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The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House
In the coming months, an audacious initiative will emerge on the doorstep of the mighty US Treasury. A collection of (mostly) business donors are remodelling three historic buildings to create a museum that will champion the “American dream”. To populate this, the Milken Institute is recording interviews with 10,000 people about their experiences of that dream. In the words of one key donor, it is intended to provide a “beacon of hope”.
No doubt some Democrats will wince. The project is spearheaded by Michael Milken, the financier turned philanthropist who infamously invented the junk bond market in the 1980s, before pleading guilty to securities violations. In 2020 he was pardoned by the then president Donald Trump.
However, sneering would be the wrong reaction. For quite apart from the question of whether we should support redemption and reinvention, there is a vital question about the American dream itself. Thus what Milken is launching in Washington highlights a bigger challenge and opportunity for politicians of all stripes.
Take the sour mood of voters. A Pew poll published last month found that only 53 per cent of Americans still believe there is an American dream — while 41 per cent say it used to exist but has now crumbled. Recent surveys from other groups, such as NORC, echo this pessimism (albeit with a more upbeat finding from a YouGov poll that suggests that while voters fear the dream is vanishing for the nation, many are experiencing it in their own lives).
Equally striking is the demographic skew: the Pew survey shows that younger, poorer and less-educated voters are the most disillusioned of all. No wonder Trump keeps declaring that the “American dream is dead”; the message packs a punch.
Dead or alive, the American dream deserves more scrutiny. In recent decades, it has typically been defined in economic terms, meaning that everyone should have the opportunity to achieve upward mobility through hard work.
Call this the “picket fence” ideal: each generation is supposed to enjoy better jobs, homes and consumer goods than their parents. Under this measure, it is easy to explain the bitter tone in polls: working-class wages have (until recently) been stagnant, income inequality has risen, average life expectancy has declined — and social mobility has fallen. Ouch.
But one oft-overlooked irony is that when the dream concept was first popularised back in 1931, it was not defined primarily in economic terms, but invoked the founding fathers’ notion of American exceptionalism.
In his book Epic of America, the historian James Truslow Adams argued that “the American dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely material plenty . . . [or] of motor cars and high wages”. Rather it is, “a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognised by others for what they are, regardless of birth or position”. Respect, inclusion, freedom and democracy mattered too.
This point might sound obvious. But it leads to a crucial question: is this American dream defined by geography? Or is it a disembodied goal?
For Trump, geography is central: he believes the dream is dying because hordes of immigrants are “poisoning” a sacred American homeland. But for the Democrats the concept is less tethered to boundaries or national purity. In Chicago this week speakers such as Michelle Obama have championed tales of upward mobility — while Kenneth Chenault, former head of American Express, lauded presidential nominee Kamala Harris as someone who thinks “all Americans [should] have the opportunity to achieve their own share of the American dream”.
Hence why the museum set to open in Washington next year should prompt reflection. In recent years, Milken’s centre has — unsurprisingly — championed policies to support innovation, capital formation and entrepreneurship. It has also lauded immigrants who drive growth and found companies. The museum is slated to feature a host of immigrant — non-white — faces, many of whom are running America’s most successful companies in tech and other spheres.
This will upset some Trump supporters, who have howled on social media if he ever sounds positive on this theme. Meanwhile, some Democrats dislike the idea of wealth creation and capitalism. But the hard truth is that if Republicans are ever going to become a party that looks more normal, they need to redefine that American dream. They should care less about geography — and champion the point that business leaders often make, namely that immigrants are essential for dynamism.
Conversely, if Democrats are going to produce a platform that sounds truly credible to business (or anyone else), they need to create and champion robust policies around innovation, entrepreneurship and capital formation. It is lamentably hard to determine where Harris stands on this.
The point then is that a debate about how to rejuvenate Adams’s century-old idea is also a possible way to rebuild America’s shattered political centre. And if this unlikely glass-walled atrium helps to remind its new neighbour at the White House to chase this, it will be welcome indeed. Here, at least, is dreaming.
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