Palikot, Tusk and First Principles
I haven’t seen Prime Minister Donald Tusk beaten on the public arena in ages. So it was all the more surprising to see him beaten at his own game and right on the forum – a major government policy speech leading into a new-four-year term – where his game is the best game going: the laying down of first principles.
But it happened.
What I have always admired about Tusk is his ability to get quickly and consistently to first principles. He virtually never gets tied up in the details of a debate, as is the norm for an overly loquacious political class. He sees through journalist questions and opponent attacks to the motives that lurk beneath. His answers defend the particular by laying the principles and values that define the general. And I’ve loved it. Nobody pins him down. Every issue is a chance for Tusk to speak to all Poles at the level of underlying tone.
[Some will say that it is not Tusk constantly reaching for first principles so much as he is avoiding details where he has none to offer, that the government hasn't been ambitious enough for Tusk o have to defend any specific policies. Only marginally true. They have advanced some issues and Tusk uses the style just as well in fending off the opposition, rejecting populist demands, advancing Poland's foreign affairs agenda, et al.]
On few topics has Tusk done this better than on economic policy, where Tusk faces off against the legion of reform-fetishist economists sufficiently enthralled with Poland’s initial shock therapy reforms to dream of a world in which Poles live in constant revolution as Poland makes massive new leaps daily towards the free market paradise. They missed the part when Poland graduated to the class of nations sufficiently advanced to be able to forego revolution for evolution.
“I don’t work for the satisfaction of economists, but for the well being of average Poles” is a mantra repeated ad nauseum throughout the past term. He takes both the calls for radical market reforms, usually supported by fancy economic and financial indicators, and the populist demands for wild spending and whip their authors with the same bare bones definition of good stewardship and husbandry.
I’m a financial journalist, some would say a lackey of those mystical foreign investors who gain as hard working Poles bear the price of reforms or some such drivel. Someone will always say something.
But I’ll be the first to tell you. It is glorious when Tusk hands out the graceful smack-down.
Then there was the Friday policy speech. Against all odds, Tusk detailed a long list of quite specific reforms to taxes, fiscal policy and pension policy deemed necessary to shore up Polish finances as the financial crisis rages in Europe.
The array of policy initiatives proved wide: Poland will rejig child tax breaks, eliminate select tax breaks, raise and balance retirement ages for men and women, partially unwind a prior cut to the social security premium, eliminate select pension privileges and begin a reform of farmer pensions that will gradually lead even to setting income tax on farmers.
You would have thought Tusk was addressing a convention of ratings agencies. Any or all of those reforms might be good or necessary. Let’s not debate that; the hacks are on it already. Just wrong language to wrong audience. A glaring lack of stewardship and husbandry.
And it was Janusz Palikot, formerly of Tusk’s own party and now leader of what appears to be the only vivid and legible opposition, who capitalized. The mainstream media will focus on the personnel jabs (“You waxed Schetyna, so now you have to suck up to Gowin”) because they like the personal drama. But Palikot’s meta-message is what I’ve been describing. Speaking to Tusk from the podium, Palikot said: “Your entire expose can be reduced to ‘I have an idea about how to make the threat of the crisis a bit less’. But that is all.” On vision and declarations of what national strengths are drivers of Poland’s future growth – that is, on Tusk’s own traditional strength – Palikot actually challenged the PM to name a few.
The Premier of the Palikot Show suggests a strong start to the season. The Tusk rebuttal begins in under an hour. Polish Parliament is back after an absence.
So am I, perhaps. Sorry for the lack of posts.
