Dems Rising on Return of Big Government

In 2004, US Senator Zell Miller of Georgia penned a memorable screed entitled, "A National Party No More," referring, of course, to the Democrats. At the time, more than a few considered his argument: Democrats had underperformed in the 2002 midterms, would lose in 2004, and (to their eyes) had underperformed in 2000. Not long after Zell's book, the Republican victories would leave the loyal opposition with forty-four senate seats, their lowest, post-Great Depression share, and more than two dozen down in the House of Representatives. That was 2004.

This is 2008.

Irrespective of Senator Barack Obama's potential liabilities as Democratic standard-bearer, the party of Jackson and Roosevelt stands on the precipice of one of their greatest election nights ever. While I do not presume they will post the overall numbers of Lyndon Johnson's 1964 or FDR's 1932 landslides, the fact that two bona fide liberals will reign supreme in the House and in the Executive, with perhaps a final partner on the way in the Senate, for the first time in American history. This is because Democrats depend far less than they used to on southern Democrats and as a consequence most of these "blue dogs" or "yellow dogs" have very little power. What is perhaps more striking are the recent events from Louisiana and now Mississippi where Democrats captured two special election races deep in the heart of the Republican base.

So what is going on? Is it dissatisfaction with President George W. Bush? Katrina? Iraq? Gas prices? What accounts for the stunningly-low numbers of the Republican Party? And will these sentiments destroy the otherwise promising presidential candidacy of John McCain? Or is something deeper at work here?

From the mid-1960s until just past the close of the century, enthusiastically spurned on by mostly conservative Republicans, American public opinion of its government fell precipitously, especially support for large-scale projects. The Vietnam War and the Great Society failed to remain in the US consensus, and busing and feminism followed shortly thereafter. In the interim, President Nixon gave us Watergate, a debacle for Republicans in the short term, but a gold mine in the long term. Vietnam and Watergate dramatically altered liberal philosophy about what Alexander Hamilton referred to as, "energy in the executive." Visions of the Fair Deal, let alone the New Deal, fell out of favor, mostly as some perfectly sane scholars openly contemplated as to whether the American presidency could survive.

My point, therefore, is that when large-scale government programs are viewed favorably, even if Republicans can manipulate them for political advantage, the fundamental edge is with the Democratic Party. Despite the best intentions of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, both faced a severe headwind, especially the latter, when he learned that Republicans could persuade Americans that his health care plan was anti-American. September 11, 2001, though, changed all of this. In the immediate aftermath, President Bush and his party reigned supreme, but, lost among fears of a new Republican era, was a critical shift: for the first time since perhaps the Kennedy assassination in 1963, Americans trusted their government.

Buoyed by this change, our big-government president pursued the most radical agenda of any president since Abraham Lincoln. And I'm not talking about his social conservatism, judicial appointments, penchant for excessive secrecy. Firstly, he ordered a large-scale invasion of Afghanistan, something no GOP chief executive had done with any nation on any scale (not even Nixon in Cambodia) since 1861--mostly because wars inevitably raise taxes. Well, all right, 90% of the nation supported him there. Heartened, the Republican executive, with a willing legislature, carried out the greatest reorganization of the national government since 1947 by creating a Homeland Security cabinet post (another bureaucrat). You may know which political party controlled the White House in 1947. Mr. Bush was not done. Iraq came next, easily the most ambitious war ever commenced by a Republican administration, because, again, wars cost money and the GOP once scowled at such projects. It was something most analogous to Vietnam (1965), Korea (1950), or Mexico (1915), all Democratic-led initiatives. Not even the Spanish-American War, a Republican-led conflict, was conducted on such a wide scale.

Additionally, with an eye toward Ohio's electoral votes, the Bush administration, which had already passed No Child Left Behind (an education reform bill that would have horrified early Reaganites), rammed their Medicare revision through Congress via the brute force and intimidation of Tom DeLay. The legislation once again put the president on the side of the big-government folks. As if that was not enough, Mr. Bush embraced an enormous restructuring of Social Security, at least until his own party finally blanched at the idea. Months later, Hurricane Katrina necessitated more government spending on the devastated Gulf Coast, but the Republican president signed off on the legislation anyway. Not content with this record, Mr. Bush visibly tried to substantially alter the nation's immigration policy.

So what are we saying? Well, I think it is possible that this new generation of Americans, those that did not grow up in the crises of the 1960s and 1970s, are taking to large-scale government projects quite well... except that many are now realizing that voting Republican is a terrible means to that end. They know the president has failed to show leadership in the Katrina rebuild, what they may only realize subconsciously is that Republicans in general do not believe in the merits of such a project any more than they believed LBJ could save the cities forty-odd years earlier. Yet again, their president had (figuratively and literally) signed a check that they did not especially want cashed. True, Mr. Bush spent far less on social programs than a Democrat, but most voters have almost no memory of big-spending liberals, or, more to the point, Democratic large-scale failures.

When the current president chose to play on the side of large-scale projects, he inadvertently gave life to the long-dormant idea of spending enormous sums of taxpayer money on gaudy initiatives. Obviously, he spent them on two wars and several decidedly unconservative domestic bills. Democrats want to spend, after raising taxes, on health care, climate change, education, poverty--projects every bit as massive as most everything pursued by this administration. Yet, unlike Mr. Bush, Barack Obama, like any good Democrat, forcefully believes in the power of the government to provide for its citizens. An alien could best understand the two main US political parties in this respect: The Republican Party's goal is to protect wealth; the Democratic Party's goal is to end poverty.

Republicans are present to keep liberals from "over-taxing" wealthier Americans so as to provide for the poor and downtrodden, whereas Dems are present to represent the plight of the lower-middle class and below. Historically, the GOP did not favor large-scale projects, save for SDI and national defense measures, because it runs contrary to their chief mission. Yet, understanding that even President Clinton's small-scale programs had nonetheless given a more positive name to government--and because Big Dog had smashed conservative Bob Dole in the 1996 election--the Texas Gang felt it could not defeat Al Gore without at least lip-service to enacting more government programs with the budget surplus. Many conservatives believed Mr. Bush's campaign was something of a ruse, just doing what he had to so as to stay close with the liberal Democrat that wanted to spend the extra money on the less fortunate. The president has proved them wrong.

By 2006, assisted by the fact that no terrorist attack had taken place in five years, the American electorate discovered they had a choice: elect Democrats that genuinely believed in the power of government to help people, or keep the same Republicans that had obediently allowed their president to commit massive resources with no real follow-through, be it Afghanistan, Iraq, Medicare, or Katrina. And they also noticed that the White House had no plan for the nearly 50 million uninsured, or climate change, or any number of issues. In the last three years, the American public has signaled a desire to embrace large-scale government programs and most believe that only Democrats can achieve these results.

Thus 2009 could prove the most hospitable clime for reform on a massive scale in nearly two or perhaps five decades. Of course, without question, Democratic politicians will overreach, and either fail or become too greedy with success, yet that is a long way off. After nearly forty years of distrust, the American people have once more come to view liberal ideas favorably, thanks, at least in small part, to George W. Bush's decisions after 9/11. Big-government conservatism pleased enough for a brief time, but Republicans are inherently conservative, and conservatives are inherently miserly and cautious, so a vast disillusionment was due. While Ronald Reagan did raise taxes and sign the '86 amnesty bill, he never expanded the Beirut mission nor did he push for anything resembling the 2003 Medicare bill.

As a result, the Republican Party is in shambles, because they followed their leader after 9/11, and he took them to the doorstep of full and complete Democratic electoral dominance by giving people a taste of the big-government ideas and through his half-hearted commitment, a reminder as to which party actually believes in the power of massive federal programs to help Americans. Yes, Democrats are running smarter candidates in Mississippi and elsewhere, yet more than that they are benefiting from the game-changing presidency of Mr. Bush. Yes, 9/11 proved a mighty catalyst, but the signs were present in as early as the education reform bill. In order to win the 2000 election, the Republicans had to find someone from outside the contaminated halls of Congress, and so they did, and received everything that went with it by the end of eight years. Republicans succeeded in making big-government popular again and unfortunately for them when they failed the public did not blame big-government as it had in the past, no, the public blamed them.