A Time For Choosing Substance Over Demagoguery

[Sandra]

Republican presidential primaries

A Time For Choosing Substance Over Demagoguery

Daren Jonescu  Friday, November 25, 2011
 
Much of what is truly at stake in the Republican presidential primaries­not to mention the 2012 elections­resides in that peculiar no man’s land of Unspeakables. These are problems so huge, so devilish, so intractable, that even to utter their names is regarded as impolite­as a breach of the contract named “Life As We Know It,” which includes the all-important subsection labelled “Politics As Usual.”

To name these issues in polite company is far more serious than shouting “fire” in a crowded theater. It is more akin to speaking in tongues: not only will you be misunderstood, but you risk reducing everyone to a fearful hush­“What just happened?” they will think nervously, while trying not to show any outward reaction, as though hoping that they imagined the whole thing, and that if left unacknowledged, the event will vanish into the ether. Not wishing to begin this article by breaching that contract with comfortable reality, I will begin instead with a thoroughly imaginary tale.

John and Mary are a middle-aged couple with two children. They have an annual after-tax income of $100,000. This year they spent $170,000. Last year, they spent $160,000. In fact, for as many years as anyone can remember, they have spent considerably more than their income. Each January, when they budget for the upcoming year, they plan all the exciting things they want to buy­vacations, cars, electronic gadgets for the children, a bigger cottage with lake frontage­without worrying about their realistic income potential. What’s worse, they always follow through on all those plans, regardless of how much money they need to borrow in order to do so. In addition to these planned deficits, of course, there are always unplanned opportunities that arise over the course of a given year. Not wishing to deprive themselves or their children of any possible sources of well-being and happiness, they usually go ahead and absorb these unexpected expenses too.

John and Mary now owe more money than they could reasonably expect to earn over the next ten years combined, and of course that takes into account neither the ordinary living expenses they will incur over those ten years independently of their debt, nor the substantial interest due each year on that debt. Finally, with creditors phoning every day, and friends and relatives increasingly inclined to keep them at arm’s length for fear of being hit up for another loan, the family sits down together and attempts to take stock of their problem, with the help of their friendly financial adviser, one Mr. Romrich.

They consider where to cut costs. How about the cottage? Well, the children are really counting on that as a place to invite their friends during the summer vacation. Next winter’s trip to Hawaii? It’s been in the works for two years; cancelling it now would be such a heartbreak for the whole family. Surely there is something less fraught with emotional hardship. The new computer John promised his son for graduation? But that would be taking away the boy’s incentive to work hard during his graduating year. The tuba lessons Mary promised her daughter? “But you promised!” the poor girl cries. “True,” Mary concedes, “we can’t break our promise.”

“Okay,” says Mr. Romrich, “let’s face it: We don’t want anyone to feel disappointed, and you can’t just go breaking promises or giving up lifelong plans. The point is not to cause you pain­on the contrary, the question is how we can cut down on your expenses without hurting anyone’s feelings. So here’s the way I see it: Looking at the rates at which your income and debt have increased over each of the past ten years, we project that you are on pace to earn about $1.5 million over the next ten years, while increasing your million-dollar debt by about $800,000 over that period. That is to say, in 2021 you will earn about $170,000 and owe about $1.8 million. The cottage, vacation, computers, and music lessons are untouchable. On the other hand, you have bought five new cars over the past ten years. That’s an average of one car every two years. The average price of these cars was $30,000. If you did that over the next ten years, that would be $150,000. Factor in inflation, the new built-in costs likely to be caused by EPA regulations, and the natural tendency to want a step-up model rather than the status quo, and that becomes $250,000. So, what I propose is this. Buy a car only every three years, rather than every second year. Instead of five purchases over the next ten years, you’ll only be making three. That reduces your total projected auto-purchasing expenses by $100,000, from $250,000 to $150,000­and with no pain!”

“Wow,” exclaims Mary. “Is that all there is to it? Of course, it won’t be easy to forego those two extra cars, especially with Johnny Junior starting college soon. But in the name of getting our finances in order, it’s a sacrifice we’ll have to make.”

“Yes,” John agrees, “it’s a huge cut, but thanks to Mr. Romrich, we’ll have… well, what will we have done, exactly?”

“You’ll have reduced your total debt increase over the next ten years from $800,000 to only $700,000,” beams Mr. Romrich. “So in 2021, instead of owing $1.8 million, you’ll only owe $1.7 million.”

The family nods gravely, and then, as they absorb this great news, they begin to smile proudly. At last, they break into applause­for themselves, at showing such fortitude in facing their problems and making difficult cuts; and of course, for their benefactor, Mr. Romrich.

The difference between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, on the one hand, and the actual conservative Republicans running for President, on the other, was on perfect display during a brief segment of the November 22nd foreign policy debate. About two-thirds of the way into the monotony, Wolf Blitzer asked the candidates, “Can the United States afford to continue that kind of foreign assistance to Africa for AIDS, malaria? Could run into the billions of dollars.”

First up for this question was Herman Cain, who said that such programs, along with all domestic programs, should be reviewed for “results.” In other words, don’t do what sounds good. Continue only what has proven effective.

Ron Paul followed this with his typical objection to all foreign aid, foreign wars, etc, followed by this: “It seems like nobody cares about the budget. We’re in big trouble, and nobody wants to cut anything… The biggest threat to our national security is our financial condition, and this is just aggravating it.”

Mitt Romney jumped in here, twisting the topic around to military spending, because the military is one of the two or three areas where mainstream Republicans know they can score easy rhetorical points with Republican audiences.

“Congressman Paul,” Romney objected, “what they’re doing is cutting a trillion dollars out of the defence budget, which just happens to equal the trillion dollars they’re putting into Obamacare…. We need to protect America and protect our troops and our military and stop the idea of Obamacare. That’s the best way to save money, not the military.”

Okay, so first of all, to Cain’s and Paul’s suggestion that America needs to look at any and every program for potential spending cuts, in light of the enormous debt, Romney’s answer is to object to spending cuts. In other words, his instinct is to deny the need for cuts­even, yes, for cuts to programs and departments that conservatives like. Furthermore, by holding the military ‘cuts’ up against Obamacare expenditures, Romney attempts to overcome one of his biggest problems, the perception that Obamacare was, to some extent, his idea. “Military good, Obamacare bad,” may be just what the doctor ordered in terms of optics for Romney’s campaign, but it shows a basic inability to recognize the nature and urgency of America’s financial crisis.

Paul, allowed to respond to Romney’s argument about a trillion dollars in military cuts, said the following: “Well, they’re not cutting anything out of anything. All this talk is just talk. Believe me, they’re nibbling away at baseline budgeting. It’s automatic increases, there’s nothing cut against the military, and the people on the Hill are nearly hysterical because the budget isn’t going up as fast as they want it to. It’s a road to disaster and we’d better wake up.”

Romney, blissfully ignoring the obvious fact at the heart of Paul’s remarks­that what is being proposed is not actual cuts, but merely reductions in the size of future increases­proceeded to ramble through a memorized list of specific military programs that will not be funded, or will receive reduced funding (i.e. he continued to speak of reduced future spending increases as ‘cuts’), concluding with another easy applause line about standing up for Israel against Iran, as though that were in any way related to the discussion at hand.

To be fair, Romney may not have been ignoring Paul’s point; he may simply not have understood it. And this, perhaps, is what Tea Party conservatives have to fear most: a Republican presidential candidate who does not even realize that he is campaigning for the privilege of presiding over the demise of Western civilization.

A few minutes later, the candidates were asked what entitlement programs should be reformed to strengthen the economy and reduce the deficit. Newt Gingrich expounded on his one-day old social security reform proposal modelled on the Chilean system. No one­certainly not Newt, of course­bothered to mention that this has been Herman Cain’s precise proposal since at least March, 2011. At any rate, after delivering, in his inimitably self-important fashion, the social security reform speech that Cain has been delivering (sans smugness) for most of the year, Newt finally concluded, amazingly, with this:

“I think you can have a series of entitlement reforms that frankly make most of this problem go away without going through the kind of austerity and pain that this city likes.”

Washington likes “austerity and pain”? Since when? More importantly, however, let’s consider this conclusion. The “problem” he is alluding to in that sentence is presumably the mountain of unfunded liabilities that stand above and beyond the debt as a reminder of the consequences of enacting seventy years of welfare state fantasies. So Newt proposes to make that mountain disappear without “austerity and pain.”

How nice: A no-fault divorce from reality. Recall that in the realm of national debt and unfunded liabilities, the “austerity” in question is that of the federal government. Gingrich, apparently, wishes to avoid that. The “pain”, on the other hand, belongs to a citizenry that will have to get used to living life without the helping hand of government in all things. But isn’t it modern conservatism’s goal, in part, to wean a dependency culture off the idea that government will always find a solution for them? After all, Tocqueville’s warning was not about debt, but about a national government that projects a warm blanket to its citizens, thereby weakening their sense of individual sovereignty. Do conservatives want to find ways to circumvent the “pain” of reinstituting that feeling of individual responsibility?

Next up was Michele Bachmann, who addressed the debt ceiling fight and the resulting Super-committee: “It’s time for us to draw a line in the sand. We had sufficient revenues coming in to pay the interest on the debt, but the real issue was: Were we going to give Congress another $2.4 billion [wishful thinking­she means trillion] in borrowing authority?... Consider the context: A little over four years ago we were just over $8 trillion in debt. We are now $15 trillion in debt…. Now we’re talking about adding… another $11 trillion in debt…. All that [the members of the Super-committee] were asked to do was cut back on $1.2 trillion of that increase in debt. We aren’t even talking about the central issue, which is balancing the budget. We need to balance the budget, and then chip away at the debt…. What we need to realize is that when we are sending interest money over to China, with whom we are highly in hock, we’re not just sending our money; we’re sending our power. What will happen is that our national security and our military will decrease, and our money will increase China’s military…. That should give every American pause.”

Indeed it should. Instead, it merely gave CNN pause­as in, an opportunity for a commercial break, to which Wolf Blitzer quickly sent us, while the audience in attendance sat silent, as though waiting impatiently for Wonder-Newt’s next pearl.

Bachmann’s words were perhaps the most important of the debate. She had cut through all the ‘cuts’ talk and austerity-avoidance to address the biggest issue on the table, the one almost no one is prepared to speak to: The United States Federal Government is not even prepared to acknowledge the fact that the country has a debt that, even if no further deficits were incurred from this moment on, might still be insurmountable­and that this dagger is pointy at both ends, as the financial crisis itself is probably enough to bury the nation, but to make matters worse­as Mark Steyn has repeatedly explained­a direct by-product of the crisis is the U.S.-funded empowerment of China.

By connecting the debt directly to national security, and in the bleakest possible terms, Bachmann was uttering the Unspeakable, and thus breaching the standard candidate’s contract with “Life As We Know It.” That is why the audience did not respond, and why Gingrich, shown in reaction shots while Bachmann spoke, was smirking patronizingly. His argument, where it was not cribbed from Herman Cain, was cribbed from a used car salesman. Her argument was a truth too painful for people looking for an excuse to cheer, laugh, or cry.

This primary campaign is a contest between those who can accept the Unspeakable, and those who stare nervously at their hands when it is mentioned. Does the Republican Party want a captain who would handsomely or long-windedly go down with the sinking ship of state? Or does it have the stomach to choose a nominee who is prepared to call on the nation to get out the buckets and start bailing­fast?

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