All Big Government Conservatives Now?

At the close of the Republican Platform Committee deliberations this year, the quintessentially unflappable executive director of the American Conservative Union was stirred to explain "I guess we're all big government conservatives now." Richard Lessner was especially upset at the education plank. Under Ronald Reagan, Republicans had pledged to eliminate the national educational bureaucracy and return it to the local level but in 2004 they were bragging they had "provided the largest increase in federal education in history."

Much the same could be said about many other domestic policy planks of the GOP platform. It defended a domestic government spending increase of 29 percent over the past four years under Republicans. It took credit for new government health initiatives and the largest expansion of entitlements since Lyndon Johnson, in its new prescription drug benefit, even though it created a larger unfunded liability that that of the half-century old Social Security. The platform demanded a national energy policy (another agency the GOP wanted to close) based upon a bill most observers concluded was mostly pork and opened up no new supplies of energy. It promised new welfare benefits for all and transportation, small and large business subsidies, new commercial services, more agricultural support and, indeed, something for everyone.

The same day he was chairing the GOP Platform Committee, Republican Senate Leader Bill Frist published an article with Sen. Hillary Clinton promoting what they called the "emerging bi-partisan consensus" on health care. They said both parties agreed to increase federal "investment" in health technology and resources and to set federal health "quality standards." How quickly things change in Washington -- from united GOP opposition to Hillarycare to a consensus on her principles! Truly, "we" are all big government conservatives now, including Mrs. Clinton who cannot wait to get hold of the new powers granted her by this bi-partisan consensus when her time comes to make the decisions.

But it is not quite everyone. A woman platform delegate from Texas made a motion to strike the sentence about historically large education spending by Republicans, including the phrase that it was "the highest percentage gain since under Lyndon Johnson." She was set-upon by high party mucky-mucks claiming the statement was necessary to support President George Bush's No Child Left Behind education policy, and her motion was defeated overwhelmingly. At the last moment, the absurdity of praising the author of the welfare state's Great Society in a Republican platform registered with one of the Bush political operatives and a motion was made to strike the Johnson name and add "since the sixties" instead, which passed unanimously.

The governors, senators and congressmen -- such as governors Haley Barbour (MS) and Bill Owens (CO), Congressman Phil English (PA) and Sen. Frist -- normally whipped the conservative delegates into line under the banner of defeating John Kerry, even though the latter would have a hard time disagreeing with much that was proposed on social welfare policy. Republicans even denied that the tax cuts mainly helped the wealthier, so how could even the pseudo self-styled "conservative" from the other party disagree with middle class tax cuts? Limited government conservatives only won one fight, interestingly also regarding education. Another woman delegate (listening on radio, she could not be identified) introduced an amendment declaring that education was a local function, repeating the language from all recent platforms. The high-ranking political enforcers on the committee at first leaped at this too as a deviation from Bush doctrine. But a light seemed to go on in these elected politicians' heads that they would be hard-pressed in a Republican primary to justify local interests being overridden by national ones, especially in a department where the National Education Association has so much sway, especially when Democrats are in power. So the convention enforcement machine broke this one time and the delegates voted their consciences for local control.

It is an undeniable fact that a Republican Congress and President Bush have increased non-defense discretionary spending by more than any president since Franklin Roosevelt during the Depression and increased entitlement spending more than any president since Mr. Johnson's Great Society. Number one circulation syndicated conservative columnist Cal Thomas compared the Bush record to that of the previously worst Republican spender, Richard Nixon. The claim that we are all big government conservatives today is a reasonable one. Contrary to what they say publicly, Republican Congressmen often lead the charge for more spending. The days of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater seem long gone for sure.

Even this was not enough for the New York Times' resident (neo) conservative, David Brooks. That very same week his cover story for its magazine was titled, "Reinvent the GOP." Now that small government conservatives were on the defensive, as his article documented, the co-inventor (with Bill Kristol) of "national greatness conservatism" could run up his true colors and identify their movement as "progressive conservatism." To him, Republicans are of only two types: those who mouth small government conservatism but do not believe or practice it and those who are trying to adapt conservatism to the fact of big government. He considers President Bush in the later category -- when Bush criticized "the destructive mind-set: the idea that if government would get out of the way, all problems would be solved" -- although he says Bush is only "muddling toward a more appropriate governing philosophy." If Brooks' program were fully embraced, however, both political parties will have adopted progressivism since Bill Clinton (under the influence of mentor E.J. Dionne, Jr.) had done so a dozen years before.

Brooks claims that his progressive conservative philosophy repudiates both small government conservatism and "the Washington-knows-best legacy of the New Deal." His third way supposedly supports "limited but energetic government in the name of social mobility and national union." Brooks identifies his tradition with Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt but the phrase is almost a direct restatement of Democratic strategist Dionne's progressive credo (and founder Herbert Croly's too). Brooks claims Democratic progressivism differs in promoting "equality and social justice" -- but are these not required first to guarantee his social mobility? His progressive agenda seems to assume so. It would: (1) reform Social Security and Medicare so that they do not swallow the rest of the government, (2) alter the culture through government marriage promotion and childhood intervention programs, wage subsidies, national standards and start-up costs for national charter schools and teacher-certification requirements, (3) eliminate business subsidies, (4) stimulate energy innovation (without business subsidies?), (5) create a multilateral nation-building apparatus to build world nation-states to stand against Islamic fundamentalism and other threats to international stability and (6) require national service of all the young as a national "rite of passage" to inculcate citizenship

What would Dionne and the Democratic progressives disagree with? Marriage? Does it not depend upon the meaning of "marriage," as Mr. Clinton might say? More pertinently, what could Woodrow Wilson or Franklin D. Roosevelt and their progressive "braintrust" disagree with? In fact, the Brooks program differs not at all from the New Deal "know-it-all" one, with the same broad role for bureaucratic experts, except they are supposed to call themselves Republicans. Even that is not so different since early progressives like Croly originally supported Republican Herbert Hoover (who Brooks forgets to mention as another forerunner) as the more progressive candidate and only switched to FDR when it became apparent that Democrats would rule for the foreseeable future.

Progressive conservatism has already been tried by Wilson, Hoover, FDR, Johnson, Clinton and now, apparently, Bush -- but historically it has been in the face of natural public opposition, as was recognized from the beginning by its founders such as Gunnar Myrdal. The difficulty is that people do not want to give the government experts the amount of power they need to implement the reforms progressives like Brooks desire. As even the sympathetic Ramesh Ponnuru of center-right National Review notes, after saying that most of Brooks proposals are "worthy enough" for conservatives -- they are impossible politically.

At the urging of Republican progressives and political experts who thought it would assure his popularity, President Bush supported a nationalized educational testing program, with the largest increases in Federal standards and spending in history. In order to pass the legislation, the states were allowed also to construct their own tests evaluating their performance, which softer tests often receive the most public attention, confusing parents. Moreover, scores rate schools but not individual students. Yet, rather than gaining popular support, critics say Bush's increase of Democratic spending by an historic one-third is not enough. Republicans simply cannot win such a spending war since Democrats will always raise them billions more. As a result, 39 percent of American who know about the law support No Child Left Behind and 38 percent oppose it, and a majority of Americans tell pollsters that they still trust Democrats more on education policy.

On Medicare, the Republicans committed themselves and the nation to $16 trillion (not billion) in additional long-term liabilities for a new prescription drug benefit, half-again the total liability for Social Security, about whose financial status GOP platforms have long expressed concern. Yet, the polls afterwards showed that a large majority blamed the Republicans for higher premium and co-payment costs, for large subsidies to drug companies and big business, and for health insurance in the private sector that was dropped so employers could switch retiree costs to the government plan. Sure enough, just after the convention it was announced that premiums would increase 17.4 percent and deductibles would increase by 4.1 percent. A majority of seniors, thus, opposed the big government conservatism of the Medicare drug bill and the bill became a political drag for Republican candidates.

If anything is clear, it is that conservatism and progressivism are alternative philosophies and Americans smell out cute attempts to be all things to all people. Progressive conservatism, indeed, is a contradiction in terms. While conservative progressivism might make some sense, as it might mean a more prudent approach than liberal progressivism, Dionne's proposals seem more conservative than Brooks' in the sense of being less radical, more prudent, more acceptable to people. Yet, the number one concern of both is runaway entitlement spending that would swallow all of the rest of government so they would not have sufficient funds to run the rest of society for us as they want. In fact, it is almost certain that a true reform of Medicare and Social Security that reduces costs is politically impossible. If one wants a bit of real realism, compared to Brooks' dreams, it seems likely that entitlements will swallow the rest of the national government and the remaining programs, without funding, will have to be returned to states, localities and private charities and businesses-and small government conservatism will have won after all.

Fortunately for the Republicans, there are other issues in the election this year. Voters are very concerned about the deteriorating situation in Iraq and are confused about what should be done about terrorism. When President Bush expressed some intelligent concerns about the winnability of the war in Iraq and about whether he should have called the war an ideological battle against totalitarians using terror rather than a war against terrorism itself, people became more confused and he was forced to return to set answers and familiar slogans. Popular skittishness makes the pressures to sloganeer and give in on domestic spending to get foreign policy support overwhelming. But the people do trust President Bush on the war on terrorism and, unless things get worse, that just might be enough to win anyway. Still, the big government conservatism adopted by the administration has not mollified the electorate but only created more opposition to it.

If Republican conservatives are to choose between equally unpopular political philosophies at least we might as well pick the one that actually made America great -- not by being powerful nationally relying upon experts, except on defense, but by promoting freedom nationally and by being governed locally. Conservatism, if it means anything, means conserving what is left of the American Constitutional schema and the Western values that underlie it, including federalism and limited national government generally. After all, the leader who manifested these values, Ronald Reagan, was elected by a large majority of the people and did limit national government for a time, achieving tremendous prosperity and winning greater support for those values at the same time. He is still the most popular of recent presidents and it just may not be as politically impossible to revitalize those beliefs as either Republicans or their critics believe.

Donald Devine, editor.