Dani Rodrik and Mr. Trump [feedly]

----
Dani Rodrik and Mr. Trump
// Economist's View

David Warsh:

Dani Rodrik and Mr. Trump: David Brooks, of The New York Times, wrote the single best piece I read last week on the Republican convention: "Death of the Party." Like him, I was riveted by Donald Trump's acceptance speech. The scene seemed straight out of one of those dystopian Batman movies of the 1980s, '90s, and '00s, an outlandish character, sailing under false colors, bullying and threatening, preying on fears, selling Gotham a bill of goods, preparing chaos.

By the time the nominee bellowed, "I am your voice" to the hall of delegates, he seemed simply the latest in a long line of improbable adversaries: the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Ra's al Ghul, the Scarecrow, Bane, Mr. Trump.

But then Batman movies depend on the Caped Crusader, the Dark Knight, to answer the Bat signal, expose the fraud, counter the villains' plans, and save the city.

Batman in this case is Dani Rodrik, 58, of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He is likely to be the next economist to enter the pantheon of those who went to school in the '70s whom much of the public knows today" Jeffrey Sachs, Paul Krugman, Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke. ...

Rodrik isn't exactly fighting with Trump, the way Batman fights with those villains.  He is, by his own account, recasting the globalization narrative, replacing the familiar triumphalist version with a more nuanced account, including the ill-effects of integration that gave rise to the Trump and Bernie Sanders campaigns, and those of H. Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan before them.  (Meanwhile, Rodrik is interpreting events in Turkey as well.)

The Trump campaign supports no intellectual edifice whatsoever. For all its flaws, it is up to the Clinton campaign to begin translating into political terms the deeper understanding globalization – its costs as well as its benefits – that Rodrik, Unger, and many others have been working out.

Holy Hoodwink, Batman!  Let's get to work!

----

Shared via my feedly newsfeed