Back to Work - Bill Clinton [11]
At its core, this has been the modern Republican Party’s credo since President Reagan rode it to victory in 1980. The idea that the government would mess up a two-car parade has shaped the framework in which we debate the issues and colored the way the media reports on them. It’s great politics for antigovernment Republicans because it meets the financial needs of their biggest backers and the emotional needs of alienated voters and, until things get really bad, explains even the failures of their own administrations. If you don’t believe in government, how can you be disappointed when it fails? It’s supposed to fail.
The antigovernment theme has also proved to be irresistible as a framework for members of the mainstream media, who use the term “conservative” to describe even the most extreme antigovernment policies and define as “liberals” all those who oppose them. This simple but superficial labeling reinforces an easy but inaccurate caricature of our traditional political philosophies and makes it harder to understand the likely consequences of radical actions camouflaged in conservative clothing.
There are only two forces that seem to slow down extreme antigovernment activists. One is stinging public rejection, as we saw in the 2011 special election in New York, where a Democrat, Kathy Hochul, won in an overwhelmingly Republican district less than a year after the GOP’s landslide victory there by opposing the Ryan plan, which the House had voted for, to replace Medicare with vouchers and require seniors to pay much more out of pocket for health care. The other is progress under a Democratic administration, as was the case in 2000, when George W. Bush ran as a “compassionate conservative” in a time of shared prosperity and more confidence in government.
Then-governor Bush was genuine in his commitment to diversity in government, to improved learning in public schools, to immigration reform, and to doing more to help poor nations fight AIDS. But his brilliant “compassionate conservative” slogan also embodied a more subtle version of the antigovernment theme. Like the Republicans in 2010, Bush was both forthright in making specific antitax, antiregulation commitments targeted to his base and skilled in not pushing them too hard on swing voters who might have disagreed but were captivated by the appeal of his more moderate compassionate-conservative mantra. He was really telling swing voters he’d get them the same good economic results of the previous eight years with a smaller government and lower taxes. Who could be against that?
To be fair, antigovernment politics have been around a long time, and a healthy skepticism of government power and enforceable limits on its abuse are important to the functioning of any democracy. Criticizing the government is part of the birthright of every American. We can all come up with a program we thought was a waste of money, a regulation we thought was wrong, a tax we thought was too high, and an official we thought went overboard in the exercise of authority.
Our nation was founded by citizens determined to resist—then break away from—an empire ruled by a government unaccountable to them. Our constitution, with its separation of powers and Bill of Rights, is designed to preserve liberty and protect us from abuse of government power. However, contrary to the current antigovernment movement’s claim to represent the intent of the framers, our founding fathers clearly intended to give us a government both limited and accountable enough to protect our liberties and strong and flexible enough to adapt to the challenges of each new era. They tried to give us the ability to keep America moving toward a “more perfect Union,” the eternal mission to which they pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.
In other words, our constitution was designed by people who were idealistic but not ideological. There’s a big difference. You