The Bush Budget and the End of Conservatism
When President Bush unveiled his budget earlier this week it may have marked the beginning of the end for Republican hegemony. It was a good run but finally policy is running smack into politics for the Republicans and the freeride is over.
Let me explain.
Conservative Republican dominance of US politics is a result of a few key things:
-Liberalism had achieved many of its goals: civil rights, the mainstreaming of environmentalism, feminisim and civil libertaries, the success of anti-poverty programs (morally if not actually), etc. With these goals accomplished Liberals became defenders of the status quo and lost their zeal for revolutionary politics. Moderates (the average middle class voter) lost his willingness to vote with reference to enlightened principal and felt free to vote his own self-interest. In a wealth Country such as ours voting purely out of self-interest means voting for really big tax cuts and big new spending programs.
-Demographic shifts moved cultural attitudes to the Right. As the baby boomers get older they become ever more conservative in their cultural attitudes. The "coarsening of culture" perception seems to be genetically programed to kick in around age 40 and the genes that cause its development will not yield to reason.
-Liberalism has no great moral principal to champion and expectations for a moral cause are unrealisticly compared to the civil rights era. Most of the work that remains for Liberalism is the tedium of finalizing the gains from the last era. Work like this attracts only the most committed or the most vested. In either case, they are unattractive leaders for the majority of voters.
But even this parade of circumstantial maladies would not allow Conservative dominance were it not for the Republicans' savy in crafting a new campaign message. Campaigns are won with broad themes. Candidates try and give voters a sense of the principles that guide them and the goals that motivate them. Up until the late 1980's it was fairly easy to predict the campaign themes of any given Republican candidate and any given Democratic candidate. Republican candidates would campaign on principles of limited government and goals like lower taxes and fewer government regulations. Democrats, of course, would campaign on more activist government and, though they may have hated to say it too frequently, higher taxes.
The parties' respective campaign themes had been formed in the early 20th Century and both parties continued to use them until midway through the 1980s. Their themes represented each parties core values and it is fair to say that both parties did reasonably well with them. That is, each party had its core of voters and they just had to catch enough of the swing voters in any particular election to get a majority of votes and win the election. Capturing the swing voters in any particular year has more to do with luck than anything else: the Cold War was a set of events that benefited Republicans for their Hawkish foreign policy while the economic boom after World War II benefited Democrats. Neither of these events could be controled by either party but in each case they benefited one party over the other because they could be used to bolster their respective ideologies.
What happens next to allow Republicans to gain dominance is either the cynical and dishonest manipulation of the public for short term electoral gains or the cynical and dishonest manipulation of the public for long term electoral gain. It depends on your perspective.
As I said earlier, you used to be able to predict the campaign themes of the candidates: Republicans wanted to cut taxes and Democrats didn't. This was an honest debate. Each side would make its case and the public would decide which it wanted: an expansion of government programs to ____ (take your pick: provide health care for the poor, fund job training for the poor and the displaced middle class, improve schools, the list goes on). Or no such expansion of government AND a tax cut (or at least no new taxes)
The Republicans seemed t0 do pretty well under this arrangement. They stood on principle and if the public wanted something else, they died on principle. Then they got crafty.
Republicans realized that they could campaign on cutting taxes AND increasing spending. I know . . . that's nutty . . .no one will fall for it . . .and it's blatently dishonest and manipulative. But it works. At least for a little while.
Reagan cut taxes and spending dramatically in 1980 but reversed himself the next year and recinded some of those tax cuts and restored much of the spending he'd cut while further increasing defense spending. The result (although it took a few years and personally I think government actions have very little effect on the overall economy) was an economic boom in the latter half of the 1980s and Reagan's reelection.
Of course this led to massive federal deficits and "Bush I" had to raise taxes to deal with them and was challenged from the Right during the parties primary for his honesty. Clinton raised taxes as well but the economy was recovering anyway and things went swimmingly from there on.
But the lesson that Republicans took from this was that cutting taxes and increasing spending is a sure way to get reelected. This would seem to be one of those obvious truths that everyone knows but believes: (1) you can't get away with it because voters will see it as a sham and (2) will only work for a few election cycles before deficits will require draconian spending cuts which will take all the luster from the ruling party's feel good tax and spending policies.
So that's where we are now. The Republicans passed a capital gains and dividend tax cut in December of last year that reduces goverment revenue by 80 billion. Bush's budget cuts (to take one example) to the Medicare program amount to 35 billion over the next 5 years. The math doesn't add up. Conservatives know Bush hasn't proposed cuts that are nearly significant enough to accomplish his stated goal of cutting the federal deficit in half over the next 10 years (a paltry and insufficient goal anyway) and they are saying it. But Congress is even less likely to approve significant spending cuts than the President, who after all doesn't have to worry about getting reelected.
All those Republicans who were elected (and reelected) over the last 10 years because Conservatives were pleased with the tax cuts and patiently awaiting the strangulation death of government spending programs will now find that actually cutting those programs bothers the swing voters and is not really possible without a fundamental shift in the way Americans think about government. Their choices: make the cuts and lose the next election because swing voters think you're hard hearted, don't make the cuts and swing voters will think you're irresponsible or raise taxes and lose Conservatives.
It was fun while it lasted. Or as Malibu Barbie might say, "Governing is hard."
Let me explain.
Conservative Republican dominance of US politics is a result of a few key things:
-Liberalism had achieved many of its goals: civil rights, the mainstreaming of environmentalism, feminisim and civil libertaries, the success of anti-poverty programs (morally if not actually), etc. With these goals accomplished Liberals became defenders of the status quo and lost their zeal for revolutionary politics. Moderates (the average middle class voter) lost his willingness to vote with reference to enlightened principal and felt free to vote his own self-interest. In a wealth Country such as ours voting purely out of self-interest means voting for really big tax cuts and big new spending programs.
-Demographic shifts moved cultural attitudes to the Right. As the baby boomers get older they become ever more conservative in their cultural attitudes. The "coarsening of culture" perception seems to be genetically programed to kick in around age 40 and the genes that cause its development will not yield to reason.
-Liberalism has no great moral principal to champion and expectations for a moral cause are unrealisticly compared to the civil rights era. Most of the work that remains for Liberalism is the tedium of finalizing the gains from the last era. Work like this attracts only the most committed or the most vested. In either case, they are unattractive leaders for the majority of voters.
But even this parade of circumstantial maladies would not allow Conservative dominance were it not for the Republicans' savy in crafting a new campaign message. Campaigns are won with broad themes. Candidates try and give voters a sense of the principles that guide them and the goals that motivate them. Up until the late 1980's it was fairly easy to predict the campaign themes of any given Republican candidate and any given Democratic candidate. Republican candidates would campaign on principles of limited government and goals like lower taxes and fewer government regulations. Democrats, of course, would campaign on more activist government and, though they may have hated to say it too frequently, higher taxes.
The parties' respective campaign themes had been formed in the early 20th Century and both parties continued to use them until midway through the 1980s. Their themes represented each parties core values and it is fair to say that both parties did reasonably well with them. That is, each party had its core of voters and they just had to catch enough of the swing voters in any particular election to get a majority of votes and win the election. Capturing the swing voters in any particular year has more to do with luck than anything else: the Cold War was a set of events that benefited Republicans for their Hawkish foreign policy while the economic boom after World War II benefited Democrats. Neither of these events could be controled by either party but in each case they benefited one party over the other because they could be used to bolster their respective ideologies.
What happens next to allow Republicans to gain dominance is either the cynical and dishonest manipulation of the public for short term electoral gains or the cynical and dishonest manipulation of the public for long term electoral gain. It depends on your perspective.
As I said earlier, you used to be able to predict the campaign themes of the candidates: Republicans wanted to cut taxes and Democrats didn't. This was an honest debate. Each side would make its case and the public would decide which it wanted: an expansion of government programs to ____ (take your pick: provide health care for the poor, fund job training for the poor and the displaced middle class, improve schools, the list goes on). Or no such expansion of government AND a tax cut (or at least no new taxes)
The Republicans seemed t0 do pretty well under this arrangement. They stood on principle and if the public wanted something else, they died on principle. Then they got crafty.
Republicans realized that they could campaign on cutting taxes AND increasing spending. I know . . . that's nutty . . .no one will fall for it . . .and it's blatently dishonest and manipulative. But it works. At least for a little while.
Reagan cut taxes and spending dramatically in 1980 but reversed himself the next year and recinded some of those tax cuts and restored much of the spending he'd cut while further increasing defense spending. The result (although it took a few years and personally I think government actions have very little effect on the overall economy) was an economic boom in the latter half of the 1980s and Reagan's reelection.
Of course this led to massive federal deficits and "Bush I" had to raise taxes to deal with them and was challenged from the Right during the parties primary for his honesty. Clinton raised taxes as well but the economy was recovering anyway and things went swimmingly from there on.
But the lesson that Republicans took from this was that cutting taxes and increasing spending is a sure way to get reelected. This would seem to be one of those obvious truths that everyone knows but believes: (1) you can't get away with it because voters will see it as a sham and (2) will only work for a few election cycles before deficits will require draconian spending cuts which will take all the luster from the ruling party's feel good tax and spending policies.
So that's where we are now. The Republicans passed a capital gains and dividend tax cut in December of last year that reduces goverment revenue by 80 billion. Bush's budget cuts (to take one example) to the Medicare program amount to 35 billion over the next 5 years. The math doesn't add up. Conservatives know Bush hasn't proposed cuts that are nearly significant enough to accomplish his stated goal of cutting the federal deficit in half over the next 10 years (a paltry and insufficient goal anyway) and they are saying it. But Congress is even less likely to approve significant spending cuts than the President, who after all doesn't have to worry about getting reelected.
All those Republicans who were elected (and reelected) over the last 10 years because Conservatives were pleased with the tax cuts and patiently awaiting the strangulation death of government spending programs will now find that actually cutting those programs bothers the swing voters and is not really possible without a fundamental shift in the way Americans think about government. Their choices: make the cuts and lose the next election because swing voters think you're hard hearted, don't make the cuts and swing voters will think you're irresponsible or raise taxes and lose Conservatives.
It was fun while it lasted. Or as Malibu Barbie might say, "Governing is hard."
posted by Ralph at 12:35 PM
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