Barack Obama should be more like Nick Clegg

A Republican urging Barack Obama to be more like Nick Clegg is not a combination often seen, but that is what Michael Gerson argues in his Washington Post column, in a trans-Atlantic continuation of the debate over what counts as economic fairness:

Addressing the actual causes of inequality should be common ground for the center-left and center-right – and politically appealing to American voters, who are generally more concerned about opportunity than income equality. A mobility agenda might include measures to discourage teen pregnancy; increase the rewards for work; encourage wealth-building and entrepreneurship; reform preschool programs; improve infant and child health; increase teacher quality; and increase high school graduation rates and college attendance among the poor. Children of low-income parents who gain a college degree triple their chance of earning $85,000 a year or more. If America had the same fraction of single-parent families as it had in 1970, the child poverty rate would be about 30 percent lower.

During the initial stage of Republican House control, the focus will be on steep budget cuts. But a successful Republican presidential candidate in 2012 will need to speak of opportunity, not just austerity, to a dispirited nation.

Obama has that chance right now – as well as a progressive model to follow. The leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, recently addressed the meaning of economic fairness. “Social mobility is what characterizes a fair society,” he said, “rather than a particular level of income equality. Inequalities become injustices when they are fixed; passed on, generation to generation. That’s when societies become closed, stratified and divided. For old progressives, reducing snapshot income inequality is the ultimate goal. For new progressives, reducing the barriers to mobility is.”

You can read the full op-ed piece here.