Category: Political Philosophy

You Can’t Squeeze Blood From A Turnip

E.J. Dionne does what Democrats love to do, except when running for public office: call for a massive increase in American taxes. Again, he demonstrates the fundamental flaws in the Democratic understanding of basic economics:

He’s right that a large share of any increase should hit those who enjoyed the biggest income gains over the last decade. But in the end, no politician (with the possible exception of libertarian Ron Paul) is willing to cut the budget enough to contain the deficit without a general tax increase down the road.

Every budget analyst knows this, and every politician knows that it’s far easier to bemoan deficits in the abstract than to risk spending cuts or tax increases that hurt sizeable groups of voters. “There are no more low-hanging fruit,” says Tom Kahn, the staff director for the House Budget Committee. “The low-hanging fruit have already been picked. Any tax increase or spending cut is going to trigger opposition from somewhere.”

In an ideal world, Obama would come right out and say we’ll need broad-based tax increases. But that would be suicidal right now. Witness the reaction to his effort to put a 28 percent ceiling on deductions. His proposal would affect only 1.2 percent of taxpayers, yet even that idea is about to die in Congress.

Dionne is correct in one aspect: just raising taxes on the “top 5 percent” isn’t going to do anything. President Obama could raise the top marginal tax rate to 99% and still never get nearly enough money to pay for his additional proposed spending, no less the entire federal deficit. The idea that raising the top marginal tax rate from 36% to 39% will be anything more than a tiny drop in the bucket compared to Obama’s radical spending plans is ridiculous. Even combining that with removing payroll tax caps, limiting deductions, etc., won’t nearly be enough.

So, is a broad tax increase the answer? Dionne suggests yes. But that answer is self-evidently incorrect. Exactly what is going to be accomplished by adding to the tax burden of the American people in the middle of a recession that is precipitously close to becoming a depression? Where is the average American member of the middle class going to get the extra money to pay off Uncle Sam’s never-ending appetites? People are already cutting back on their spending—raising taxes would cause them to cut back even more. When the economy is already having problems with paradox of thrift, why would policymakers try for a plan that would reduce consumer activity even more?

The root of this whole problem was bad policy. We let everyone get over-leveraged, homeowners, banks, and even the government. Now, instead of tightening their belts, our “leaders” in Washington D.C. are trying to find every inventive new way they can to spend even more money. Dionne is also right in that just nibbling away at the margin will not do it—we have to re-evaluate the massive and virtually uncontrolled growth of government.

Raising taxes and having government “invest” that money will not work. Government is subject to the political process, which virtually guarantees waste. If anyone thinks that Congress will rationally allocate money based on the national interest, then they have a fundamentally irrational faith in government unjustified by facts or common sense.

Raising taxes is simply not the answer. In a time when the American people are cutting back, losing their jobs, and losing their homes, it is grotesquely irresponsible for government to demand even more of their hard-earned money—they don’t have the money to give. The argument that somehow the government will spend its way out of this recession is completely unjustified. Those who think that we should follow the example of FDR had better hope the Europeans start slaughtering each other so we can bomb them to rubble and then help them rebuild—it was World War II and not the New Deal that finally ended the Great Depression. We do not have the ability to spend our way out of this—and all Dionne would have us do is feed the beast more.

What needs to be done? For one, we need to re-evaluate our view of what government does. Nearly all of our current problems can be traced to government intervention. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could cook their books because they (and everyone else) knew that they were “too big to fail” and if anything went wrong, Uncle Sam would bail them out. For all the talk about how it was deregulation that caused this mess, the reality is that the less heavily regulated industries are doing better than the most heavily regulated ones. The idea that banks were living in some kind of libertarian paradise and government wasn’t watching everything they did is completely wrong. The banking industry was, and is, heavily regulated. The problem was that the big players (Countrywide, for example) could “buy” Congress and get them to pass laws and rules favorable to them.

The answer is to make sure that this kind of capture can’t happen again. The best way to do that is to make sure that Congress can’t rewrite the rules to line their own pockets. That means not only tougher ethics reform in Congress, but also preventing Congress from being able to screw around with the nation’s economy. Everyone treats this as a demand problem—but it’s really a supply problem. If Congress could only do so much to regulate the industry, there would be no incentive for companies to spend billions on influence peddling. There would be no point to doing so—even if they wanted to, Congress couldn’t stack the deck in their favor.

That means restricting the power of government, except in making sure that companies act transparently. The government does have some need to interfere with the market, but what we are seeing now is when government substitutes the “wisdom” of someone like Tim Geithner for the judgment of the market—quite literally making Geithner the one who gets to make all the rules. Even if Geithner were an unqualified genius, this sort of concentration of power is dangerous.

What we need is less government, not more. What we need is the development of the private sector, not more reliance on government employment. What we need is less of a tax burden, not more. We need a government that does a few things and does them well, not a government that tries to do everything and ends up failing more often than not.

Dionne is wrong at the core of his argument—the level of government spending is unsustainable, and we can never raise taxes enough to cover the difference—and if we tried it would further depress the economy. We cannot keep hoping that the same top-down solutions will work. We cannot just assume that substantive entitlement reform is off the table.

This nation is at a crossroads. We can either continue to spend our way into bankruptcy or we can start looking at alternatives. Raising taxes only makes things worse. We cannot blindly put our faith in government, but must look back to the basics of what makes our economy strong: hard work, a government that promotes opportunity, and a government that is small but effective. The more we stray from those basics, the harder things will be in the future.

Buyer’s Remorse

Sometimes, a concept can be so obvious that even David Brooks sees it. Brooks, the New York Times’ wishy-washy man of the Right no wakes up to the obvious and that Barack Obama is not a moderate at all and that he and the Democratic Party are engaged in an orgy of spending and ideological experimentation.

Brooks and other erstwhile conservatives—I’m looking at you, Chris Buckley—are just figuring out what should have been obvious all along: Barack Obama is not a moderate, and never was. He just played one on TV.

As Brooks puts it:

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”

Where were these people during the campaign? What in Obama’s background suggested that he would be anything more than a doctrinaire left-wing liberal? His Senate voting record was the most liberal in the Senate by any objective measure. He grew up in the Chicago political machine. He was raised in a comfortable liberal orthodoxy. His books are filled with grand liberal planning. He’s a devotee of left-wing radical Saul Alinsky. And yes, Gov. Palin was right, he was “pallin’ around” with such esteemed “moderates” as Rev. Jeremiah Wright and admitted left-wing terrorist Bill Ayers.

What did these “moderates” expect?

They let their own gauzy feelings dictate their choices rather than evaluating Obama as he really is. They used Obama as an empty vessel into which they poured their vision of the ideal candidate. Of course, their idealized version of Barack Obama had little do with the real Barack Obama once one gets beyond the superficial elements. They thought that because Obama was so intelligent and articulate that he wouldn’t be so radical. How little did they know…

President Obama is not a moderate. He never was, no matter how fervently ersatz conservatives like David Brooks and Chris Buckley wanted him to be. Now that Obama has power, he is showing his true spots. The real Barack Obama is the most radical President in American history, even more so than LBJ. He aims to fundamentally transform American culture and society into something akin to a European welfare state. He does not believe in limited government, he believes in the expansive state. He does not believe in moderation, but in radical transformation. He does not need the support of people like Brooks or Buckley, he has the power he needs, and he will wield it.

Obama will not listen to Brooks’ proposed “moderate manifesto”—he doesn’t need to. He has his power. He has a Congress that is equally committed to left-wing experimentation. He has a media that is utterly supplicant to him. He has a populace that has yet to see through his charming façade. The more the markets sink in reaction to his dangerous experimentation, the more he can use the crisis as a justification.

Obama’s critics were dismissed as reactionaries for not recognizing his brilliance—and now it looks like those of us who questioned the President’s much-vaunted moderation were right. Brooks and the others who were so swept away by Obama’s surface appeal are not belatedly coming to see what others saw from the beginning. The problem is that it’s too late—Obama was figuratively and literally given a blank check, and now the “moderates” no longer matter.

Partisanship Is Democracy By Another Name

Yuval Levin has why “partisanship” is a healthy thing in a democracy:

Our deepest disagreements coalesce into two broad views of human nature that define the public life of every free society. In a crude and general way our political parties give expression to these views, and allow the roughly like-minded to pool their voices and their votes in order to turn beliefs into action.

To ridicule these disagreements and assert as our new president also did in his inaugural that “the time has come to set aside childish things” is to demean as insignificant the great debates that have formed our republic over more than two centuries. These arguments—about the proper relationship between the state and the citizen, about America’s place in the world, about the regard and protection we owe to one another, about how we might best reconcile economic prosperity and cultural vitality, national security and moral authority, freedom and virtue—are divisive questions of enormous consequence, and for all the partisanship they have engendered they are neither petty nor childish.

Levin’s words match my own thoughts on the issue. Our current working definition of “non-partisan” seems to be more based on shutting up and getting with the program than anything else. When the President calls for an end to “childish” partisan disagreements, what he means is that everyone should accept his views on the proper role of the state and be done with it. The problem with that is that a large segment of the American population doesn’t accept the basis of his worldview, and they have a legitimate right to have their voices heard.

We don’t need “non-partisanship” at this point in our history. We need vigorous partisan debate. Democratic debate is a crucible that helps extract the truth—and today’s society is becoming less about democratic debate and more about cultural balkanization. We have a media elite that is overwhelmingly uniform in their worldview. With the exception of specialized media outlets like Fox News and talk radio, conservative voices are marginalized and diminished. Not only does this harm conservatism by denying it a forum, but it diminishes liberalism as well. Without a counterbalancing force, any ideology becomes stagnant and increasingly irrelevant. Liberalism, by constantly defining itself as the only valid worldview, has ceased being a vital political philosophy. Is it any wonder than that the banner of today’s liberalism is the empty slogans of “hope” and “change” and it’s ultimate rationale the accumulation of power? When President Obama spoke with GOP members of Congress his message was simple: “I won”. While that counts for a lot in politics, winning an election does not vindicate the rightness of a worldview.

This isn’t to say that conservatism is perfect. Many, if not possibly most of conservatism’s wounds are self-inflicted. Conservatism stopped, by and large, being intellectually vital during the Bush Administration. By going along with Bush’s “compassionate conservatism”, the conservative movement lost sight of it’s small-government origins. By becoming more stridently anti-gay rather than pro-family, conservatives alienated much of their own audience. The Republican leadership that has become the standard-bearers for conservatism lost the ability to connect to the American public because they became too ingratiated with power and defending their own record. That President Bush spent most of his second term allowing the opposition to control the public imagination helped bring conservatism in America to a new low.

But liberalism is making the same mistake. At this moment, liberalism is embodied in President Obama in a way that is fundamentally unhealthy. Just as conservatism tied itself to the political fortunes of President Bush, liberalism has become the Ideology of Obama, with the President as its pontifex maximus.

This is particularly unhealthy for a democracy. The combination of ideological arrogance and a cult of personality surrounding one great leader is a dangerous thing. The President, much to his credit, has tried to create a “team of rivals” to challenge his beliefs, but has yet been able to demonstrate more than a token commitment to that end.

Instead of trying to be aloof and above-the-fray, Obama should embrace respectful partisan disagreement as part and parcel of democracy. Instead of putting himself in an ideological cocoon, Obama should engage with the conservative movement. Instead of having The Huffington Post ask him pre-approved questions at his press briefings, he should invite prominent GOP and libertarian bloggers to grill him. It would be interesting to see how he would respond to questioning from someone like Glenn Reynolds or William Safire.

Obama has the bully pulpit of the Presidency, and he has a large hand in setting the tone. If he is serious about leading this nation, and he certainly is, he should be embracing partisanship rather than decrying it. The past President was accused, probably with merit, of living in an ideological bubble. He, like Obama, promised to be a unifying leader. If the President wishes to avoid the same problems that befell his predecessor, he needs to realize that you can’t strengthen your arguments without accepting the arguments of others as valid. For all his promising talk in this regard, his Administration has scarcely wavered from Democratic politics as usual.

Democracy cannot survive in a political monoculture or in a state where only one side is given legitimacy. Liberalism needs conservatism and vice versa. Partisanship is a crucial part of a healthy democracy, and right now American democracy is increasingly unhealthy. If we are to set things right, we need more reasoned disagreement, not mindless and rigid ideological conformity.

Why Small Government Is Better For The Little Guy

Hardvard economist Edward L. Glaeser has a fascinating and provocative piece on what he calls “small government egalitarianism”:

In the 20th century, President Woodrow Wilson campaigned on a “New Freedom,” opposing Teddy Roosevelt’s big-government Progressivism. While Roosevelt wanted the government to manage monopolies, Wilson wanted trust-busting and less protectionism. Wilson perceptively noted the dangers of too much government: “If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don’t you see that big business men have to get closer to the government even than they are now?”

Wilson’s warning could not be more prescient. Look at the “stimulus” bill snaking its way through Congress. It is positively loaded with pork for special interests, handout for big donors, and only a fraction of it will go to the sort of crucial infrastructure projects that were supposed to be its very purpose. The “stimulus” bill could not be a better example of why Big Government hurts the poor. Even setting aside the issue of whether government spending creates jobs at all, this bill certainly won’t put enough people to work to make even a dent in the skyrocketing unemployment lines. Instead, billions of dollars will go to the politically well-connected and unscrupulous. The difference between Bill Blogojevich and most of Congress is that Blagojevich got caught.

Small government is good government. Small government helps the American worker because it does not allow the kind of concentrations of power that we have now. Why do big corporations spend billions on lobbying Congress to tilt the law in their favor? Because Congress has the power to tilt the laws in their favors. The reason why the Founders deliberately created a limited government of enumerated powers is to prevent the kind of naked interest-buying that we see now. The more power you give the government, the more incentives there are for government to use their power for their own advantage.

With Congress’ approval at a historic low, the idea that the case for small government is no longer worth making seems absurd. If anything, now is the best time to push a vision for a government that is smaller, more responsible, and more accountable. That such a government would ultimately be more equitable is a beneficial side-effect.

Politically, the Republicans should be doing what Sen. McCain threatened to do and “make famous” every single pork-barrel project in the “stimulus” bill. The message here is simple: tens of thousands of Americans are losing their jobs every day and Congress is paying off its campaign contributors with pork. Americans should be disgusted by the performance of Congress right now. The myth that this trillion-dollar boondoggle is anything but a case of Congress acting like robber barons of old should be laid to rest. Congress wants to claim that they’re “creating jobs”, but instead they’re giving more and more cash to the same politically well-connected actors.

This is precisely why small government is so crucial to having a more equitable society. If Congress were only allowed to spend money on truly national projects there would be no ability to send pork to campaign contributors. Big Government does not produce an more equitable society, it rewards those who side with the politically powerful. Small government benefits the people because it doesn’t allow Congress to game the system to benefit their own interests.

Take a simple but common example. When new regulations come down from all the federal agencies, have John and Jane Doe on Main Street had any opportunity to shape that new rule? Of course not, even if they compulsively wade through each daily edition of the massive Federal Register to see what rules are being proposed the most they can realistically do is send a strongly worded letter. Can Washington interest groups shape that rule? They pay lobbyists great amounts of money to do exactly that. Can business interests shape that rule? Absolutely, and they have their own army of lobbyists for just that purpose. So is it any shock that John and Jane Doe are under-represented in the process?

It’s a myth that “big business” and powerful special interests love small government and hate regulation. Why should they? They have the clout in Congress to make sure that the regulation benefits them. They can use their political connections to steer millions of taxpayer dollars to them. They can benefit from the access they have to Congress and even the White House. They know that P.J. O’Rourke’s great maxim is correct: “when buying and selling is legislated, then the first thing to be bought and sold are legislators.” The bigger and more intrusive government is, the higher the barriers to new competitors. Look at the most heavily-regulated markets in this country: they tend to be dominated by a handful of large players who can use their access to lobby government to keep those regulations in place. They benefit the most from the regulatory state, and they have every interest in seeing Big Government stay big.

If you’re a little player, like a “Mom and Pop” operation, forget it. The costs of regulatory compliance are too high. If you can’t afford the lobbyists, you can’t play the game, and you get squashed.

That is why we need smaller, less intrusive, and more accountable government. We need to reduce the incentives for the big players to game the system and increase the chances for small players to enter the market. That way the benefits go to the best and the brightest, not the most politically well-connected.

Here is where liberalism fundamentally gets it wrong: government regulation of the market will never produce equality. It will only benefit the big players. If we want a more egalitarian and equitable society we cannot put in place barriers that keep the small players out. Glaeser is right, and the case for small-government egalitarianism is one that needs to be made now more than ever.

Congress To Illinois: Get Rid Of Blago Or No Cash

Jim Geraghty notes a curious provision in the stimulus bill directed at the State of Illinois:

None of the funds provided by this Act may be made available to the State of Illinois, or any agency of the State, unless (1) the use of such funds by the State is approved in legislation enacted by the State after the date of the enactment of this Act, or (2) Rod R. Blagojevich no longer holds the office of Governor of the State of Illinois.The preceding sentence shall not apply to any funds provided directly to a unit of local government (1) by a Federal department or agency, or (2) by an established formula from the State.

It seems to me that this move is unconstitutional. The federal government may condition receipt of federal funds on doing certain things. For example, the Supreme Court upheld the federal government only allowing for highway funding to the states if they raised the drinking age to 21. South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987). However, that case only allowed the government to do so for reasons related to the “general welfare”. Helvering v. Davis, 301 U. S. 619, 640–41 (1937).

The question is whether Illinois getting rid of Gov. Blagojevich is related to the “general welfare.” Say what you will of the corrupt and profane Illinois governor, he has not yet been convicted of any crime. This probably isn’t an illegal bill of attainder since it’s punishing Illinois rather than Blagojevich himself, but it’s still a gross violation of the principle of federalism. The “general welfare” isn’t a way for Congress to advance narrow issues or play political hardball. It would be blatantly unconstitutional for Congress to condition federal funding on a state electing a Republican governor or electing a female governor. So why should it be constitutional for the federal government to withhold funds from Illinois because they refuse to impeach Blagojevich on Congress’ timetable.

Even though the courts generally defer to Congress on what is defined as being in the national interest, this seems to be a rather clear case of Congress overstepping their constitutional limits.

Dissent Is SO Yesterday!

David Harsanyi asks whether dissent is still patriotic in the Age of Obama. The answer, I suspect, is no. Instead, watch for any opposition to President Obama, whether measured or not, to be labeled as “divisiveness” and cast aside. As Harsanyi puts it:

Some of you must still believe that politicians are meant to serve rather than be worshiped. And there must be someone out there who considers partisanship a healthy, organic reflection of our differences rather than something to be surrendered in the name of so- called unity — which is, after all, untenable, subjective and utterly counterproductive.

President Obama’s call to unity was standard boilerplate stuff. After all, one of the mottos of this nation is E pluribus unum—”out of many, one.” But at the same time, there’s a difference between coming together as a nation and being forced to all read from the same playbook. The strength of America is in our ability to have legitimate disagreements about politics and policy while still acknowledging our common values. That is a balance, and I fear that Obama will fail to understand the difference. These passages from his Inaugural Address does not bode well:

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

Have we? I despise the idea that one party of another has a monopoly on either hope or fear, and it’s a transparently dumb argument to make. Those of us who voted for McCain voted out of hope as well, hope for a better future in which government did not trample upon the right of the people to pursue their own happiness. Does President Obama really believe his own bull about him being a living symbol of hope? If not, are these words just more empty rhetoric, sugary words devoid of substance? Then why make them?

I suspect the answer is that Obama is a believer in his own hype, and that scares me deeply.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

Like hell we have.

Every politician plays hardball. Partisanship is inevitable in a free society, and that’s a feature, not a bug. In order for this statement to make sense, Obama must believe 1) that he is somehow above politics, which is transparently ludicrous for any politician to say; and 2) that our politics would be better if we jettisoned the “worn out dogmas” that he doesn’t like.

As a good Burkean, this makes me gag. Our politics is meaningless without the beliefs that President Obama wants to denigrate as being “worn out.” Our politics needs vital disagreement on key issues. Democracy is never about conformity, else it becomes little more than the rule of the mob. But when you’re at the head of the mob, I suppose, mob rule doesn’t sound all that bad.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

Note what Obama is doing here. He’s first calling partisanship “childish” rather than a necessary part of vital democratic debate. He’s then wrapping himself in the mantle of the American character. It’s the classic way that a politician tries to diminish his or her opponents without appearing to do so. First you delegitimize the “other” then you wrap yourself in the values you wish to be seen as embodying. It’s a classic rhetorical trick, and Obama plays it to the hilt.

If that weren’t enough, this passage further demonstrates Obama’s feelings towards dissent:

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them – that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works – whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.

Hear that, all of us “cynics”? We’re too stupid to realize that now that Obama is on the scene, the question about the role of the State in our lives is no longer relevant. Now the question is not whether the government should interfere in our lives, but just how much it will take to achieve the desired ends of the left-wing nanny state. Our “stale arguments” aren’t even worth discussing, now is the Era of Government, and we are but mere roadbumps on the way.

Sadly, those words betray a worldview that would delegitimize debate. Whenever a politician speaks of “transcending politics” or whatever mumbo-jumbo they use, what they ultimately mean is that they would like their side to always prevail. Politics isn’t a flaw in our system, it is our system. The moment we start arguing that legitimate debate over issues is “childish” or decide to chuck out the “worn out dogmas” of the opposition party, we abandon the principle of democracy in for tyranny.

Not once in the speech does President Obama countenance any opposition to his worldview. Not once in his speech does Obama even admit to the legitimacy of those who see things through another lens. Rather it was entirely about how now that Obama is in charge it’s time to “remake” America, whether those cynical believers in the value of a limited government of enumerated powers like it or not.

It is one thing for America to be one nation united by common bonds of history and culture. It is another for someone to declare that their election is a triumph of hope over fear. The worst thing that could happen is that they actually start to believe that.

I will keep my “worn out” dogma and be “childish” then. We should, and must, act as a loyal opposition, never sacrificing the national interest solely to make a political point, but that does not imply rolling over for Obama’s “remade” America. In the words of another President, “aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.” Just because President Obama says that the days of partisan disagreement is over will not make it so, nor should it.

The First Step Is Admitting You Have A Problem

Via the incomparable James Lileks comes a map that should send chills down the spine of every Republican:

A county-by-county map of the 2008 election results.
A county-by-county map of the 2008 election results.

Even though this election was relatively close, the map does not show that McCain did very well in spreading his message nationwide. The Republican Party cannot hope to win as a regional party any more than the Democrats could. The task for the coming years will be in crafting a Republican message that can resonate beyond the Bible Belt of the country.

The good news is that this country remains a center-right country. There are still more self-described conservatives than liberals, and the center remains persuadable. If Obama over-reaches—and with a strident liberal Congress that is quite likely, the Republicans can come back again. This isn’t necessarily a realigning election that presages a Democratic majority for years to come any more than 2004 was the same. The normal political cycle of realigning elections in this country seems to be dramatically shortened thanks to mass media and technology. Republicans shouldn’t be consigning themselves to defeat yet.

But we have to admit that this map shows a massive problem. The strategies of exploiting cultural wedge issues and national security won’t work anymore. The Karl Rove playbook worked in 2000, 2002, and 2004. It didn’t in 2006 or 2008, and it won’t work in 2010 and 2012. The Republican Party needs to broaden itself and admit that it has a problem reaching out to the center.

Granted, the 2008 result was largely due to two factors: President Bush’s unpopularity and Barack Obama’s immense political skill. Those factors aren’t going to repeat themselves again—and in 2012 it could be a skilled Republican like Bobby Jindal versus an unpopular President Obama. But even if that is true, the problems with the Republican Party are structural, and need to be fixed.

I don’t pretend to have the right answer. There’s going to be gallons of ink and gigabytes of blog posts figuring out where to go next. What I do know is that something has got to change, and the Republican Party will have to adapt to a changing political climate. That does not have to mean compromising on our values—Republicans can win in places like the Northeast without compromising on key values. But it’s also going to require the GOP to do more than try to use cultural wedge issues to their partisan advantage.

In a democracy, parties can and should win and lose. Politics is cyclical, and the Republican Party has done much to put themselves in this position. The goal moving forward is to rebuild the party for a post-Bush world. There can be a Republican renaissance, but only if the party and its constituents are willing to make it happen.

Obama And Redistribution

David Harsanyi has an astute piece on Obama’s collectivist tendencies:

Now, I’m not suggesting Obama intends to transform this nation into 1950s-era Soviet tyranny or that he will possess the power to do so. I’m suggesting Obama is praising and mainstreaming an economic philosophy that has failed to produce a scintilla of fairness or prosperity anywhere on Earth. Ever.

If you believe that “fairness” — a childishly subjective idea that ought to be quarantined to playgrounds and Berkeley city council meetings — should be meted out by the autocrats inhabiting Washington, D.C., your faith will be duly rewarded.

You know, once upon a time, the stated purpose of taxation was to fund public needs like schools and roads, assist those who could not help themselves, defend our security and freedom, and, yes, occasionally offer a bailout to sleazy fat cats.

Obama is the first major presidential candidate in memory to assert that taxation’s principal purpose should be redistribution.

For his talk about “hope” and “change”, Sen. Obama’s policy positions are nothing new, and nothing hopeful. They are based fundamentally on envy. “Redistribution” has nothing to do with fairness, and everything to do with greed. It is about demanding the work of others without having done anything oneself. Such an attitude is corrosive to democracy—the moment that the levers of the state can be used to rob from some to give to others, then such concepts as “equal justice under law” become just empty words.

I’m not so sanguine as Harsanyi about the future of this country. That so many Americans have been taken by the rhetoric of redistribution is itself troubling. The lifeblood of a democracy is in its citizenry, and when the citizenry decides to use government to line their own pockets with the wealth of others, they will inevitably take the country down the road to serfdom.

The Founders realized this, of course. That is precisely why they created a government of limited powers, enumerated in the Constitution. They lived in a time of out-of-control government when the Crown “redistributed” wealth from the Colonies to Great Britain. They saw the results of what happens when government controlled everything from the disposition of property to the publication of ideas. The strictures put in place in the Constitution exist to preserve the rights of the individual. Economic redistribution is premised on the idea that the individual has less right to their wealth than does the collective. Economic redistribution and individual rights are at odds, and for one to gain, the other must recede.

This country cannot embrace economic redistributionism and remain a democracy for long. The two will always be at odds. Obama is perhaps but a symptom of a larger sickness, and the cure is a reaffirmation of the principles of constitutional government.

Powell’s Flimsy Case For Obama

Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama, although not unforeseen, is the big political story of the day. The Editors of National Review have a well reasoned response to the Powell endorsement that is well worth reading.

Contrary to Gen. Powell, Obama will be another divisive and polarizing political figure…

The problem with Powell’s endorsement of Obama is the same problem with the vast majority of endorsements of Obama: they’re all built on unsound logical ground. Even taking it for granted that the Bush years have been bad for the country (although not because Bush has been a radical conservative—he has not) and that some kind of “change” is needed, I’ve yet to see a coherent case for why Obama’s policies are the right direction.

Oh yes, I’ve seen plenty of ink spilled on why Obama’s personal qualities are so wonderful: everyone says that he’s intelligent, articulate, and vibrant. None of those mean a great deal in the long run. Many very intelligent men and women believe some very idiotic things: visit a college or university campus and ask members of the faculty about basic economic questions and you’ll get some profoundly unserious and utterly misinformed answers. Intelligence alone does not qualify one to be President: Nixon was a very astute thinker, but a lousy President.

Being able to use the bully pulpit of the American Presidency is critically important—look at what Bush’s failure to do so has done to his Presidency. But again, it is not nearly enough to make up for poor policies. Everything Obama stands for, from taxes to the Supreme Court to foreign policy is ill-conceived and often dangerous to the future of this great nation. Crafting lofty speeches will not make it less so. Being a good salesmen does not make the product any more safe.

Would Obama would be a “uniting” force—a “post-racial” President? There’s some good reason to believe that is so. But that is neither assured, nor is it enough. Obama has a history of being a political radical, a member of a virulently racial church, and surrounds himself with members of the extreme left. He has scant little in his record to suggest that he will govern as anything less than a doctrinaire across-the-board leftist—in a country that remains conservative. When Obama has to actually enact his policies, he will do so over the objections of a plurality of Americans who are increasingly seeing themselves as divorced from a left-wing elite. Obama will have to reach across party lines if he wants to avoid being another Clinton or George W. Bush. There is little in his record that suggests that he will do so.

In the end, Powell’s rationales are as superficial as the rest. Obama is a compelling figure, but the messianic nature of his campaign and his virtual coronation by a lickspittle media only makes it that much harder for Obama to govern with anything but a sense of institutional arrogance. Make no mistake about it, contrary to Gen. Powell, Obama will be another divisive and polarizing political figure. We do not need more of that kind of political division.

Sen. McCain, in contrast, has a long record of bipartisan accomplishment, including doing things that have put him against his own party. He stood his ground on campaign finance reform, on immigration reform, on torture, and especially on Iraq and each and every time his stand was based almost entirely on putting principle above politics. McCain can and will reach across the aisle—he’ll have no choice but to do so. Divided government would be healthy for the economy. A government totally controlled by the Democrats would lead to even greater political division than we have now. If an Obama-Pelosi-Reid government passes card check legislation, renews the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” to muzzle criticism of their rule, and enacts legislation repealing the ban on partial-birth abortions, will that heal the nation’s political wounds, or will it make things even worse? The answer should be obvious.

Our Republic is a house divided, and Obama will only expand those divisions. He will not be the figure of “hope” and “change” and the great transformational leader that Gen. Powell would hope him to be. Instead, he will do what he has always done: act as a radical leftist in concert with a radical Congress and arrogantly impose a radical agenda on a divided nation.

That is not the change we need, it is the change that will tear us apart.

On Buckley And Obama

There’s a brouhaha over Christopher Buckley leaving National Review after his endorsement of Barack Obama. Buckley, like his father, is a brilliant and witty writer, but it seems hardly surprising that he’s getting such a reaction from conservatives. Buckley’s sin isn’t heresy, it’s shallowness. His endorsement of Obama hardly makes a conservative case for Obama. His critique of McCain is that somehow McCain has become “inauthentic” and his case for Obama is that he has a “world class intellect.”

Plenty of other wrongheaded individuals were brilliantly smart—and even though Sen. Obama is unquestionably smart and capable, he represents the antithesis of everything conservatism stands for. Conservatism is an ideology that desires limited government—Obama supports an even more dramatic expansion of government that what we have seen in the last eight years. Conservatism rejects cults of political personality—and yet Obama is skating by largely on the force of his personalty than the substance of his ideals. Conservatism rejects immenatizing the eschaton—that might as well be Obama’s campaign slogan.

That Mr. Buckley is so haughty in his folly demonstrates that while he has his father’s wit, he appears to have lacked his judgement.

This argument demonstrates exactly why Buckley’s judgement is so mistaken:

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

If Buckley’s judgement is incorrect, and Obama is exactly what every bit of his record suggests—an unrepentant and unabashed leftist—what would the result be for the country?

Conservatives made the mistake of putting their trust in a politician rather than in their ideas over the past eight years. Making the same mistake again won’t be any better for the country.

Buckley ends his piece with “As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.” God save us from such poor logic.