In today’s Wall Street Journal David Wessel entertains the idea that Bill Clinton was wrong: The era of big government is not over. The online article is subscription-only and found offline at page A2.
Indeed, anyone who has watched the development of national policies through the last half-decade is unlikely to jump to the idea of “limited government.” Where to begin? Steel tariffs. Gutting the market-oriented ’96 agriculture law. NCLB. The Department of Homeland Security. The porkalicious transportation bill that recently squeaked and squealed through Congress and across the President’s desk. The list could go on and on.
Wessel begins with the following:
The era of small government is over. Sept. 11 challenged it. Katrina killed it.
Of course, despite a conservative Republican president with a Republican majority in the Congress, small government has been more principle than practice lately. President Bush has presided over the nationalization of airport security screeners, the creation of the sprawling Homeland Security bureaucracy, the largest expansion of Medicare since Lyndon Johnson signed it into law and a 20% increase in all federal spending, adjusted for inflation, even before the cost of responding to Hurricane Katrina.
Now the rhetoric is fading to match the reality.
The rhetoric peaked back in 1996 when the great triangulator, Bill Clinton, delivered his State of the Union address to a receptive Republican Congress: “We know big government does not have all the answers. We know there’s not a program for every problem….The era of big government is over.”
In essence, the argument is that national Republicans are
in favor of “small government tax rates and big government spending plans” and that this cannot hold forever.
In some sense, I don’t fault or blame the President. I don’t think he ever campaigned in the tradition of Barry Goldwater, or even, Ronald Reagan. Bush promised to make government better, more compassionate, more efficient, and more in tune with American values (namely, democracy abroad and economic plenty at home) and aspirations. Many of his policies reflect these goals.
Government has an vital role to play in society. It also has the potential for collosal failure. And when it fails, the liberty and choice — even lives — of citizens can be lost forever. John Jay summarized the trade-off more than two centuries ago in Federalist No. 2:
“Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of government, and it is equally undeniable, that whenever and however it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights, in order to vest it with requisite powers.”
Wessel may be wrong. Perhaps a proper, bounded and limited understanding of “requisite powers” will emerge in this Administration.
But I suspect he is on to something. The disconnent between rhetoric and reality is creating cognitive dissonance and something is going to give. My hunch is that fidelity to conservatism — broadly understood — is on the decline among government officials — state and national. I’m open to persuasion. Will anyone make a counter-argument (that also accounts for the new state lottery)?
