David Brooks hopes that someone will restore fiscal sanity to Washington:
There’s going to be another Ross Perot, and this time he’s going to be younger. There’s going to be a millionaire rising out of the country somewhere and he (or she) is going to lead a movement of people who are worried about federal deficits, who are offended by the horrendous burden seniors are placing on the young and who are disgusted by a legislative process that sometimes suggests that the government has lost all capacity for self-control.
He’s going to be set off by some event like what is happening right now with the Medicare prescription drug benefit. He’s going to look at an event like that one, and he’s not only going to be worried about the country’s economic future – he’s also going to be morally offended. He’s going to sense that something fundamentally decadent is going on.
And he’s going to be right.
Brooks is right – the single biggest disappointment of the Bush Administration has been the complete disregard for small government displayed by the Administration. The Medicare drug benefit was an unmitigated disaster, and had the Democrats proposed it the Republicans would have (rightly) fought it tooth and nail. Bush has been promising fiscal sanity in his budgets, but has not delivered on that promise. The federal government continues to expand and consume resources like The Blob, and despite the Democrat’s attempts to outflank Bush from the right on fiscal discipline they’re even worse than he is when it comes to government spending.
We can’t wait for Brooks’ hero to come along. Congress is going to have to hold the President’s feet to the fire over the budget. Sadly, the Democrats will demand more spending, and the Republicans are all too willing (with the exception of some die-hard fiscal hawks like Oklahoma’s Sen. Tom Coburn) to simply go along with the President’s spending habits. Certainly there’s room for a candidate who’s a fiscal conservative, socially moderate, and strong on national defense. That candidate could even be a Democrat like Tennesee’s Phil Bredesen, or a moderate Republican in the vein of Ah-nold.
Either way, Bush has left an enormous vacuum by not tackling the budget head on and demanding fiscal sanity. Pork and Congress go together like college students and beer, but someone has to stand strong on limiting out of control government spending. The President talks a good game, but he needs to match words with actions. If he can’t control the budget, there’s going to be a groundswell of support for someone who can. The GOP has long been the party of limited and sound government. As much as I support the President in other areas, his fiscal profligacy cannot be easily swept away. President Reagan reminded us that government is often the problem, not the solution. It’s too bad that our current President hasn’t embraced that aspect of the Reagan legacy.
C’mon. Small government is dead. You can either have big government that pays for itself, or big government that can’t. If you prefer the first, then you need to be voting Democratic.
It’s futile to even talk about spending restraint in Washington….or in representative government in general for that matter. Mutual back scratching is the only way for anything to get done when conflicting interests converge. As the population ages, and as Americans clamor for ever-tighter control of their personal lifestyle choices (gov’t mandated restrictions or outright prohibitions on tobacco products and junk food), expect the need for government to expand exponentially in the next decade. Of course, whether we’ll have the resources to accommodate that expansion is another story altogether. It’s foolish for Brooks or you to chastise spending growth when you both advocate the re-establishment of the Cold War military-industrial complex while slashing the means of revenue needed to pay for it. Republicans with a clue ascribe to the Dick Cheney mantra that “deficits don’t matter” and have every interest in seeing them soar ever-higher.
Bush’s addiction to reckless short-term spending has the endgame of achieving GOP utopia…where massive debt burden forces the slashing of government services to the point that Grover Norquist can “drown what’s left of government in a bathtub.” That’s why I don’t suspect spending growth will wane even after the election. On top of the fact that most new spending is accounted for by our imperialist empire-building, Bush and Rove have yet to completely ensure long-term GOP domination of government, and in order for that to become a reality, they need to play the role of the serpents handing out juicy apples a while longer. By delivering every scrap of pork possible today, there will no pork left for tomorrow. After the 11-2 attacks, it’s hard to imagine how that scenario doesn’t play out….ensuring a substantially lower quality-of-life for future generations held hostage to paying for their parents’ tax cuts and Homeland Security Department.
“the 11-2 attacks?!”
crap like that reminds me why i’m not a democrat anymore.
crap like that reminds me why i’m not a democrat anymore.
Oh, right. When Democrats use hyperbole, it’s a sign we’ve gone off the deep end. But when Republicans do it, it’s ok.
Just keep staring at that poster you have above your bed, I’m sure that will make the scary thoughts go away. “It’s not Fascism when Republicans do it.”
And now Republicans are Fascists…
And you people wonder why people think the Democratic Party has lost any remaining vestiges of sanity?
C – I told you that you’d see the light eventually… 😛
Caroline, if all it takes is instances like my throwaway comment about “the 11-2 attacks” for you to abandon your sociopolitical convictions and embrace the antithesis, then it was only a matter of time until you were gonna be a Republican regardless of what anybody said. Shrill propaganda is hardly exclusive to one party, as Max Cleland could attest to when the GOP smear machine compared him to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in 2002. Thus, your attempt to defer guilt onto me and like-minded Democratic partisans for your political convergence rings hollow as a debating ploy and makes you look incredibly shallow and in desperate lack of personal convictions outside of “playing nice” at the bully pulpit.
Except Cleland was never compared to Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, as anyone who’s actually seen the ad in question can ascertain.
And now Republicans are Fascists…
My dictionary says that “facism” is a system under which corporate interests are the priority of government.
So, yeah. It’s not that now Republicans are Fascists; they always have been.
Except Cleland was never compared to Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein
Oh,. yeah? Just like Bush has never been compared to Hitler, I guess.
I’ve seen the ad. Sandwiching Cleland’s mug shot in between those of bin Laden and Hussein can be interpreted one way and one way only. If Kerry had ran an ad showing Bush in between Hitler and Mussolini, you would have been spouting disgust for weeks on end regardless of what actual verbal propaganda was or wasn’t used. For someone as hypersensitive to Hitler-baiting as you to suggest the Cleland ad was anything but a malicious comparison of a domestic political opponent to a wartime enemy is just another example of the depth of your situational ethicism.
Of course given that one can see the ad here and clearly see that Cleland is not compared to Osama or Saddam the point is moot.
Not that such things as facts have ever deferred Democrats from using that argument ad nauseam.
Compare that to MoveOn’s Bush=Hitler ads and the difference becomes quite clear.
Main Entry: fas·cism
Pronunciation: ‘fa-“shi-z&m also ‘fa-“si-
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian fascismo, from fascio bundle, fasces, group, from Latin fascis bundle & fasces fasces
1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
Sounds more like a liberal paradise, minus the point about race
From the Merriam Webster Dictionary m-w.com
Sounds more like a liberal paradise
You’ve got your directions wrong. Liberal is left-wing; fascism is right-wing. Except, I guess, in your alternate universe where “liberal” = “everything bad.”
Your hero rhetoric comes as quite a surprise to me. Not only was I reminded of that scene in The Lord of the Rings’ The Two Towers movie where Saruman delivers his “A new power is rising in the east” speech, but what is more important: placing the fate of a nation into the hand of some mystic figure means giving up the very notion most of your writing is based on – the belief that individual action is key to the well-being of all; that is, that everyone is responsible for and in charge of their own fate. If every individual takes that responsibility serious, the world is, basically, in good shape.
Proclaiming that a hero will rise is the equivalent of saying, “we don’t need to do anything because in the end, a savior will come from outside and take care of things for us.” That whole believing in heroes business is an expression of passivity. While you are waiting for your hero, put on that Mariah Carey song (“And then a hero comes along…”), it is just the perfect soundtrack to not doing anything.
After WWI, Germany was waiting for their hero to put things straight- and they got Hitler.
After centuries and centuries of suppression, the Russian people were waiting for a hero to deliver them – and they got Lenin and Stalin.
“Hero” is a dangerous concept in terms of politics; waiting for heroes doubly so.
J.
Actually, I just ripped off the tagline from Gladiator and used it as the post title…
You’re right, we really shouldn’t wait for Brook’s reformer to come along. Congress and the President need to get spending under control. Hell, if the Democrats were to actually push for Kerry’s campaign promise of reinstating the old pay-as-you-go budget rules they might just do something constructive for a change…
Oh, it was Gladiator? Never really saw that one, only the bits that Jill Locke played to us in Political Philosophy 101 😉
J.
I just watched that commercial mentioned above. How could that be misinterpreted so badly? Cleland was not compared to Osama or Saddam at all. He is just not “leading” the fight against those types of people. Good grief… Maybe they are referring to a different commercial.
I dont think liberal is everything bad, just that many who are support a more centralized government with severe economic regimentation, as well as puts the indivdual below the whole.
Joe, I’m gonna work on an advertisement where I picture your wife in between photos of two $20 crack whores. But don’t you dare suggest that by doing so I’m degrading your wife and comparing her to them!
Joe: Anyone who actually sees the ad would pick up on the context instantly. One can only conclude that the people still flogging this myth either have the intellectual capacity of a four-year-old or are being deliberately disingenous.
I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which…