Best of the Blogs: Ryan Sager on Frum
by The Editors
May 8th, 2006
Frum Unbound
by Ryan Sager
“Miscellaneous Objections,”
May 3, 2006
Over at the Cato Institute’s excellent new online journal, Cato Unbound, this month they’re discussing, “The GOP and Limited Government: Do they have a future together?”
It’s a topic I have no small interest in.
David Frum kicks things off with a short essay putting forth what might be called the conventional wisdom on the waning of the small-government impulse within the GOP: the Republican Congress comes to power in 1994; it accomplishes some decent reforms but ultimately gets beaten like a red-headed stepchild by Bill Clinton; from 1996 on, the Republicans cut less and less and spend more and more; in 2000, they bet wrong on George W. Bush, figuring that “compassionate conservatism” was a load of bull and he wouldn’t be all that bad.
Oops.
What I take issue with in Frum’s analysis is this idea that there was a golden opportunity in 1994, we missed it, and after that, well, things just happened. The Republicans gave up on small government in the late 1990s. What else could they have done? Bill Clinton was too good. How do you solve a problem like Bill Clinton? Bush turned out to be a dog. What’s could anyone have done about that?
Well, the Republicans could have had a collective spine. They could have done a better job tactically — before, during and after the government shutdowns. And Bush could have not portrayed himself to the electorate as someone with any interest in containing the size of government (while many maintain that those paying attention — a.k.a. pundits — knew Bush was bad on size-of-government issues, he portrayed himself to the voting public as a small-government guy).
However, while assigning blame is important (and an underrated way to pass the time), let me take my main issue with Frum’s assertion that the period right after 1994 was a golden opportunity, never since matched. Why, exactly, I have to ask, was that period in any way superior to, say, the period after the 2002 midterms or the 2004 general election?
Frum gives a bulleted list of factors that came together after 1994:
* They had won a stunning and unexpected mid-term victory against a stunned and demoralized Democratic administration elected two years before by only 42% of the vote.
In 2002, they won a resounding victory over a thoroughly demoralized Democratic Party. Also, full control of both houses of Congress and the White House trumps just having control of the Congress.
* They were backed by a bipartisan consensus that the huge deficits of the early 1990s had to be brought under control – without any further repeat of the tax increases of 1991 and 1993.
In 2002, they were backed by a bipartisan consensus that the Democrats were unfit to govern. GOP candidates supporting Social Security privatization fared well. There was less concern with the deficit, but low taxes are always in style.
* The Cold War had ended, making possible substantial reductions in defense spending.
As Frum recounts, we did get big cuts in defense spending. In retrospect, this was nothing to cheer. Increases in defense expenditures the Bush administration can blame on world events, but that’s not where most of the growth in government has been.
* The baby boomers were entering their peak earning years, with the first retirements still almost two decades away – leaving plenty of time for any necessary adjustments to retirement programs.
This is, unfortunately, another way of saying that the need for entitlement reform seemed extremely distant to the public. As policy, of course, Frum’s right: the earlier the better. As politics, it’s going to be very hard to get entitlement reform until the public believes there’s a crisis.
* The Soviet Union had collapsed; China was opening; and the prestige of free-market solutions was rocketing to an unprecedented apex.
I really don’t think such factors have any effect on domestic support for free-market reforms. If anything, Americans seem convinced now more than ever that Republicans are generally right about things like low taxes, the free market and personal responsibility. If anything, we now have major conservative successes, like welfare reform, to point to.
* A huge stock market boom was gathering—creating an enormous potential constituency for a shift from defined benefit to defined contribution approaches to pensions and healthcare.
Frum is right that a booming stock market would have made it easier to pass Social Security private accounts. But what if we had done it — right before the stock market bubble burst. It would have discredited the idea for a generation. If anything, I’d say we dodged a bullet on that one. Better to create a private-accounts program when the economy is strong, but not exploding. It will keep people’s expectations in a more reasonable range.
* * *
The fact is, during the Bush administration, the Republican Party has had every opportunity to undertake serious conservative reforms. While 9/11 of course pulled focus away from the domestic agenda, if anything that should have helped the Republicans get things done. Even if the GOP enacted programs that were not the most popular, the public’s trust in the Democratic Party was at an all-time low (that opportunity we may well have squandered … we’ll see how things go in November).
Instead, for the duration of the Bush administration, the GOP has lived up to Dick Armey’s lament: “We come to this town and we do things we ought not to be doing in order to stay in the majority so we can do things we ought to be doing that we never get around to doing.”
The 1990s weren’t the missed opportunity. The last six years were.
May 10th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
The Republican Marginal Revolution
I’ll eventually have more to say about some good follow-ups by Bruce Bartlett, Ryan Sager, David Boaz and Ross Douthat/Reihan Salam all of which are worth reading but let’s start with the essay of David Frum’s discontent…