Harvard Philosopher Michael Sandel on the Trump
Phenomenon
"The Democratic Party Opened the Way for
Trump"
Critics of U.S. President Donald Trump claim he has
brought ruin to the United States. For Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, that
charge is too easy. He argues that liberal hubris has also played a significant
role in the decay of American society.
Interview
Conducted by Susanne Beyer
18.09.2020,
18.03 Uhr
His tone is
perpetually friendly and he has the charisma of a reserved gentleman. At the
same time, he has that presence that is typical of American stars, regardless
whether they’re in Hollywood, politics or at a university. His arguments are
razor sharp and often accusatory in nature.
Michael
Sandel, 67, is a professor of philosophy at Harvard University. Millions have
viewed his popular Ted Talks online.
The release
date for his latest book, "The Tyranny of Merit,” has deliberately been
pegged to the final weeks of the presidential election campaign in the United
States. Fittingly, the book is about U.S. President Donald Trump, his
predecessor Barack Obama, Trump’s challenger in the last election, Hillary Clinton,
and her husband Bill, the former president.
In the
book, Sandel seeks to identify the culprits behind the division of American
society and that of so many countries, including Germany. He is critical of
Donald Trump, but his indictment also targets the Democratic Party in the U.S.
and the left-leaning social democrats in Europe.
DER
SPIEGEL: Professor Sandel, readers are getting used to the publication of books
in rapid succession that always seem to have the same tone: Trump is dangerous,
Trump is stupid, Trump is to blame for everything. But in your latest book,
"The Tyranny of Merit," you focus on his opponents, the Democrats,
and blame them for the plight of American society. That's a bit surprising.
Sandel: To
make one thing clear: My book in no way excuses Donald Trump for the damage he
has done to American politics and society. He has inflamed racial tensions and
he has inflamed all of the divisions that already existed in American society
before he entered into office. He has made them worse. But the book also tries
to show how the Democratic Party - with Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Hillary
Clinton – opened the way for Trump.
DER SPIEGEL:
You argue that the Democrats have established a "success ethic” that has
turned their former voters, including the working class, against them. What’s
wrong with the idea of performance? The message that, "You can make it if
you try," has always been part of the great American promise.
Sandel: It
is true that the Democrats have repeatedly made this promise with good
intentions: to show people a way out of the inequality that has worsened as a
result of globalization. They emphasize university education as the avenue for
upward mobility. But this leaves out over half of the population. We now have
intense meritocratic competition for spots at the best universities, for the
best grades and degrees, and we’re seeing an epidemic of overly protective parents
because they are worried their children will be left behind. The notion that
fate is in your hands is inspiring in one way but invidious in another,
especially for those who don’t manage to succeed. Trump taps into that feeling.
DER
SPIEGEL: But the development of the kind of elite thinking you describe isn’t
exclusively the domain of the Democrats.
Sandel:
That’s true. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher promoted the free market and globalization. In the course of the
1990s, Bill Clinton took office as president, Tony Blair as British prime
minister and Gerhard Schröder as German chancellor - all representatives of
center-left parties. They accepted the basic principle of their conservative
predecessors that market mechanisms are the primary mechanism for achieving the
public good. Their faith in the markets was softer than that of Reagan and
Thatcher and they also tried to strengthen the safety net for those the markets
left behind, but they did not question the market faith itself.
Sandel: Yes. Think
of Hillary Clinton’s use of the word "deplorables.” She used it in the
last election campaign in reference to Trump voters, blue-collar workers. It
showed an arrogance toward the less educated. Obama spoke of people who
"cling to guns or religion.” The liberals emphasize rising based on merit.
But we don’t live up to the meritocratic principles we proclaim. Of course, you
have to pass difficult entrance exams to get into Harvard, but some people are
groomed for it throughout their childhood and youth, with hockey lessons, piano
lessons, foreign language classes, and their parents pay for it. Other parents
can’t afford it at all. So, good performance depends heavily on family
background and a good deal of luck. By realizing this, we can develop a sense
of humility and identify more easily with those less fortunate than ourselves.
DER
SPIEGEL: Obama was the first black president of the U.S. He would certainly
reject the accusation that he spoke to a largely white elite.
Sandel: He
would also have some arguments in his favor. Obama and Bill Clinton could say:
We offered working people a much more generous set of policies. We offered
universal health care. The Republicans were against it. We offered more
childcare. The Republicans were against it. We fought for a tax policy geared
to the middle class. The Republicans were cutting taxes for millionaires and
billionaires. Your follow-up question to Clinton and Obama would then be: Well,
then why is it that working people voted for Donald Trump instead? The
Democrats were shocked when Trump was elected. They didn’t take seriously the
legitimate grievances with which the ugly sentiments that drive supporters of
populism are entangled. For Trump’s supporters, it’s not only about wages and
jobs but about humiliation. The grievances are not only economic, but also
moral and cultural. It's about the lack of dignity and esteem.
DER
SPIEGEL: If Trump's followers feel humiliated by the elite, was it particularly
intolerable for them to see a black man rise to the presidency and, with
Hillary Clinton, almost a woman, too?
Sandel:
Racism and sexism are certainly factors. Trump makes misogynist statements and
overtly racist appeals. But it is important to remember that Obama got elected
president twice, and some Obama voters went for Trump. Sexism was a factor in
Hillary Clinton’s defeat, but so was her identification with meritocratic
elites who seemed to look down on working people. With Trump, they didn't have
that feeling.
DER
SPIEGEL: Why do you think that the Democrats, in particular, are attached to
the idea of an elite?
Sandel: The
Democratic Party once stood for farmers and working people against the
privileged. When Hillary Clinton reflected on her presidential campaign, she
boasted that she had won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s
gross domestic product. Electoral studies found that education, not income,
best predicted support for Trump. Among voters with similar incomes, those with
more education voted for Clinton, while those with less voted for Trump.
DER
SPIEGEL: Barack Obama undoubtedly had his arrogant moments and an intellectual
arrogance too. But he also had an ability to speak from the heart in his desire
to overcome divisions. Look at his speech at the funeral service in Charleston
in 2015, where nine members of a Black church had fallen victim to an attack
while praying in church. They came to the memorial service full of rage. Obama
held the eulogy and then sang "Amazing Grace” to help relieve their anger.
The speech he gave was one of the greatest presidential political speeches in
recent years.
Sandel:
Yes, that’s true. He was more eloquent than any other political figure in my
lifetime on racial equality. I think history will look back positively on Obama
and view him as an inspiring figure. When he ran for office in 2008, he
inspired a kind of moral and civic idealism that we had not seen in
generations. But 2008 was also the peak of the financial crisis. And on
economic issues, he embraced neoliberal globalization. When it came time to
reform and restructure the financial industry, he bailed out the banks without
holding them accountable for their irresponsible behavior, and did little to
help ordinary citizens who had lost their homes. Lingering anger at the bailout
fueled a politics of protest - on the left, the Occupy movement and the
candidacy of Bernie Sanders; on the right, the Tea Party movement and the
election of Trump.
DER
SPIEGEL: How do you view yourself? You’re a white man and a professor at
Harvard. That’s pretty elite.
Sandel: It’s
true, I write critically of elites and meritocracy having witnessed it
personally. I see the damaging effects that intense meritocratic competition
has on many of my students. They arrive at college having prevailed in a
stressful, anxiety-inducing meritocratic competition, which increasingly
consumes the high school years of many teenagers. I understand the situation in
Germany is different. But in the U.S., by the time young people arrive at elite
colleges, some are so accustomed to striving for credentials that they find it
difficult to step back to explore, to reflect on what is worth caring about.
The pressure to achieve can crowd out learning. The tyranny of merit harms the
winners as well as those left behind.
DER
SPIEGEL: Tyranny is a pretty strong word.
"In an
individualistic society like the U.S., solidarity can be difficult to
achieve."
Sandel:
There’s also a sobering statistic from a recent study that looked into the
mental health of 67,000 undergraduate students at more than a hundred colleges.
The study found that enormous stress levels are leading to rising rates of
depression and anxiety. One in five college students reported thoughts of
suicide. The suicide rate among young people aged 20 to 24 increased 36 percent
from 2000 to 2017.
DER
SPIEGEL: Only a few weeks are left until Election Day in the U.S. on Nov. 3.
What tasks will the political class be facing if, a.) Trump wins or b.) his
challenger Joe Biden wins?
Sandel: If
Trump wins, the central question for politics will be how to protect democratic
norms and institutions in the face of the threat Trump presents. If Biden wins,
the central question will be how to heal the deep divisions in our society, how
we can renew the sense of common good. But we can’t begin to heal our divisions
if we don’t understand the cause of the loss of social cohesion. My book
attempts to start a conversation about those causes, and about how we can build
a politics of the common good.
DER
SPIEGEL: But solidarity and community spirit aren’t easy to impose politically,
and certainly not humility.
Sandel:
Right. Humility comes from experience, from the messages parents give their
children as they raise them and through the implicit lessons that schools
convey about success. Is it mainly cognitive performance that is rewarded or
are social skills also cultivated and appreciated? Can we create public spaces
where people from different social classes come together, or must we retreat
into gated communities in the company of our own kind? Do we send our children
to public schools, where they meet children from other social classes? Do we
give up the VIP skyboxes in the sports arenas that separate us even while
watching our favorite team? And above all: Do we acknowledge that we are
indebted for our success - to family, community, life circumstance and a good
bit of luck?
DER
SPIEGEL: We are now months into a global pandemic that has shown us just how
vulnerable humanity is. Are there perhaps - not on a large scale, but on a smaller
one – signs of a new solidarity among students?
Sandel: In
an individualistic society like the U.S., solidarity can be difficult to
achieve. Otherwise, we would have a more generous welfare state. There may be
some small signs things are heading in the direction you are suggesting.
Recently, I asked a group of students whether, during the pandemic, they would
favor a lockdown of the economy to protect the vulnerable members of society,
or a policy of herd immunity, as in Sweden, where the government risked major
outbreaks in order to keep the economy going. The students were overwhelmingly
against the idea of herd immunity, because they felt that it was too dangerous
for society’s weakest, the elderly and people with underlying medical
conditions. But it is too soon to draw any conclusions. At the moment, my
students are spread out all over the world, learning remotely, as we try to
think through the meaning of justice in the midst of a pandemic.
DER
SPIEGEL: Professor Sandel, we thank you for this interview.
Sept. 15,
2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/books/review/the-tyranny-of-merit-michael-j-sandel.html
THE TYRANNY OF MERIT
What’s Become of the Common Good?
By Michael J. Sandel
In an
eighth-grade math class at Pacific Palisades Junior High in the late 1960s,
Michael J. Sandel’s teacher seated students in precise order according to their
grades. As their G.P.A.s shifted with the dramatically announced results of
every quiz, so did the seating. “I typically shuttled between the second desk
and the fourth or fifth,” Sandel recalls, and at age 14, “I thought this was
how school worked.”
“The
Tyranny of Merit” is like a brilliant response to that misguided but
well-meaning math teacher from the viewpoint, as it were, of a kid in some
back-row seat of any classroom in a Rust Belt, prairie town or inner-city
school in America. What do grades and degrees tell us, Sandel asks, about the
widening gap between rich and poor, proud and humiliated, trusting and
suspicious, opponent and devotee of Donald Trump?
Some have
called Sandel a “rock star moralist.” Without guitar or shiny shirt, the
soft-toned but hard-hitting Harvard philosophy professor has packed St. Paul’s
Cathedral in London, the Sydney Opera House in Australia and a 14,000-seat
outdoor stadium in Seoul, South Korea.
One reason,
perhaps, is that many of us need what he does so well: help us grapple with the
unexpected and uncomfortable questions that history delivers us. Is it OK for
parents to try to make a genetically perfect child (“The Case Against
Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering”)? Is it OK to pay your
kid to read (“What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets”)? Now, in his
new book, he asks: Is it OK to claim that our fine grades and degrees are all
our own doing, so that we owe little or nothing in return?
What, he
wonders, if the highly educated harden into a hereditary aristocracy? And what
if this occurs under a flag of fairness, during a time when B.A.s and higher
degrees are ever more closely tied to income and prestige? Let’s set aside the
case of rich parents who bribe corrupt officials or donate huge sums to get
their child into a good college. Let’s focus instead, Sandel writes, on the
inequity that creeps in without breaking any rules. At Princeton and Yale, for
example, more students come from families in the top 1 percent of income than
from the bottom 60 percent. Two-thirds of students in all the Ivy League
schools come from families in the top 20 percent. This is very largely because
of the head start woven into upper-income life itself: engaging dinner
conversation, better schools, private tutors, foreign travel.
Sandel is
not about guilt-tripping anxious parents of front-row kids; they’re suffering
too, he says. But the credentialed have come to imagine themselves as smarter,
wiser, more tolerant — and therefore more deserving of recognition and respect
— than the noncredentialed. One reason for this, he suggests, lies in our
American “rhetoric of rising.” Both rich and poor parents tell their kids, if
you try hard enough, you can achieve your goals. For the upper strata, things
may work out, but for the downwardly mobile blue collar and poor, there’s a
Catch-22. If they fail to reach their goals — which a torpid economy almost
guarantees — they blame themselves. If only I could have gotten that degree,
they say. Even the poorly educated, Sandel notes, look down on the poorly
educated.
Donald
Trump has reached out to this group with open arms — “I love the poorly
educated.” He has harvested their demoralization, their grief and their shame,
most certainly if they are white. But, Sandel notes, two-thirds of all American
adults lack four-year degrees. And in the wake of automation, in real wages,
the white man without a B.A. earns less now than he did in 1979. The dignity of
his labor has steeply declined. And since 1965, high-school-educated men in the
very prime of life — 25 to 54 — have been slipping out of the labor force, from
98 percent in 1965 to 85 percent in 2015. Of all Americans whose highest degree
is a high school diploma, in 2017 only 68 percent worked. And with rising deaths
of despair, many are giving up on life itself. So you who are highly educated,
Sandel concludes, should understand that you’re contributing to a resentment
fueling the toxic politics you deplore. Respect the vast diversity of talents
and contributions others make to this nation. Empathize with the undeserved
shame of the less educated. Eat a little humble pie.
But we are
left with an important issue Sandel does not address: the targeting by the
right wing of colleges themselves. This isn’t new: Running parallel to the rise
of the meritocracy in America has been a suspicion of the egghead who can’t
skin a rabbit, build a house or change a tire. As the historian Richard
Hofstadter observed in “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,” and Tocqueville
before him, many Americans have valued not simply the cultivated intelligence
of heroes in a culture of merit but also the creative genius of the “common
man” in a culture of survival.
Today this
has taken a shockingly partisan turn. For the first time in recent history, the
less education you have, the more you lean right and distrust higher education
itself. In a 2019 Pew survey, 59 percent of Republicans (and Republican-leaning
independents) agree that “colleges have a negative effect on the way things are
going in the country these days,” whereas only 18 percent of Democrats (and
those leaning left) agree.
So now’s a
good time for both sides to sit down for a very serious talk, with “The Tyranny
of Merit” required reading for all. And invited from inner-city, suburban and
rural schools across the land should be those who warmed seats both in the
front row and in the back.
Arlie
Russell Hochschild’s most recent book is “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger
and Mourning on the American Right.”
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