September 19, 2008

The end of the “ownership society”

Posted by johnmcquaid under George W. Bush, government | Tags: , , , , |
1 Comment 

During the 2004 presidential campaign, the White House was pushing the catchphrase “ownership society” to sum up its economic philosophy. The policies included limited privatization of various government-run programs including Medicare and Social Security, incentives to increase homeownership and, of course, tax cuts. This is mostly forgotten now, but it’s an interesting window into how George W. Bush and Karl Rove overlooked the brewing troubles facing the country and, more surprisingly, emerging political trends.

The ownership society had a composition similar to many Bush initiatives: about 50 percent giveaway to Republican interest groups, 30 percent campaign razzle-dazzle, 15 percent GOP anti-government shout-out and 5 percent functional policy proposal.

The underlying idea here was ambitious: to break the traditional alignment in many voter’s heads between the largest, most popular government social welfare programs and personal economic security. Playing on looming entitlement troubles, Bush was saying in so many words: the government won’t be there for you down the line. But the solution is not to fortify those programs but to begin dismantling them. You won’t need them because you’ll have ownership in your own private health care account, your home, and the stock market.

The ultimate aim was to break the back of the Democratic Party support by dismantling, or altering beyond recognition, its signature achievements and “brand.” It would be replaced by a Republican brand whose message was: you’re on your own, but that’s good, because you’ve got a stake in these robust markets. It had a kind of superficial appeal - the New Deal and Great Society are so 20th century, and the 21st is all about markets and globalization, etc.

But this was a radical and, it’s obvious today, crazy idea.

Markets are risky. Sometimes you lose your shirt. The whole idea of 20th century government social welfare programs is to cushion those blows, not say “bring ‘em on.” And today, the blows are raining down. “Ownership” is out - except when the government’s buying at the fire sale. And it’s not individuals the feds are bailing out, but the guys who helped bankroll the Bush campaigns and the “ownership society.”

 

July 9, 2008

Incoherence, confusion from McCain

Posted by johnmcquaid under 2008 campaign | Tags: , , , , , , |
[3] Comments 

The McCain campaign’s mounting incoherence - born of the candidate’s attempts to straddle the political center and the right, and of his apparent ignorance of the content of his own proposals - is a sight to behold.

Just in the past few days, there’s been a drumbeat of contradictory messages. McCain pledged to balance the budget by the end of his first term, but provided no details for what is a politically impossible task right now - one made all the more so by his proposed tax cuts and increases in defense spending

Then McCain denounced the pay-as-you go element of Social Security, in which today’s taxpayers pay the benefits of today’s retirees, as an “absolute disgrace.” It’s not clear why he said this - of course, if you have rising numbers of retirees and relatively few taxpayers, it’s a problem. But a “disgrace”? This is, after all, the way the program was designed and has operated for 70-plus years. The campaign’s explanation - the “disgrace” is the failure to address the coming shortfall - doesn’t really make sense. So we’re left with the impression, justified or not, that McCain somehow questions the rationale behind Social Seucirty itself.

Now, McCain’s staffers are apparently telegraphing the idea that he will abandon cap-and-trade as his big fix for climate change. This is probably wishful thinking on the part of conservatives. But still - this is the centerpiece of McCain’s climate policy. Or is it? (Update: It still is.)

McCain’s position on Iraq also got muddled on the question of whether we will be maintaining bases in a peaceful Iraq for decades to come, or leaving much sooner at the behest of the Iraqi government.

Presidential campaigns are always semi-improvisational - they can’t just rely on position papers, and must respond to changes in the world and the political environment. But this goes well beyond semi - these are not intelligent or even opportunistic adjustments to events, but random, chaotic changes. This isn’t jazz, it’s noise. There seems to be some fundamental confusion about what McCain’s policies are or should be, and also about his underlying principles. On a practical level, you never know precisely how a candidate’s positions will be translated into actual policy - but you can get some general ideas. That doesn’t seem to be the case here. We don’t know what McCain would actually do if he becomes president. And at least right now, neither does he.

 

June 13, 2008

McCain and reform

Posted by johnmcquaid under 2008 campaign, government | Tags: , , , , |
[2] Comments 

Why is John McCain running such a fumbling, cautious, and message-free campaign when the message is right at his fingertips?

If I were McCain, upon sealing up the nomination I would have aggressively focused my campaign around domestic issues, building on my brand as a government reformer. Even if you don’t care much about the details of, say, tax or fiscal policy, reform in the broadest sense clearly has a potent political appeal this year. From national security to environmental protection, the government has been badly misused by the Bush administration. Thanks to Iraq and Katrina, to many it appears all but broken. Moreover, even if you could erase the disasters of the past eight years, the government simply isn’t set up to handle many of the problems engulfing us now. So reforms are not just politically appealing, but necessary.

McCain has credibility in this area - he fought for campaign finance reform against his party and won. He recognizes the pernicious effect Washington’s “permanent class” of lobbyists and trade organizations have on legislation and the executive branch. He really cares about these things too, for instance repeatedly making a point of stressing his personal horror at the big government breakdown in New Orleans. So all of this fits together very naturally for him. Even his strong advocacy for the surge in Iraq, seen in this context, was a reformer’s move in the face of massive blundering. It was an tactical innovation that got things working right - and showed they could work (work militarily, that is, as opposed to working politically or strategically - but that’s another argument).

Last month Yuval Levin made this argument in the Weekly Standard:

McCain himself long ago offered the core of the answer. In announcing his first run for the presidency, in September 1999, McCain declared that if elected he would work to “reform our public institutions to meet the demands of a new day.” So far he has not made the vocabulary of reform a key to his second run for the White House. But a comprehensive reform agenda, which framed America’s challenge in terms of revitalizing and reimagining its core public institutions, would be a natural fit for McCain, and for the challenges of the day. It would provide him with the overarching theme for the assorted elements of his approach to public policy.

I’m not thrilled with Levin’s proposals, which dress up old conservative privatization schemes as a fresh antidote to problems they will never solve, and likely make worse, primarily because so much of what happens in Washington is determined by corporate lobbyists. But the point is, if you’re John McCain it shouldn’t be hard to come up with a simple, compelling message that is a credible alternative to Obama’s.

Yet it’s not happening. Instead, McCain seems to be betting the farm on his politically inadvisable “stay in Iraq” policy, while in the domestic arena he has become an ever-more conventional Republican in a year when Republicanism is clearly on the outs. And he’s constantly haranguing the media and Democrats for accurately reporting his own, inconvenient statements. Today, for example, he’s pushing back against the idea he supports “privatization” of Social Security. Set aside the mind-numbing semantic debate. Why does McCain put himself in this position of supporting an idea that George W. Bush pushed so aggressively, and which was an utter political flop, and which was never a serious policy solution to begin with? Because he’s bought the standard suite of Republican policy positions, most of which have already been tested in the political-electoral marketplace and failed. This may be the easiest way to get a position paper up on your website, but it actually makes the case against McCain: he doesn’t know what the hell he’s going to do if he wins.