(Please see Jon Sanders’ post below, which makes a similar point in a much more humorous way.)
If you’ve ever wondered why the same goofy ideas return to the top of the political agenda after intermittent bouts of sanity, Michael Barone offers us some hints in his latest U.S. News column. It’s an idea he previewed during his recent interview with Carolina Journal Radio.
[T]he preference for smaller rather than larger government is not as
ample as it used to be. The strongest case against big government has
been its failures in the 1970s, typified by gas lines and stagflation.
But the median-age voter in 2008 was born around 1964, so he or she
never sat in those gas lines or struggled to pay rising bills with a
paycheck eroded by inflation. That demographic factor helps explain why
Democrats today are promising big-government programs, unlike Bill
Clinton in 1992, when the median-age voter remembered the 1970s very
well.America has enjoyed low-inflation economic growth for 95 percent of
the 2008 median-age voter’s adult life. This is a record unique in
history, which neither party is addressing particularly well.
You can watch Barone’s entire John Locke Foundation Headliner speech here.
