The Republican candidate in 2012 who is unafraid to talk about upward mobility - and not just jobs and growth - will have the broadest appeal

Ryan Streeter
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Last week on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, Mitch Daniels was asked about Paul Ryan. Instead of praising Ryan’s work on entitlements and the deficit, for which Ryan is well-known, Daniels took a different angle and said Ryan would “do whatever it takes to restore upward mobility in this country, to restore the conditions for a stable, broad middle class.”

Of all of the people either running for President or among those who were once seriously considering a bid, Daniels is the only one who talks like this. Had he run for President, he would have been the upward mobility candidate.

While the leading candidates talk about “jobs” and “growth,” Daniels is talking about mobility and the middle class.

It’s not enough to create more jobs if they’re dead-end jobs. It’s not enough to have growth that only benefits the upper 20 percent of American households. Jobs and growth matter in so far as they are part of an opportunity society in which it’s still worth it for everyone, regardless of life’s station, to pursue a dream, aim high, take risks, and have a reasonable expectation that hard work will propel you to a life that is better than your parents enjoyed. The gauge for how we’re doing isn’t the upper middle class, but the middle class itself.

Daniels has been refreshingly consistent on this theme. Yesterday on Meet the Press, once again in the context of fielding a question about Ryan, Daniels said that Ryan’s “pro-growth, pro-jobs message is the one hope for low-income people in this country, it’s the one way we restore a stable and hopeful middle class.”

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Back in February, Daniels gave a much-lauded speech at CPAC in which he said:

We must display a heart for every American, and a special passion for those still on the first rung of life’s ladder. Upward mobility from the bottom is the crux of the American promise, and the stagnation of the middle class is in fact becoming a problem, on any fair reading of the facts. Our main task is not to see that people of great wealth add to it, but that those without much money have a greater chance to earn some. (emphasis added)

For some reason other conservatives have a hard time laying out economic objectives this way. They rightly resist falling into the rhetoric of class warfare while wrongly neglecting to take seriously the very real difference in America between the opportunities enjoyed by the affluent and those available to everyone else.

Since Daniels isn’t running, the mantle of the upward mobility candidate is available for the taking by one of the others. It’s an important mantle to take up. Upward mobility is what people care about. Who hears a mother on the sideline of a soccer field talking about GDP growth? She’s much more likely to be talking about the things she and her husband are doing to help their children get a shot to move up in the world.

The upward mobility candidate would be the one who says:

1. Cutting spending and reforming entitlements are necessary but not enough;
2. Job growth and GDP growth are necessary but not enough;
3. Accelerating the rise of median income in America (without doing so through redistribution) is the key indicator of how prosperous America really is.

Listening to all of the other candidates, one is left to believe that they all think the first two points – reducing spending and growing GDP – are sufficient in themselves.

If Ryan gets into the race, he may well become the upward mobility candidate. This Jack Kemp protege freely uses the expression for starters. Watch him at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in June, and at this town hall meeting in Wisconsin in April.

Oddly, and for whatever reason, the GOP field largely ignores upward mobility. Doing so isn’t even good politics. Independents are much more likely to support a Republican who lays out an appealing program of upward mobility in America than one who focuses mostly on cuts. And Tea Partiers will gladly follow the candidate who is able to demonstrate how limiting the government goes hand-in-hand with a vision for increasing upward mobility in America.

It’s not enough to try to be the most-middle-class-looking candidate (Tim Pawlenty tried that). The GOP candidate who hopes to be the frontrunner should lay out why his or her leadership will create opportunities for all Americans to move upward regardless of whether they start in the lower, middle, or upper class. So far, no candidate has.

Comments

[Elisabeth]

Brilliant observation, Ryan Streeter! Let's maximize this message no matter which candidate carries it. It's a MUST for the American people to hear. Let's get rid of a lopsided message! Thanks Ryan!

[David]

Interesting point, and let me add to that idea. The emphasis needs to be on ‘mobility.’

Perhaps the most critical error made early on during the housing crash was orienting policy around keeping people in their homes. Instead, it should have been about enabling people to get out of their mortgages, with as little damage to their credit and prospects as possible. Labor market mobility has long been central to the American economy, and we’ve lost a big part of that as people have become ‘chained’ to homes they can’t sell or walk away from.

Great post.