One of the odd features of the Democratic Party is its inability to learn what politics is about. It’s not about winning arguments. It’s about deciding which arguments you are going to have. In the first year of the Obama administration, the Democrats, either wittingly or unwittingly, decided to put the big government-versus-small government debate at the center of American life.
Just as America was leaving the culture war and the war war, the Democrats thrust it back into the government war, only this time nastier and with higher stakes.
This war is like a social script. Once it was activated, everybody fell into their preassigned roles.
As government grew, the antigovernment right mobilized. This produced the Tea Party Movement ”” a characteristically raw but authentically American revolt led by members of the yeoman enterprising class.
As government grew, many moderates and independents (not always the same thing) recoiled in alarm. In 2008, the country was evenly split on whether there should be bigger government with more services or smaller government with fewer services. Now, according to a Pew Research Center poll, the smaller government side has a 10-point edge. Since President Obama’s inauguration, the share of Americans who call themselves liberals (24 percent) has remained flat, but the share who call themselves conservatives (42 percent) has risen by as much as 10 percentage points, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll, as former moderates have shifted to the antigovernment side.
Kendall,
Thanks for frequently posting David Brooks’ columns. They are almost alwasys thoughtful, informative and stimulating, and this one is no exception. Only it’s less substantial than most of his pieces.
As I’m considerably to the right of Brooks when it comes to the old threadbare small government versus big, activist government debate, I don’t find this jeremiad of his very helpful. Like many neo-cons I’d describe myself as an ex-liberal (politically) who got mugged by reality. All too often, those big, expensive government social programs that promised to do so much good and usher in a more just society only boomeranged and ironically made things worse. The dependency-creating welfare system is the classic example.
I don’t agree with Brooks that Obama is a pragmatist and has staffed his administration with sensible, non-ideological pragmatists. On the contrary. Obama’s stubborn, relentless push for a massive new entitlement program (health care) that we can’t afford in a time of severe economic turmoil and distress is the very opposite of being pragmatic.
No wonder “moderates” and independents are fleeing the wreckage that Obama and the even more ideological Nancy Pelosi are making of the Democratic Party. I hope that we see a big swing in the November elections, maybe on the scale of the 1994 midterm landslide.
David Handy+
I’m surprised that Brooks didn’t throw in the word “reactionary” somewhere in his overview of Conservative response to the inside terror that we are experiencing. The whole problem is that Conservatives, by their philosophical construction, tend to be reactionary. It is hard to imagine the “Tea-party” movement as being other than reactionary.
We see the same thing happening in the Anglican Church – conservatives are reacting to Liberal deconstruction.
Don
Just to cut to the chase and answer the question implied in the title, the size and role of government in the USA should be as small as necessary to carry out the barest minimum roles permitted by our Constitution (accommodating a vastly diminished understanding of the much overly used and inordinately expanded prostitution of the “commerce clause”). A good start to bring things back into line would be to achieve the repeal of the 16th and 17th Amendments as a grand vehicle to bring the scope of government into line with a proper understanding of the United States as a Constitutional Republic.
#2. Thank you for your astute observation – “We see the same thing happening in the Anglican Church – Conservatives are reacting to Liberal deconstruction”. What we can further learn from the Liberal Anglican movement is that Liberals are relentless in enacting their agenda. It matters not to them if they destroy a church and hundreds of years of doctrine. They only see and care about their agenda. The same is true of the Liberals in Washington. They only see and care about their agenda. They will and are destroying America as a free and prosperous country of opportunity to enact their socialist agenda. Conservatives must put forward their agenda and fight for it with the same intensity.