What's In A Name?

With the profusion of political lables, there is more need than ever for small business to create an identifiable image.

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Last year, INC.'s research department polled subscribers to ascertain their political attitudes. A sample of INC. readers was asked whether they considered themselves conservative (51%), moderate (29%), or liberal (16%); and whether they were Republican (46%), Democrat (27%), or independent (20%).

Those, alas, were the good old days, because life is no longer so simple. In 1982 you can't call yourself just a conservative, or a Republican, or even a conservative Republican. That would not be specific enough. People would think you were holding back. They might wonder what you were hiding.

Take George Shultz, for example. In years past he called himself a conservative Republican, but the day after President Reagan nominated him as Secretary of State, this paragraph appeared on the business page of The New York Times:

"Shultz is a conservative, but not a real Reaganite," said Lester Thurow, a liberal economist who advises Democrats. "He's not a real dyed-in-the-wool monetarist nor a dyed-in-the-wool supply-sider."

You see how Thurow felt compelled to modify and qualify Shultz's "conservative" label. Actually, no one is even sure what a plain conservative is today, except that he probably voted for Barry Goldwater. Any conservative with a flair for political style today calls himself a neoconservative. A neoconservative, says Irving Kristol, a neoconservative himself, is "a liberal who has been mugged by reality."

Thurow says that Shultz is not a "Reaganite" conservative, which is confusing unless you understand that besides its general meaning -- someone who supports Ronald Reagan -- "Reaganite" has a technical definition as well. In the current political vernacular, Reaganite refers to an individual who voted for Reagan but would have preferred Calvin Coolidge. Thus someone who, like Shultz, is not a "real Reaganite" rejects the nostalgia theme of the current administration

Everyone understands "monetarist" and "supply-sider," but, Thurow says, Shultz is not a dyed-in-the-wool either one. A dyed-in-the-wool supply-sider would bc from the East Coast. A polyester supply-sider would be from the Midwest -- Indianapolis, for example. Since Shnltz was most recently living in California, where the term "supply side" gained prominence, no modifier is required when saying that he is not one

Those definitions should help clarify your understanding of where Secretary of State Shultz stands as a political economist, but it might also be useful to point out before getting on to the main subject that the Times made a serious error in calling Thurow a "liberal economist who advises Democrats."

More accurately, Thurow is one of the neoliberals, defined by neoconservative writer Michael Scully as "liberals who have been mugged by reality and refuse to press charges." Furthermore, Thurow does not advise just any Democrats, only rising young Democratic stars like Gary Hart (Colo.) and Paul Tsongas (Mass.), who look more like Senate pages than senators, which may be because Thurow himself looks more like an MIT student than an MIT management professor

This proliferation of labels, hyphenated modifiers, and qualifying phrases might be funny if it were not just a part of a bigger explosion. What is exploding, of course, is the American political body. E pluribus unum has been turned inside out, and instead of unity, the underlying trend in the United States now is toward factionalism -- little armed camps of single-issue soldiers ready to take potshots at anyone who violates their space. We divide ourselves by geographic region, by sex, by sexual preference, by age, by income, by color, by culture, by religion. Political analyst Kevin Phillips calls it the balkanization of America, but he isn't the first to notice the phenomenon.

Thurow wrote about it in The ZeroSum Society two years ago, observing that when the economic pie stops growing, a lot more interest quickly develops in how the pie is sliced. My piece can get larger only if your piece gets smaller.

Theodore H. White, who has written about every Presidential election since 1956, has postulated his first rule of politics: "Every one and every group want more than they deserve, and demand more than they want." Behavior that accords with White's rule creates no problems until the supply of something begins to fall short of the demand. Then the system breaks down, just as it did under the unfortunate Jimmy Carter.

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