2012: A Decisive Election?
Jay Cost, who is nearly always worth reading, has a thoughtful post on the site of The Weekly Standard today that deserves close attention. In it, he argues that political parties exist to win office and that most of the time the candidates go very far out of their way to blur the differences. Once in a while, however, we hold a Presidential election in which the two contenders square off regarding the economy. That is, he argues, what happened in 1832. That is what happened in 1896. And it looks as if that is what will happen in 2012.
In 1832, he tells us, Andrew Jackson looked on “the status quo in government as an unfair payoff to the privileged, and believed that he should be the great leveling agent. This explains much of the Jacksonian agenda: the assault on the Second Bank of the United States, the elevation of the spoils system to a civic virtue, and efforts to secure more land for poor Western farmers.” In contrast, Henry Clay, “the greatest statesman never to become president, advocated for the ‘American System,’ a combination of protective tariffs to grow American industry, internal improvements to facilitate trade, and the Bank of the United States to stabilize the money and credit systems. The government was not, in Clay’s view, intended to be the great equalizer, but the great facilitator of American enterprise in all its varieties.”
In 1896, when William Jennings Bryan fought against William McKinley and called upon the nation to choose between Free Silver and crucifixion on a Cross of Gold, something similar was purportedly at stake. The farmers who wanted debt relief sought inflation; the bankers and the propertied preferred hard money. “Borrowing a phrase from Theodore White,” Cost observes, “we might call it the everlasting battle of the ‘share out’ against the ‘share up.’” In 1832, Americans opted to share out; in 1896, to share up. And this is the choice we face in 2012.
There is something to this. Americans are not bashful when it comes to self-interest. I can remember an American presidential candidate who asked, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” But I have grave misgivings as well about the manner in which Cost allowed Theodore White to frame the choice.
If what is at stake is “sharing up” vs. “sharing out,” the choice would nearly always turn on the question whether any given individual is apt to profit more from “sharing up” or “sharing out,” and one never knows ahead of time whether “sharing up,” which liberals sneeringly call trickle-down economics, will actually take place. “Sharing out” is easier to understand, even if it is, in fact, deceptive – even if the practice of “sharing out” wealth dramatically reduces the incentive to produce such wealth in the future and leaves us all in the long run worse off.
In any case, the phrase “sharing out” is a euphemism – devised by liberals such as White for the purpose of confusing us, and confuse us it does. Witness the disgraceful social teaching advanced within this country by the Roman Catholic Church, which confuses a coercive redistribution of wealth with charity. We all tend to believe that in one fashion or another we are called on to share what we have with those less well-off. One sign that this is so is that conservatives, whom liberals charge with being stingy, tend, in fact, to be much more generous in disposing of their own money than are liberals (witness Joe Biden). But what was at issue in 1896 and what will be at issue in 2012 is not sharing: it is taking. It is using coercive force, which is possessed in plenitude by the government, to be generous with other people’s money, and this is a policy recommended not in the Gospels but in the sixteenth chapter of Machiavelli’s Prince. The real choice is between systematic theft and a public policy aimed at encouraging and enabling individuals to earn their own way, and that is the way it should be pitched in 2012.
Let me add that I think that Cost’s materialist treatment of decisive elections largely misses the point. As I have argued in a lengthy post on BigGovernment.com entitled Patronage, Principles, and Political Parties and in a different fashion in the lead article in the current issue of Commentary, which is entitled How to Think About the Tea Party, we have had decisive elections in 1800, 1832, 1860, 1896, and 1932 – and on every occasion the rhetoric battle turned on the suspicion that – if I may once again quote the immortal words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- “a small group” was in the process of establishing “an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor – other people’s lives.” That was the charge laid by Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt – and it worked for all but Bryan.
Let me add that this is the issue on which the Republican nominee should base his campaign in 2012. I do not doubt that men of bad character will readily vote to give themselves a share of someone else’s earnings. I would only assert that most Americans are of better character. Except in times of desperation, such as 1932 (and for some, given the Panic of 1893, 1896), shame will prevent them from disgracing themselves in this fashion. Of course, such a policy can be presented by the liberals in another garb, and Barack Obama and his minions will certainly try to do precisely that. But the task of the Republicans will be to unmask the thieves, and 2012 will be an occasion in which this is relatively easy to do.
Even more to the point, however, it will be their task to defend our right to control our own property, our own money, our own labor, our own lives. We have a natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What needs explaining – and it should be easy to do so in the shadow of Obamacare – is that, if we allow others, putative experts housed in the bowels of the federal bureaucracy, to provide for our happiness, we will have to sacrifice our liberty, leave to them the decision whether we are to live or to die, and give up the right to pursue happiness in the diverse ways in which we understand it.
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Dec '10
Re: 2012: A Decisive Election?
Paul A. Rahe:
I do not doubt that men of bad character will readily vote to give themselves a share of someone else’s earnings. I would only assert that most Americans are of better character. Except in times of desperation, such as 1932 (and for some, given the Panic of 1893, 1896), shame will prevent them from disgracing themselves in this fashion. Of course, such a policy can be presented by the liberals in another garb, and Barack Obama and his minions will certainly try to do precisely that. But the task of the Republicans will be to unmask the thieves, and 2012 will be an occasion in which this is relatively easy to do.
Willie Sutton was asked, "Why do you rob banks?" He famously replied, "Because that's where the money is."
But Obama and his friends aren't even engaging in robbery, because no one has the kind of loot they covet. They're kiting checks, making it look like there's money where none exists.
If the public understands that what Bernie Madoff did was evil, they ought to feel the same way about Obama's fiscal policies.
Jul '10
Re: 2012: A Decisive Election?
I disagree with Cost. 2012, in my view, will be a contest about Barack Obama as a symbol.
He was elected as a symbol. Millions of people who had no real knowledge of the man or his intentions voted for the First Black President and millions of people who did understand his ideology voted for him as the symbol of their long yearning for expansion of the welfare state.
The former voters are up for grabs. The latter, of course, will support Obama, no matter what.
The question in 2012 is whether we can field a candidate and enunciate ideas which will bring the symbolic voters into our camp.
Nov '10
Re: 2012: A Decisive Election?
I think you are right on the money. I am not sure I understand the difference between share out and share up, but I agree that the primary narrative of the Republicans HAS to be "return money and power to the private sector" and they have to back that narrative up with real action. If they are able to accomplish that on a broader level than just what specific governors are doing, then I think we will carry 2012 nicely, if we have the right candidates in place. But we need to pound that message hard. The easiest way to end a political debate is by saying "Ideology aside, we cannot keep spending the way we are, and the American people know it." There simply isn't argument on the other side of that. I'm just imagining William Wallace on his horse before Congress saying "Go back to your homes, and on your way beg forgiveness from everyone you encounter for taking so much money from the American people and spending it foolishly. Do it, and you will live. Do it not, and none of you will survive 2012."
Sep '10
Re: 2012: A Decisive Election?
I wish I could be as optimistic as you, but believing that the GOP will nominate a candidate that will enunciate an agenda fundamentally different than O’s requires rosier glasses than I possess. . Most Republicans object to his agenda not because it is opposite to what George Bush and the GOP advocated for during the previous eight years but because it move much faster in the same direction. Perhaps someone like Daniels, who I am beginning to think has the principles and temperament, will get the node, but frankly most of the field appears to me to be disappointing at best. A decisive election requires a decisive choice. It would be nice if the GOP gave the country such a choice, but given recent history I find this doubtful.
Re: 2012: A Decisive Election?
You have a point, but people like Paul Ryan are pointing the way.
Dec '10
Re: 2012: A Decisive Election?
Clarity.
I agree with Liberal Jim's point. And Paul's answer.
But I hang my banner in Kenneth's camp and there must be clarity. Never "spending". but always, "your money". Never abstract, but always personal.
As a biologist (liberal milieu) and betrothed of an artist (liberal swamp), I promise you that even the smartest and most sensible amongst them are immune to the abstract. Except, of course, in art. Determined clarity and personalization is the only thing I can imagine that might persuade the politically suasive that I am aware of. Purposeful middling will never move them.
And, yes, I am aware I ended two sentences with prepositions, but please excuse me; in my world, I feel as if I am going down under a mob in a Middle Eastern square and that nobody is listening.
Jul '10
Re: 2012: A Decisive Election?
Fact 1: If you have never posessed, or earned, something my failure to give such to you is NOT taking it from you.
Fact 2: If I posess, or earn, something your failure to take it from me is NOT giving it to me.
Unless, and until, the public in general (and liberals in specific) can understand those two facts, we will have our work cut out for us.
Nov '10
Re: 2012: A Decisive Election?
Jaydee_007: Fact 1: If you have never posessed, or earned, something my failure to give such to you is NOTtaking it from you.
Fact 2: If I posess, or earn, something your failure to take it from me is NOT giving it to me.
Unless, and until, the public in general (and liberals in specific) can understand those two facts, we will have our work cut out for us. · Feb 18 at 12:44am
It makes me sad that I can only like a post once. :(