The New New Deal
When I wrote a post the title of which suggested that today’s market decline meant we’d need to spend another $800 billion, I was joking.
It is a reminder that the rescue package that was passed last week is not the end of our efforts to deal with the economy, it’s just the beginning. I think it is very important for Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke to move swiftly and try to restore confidence as quickly as possible, and effectuate the plans based on the authority that has been given to them by Congress.
I think it is still critical for us to move forward on an economic stimulus package that can provide people with some relief from high gas prices, food prices, help state and local governments maintain their payrolls. I think we have to extend unemployment insurance after the statistics showing that 159,000 additional jobs were lost just last month.
When Barack Obama sees a problem, his first instinct is invariably to nationalize it and throw money at it. His second instinct is to throw more money at it. When that problem stems from a lack of fiscal discipline, his instincts are still to throw money at it, and on top of it, he engages in the worst sort of demagoguery to move his agenda forward.
What has been brutally exposed over the last couple of weeks is that we are looking at a Democratic nominee who is congenitally incapable of setting priorities. Asked twice what portion of his agenda he’d cut to pay for the grandiose bailout, he explicitly declines to cut anything. Now that the bailout is proving a failout, he wants more expensive government interventions. And he won’t pay for those, either.
The fact that there are still self-described conservatives supportive of putting this man in the oval office–with a huge congressional majority–is staggering to me. There is nothing remotely conservative about his temperment, and no problem that he apparently thinks government can’t fix.
I don’t think there can be any more doubt about it. You vote for Obama, you get FDR.
The sad thing is that the best reason I can come up with for voting for McCain is that he’s not Obama.
Comment by Laura — 10/6/2008 @ 9:52 pm
I bet you if most Americans thought that a vote for Obama was a vote for FDR, we wouldn’t even have to run an election. People loves them some FDR.
Comment by Adam — 10/6/2008 @ 9:56 pm
Yep. And that’s why he’s winning.
That doesn’t mean conservatives–or devotees of fiscal discipline, whatever their other principles–should be clambering aboard the bandwagon.
Obama is no leader; he is a follower with an ear for the groundswell, and an eye for the right constituencies to appease. Obama with an improved congressional majority is the worst–and likeliest–possible outcome of this election.
Comment by Rojas — 10/6/2008 @ 9:58 pm
One of the things Ann Coulter has gotten right is in her proclamation that if she could be someone from history, she would be FDR so that she could not introduce the New Deal.
Not as well-received as Al Franken’s response of “Hitler” so that he could stop the Holocaust/World War II, but a good one nonetheless.
Comment by K_Wright — 10/6/2008 @ 10:18 pm
Not sure either counterfactual would work. The policies both men set into effect were to a considerable extent the product of public passions, and some variation on either would have found its way into public policy. It might have been less dire versions, of course. On the other hand, in FDR’s case, it might have been full-on socialism.
Comment by Rojas — 10/6/2008 @ 10:26 pm
And since for some reason that comment sent itself too soon, let me continue here:
His notion that a consistent onslaught of government funds will somehow solve any and all problems is disheartening. Not only that, but it’s almost as empirically false as his ill-conceived tax policies. I would discuss it more, but I feel this post has done a fine enough job of outlining my own opinions on the matter. I will add this, though: I think that Obama truly “knows not what he does”. In typical liberal fashion, he resolutely refuses to acknowledge the simple truth that government interference is not only bad, it’s part of what caused this problem we’re in. So the natural response? Do it again. Yes, Barack, let’s trick out our economy once more into thinking it’s okay so as to face this problem down the road yet again.
As for what my response would have been? I’d be Obama so that I could not run for President.
Comment by K_Wright — 10/6/2008 @ 10:32 pm
I’m more concerned about unintended consequences.
Government action does, in some cases, produce the desired result. The problem is that it creates entirely new arrays of perverse and counter-productive incentives.
In this case, we’re going to absolve a broad array of financial services companies from any disincentive towards risk-taking in the marketplace. We’re going to prevent healthier, saner companies from taking them over. And as has been said, we’re going to delay the transition away from a culture of debt to a culture in which we live within our means.
I say “delay” rather than “prevent” because the structure WILL crumble at some point. There are limits to even the fed’s resources. The question now is how hard the landing will be.
Comment by Rojas — 10/6/2008 @ 10:38 pm
You’re massively overstating what is, for Obama, mostly a reiteration of items that have been on his economic agenda for ages and which most Congresses get to in some fashion or another (stimulus package stuff). To me, it’s sort of akin to hollering about minimum wage increases that come up every 10 years or so. Yes, the fundamental idea of it is bad, but no, it’s not going to crash the system, and the guy spearheading it at the moment is not the next FDR.
The truth of the matter is FDR’s changes were institutional in nature, remaking government from scratch, a right angle to the course of governance and the basic premises that came before it. Through no interpretation is Obama’s proposal here in even remotely that ballpark. He’s going to bleed out another 100 billion from the treasury for payroll insurance or padding unemployment? That’s the worst possible outcome of this election? If you believe that to be true, you either lack perspective or imagination.
Obama does indeed believe that the government can be a safety net and insulating force—he, in that respect, holds a pretty mainstream liberal view. It is disappointing (particularly if you are not a liberal), compounded by the fact that he’s not yet showing any flexibility on the matter given new realities, but the economic sky is not falling. Compared to even the level of change of the Medicare bill or No Child Left Behind under Bush, this is pretty hum-drum stuff. There are riper fruit in that respect (universal health care).
But the bottom line is this is not going to be a size of government or fiscal (as opposed to financial) election—that is not a tipping point issue here. Again, if expressing a mainstream liberal economic viewpoint is a deal-breaker for you, welcome to being forced to vote third party or Republican in every election for the rest of your life no matter what candidate they put up, what direction their party is shifting, or what other issues are likely to be decided (one way or the other). Because let’s face it, the left will always be…well, to the left, on this. And if the above cited economic changes signal, to you, a new New Deal, then your threshold is low enough that I can’t imagine any Democrat v. Republican matchup that wouldn’t surpass it.
There ARE, by the way, institutional realignments of how government operates going on right now, ones which will make the basic mode of governance unrecognizable in a few generations to what it is now (or more accurately, ten years ago). An economic stimulus package with a regular Congressional session’s amount of giveaways is not it (the bailout might be another matter, but you can hardly lay that on Obama’s feet).
Comment by Brad — 10/6/2008 @ 10:39 pm
That’s pretty much what I mean. When I refer to government action, I’m using broad language, but referring specifically to policies like this one — government action that fundamentally shifts from the very structures our nation is based on. I agree wholeheartedly with your idea that this structure cannot last, and that it only makes sense for us to eventually stop basing our view of the economy on falsehoods brought about by huge amounts of debt and bad credit. This crumble that you talk about, in my opinion, is simply the natural progression of widespread misconception.
I don’t think anyone purposely intends to cause negatives effects when implementing policy. All negative consequences, therefore, are just as you say: unintended. I wouldn’t presume to sit here and say he or anyone else wants unexpected, negative consequences to occur. I’m just saying they will.
Comment by K_Wright — 10/6/2008 @ 10:47 pm
It’s always possible, Brad, if you want to ignore the additive consequences of fiscal mismanagement, to reduce the debate to any one giving spending program, and argue that a little more won’t hurt.
It’s not, in Obama’s case, any one thing. It’s EVERYTHING. It’s ALL of it–his entire approach to governing. He speaks about personal responsibility, but in every single instance I can think of he acts in such a way as to make it irrelevant.
I suppose you could, if you wanted to, excuse any one or another of Roosevelt’s alphabet-soup agencies and programs. That would be missing the forest for the trees in the truest and purest sense of the metaphor. They are all individual organs in the new body FDR crafted, which fights like hell to prevent surgery on any one of them. That, too, is the long-term promise of Obama’s New New Deal.
It’s not universal health care or absolution of mortgage recipients or any individual stimulus package or industrial protectionism or enhanced ag subsidies or massive new poverty initiatives. It’s ALL OF IT, AT THE SAME TIME, REGARDLESS OF SURROUNDING CIRCUMSTANCES. And it’s the hectoring, demagogic tone with which any resistance to any aspect of the overall program is met.
If this is mainstream liberalism, as you assert, then that is a damned good reason not to give mainstream liberals unitary control of the government for eight years. I have voted for Democrats for President, for state representative, and for every office in between. I expect that I will again. But there are Democrats, and then there are Democrats. And there are checks on the power of those elected officials that simply don’t pertain in this case.
You say that this is not a tipping point election on economic issues. Funny; your preferred candidate doesn’t see it that way. When pressed, he has caved on civil liberties, caved in foreign policy, caved on political tone and tactics–he is willing, it seems, to compromise on every aspect of his agenda except for the expansion of the entitlement state. This suggests, to me, that when it comes to trade horses in order to enact his agenda, your favorite parts of his agenda are going to end up at the glue factory. I’ll make this promise, for instance: at the close of the Obama administration, the executive brance will be no less powerful, relative to the other branches of government, than it is now.
The race appears to be over, and I suspect you and this nation are going to get the man you want. We will discover whether I’m right or not. I hope you’re right and I’m wrong. But I suspect that your honeymoon period with President Obama is going to be very, very short.
Comment by Rojas — 10/6/2008 @ 10:56 pm
You are officially a moronic ideologue.
Comment by weltschmerz — 10/7/2008 @ 2:19 am
No, Obama is a leader. He’s a leader because he has a cooler temperament than McCain. He’s a leader because he’s a skeptical empiricist who questions himself constantly. He’s a pragmatist. He inspires huge numbers of people. He’s competent, unlike McCain.
He’s not F.D.R., for Christ’s sake. In many ways, he’s a Friedman-ite. But one who has the basic understanding of what is central to Georgism – the practical realities of self-reinforcing wealth disparities, especially as a result of ownership of natural resources and the means of production.
All personal ideologies about how things “ought” to be aside, there is an objective truth to which policies will lead to the best long-term prosperity for our country. And in an era of increasingly globalism and competition from rapidly advancing countries like Russia, China, and India, we cannot afford to be blind patrons of dogma. We have to embrace reality. We have to understand that there are policies that may not inherently sit well with us, which nevertheless increase our net well-being, and maintain our thriving Western (mostly) secular democracy.
Barack Obama is a far better leader than John McCain, because he understands that. He understands that beliefs must stem from reality, and not the other way around. He understands that picking a VP who could potentially lead the “free world” is not some children’s game, but a gravely consequential matter.
And he’s proving his superior leadership right now at Pollster.com, where he’s obliterating McCain 296 to 163, with 79 votes still in a toss-up.
That’s superior management and leadership my friend. Get ready for your black President, and a hard turn toward greater prosperity under a competent president who actually uses reason as a guiding principle. Try not to cry too hard.
Comment by weltschmerz — 10/7/2008 @ 2:34 am
And Ron Paul hasn’t. Oh wait…what ever happened to him again?
Pragmatism young Jedi. Learn about it.
Comment by weltschmerz — 10/7/2008 @ 3:16 am
One might as easily say, “Barack Obama is a leader because his favorite color is blue”. Leadership definitionally requires a person to DRIVE public opinion, not to be guided by it. Barack Obama hasn’t a shred of that in him. He hands out candy to appropriate constituencies. That’s all. He is the perfect modern American politician. But in modern American politics, actual leadership is seen as arrogance, and is resented, not prized.
If it is the pragmatism of sacrificed ideals that you seek from your President, get ready for an ultra-pragmatic Presidency on civil liberties issues. There’s nothing wrong with political compromise in itself, so long as you compromise secondary principles to achieve primary ones. Barack Obama has long since proven what is primary to him, and what is secondary.
I’m not even going to discuss the economic side of things with you, as you are wrapping yourself in the mantle of empirical truth and empirical truth is not subject to discussion. Barack Obama is going to get his way on all things economic, and when that doesn’t work, I’m sure someone else will somehow be at fault.
Comment by Rojas — 10/7/2008 @ 10:27 am
Let’s begin by first addressing the fact that you called ANY poster on this site “moronic”. Each of the writers on the Crossed Pond have a good mind for politics — that can be determined easily, whether or not you agree with their political beliefs. Your regression to name-calling is a poor precursor to your post in a forum that is supposed to be based on open discourse. Take it from someone who has argued a lot in his lifetime: calling someone a “moron” makes the rest of your points look poor. Spewing party lines as you consistently do in this post is the greatest irony of you criticizing an actual thinker like Rojas. The best way to handle yourself here is in a respectful manner.
Now onto the substance. (I don’t know how to do the quote boxes, so I will do my best to respond on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis.)
First of all, I’d argue to say McCain isn’t quite the raving madman he’s been painted to be by the other side of the fence. But even if he was, it’s a moot point because having a cooler temperament does not make someone a leader. That logic makes zero sense.
And Obama is no skeptical empiricist…unless you mean that he’s skeptical of his own Senate votes and campaign policies, which he has consistently changed positions on throughout the entire course of this election. And empiricist? That would require him to have had sense-experience, which he simply does not have. I don’t know what you refer to when you call him an empiricist, but I should be interested to know.
As for Georgism? Money is not found in nature, though based on Obama’s ideology, I suspect you think it grows on trees. Henry George is what Karl Marx would have been if he didn’t have ambition. You and Rojas see this theorist, I’m sure, in a different light. It is not for you to call him an idiot because he disagrees with a politician whose viewpoints you equate with Henry George. There is much dispute with this man, anyways.
I’m interested to know — what dogma do you keep referring to? I don’t see where you’re getting “dogma” from Rojas’ post. Be serious. Let’s look at this squarely in the eyes: if there is one political party who has based almost the entirety of their policies on dogma and ideology, it is the Democratic party. I’m not saying this is a bad thing. Republicans see people the way they are, and Democrats see them in the way they should be. There is nothing inherently wrong with this notion, except that policies put into place to further this agenda generally fail. I mean, the quest for social justice is one of the greatest (if not the greatest) contributors to why we are in the financial crisis we’re in. The only party based in reality is the one whose policies have been proven to work more often than the other. Or simply not explode into the greatest financial crisis we’ve faced.
Oh boy — the VP argument again. Shocking. Well, you can argue either way about this matter, but if you go back on the site, you can read pretty good argumentation on both sides. But then again, I could sit here and argue you back and forth as to whether or not Obama himself is a good leader of the free world…and when it comes to foreign policy, he just isn’t (in my opinion). Now don’t confuse my argument with Rojas’. From what I can tell, Rojas argues that Obama is a good leader for the policies of his party constituents. All Rojas says is that he doesn’t agree with the policies of said constituents that Obama seeks to implement in his leadership. I, however, am arguing that he’s just going to be a bad leader in general, coupled with bad policies.
Polls don’t prove anything about who is going to be a better leader. C’mon.
Did you even read any of Rojas’ posts or comments other than the FDR line? I don’t think he cares a lick whether or not Obama is a black man (I have ZERO idea why that comment of yours holds any bearing whatsoever), as he is actually one of the more tolerant people you can come across. As stated above, he has voted liberal, conservative, and everything in between and will continue to do so in the future. I don’t think he will cry when/if Obama is elected, as evidenced when he says “I hope you are right (about Obama) and I’m wrong”. His tolerance for people with views different than his own is so much, in fact, that he chose not to stand up for himself against your attacks of his intelligence. Now, I realize you didn’t come outright in saying that he is somehow intolerant of race merely by not voting Obama, but the implications behind that comment are certainly there. I suspect this is an assumption of yours about all/most Republican voters. Basically, what I’m calling into question is whether or not the “get ready for your Black president” thing was necessary at all. You can clarify the need for that later if you want, although I imagine there was no good reason behind you saying that. Race is probably going to be a non-issue for educated people such as the ones you find on this site.
My final point:
Ron Paul? Huh? What does that have to do with the weather in Memphis? Rojas doesn’t agree with everything the man does (see: http://thecrossedpond.com/?p=5184#comments ), nor did his post advocate Ron Paul. You are really beginning to cause me to question whether you read the entirety of his post and the comments following, or were just too caught up in a maddened frenzy as a result of the subject line.
Civility, young Jedi. Learn about it.
Comment by K_Wright — 10/7/2008 @ 12:23 pm
By the way, that post was addressed at weltschmerz and no one else (in case it wasn’t self-evident).
Comment by K_Wright — 10/7/2008 @ 12:23 pm
K_W, you’re new here. The way it works with welt is, he shows up every couple of months, says angry things, spams a couple of posts with irrelevant comments linking to range voting sites, then gets angry about somebody disagreeing with him and declares himself done with the blog forever. Then the cycle repeats.
Civility really doesn’t figure into it. We know from long experience that it isn’t his style. He’s a fairly typical net commentator in that respect, and it’s good to have a token one of those around (at least in between his permanent retirements).
Comment by Rojas — 10/7/2008 @ 2:05 pm
The race thing doesn’t even merit a response, though Sullivan also has been pimping it at every available opportunity.
There were always going to be irresponsible people who were going to reduce criticism of Obama to racism. There would be a whole lot more of it flying around at the moment if the election were closer. I guess that in that respect we can be thankful for the widening chasm between the candidates.
Comment by Rojas — 10/7/2008 @ 2:07 pm
K Wright,
For future reference, you can quote someone using the indented and shaded box by using the following tag:
(blockquote)What you want to quote goes here(/blockquote)
Simply replace the paranthesis with the arrow things that are found when you press shift period and comma respectively. Also, you can make a link like this where the actual link is not shown but rather a word (or group of words) acts as the frontfor a hyperlink by using this format:
(a href=”www.yourlinkgoeshere.com”)The word you want displayed goes here(/a)
Again replace the parenthesis.
Also of note, you can make words bold and italicized by using (strong)bold words here(/strong) and (em)italic here(/em)
Comment by Cameron — 10/7/2008 @ 2:18 pm
Damn. It is actually (blockquote)quoted stuff here(/blockquote)
Comment by Cameron — 10/7/2008 @ 2:26 pm
Fixed.
Comment by Adam — 10/7/2008 @ 2:58 pm
Thanks Cameron. That will be incredibly useful in the future in making me sound less like a crazy person spewing out randomness.
Comment by K_Wright — 10/7/2008 @ 3:30 pm
18: Ha okay, fair enough. Well here’s hoping that my post is the one to make him leave. I mean, I guess it says something you have affected someone enough to make them comment in this way, so that’s good at least.
Comment by K_Wright — 10/7/2008 @ 3:33 pm
Ho no, that’s not what I want to do at all.
Take every single item in that quote above. What are we talking about here? 100 billion? 200? Put a price tag to it.
In looking around, his “economic stimulus package” which has been on his agenda for ages and appears to be exactly what he’s talking about above, amounts to, apparently, 50 billion dollars a year.
But fine, add in the 65 billion a year on health care (by far the most conservative Democratic proposal), throw in 10 billion a year on education, however much on subsidies. Add together every spending program he has made a part of his platform. Knock off a few hundred billion from the top based on his raising of revenue from repealing the tax cuts on the wealthy. What’s the number we’re talking here? Because apparently, it’s enough to disqualify him from the Presidency, and since there is no national figure in either major party arguing that we actually shrink the size of government, just a lot of people who believe we should grow it marginally faster or slower, it’s worth putting a number too, yes? So what’s the number? What are we talking here?
I’ll even be kind and leave foreign policy entirely out if, since everybody else seems disinclined to put a price tag to it, why start now? I will add that there might be some difference in bleeding our coffers between, say, being out of Iraq in 4 years, or maintaining a “residual force” of 150,000 troops stations in the middle of Arabia for perpetuity, and I even won’t sweat you the cost-benefit analysis of how likely each candidate is to, say, engage in a hot war with Iran, or a cold war with Russia, or whatever, multiplied by the cost of each. Who’s counting, right?
Here’s another way to look at it: put a guy in office who will freeze all new spending. We stop the clock at January 19th, 2009, and nothing, forevermore, goes through. When does the United States go bankrupt. 10 years? 20? 50? What?
Now replace that guy with Barack Obama. What’s the increase in that rate? How much sooner are we ushered towards economic apocalypse? 2 years? 5? 10?
For my money (and it is), it sounds like most of what Obama is talking about are the generic “stimulus package” crap that every Congress seems to pass every other year. You’re throwing around FDR comparisons, so I’m curious as to what you perceive as the institutional change that will radically alter the nature of our republic under Obama?
Obama is certainly no better than most politicians in that respect, and I can hear arguments that he’s marginally to moderately worse, but what I’m not seeing is any evidence for your assertion that he’s some fiscal anti-Christ, and you sound, frankly, hysterical when you’re trying to make that case with not evidence.
But it’s precisely this fetishization of fiscal policy by teetering conservative that has allowed two things to happen, very clearly. The one, is the massive primacy put on economic freedom as the trumping value over all other freedoms has, unsurprisingly, allowed for BOTH parties to throw every other freedom under the bus, comprehensively, and indeed, exactly at that “FDR” level you’re talking about. Because when it comes down to marginal spending differences on education, what’s a little habeus corpus between friends?
The second thing is that, in allowing every election to come down to the Republicans being Democrats -1, and for that to be enough for fiscal voters, has ENTIRELY insulated the GOP from any kind of accountability whatsoever on fiscal matters. Look at this year’s Republican primary. A very robust field of 12 candidates, precisely one who had any interest whatsoever in actually shrinking the size of government, and he was laughed off the stage. Why? Because Republicans are very aware that they need only throw “tax spend liberal” into the mix, and what else are fiscal voters going to do, vote Democrat? To them, you are not a swing voter, because you refuse to demonstrate any potential to swing. Maybe you’ll stay home, but you won’t turn against them, so fuck you as far as they’re concerned.
And I might even add a third: it has ceased to become a question of socialism vs. free markets. There is no free market left in the platforms of the two major parties. It’s corporatism and crony capitalism vs. hybrid socialism and special interest goodie bags. When you demand purity from one side, and none from the other, it’s you who is watering down purity, not that other side.
Look, if spending levels are your trumping issue—if every election may as well come down to a crib sheet of costs, and whoever clocks in lower, regardless of other issues, wins your vote, more power to you. If you choose to opt out of the two party paradigm entirely, I can certainly respect that, and again, more power to you.
But to say that no conservative can vote Obama because of his economic stimulus package or the fact that he’ll almost certainly marginally increase the size of economic government is, to my mind, a counter-productive sham. And to start throwing around FDR, and “worst possible outcome of this election” kind of stuff is, at best, wanton hyperbole, and at worst, pure hysterics.
Comment by Brad — 10/7/2008 @ 4:19 pm
Walking back, so as not to be quite so “in the heat of the moment”.
Look, I certainly understand objections to Obama based on the unequivocal fact that he will further expand the size of government and decrease economic freedom. I can certainly respect voters for whom that is a deal-breaker, and thus find themselves consigned to the Libertarian Party or the few particularly noteworthy (Ron Paul, Jeff Flake, etc.) two-party candidates that pop up once in a blue moon.
But here is what assuages this conservative about Obama.
Institutional vs. expendable. Obama does indeed have that tendency you speak of—he truly believes that government can work to assist people where free markets, he believe, has failed them or is unable to deal with externalities. Part of what makes me feel a little better about him is he does not appear to me to be overly anxious to enact institutional changes, ala FDR. I would much prefer a “stimulus package” than, say, a Medicare expansion. And for all of Obama’s faults on fiscal policy, at the very least I think it can be said of him that his changes in that area, though there are a lot of a little (lots of single-items encroachments in a broad range of areas), do not appear to me to be systemic in quite the same way you’re taking it, i.e. none of his agenda items are particularly far-reaching or revolutionary; he can’t really be mistaken for a dyed-in-the-wool socialist true believer so much as a business-as-usual short-thinking Democrat. The one area where he is advocating a kind of systemic change, but A. it is indeed the most conservative plan floated by any Democratic candidate or any Democratic congressional constituency, and B. I’ve more or less come to terms with the fact that universal health care is coming, and I’d rather Obama be in charge of it than, say, a Clinton or an Edwards. And, in fact, maybe my liberal tendencies are showing—the hybrid managed care system we have now is a problem, it is broken. I’m almost willing to let a more European model have a shot at it.
Business as usual. Stemming from that, I don’t expect the size of government to expand any more markedly than it usually does given 8 terms of an President. It will expand, no doubt, but I’m not convinced, in that regard, that Obama is so far out of keel with whoever else was likely to be President to view it as a damning indictment of him so much as a mournful dirge to the fact that economic, institutional conservatism really does appear to be mostly dead on the national level for now. The liberals didn’t win that argument, it was ceded to them, and it’s hard for me to get angry at Obama, of all people, for that. If Bush and the GOP of 1994-2008 wrought what they did, I’m much, much, much less willing to be scared away from voting Democrat on the usual “tax and spend” fireworks.
The bailout admittedly complicates that picture, although, again, it is worth noting that every major politician and ideological swath supported it. It came from Bush, both candidates supported it, and, though I’m reaching a bit here, what strikes me as having made it possible is the turn from conservatism from a distrust of authority to a veneration of it. Of course when a crisis hits, you hand over as much power as fast as possible to a paternal executive authority. That’s what conservatives nowadays do, and who’s going to stop them? Obama will certainly advance that perspective in terms of economic social tinkering, but make no mistake where the deification of the executive and the pushback against any attempt at criticizing or overseeing it has come from. Obama won’t stop it, to be sure, and will advance it where it suits him for sure, but that pales in comparison to where the 180 there has come from, and from where a Republican like McCain derives all his authority and legitimacy, and the path that has been charted that made the Paulson bailout not only possible, but almost the only possible answer that made ideological sense across the aisle. And even a casual look can tell you where the loose consortium of executive-distrusters and the hard and fast consortium of authority venerators are falling, in terms of political bases, and which vote will lend credence to what over-arching worldview in that respect.
Tipping points. Stemming from that, believe it or not, I think we can survive 8 years of Obama and still have roughly the same sort of society and system of governance as we do now. We certainly have until this point, and the marginal rates of economic freedom restrictions under any single President is not, I don’t think, the difference between “make it or not” so much as the difference between “bankruptcy in 2032 or 2036″. I can only hope that the Republicans go back to the drawing board and, under the pressure of said Democratic congress and President, come back with a reinvigorated full-throated critique of the entitlement system. That wasn’t going to happen under President McCain; perhaps it’ll happen when they lose the rest of the arguments on which the elections have, for them, been turning. It’s certainly not going to happen by selling out your vote to them every single time, nor will it happen by expecting the Democrats to come around.
Other tipping points. Where this election WILL have a profound effect are on all other freedoms besides economic. You note, very correctly, that Obama is not as strong on that front as many of his civil libertarian supporters would demand, and that’s true and worth noting, but it is also true that relative to McCain, the difference is nevertheless stark, significant, and real. What’s more, it’s exactly those kinds of freedoms that one could expect a President McCain to be most unwilling to concede, given his place with the Democratic Congress and given as well his natural tendencies and spheres of interest.
In that sense, it has been Bush who most closely resembles FDR, fundamentally altering the nature of our republic. Neither candidate is ideologically pure in this respect, but one candidate clearly represents a promise to begin the process of rolling that back, and one candidate clearly represents a promise to set that in stone. Either may surprise us, of course, and I recognize that too, but the math here is not wishy-washy between McCain and Obama in terms of all other freedoms outside of the economic realm. And it is these issues on which governance in America will turn between Bush and his successor.
Throw in foreign policy there too, where there also exists a clear realignment of how America engages with the world, and one candidate who wishes to at least begin the process of walking back on that, and one candidate who makes as an explicit core of his candidacy the promise to double down.
My own hope is that the GOP begin winning seats back in 2010, as I think they will. Dems might have two years of a veto-proof majority, but if they think they can stay complacent for long, they’re wrong. My hope too is, seeing what a mess Bush Republicanism made of things, conservative candidates begin cropping up once again who make the arguments that you or I want so much to hear. A Ron Paul strain of conservatism is not going to come under President McCain (whereas Michelle Malkin and Mike Huckabee strains almost certainly will). It might come under a President Obama.
But for now, I’m looking to what candidate bears the most credible and comprehensive promise of turning the page on the Bush years, with all that entails, the full view of it. I can project all I like, but when I look soberly at the options, I no longer have much doubt as to who that is.
Comment by Brad — 10/7/2008 @ 5:37 pm
haha, I am so enjoying this discussion. Rojas, while I don’t agree with your positions, I feel I understand them better than I ever have.
Brad you arguments, particularly @ 24 remind me of the perfect vs enemy of good logic to which you subjected me dring numerous Ron Paul debates. In this case, perhaps it would be good versus enemy of not good.
Comment by Jack — 10/7/2008 @ 7:40 pm
I was right then, I’m right now, dammit.
Comment by Brad — 10/7/2008 @ 7:51 pm