To the extent that poverty could be addressed by public policy, there is this big honking problem: For the most part, neither party sees political advantage in really trying to make that happen. Democrats benefit when poverty persists and their political allies in the poverty industry enjoy the steady flow of public funds, especially as low-income voters continue to embrace the illusion that voting for Democrats is in their best interests. Republicans figure there is not much point because venturing into the inner city would eat up lots of time and resources and bring you little reward.
That kind of thinking drives Robert Woodson crazy. He is a black conservative who has run the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise since 1981, and while politicians give lip service to the question of poverty, he's spent decades in the trenches discovering the real causes of the problem, and real solutions. But that doesn't mean no one in the political world is paying attention. The Wall Street Journal's Jason L. Riley told us over the weekend that Paul Ryan approached Woodson wanting to know what he could teach him about better approaches to poverty. Woodson's answer was that he would help, but only if Ryan and his people were serious enough to devote serious time to the issue. They were, and to date Woodson has taken Ryan on 12 trips into high-crime, drug-infested neighborhoods as part of a larger effort to show Ryan the real dynamics that drive poverty:
Mr. Woodson sees an opportunity here for the GOP to do right by the poor without abandoning its conservative principles or pandering. He points to the successful outreach efforts of former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, two Republicans who worked with local minority communities to push market-driven urban redevelopment and were rewarded politically by blacks for doing so.
To illustrate the difference between his approach to community activism and a liberal's, Mr. Woodson tells me about a pastor in Detroit who wanted to build 50 new homes in a ghetto neighborhood but couldn't find financial backing or insurance. "If he had gone to someone on the left for help, they would have gotten their lawyers to sue the insurance company and the bank for redlining or something. What I did by contrast is arrange a meeting between the insurance executives and the pastor. They saw what he was trying to do, the people in the neighborhood he was employing. They saw someone developing human capital." The insurance company got on board and a bank followed. With financing in place, the homes were built, as was a new restaurant currently run by a man who did 13 years in prison.
You will recall, of course, that some statements Ryan made recently sparked a brouhaha in which liberal poverty pimps knee-jerked into racism accusations against Ryan. But you may also recall that the previous week, Ryan was talking about finding better solutions to poverty than the traditional dichotomy the two parties usually give us. Now you know, at least in part, where all this is coming from.
Woodson assails Republicans who genuflect at the altar of race pimps like Jesse Jackson, saying it's time to stop validating such people. At the same time, he showed up at the recent White House unveiling of President Obama's "My Brother's Keeper" initiative, saying he doesn't care about partisanship if something works. (He expects, however, it will make little difference because most of the money will go to Jackson and Sharpton types.)
Some of you are upset with Ryan about his recent strategic decisions concerning the budget. Fine. But Ryan is doing something here that Republicans need in a partisan sense, and more importantly that the nation needs in a substantive sense. We can all recognize that left-wing approaches to poverty have been a disaster, but when Republicans refuse to engage on the issue because they figure there's nothing to gain politically, all that happens is that we leave inner-city people in the hands of liberal politicians who will always do what they've always done.
Finding solutions that actually work would not only change the nation's political dynamics - imagine what would happen if the GOP could merely become competitive for inner-city black votes - but it could changes a lot of people's lives for the better. Paul Ryan may not be perfect, but a nation with a lot of political poseurs and very few real leaders needs people like him on the scene precisely because he is willing to do things like this.
