with trade unions means that progressive politicians now have little left to argue about except management. The British Labor Party is no longer divided between supporters and opponents of military disarmament. The only question is how to stretch the budget to meet Britain’s nuclear obligations. The Democratic Party is no longer divided between people who think it should be an arm of the labor movement and those who think it should govern for the common good. The only question is how to get the economy moving so that it creates jobs and distributes wealth.

Another reason is the need to look respectable. This is particularly urgent for the Labor Party, which spent most of the 1980s thumbing its nose at Middle England--a party leader, Michael Foot, once turned up to a state occasion dressed in a donkey jacket--and suffered four crushing election defeats as a consequence. But it is also important for a Democratic Party that, as far as some Americans are concerned, has fallen into the hands of a generation of pot-smoking draft-dodgers. Spouting management theory is the verbal equivalent of putting on a suit and tie.

A third reason is the desire to provide decent public services without over-straining the taxpayer. The left knows it will be booted out of power if it returns to its old tax-and-spend ways. Clinton has declared “the end of big government.” Blair has promised that, whatever else he does, he will not increase taxes. But the left is equally wedded to providing good public services--particularly good public schools. How do you square the circle? The answer, for both Clinton and Blair, is: Manage the public sector better.

Of course, left-wingers are not the only politicians to have discovered management theory. One of the first things that Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) did when he took control of the House in 1994 was to send his fellow Republicans a reading list featuring management books by the likes of Peter F. Drucker. Britain’s Conservative government has probably spent more on management consultants than any government in history. But management theory seems to be better for the image of the left than the right. It makes left-wingers look respectable and business-like. It makes right-wing politicians look extreme and uncaring.

Is the left’s love affair with management theory a good thing? Party bosses on both sides of the Atlantic have every reason to think so. It fits in with the mood of the voters--who want carefully managed changes, not sweeping revolutions. But politicians should beware of taking the cult of management too far. Management theory may, on balance, have helped improve the U.S. economy over the last few years; but it has brought much pain in its wake. As workers, we all have little choice but to endure re-engineering, downsizing and whatever else theorists may choose to throw at us. But as voters, we get to answer back.