Political parties, like generals, have a tendency to fight a new war the same way they fought the last one even when the enemy and circumstances have changed. Conservatives eagerly draw parallels between the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and that of Barack Obama. It’s a very convenient and perhaps true analysis of the state of the present administration. But conservatives should not expect the same playbook that brought them a conservative majority after Carter to work for them today.
The Obama administration seems to be a rerun of the paleo-liberalism of the 1970s, with huge increases in spending, initiatives for new or expanded entitlements and a worldwide self-flagellating campaign to appease our enemies. It’s a familiar state of affairs for conservatives, but if our opponents fail in governing that by no means guarantees our own success. Imagine the most optimistic scenario: Republicans gain the House in 2010 and the White House and Senate in 2012. But then what? Of course, stopping many Democratic plans will be an improvement but it won’t be enough.
In the coming years more Americans than before will retire, enlarging the slice of the population that gobbles up government largesse. The Republican candidate in 2012 might offer the panacea of lower taxes and a lighter regulatory regime but those will only postpone the day of reckoning. It is much easier to lower tax rates than to reform Medicare and Social Security. We may be able to lower tax rates again but any action in this area as time goes by will become harder and it will come with diminishing returns.
There is a convergence of our politics with that of Western Europe. Increasingly their problems become ours. And like our European counterparts we have not yet discovered the political coalitions and means to achieve the necessary reforms to our welfare state. As the problems of entitlements intensify, it is conceivable to see successive Democratic and Republican administrations each entering the White House with high expectations and leaving with an unmistakable sense of failure.
The Obama administration up to now seems to be a replay of the old liberal canon. Conservatives in opposition to this paleo-liberalism might win some battles, but essentially they’ll be winning old battles anew. The problem is that conservatives lost recent elections not because they were unable to defeat the liberalism of yesteryear but because they were incapable of developing solutions to the problems that Americans face today. Whatever victories come from our confrontation with the Obama administration, they may conceal our fundamental weaknesses and leave us offering the public more of yesterday’s solutions.
10 responses so far
1 balconesfault // Oct 26, 2009 at 3:24 pm
The Obama administration seems to be a rerun of the paleo-liberalism of the 1970s, with huge increases in spending, initiatives for new or expanded entitlements and a worldwide self-flagellating campaign to appease our enemies.
Just to be clear – because sometimes facts are necessary to shed a new light on certain mythologies – the average annual federal spending as a percentage of GDP during the Carter years was 30.45%. During the Reagan years, that ratio was 32.35%.
So perhaps you should be talking about the huge increases in spending during the 1980’s?
2 ottovbvs // Oct 26, 2009 at 3:34 pm
………These guys make me chuckle………They spend eight years creating one of the greatest FU’s in US history……are totally unwilling to accept an iota of responsibility for this and instead want to talk about the events of 35 years ago ten months into a new admin that is trying to clean up their mess…….as someone said…..instead of griping why not……grab a mop.
3 Reason60 // Oct 26, 2009 at 4:13 pm
A slight correction to Balconesfault:
According to Zfacts, the deficit as a percentage of GDP rose under Reagan from about 30% to about 70%
http://zfacts.com/p/318.html
I did find myself nodding in agreement with one aspect of the original post- generals and politicos DO prefer to fight the last war.
Which explains the need to paint Obama as a “Socialist” and make this into a war between free market Capitalists versus Soviet style Socialists. The pundits KNOW how to win that war.
But that conveniently ignores some complexities- namely, that:
1. Lliberals are anything but. Even the Commu-Nazi Himself, B. HUSSEIN Obama is insisting the healthcare be deficit neutral; even if they fudge the numbers and cook the books, I don’t see anyone really calling for tax hikes in the range of oh, say, Eisenhower (34th President- Socialist Worker’s Party), when taxes were around 80% for the top tiers.
2. Conservatives are anything but. Conservatives used to favor a balanced budget. Name one- ONE- GOP contender for 2012 who has a serious plan for a balanced budget. Or even speaks wistfully about it. Conservatives used to be cautious, skeptical about the government’s ability to engineer societies. Today they are Wilsonian interventionists, quite certain of the government’s ability to mediate between Sunni and Shia, and establish a peaceful, liberal democracy in Afghanistan. Not to mention their certainty that a government bureaucrat knows exactly what Terri Shiavo was thinking.
The last war was between those who wanted to destroy the free market and substiture government planning; today the threat to the free market comes not from government planners, but from government/corporate marriages, like Goldman Sachs and Halliburton- neither free market nor publicly controlled, it has the worst aspects of both.
But neither party really wants to talk about that, because it doesn’t fit the convenient narrative that wins elections.
4 balconesfault // Oct 26, 2009 at 4:33 pm
reason: A slight correction to Balconesfault:
According to Zfacts, the deficit as a percentage of GDP rose under Reagan from about 30% to about 70%
Ah – but I wrote about federal outlays as a percentage of GDP, and not deficits. Different bases. Although one could note that the deficit growth was mitigated somewhat by Reagan signing tax increases in every year after his first in office.
Conservatives still do favor a balanced budget – particularly when they have absolutely no real responsibility for passing or implementing it.
I’m with you about the battle being over government/corporate marriages. There’s a great piece on Salon today about how the Obama reforms for the investment community are far short of what is needed – we need to take seriously Volker’s admonition that institution that are “too big to fail” should be broken up as a precondition to government bailing them out.
5 ottovbvs // Oct 26, 2009 at 5:45 pm
balconesfault // Oct 26, 2009 at 4:33 pm
………Correct…….Reagan actually tripled the federal debt……that is not a misprint…..tripled…….Bush was an amateur by comparison he only managed to double it…..that is not a misprint……doubled
6 LFC // Oct 26, 2009 at 6:16 pm
…initiatives for new or expanded entitlements…
Like the 100% unpaid for Medicare Part D entitlement? Oh. Never mind.
…and a worldwide self-flagellating campaign to appease our enemies.
After the absolute wretched failure of Republican foreign policy for the past 8 years, do you REALLY want to go there? Really?
7 agentprovocateur // Oct 26, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Poor conservatives. Some of them so desperately want to paint the president with the Carter brush. While that fantasy may comfort them into thinking that he will be as bumbling as his predecessor, that won’t help them win any elections anytime soon, especially considering that they have no modern day Reagan. Well, to some of them that may be Sarah Palin. Pardon me while I step away to snicker for a moment.
8 rbottoms // Oct 27, 2009 at 11:10 am
Better bring a better game than painting Obama as Jimmy Carter redux. Unlike the previous president, this one like to get actual facts before making decisions that will get soldier killed.
Personally, I miss the swagger and go with yer gut style of leadership. No wait, I don’t
9 sinz54 // Oct 27, 2009 at 2:24 pm
You can’t defeat an incumbent President just because you have some better ideas than he does. The advantages of incumbency are so great, that the only way he can be defeated for re-election is if he truly screws up somehow.
Carter certainly did screw up. To the point that even Ted Kennedy revolted against him and tried to take the 1980 Dem nomination away from him. That’s why Carter lost. He would have lost to just about any Repub candidate.
It’s way too early to know whether Obama will screw up badly. Carter’s biggest screwups occurred in the second half of his term. I lived through that era as an adult. As I recall, no one in 1977 (Carter’s first year in office) predicted that he was going to crash and burn so badly in the rest of his term. We tend to remember Carter for the last 18 disastrous months of his Presidency.
So once again, I advise my fellow conservatives to have patience. If Obama is even a middling decent President, he will win a second term in 2012, no matter what we say or do. In the meantime, let’s develop our own ideas and platform, and wait.
If Obama screws up badly, then we can pounce.
10 sinz54 // Oct 27, 2009 at 2:29 pm
I’ve often thought that if George Herbert Walker Bush had gotten the 1980 GOP nomination, he would have clobbered Carter ever more than Reagan did.
Throughout the summer of 1980, polls showed that Americans weren’t quite sure whether Reagan was up to the job of President, and so Carter and Reagan were fairly even in the polls. The shift to Reagan didn’t occur till they got to see him in the debates in October.
No such doubt would have existed about GHW Bush. He had tremendous experience in numerous Federal posts. His campaign ads pointed out how much more experienced he would be to hit the ground runninng as President than Carter was.
You must log in to post a comment.