"Steaming"

Josh Marshall writes:

But there do appear to be forces in Washington -- seemingly the stronger ones, with Rice just a facade -- who see this whole thing as an opportunity for a grand call of double or nothing to get out of the disaster they've created in the region. Go into Syria, maybe Iran. Try to roll the table once and for all. No failed war that a new war can't solve. Condi's mindless 'birth pangs' remark wasn't just a gaffe -- or perhaps it was a gaffe in the Kinsleyan sense of inopportunely saying what you really think. That seems to be the thinking -- transformation through destabilization.

This is spot-on. It's also manifestly clear, because this administration and its supporters make no bones about it. But the dynamic behind it is fascinating. The economist Joseph Schumpeter is revered by many on the Right. An important part of Schumpeterian theory is what he called "creative destruction," which essentially posits that capitalism is an organic, evolutionary process by which innovation destroys stagnation and inefficiency. It's somewhat analogous to a forest fire that clears old or dead vegetation so new growth can replace it. I'm a Schumpeter fan. (Unfortunately---and this is the basis of my criticism of the Federal Reserve---there's no place for Schumpeter in the nanny state, where malinvestment is never cleansed and inefficient giants never die; they just get fresh infusions of liquidity from the printing press.)

Here's the problem: Schumpeter has been co-opted by some on the Right as intellectual scaffolding for a geopolitical agenda. It's not a coincidence that Larry Kudlow gleefully invokes Schumpeter and "creative destruction" one moment, then urges viewers to "have faith in Israel" the next. Kudlow's not alone. In his book The War Against The Terror Masters, Michael Ledeen writes:

Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone. They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very existence -- our existence, not our politics -- threatens their legitimacy. They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission.

What would Schumpeter say to titular acolytes like Kudlow and Ledeen? My guess is he wouldn't be thrilled at the wedding of his economic theory to a geopolitical agenda. In chapter seven of his book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Schumpeter writes (my bolds, his italics):

The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation -- if I may use that biological term -- that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.

And what of attempts to impose creative destruction where it has not yet evolved naturally from within? Schumpeter is clear:

And this evolutionary character of the capitalist process is not merely due to the fact that economic life goes on in a social and natural environment which changes and by its change alters the data of economic action; this fact is important and these changes (wars, revolutions and so on) often condition industrial change, but they are not its prime movers.

Throughout history, of course, some have twisted narrow (and often obscure) economic, religious, racial, or genetic theories to fit unrelated larger agendas. The results are rarely pretty. But creative destruction sounds pretty good when your administration is trapped by a disastrous war in Iraq, a stagflationary economy, and exhausted fiscal and monetary policy (Middle East tension acts as a wonderful cover for the effect of irresponsible monetary policy on the price of oil). And all this, in the context of upcoming midterm elections in which control of Congress must be maintained at all costs. So creative destruction in Lebanon and ideally Syria and Iran is not only appealing, it's the only way out---particularly for an administration that manifestly hates doing the work that actual governing entails. And for the Raptured-up set, of course, creative destruction is the holy grail; shake things up, and it will all come out in the laundry---or in this case, on Judgment Day.

In Vegas, the pit bosses have a term for a player deep in the hole who starts increasing his bets dramatically in an attempt to get his money back: a "steamer." Desperate gamblers are dangerous, so steamers get extra scrutiny from the eye in the sky. It's "steaming" time for this White House. And the wife waiting anxiously at home, aware of her husband's compulsion and wondering how the mortgage or kids' tuition will get paid if he blows it all? That's us.