The "Plutocrats" and the US election

This Thursday, party insiders will elect China’s new political leadership. Tomorrow, millions of Americans—after standing in lineups for hours—will elect theirs.

China is becoming the world’s first modern superpower plutocracy. The United States remains a far better place for the super-rich to live, and express themselves. But, its democracy is still more powerful than its pushy "plutocrats."

Whichever way it tips, the 2012 US presidential election can already be celebrated as a democratic success: next to nothing has been excluded from discussion; religion, race, region, family background, and relative privilege haven’t seriously handicapped either campaign—and the influence of a "plutocratic class" hasn’t been decisive either.

Indeed, the interests of surging minorities, workers, radical pensioners, and numerous value issues of little consequence to the pocket books of the rich have dominated the desperate final appeals for votes.

As a 50-50 election, with $billions to help partisans shout out their messages and with the voices of more independent commercial and amateur opinion makers than ever before, it's been wonderful for those who collect American faux pas. Nevertheless, history will probably note that the two national parties were especially effective as inclusive, competitive political organizations.

In the closest swing states, their organizations will likely get out two-thirds of eligible voters, as they did in 2008.

Most billionaires favor the Republican Party, but don’t run it; and the Democrats found plenty of money and talent people elsewhere.

As Chrystia Freeland brilliantly reminds us in her book Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, self-esteem and political ambition grow with the accumulation of great wealth.

However, the titans who’d like to be called "plutocrats" shouldn’t take themselves too seriously. Freeland’s thesis is essentially cautionary: entrenched wealth ultimately is self-serving, will eventually compromise social and economic mobility, and, thereby, enfeeble both America’s democracy and economic vitality—but we’re not there yet.

A working plutocracy—as opposed to a failed democracy—must secure internal cohesion among the rich and have enough talent and time away from the office to run Washington, consciously and intelligently, on behalf of their interests.

Running the American polity, with its free press, secret ballot, independent courts, and dynamic regional differences, is not the same as running one of Disneyworld’s company towns or a high-tech valley in California. Along with a talent for money, the successful plutocrat must have a talent for politics—for picking political fronts that can get elected, and for staffing a political elite that can finesse the interests of the most powerful in each of the country’s contending regions.

The best defense for democrats, however, is not to count on their incompetence. Maintaining an open, dynamic American federation, two ambitious national political parties are still the surest ways to keep the plutocrats at bay.

If you’re not careful, not drinking will turn you into a liberal?

Rolling Stone Magazine once relied on Hunter S. Thompson’s paranoid genius and drug use to caricature Republicans. Now, it employs a stable of highly educated political psychologists who rely on questionnaires. Thompson was more fun, just as convincing, and less expensive all round.  

Chris Mooney’s reports on a recent study in his article this week: "Can Drinking Make You Conservative? (and Other Questions About the Political Brain.)"

“The researchers were actually outside the bar – a bar in New England – where they flagged down exiting patrons with quite the request: Would they get their blood alcohol level tested and fill out a short questionnaire on their political views? Eighty-five of them consented to share their level of agreement with statements like "Production and trade should be free of government interference" and "Ultimately, privately property should be abolished." Then came the breathalyser.

“When the scientists collated the results, it turned out that, on average, the higher the subject's blood alcohol level, the more likely he or she was to express conservative opinions. This was true of liberals and conservatives alike; both groups appeared to shift to the right.”

Click on: www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/can-drinking-make-you-conservative-and-other-questions-about-the-political-brain-20120326

Rather than retreat, Rooney explains why it all makes sense—along with a short advertisement for his new book The Republican Brain.

Apparently, you think like a conservative when you’re slightly and severely incapacitated—when you’re gut is taking over and you have no time for subtlety. On the other hand, the liberal mind loves to reason, to see the other point of view, and imagine unintended consequences. Liberals care about poor people, climate change, and unregulated markets—conservatives and drunks much less so.

Will his next book be called The Republican Body? Will he suggest that Republicans not be allowed to drive after even one drink?

The populist Republican Party might as well accept the stings of Rolling Stone. It has chosen on several issues to say very simple things to be popular (think: climate change, the source of rising gasoline prices, the benefits of cutting people's taxes).

However, conservatism in the true sense of the word isn’t coming out of the mouths of those kids at that New England bar and it isn’t being measured by these political researchers/pollsters.

Historically, conservatism has always been too intellectual and never competitive with liberalism emotionally. Conservatives, ironically, have been very productive in this liberal age because they’ve been its greatest worriers.

Look back over the last fifty years and at many of the policies liberals champion—individual mandates, carbon taxes, guaranteed annual incomes, the indexation of pensions and income tax deductions, and détente. These ideas didn’t come from the guts, but the brains of conservative minds.

A cynic and a linguist cloud the truth

On the first of the month, Frank Luntz gave nervous Republicans a shrewd list of words to repeat when selling themselves and their American vision in the next election (Click on:http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/republicans-being-taught-talk-occupy-wall-street-133707949.html).This blog (December 2) complained that his advice was too selective, rather chicken-hearted, and would only corrupt what could be an exceptionally clear-headed fight over America’s future.  

Linguist and left helpmate George Rakeoff takes a very different approach, offering a pretty alternative of his own:  

“Unfortunately, Luntz is still ahead of most progressives responding to him. Progressives need to learn how framing works. Bashing Luntz, bashing Fox News, bashing the right-wing pundits and leaders using their frames and arguing against their positions just keeps their frames in play.

“Progressives have a basic morality, which is largely unspoken. It has to be spoken, over and over, in every corner of our country. Progressives need to be both thinking and talking about their view of a moral democracy, about how a robust public is necessary for private success, about all that the public gives us, about the benefits of health, about a Market for All not a Greed Market, about regulation as protection, about revenue and investment, about corporations that keep wages low when profits are high, about how most of the rich earn a lot of their money without making anything or serving anyone, about how corporations govern your life for their profit not yours, about real food, about corporate and military waste, about the moral and social role of unions, about how global warming causes the increasingly monstrous effects of weather disasters, about how to save and preserve nature.

“Progressives have magnificent stories of their own to tell. They need to be telling them nonstop.”

Click on: www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=george-lakoff

So, listen carefully progressives: don’t argue, moralize.

Imagine a Moral Market, regulated by angels, where our pension funds grow in double digits and our corporations will make profits just short of “greedy.” Promise a Market for All, except, most likely, in the delivery of public services. Insist that the unproductive rich and their unpatriotic corporations run our lives and that once we’re free of them we’ll be happy to pay—whatever we’re told it will take—to save the planet. Imagine that—without the other side’s corrupt lobbyists—government will be waste-free, that its claims on us will always make sense.

Both Lakeoff and Luntz live in California. Each wants us to pick their illusion; probably each believes that the real world will submit to their story—if it turns out to be a blockbuster.

Republican advantage: the “strongman” presidency

Republicans have almost totally abandoned their fear campaign against the embattled Barack Obama. Their street philosophers and Tea Party freedom-fighters are losing their momentum. Every day, we hear less about the constitution and more and more about how to be a boss.

Republican strategists and fundraisers are not simply running away from the shrillest of the Republican candidates for president. Rather, they’re looking eagerly for a demonstrably muscular candidate who can run against a weak president—a president every bit as American and as unforgivably ineffectual as Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.

Michael Goodwin wrote this in the New York Post:

“His is a vision best described as pragmatic idealism. He is about taking direct and forceful action without ever losing sight of the big picture.

“As he said in his stirring speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, “The rule for effective government is simple: When you see a problem, you fix it.”

“Later, he added, “You can’t wait for someone else to do it when you sit in the Oval Office.”

Click on: www.nypost.com/p/news/local/inside_the_passion_of_the_christie_WhLv56zPRIjLxh4DCAqdzN#ixzz1ZdFH2qDZ

Without the reference to the Reagan Library, this encomium to Governor Chris Christie could have been written by several equally shrewd columnists in the New York Times, in 2008, about Barack Obama.

Obama, who also talks to himself as well as the lowest common denominator, could have easily said every bit of it—only adding that a spirit of bipartisanship in Congress will be required as well.

Today, Obama doesn’t scare anyone—in America. But he isn’t called a “pragmatic idealist” because Republicans won’t let him get anything big done. 

Here’s the cruel beauty of a Christie candidacy: with a non-ideological tough guy as the star candidate for the presidential nomination, Republicans in Congress, in the shadows, can continue to block Obama’s domestic initiatives. (Conversely, without the distracting excitement of Christie, every week of paralysis in Congress further highlights Republican legislators as obstructionists.)

Nevertheless, whatever the New Jersey governor does, the Democrats are left with a dangerous problem: Americans are desperate for effective leadership, but they see that an eminently level-headed Democrat can’t get much done.

Probably millions of independent voters who support Obama’s program today would drop him now for another so-called effective president like Ronald Reagan.

He can’t win and stay the same. Obama’s leadership potential can’t be re-imagined without a clear legislative win on jobs and the economy this fall or without, shall we say, a rather vicious and winning campaign against the re-election of an obstructionist Republican Congress next fall.

It can be argued that the capacity of the two-party system to express what a majority of Americans want is at stake. The constitution doesn’t insist that only center-right presidents can lead. Nevertheless, a sane case can be made that that’s exactly what a decisive faction in the US Congress believes.

Remember, even president George Bush’s economic emergency legislation was torpedoed by the same faction (then without a brand name) when the financial system nearly collapsed in September 2008.

There is a pattern of recklessness that only the voters can break. There are many things Democrats may not understand about American exceptionalism. However, they alone, as a national party in Washington, still seem to know when to cooperate with a pragmatic president—Republican or Democrat—when the nation’s economy is in peril. 

Americans don’t approve of their government: Feel better?

For progressives who fear that the US federal government is dysfunctional and for right-wing conservatives who think that most of it is unnecessary, Gallop’s latest findings should be heartening: Americans Rate Computer Industry Best, Federal Government Worst:

“The results range from a +62 net positive rating for the computer industry to a -46 net positive rating for the federal government.

“The sectors Americans view most negatively have all had well-publicized problems in recent years. The federal government has been near the bottom of the list in previous years, but is at the absolute bottom this year for the first time, displacing the oil and gas industry.”

Click on: www.gallup.com/poll/149216/Americans-Rate-Computer-Industry-Best-Federal-Gov-Worst.aspx

Certainly, this is good news for the outs. However, this survey shouldn’t give any comfort to either extreme in American politics.


The public hasn’t decided that Washington is too Red, or too Blue, or too big, or too small, only that it talks too much and doesn’t get much done.


According to this survey, nearly twice as many Americans have a positive opinion of banking than a positive opinion of the federal government (30% compared to 17%). The health industry has a higher score. Nevertheless, the vast majority of Americans—and Wall Street bankers—are waiting to hear what Obama has to say about jobs. Furthermore, they are more concerned about how Congress leaders react to his next speech than how the markets react overnight.


And, while no one thinks that the red-tape on their desk makes any sense, clear majorities are reluctant to send seniors, children and the poor out on their own to secure health services.


The extraordinary collapse in American consumer and investment confidence in July underlies a more telling assessment of the place of the federal government in the expectations of Americans. They rely on the beast. Evidence of its paralysis and rumours of its pending bankruptcy are not leading to calls for less, but more public leadership.

Liberals tell the President to “go big,” that his speech next week on jobs is his “last chance.” Conservatives assign, retrospectively, magical powers to his presidency: it’s “his” economy and his policies destroyed 2.5 million jobs. While no one takes him seriously abroad, American “job-creators” and industrial titans apparently tremble in fear of what he’ll do next.

In a strange way, Obama’s biggest problem is his diffidence.


With so few Americans respecting the institutions of the federal government, you’d think that their incumbents’ first recourse would be to stop making mistakes and stop talking to each other the way they have been over the last year. Nevertheless, the loudest voices in politics seem to want to escalate.

Mark Steyn’s invective

After spending a month listening to “economic” Republicans chant “jobs, jobs, jobs” like Democrats that can’t dance, you start to miss the untrammelled passions of “social” conservatives—until you glimpse at Mark Steyn’s latest book, After America: Get Ready For Armageddon. 

As a pugnacious Canadian prophet of hopeless decline, Steyn got his start diagnosing the vacuity of Canada and the approaching suicide of Christian Europe. He’s now closed off any hope of escape by portraying America as a kidnapped victim of fuzzy aliens. His evidence is highly eclectic. Real Americans would be building a much higher tower to avenge 9/11. His thesis—the America of Steyn and Orange County culture is being destroyed—can give no quarter to President Barack Obama.

He offers invective as fresh as any that was thrown during the dying days of the 2008 election:

“He’s the first president to give off the pronounced whiff that he’s condescending to the job—that it’s really too small for him and he’s just killing time until something more commensurate with his stature comes along. . . .There is an absence of feeling for America—as in his offhand remark to Bob Woodward that the United States can ‘absorb’ another 9/11.

“It’s not so much that he’s foreign to America, but that America is foreign to him. Outside the cloisters of Hyde Park and a few other enclaves, he doesn’t seem to get America. Not because he was born in Kenya or wherever, but because he’s the first president to be marinated his entire life in a post-modern, post-American cultural relativism.”

—Excerpted from the recently released book After America: Get Ready For Armageddon by Mark Steyn, National Post, August 25, 2011

A good half of the Birthers promptly gave up their cause once they were presented with the evidence that Obama wasn’t born “wherever,” but in America. They, of course, were amateurs. Only a professional would relocate the issue in Obama’s head rather than in his accuser’s.

In truth, Chicago, New York and Boston are as emphatically not post-modern and as brutally American as any of Steyn’s enclaves of WASP authority—those white communities that pine for a 19th Century America that real WASPS thought was second-rate.

US Tax reform is coming

Except in a handful of wicked American cities, you could not get elected a hundred years ago without being able to talk intelligently about the family farm and commodity markets. Economic dangers and opportunities were immediate and hotly discussed; the stakes were high and, consequently, the voters were economically literate. Is it possible that those times are returning?  

This summer, twenty-four hour coverage of the economy and Washington’s finances—and extreme political talk on both—may be doing the economy measurable harm, as well as educating the public. Talk of national bankruptcy has surely had something to do with the decline in consumer confidence, an ever rising savings rate, and now stalling industrial production.

Consumers, investors and employers have been told that the glass in Washington is not just half empty, but half full of poison.   

Being unready to accept failure or live for long in pain, the next response by Americans is likely to be higher political participation and, just possibly, less tolerance for Democrat and Republican clichés. Over the next fifteen months, it could get harder and harder to sound stupid and irresponsible.

Already, two fire lines against fresh thinking are in trouble. “No new taxes” and higher taxes on “millionaires and billionaires” are perceptively giving away to calls for tax reform and, yes, some new revenues. The prospect of a more robust tax base would make short-term stimulus more credible and, therefore, more effective.

Singling out too few taxpayers for an income tax increase sounds too convenient. It doesn’t sound statesmanlike, it sounds envious. Alternatively, calling any new tax “socialistic” or a “job killer” is wearing thin. American governments spend like Canadians. Ultimately, they’ll have to pay equivalent taxes too. Most important, there is no credible way to raise serious money without asking more from the rich.

(Okay. Let’s set aside the extraordinary growth in wealth of the top 0.1% of Americans over the last thirty years. It is not demagogic, however, to note that the top 10% of Americans control two-thirds of America’s wealth. The Democrat’s proposed tax increase on those earning over $200,000 is stale, doesn’t raise enough, and doesn’t encourage economic growth. Nevertheless, it is not radically left or substantially different from most conservative and mainstream alternative ideas to modernize the tax code. They all hit those with high incomes and indulgent tax breaks—because that’s where the money is. This isn’t a class-war issue. It’s about ability to pay.)

Click on: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph  

Clearly, the business community has discovered, albeit, ridiculously late, that brinksmanship, polarization and paralysis in Washington are very bad for business. Also, on his Midwest tour this week, Obama must have noted that his audiences want him to test Congress with new measures immediately, not simply sound reasonable. 

They may respond well to another “give ’m Hell Harry” next fall. But, for this fall, they want an LBJ problem-maker.

Friday wrap-up: talk economics, seriously

The debt-ceiling deal may not have lasting economic significance. After all, it doesn’t bind the future where it’s supposed to do the heavy lifting. The debt-ceiling debate, however, may have changed American politics. The politicians looked terrible but may not be able to change the subject get Americans excited about something else.

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released an extraordinary set of findings on public participation and interest in news coverage of the debt-ceiling debate.

Click on: http://people-press.org/2011/08/02/attention-to-debt-debate-grew-steadily-in-july/

Forty-one percent of Americans were “very closely” following the drama in Washington last weekend. The debate beat out the economy generally, the Norway massacre, the NFL labor agreement, the stock market, and the 2012 elections. Amazingly, 10% of those surveyed said they bothered to contact an elected official on the federal deficit. Furthermore, those who were most interested and most likely to weigh in fell equally on both ends of the political spectrum. Twelve percent of conservative Republicans and 14% of liberal Democrats say they contacted their representatives.

The vast majority, likely, after many hours of watching television and reading press reports, didn’t go to bed meekly regretting their economic illiteracy; they felt sure enough about what was going on to volunteer that their politicians were “ridiculous” and “disgusting.”

Effectively, Americans have experienced another national trauma. It’s too early, of course, to say anything with confidence, but there surely will be consequences—in politics and in the economy. Here are three bald assertions:

One: Washington’s perceived economic incompetence is a critical economic factor, it affects consumer and investor behavior.

It matters when people stop trusting banks and the stock markets, and it matters as well when they think Washington is incapable of offering coherent economic leadership. (Is there any point increasing public borrowing to stimulate consumer demand if consumers respond by saving more because they fear that $trillion deficits will break the economy?)

Two: simple economic slogans won’t get you elected.

People may or may not be polarized. However, they are now intensely interested in economic issues and have been exposed to many points of view on what should be done. They didn’t tell the Pew Center that Washington politicians were ridiculous because they didn’t use the right sound bites, but because sound bites were all the politicians had to offer. Promises like “jobs, jobs, jobs” and “cut, cap, and balance” and retorts like “job-killing taxes” and “fair shares from millionaires and billionaires” won’t work with the un-indoctrinated.

Three: the public watched what was happening because they know that what leaders do still counts.

The Iraq War led to severe voter remorse in 2006 and 2008. People didn’t turn their backs on the world then and they are not going to try to fix the economy without a competent federal government.

Democratizing elite policy-making has been America’s unique political dynamic. It has worried the world for over a century. However, as often as not, in foreign as well as domestic affairs, the final verdict of the people has favored enlightened American self-interest. But, nothing’s a sure thing.

Mainstream Republicans have more than entitlements to worry about.

An insurgency that wins elections and Republican primaries has to be motivated by more than anger and alienation. Protest movements grab hold of extreme ideas, not for the aesthetics of simple thinking, but because they want to fix big problems. That’s what makes the Tea Party relevant and dangerous; they haven’t rejected America’s cocky optimism. They want to put it back to work.

Conservative thinkers do want to reform Medicare and do want Americans to practice more rigorously their love of liberty and consumer choice. That’s fine with the Tea Party, but that’s not what gets their legions out to campaign and vote. They don’t trust modern government and its allies because they don’t like the results—an America not growing fast enough to give every able American a chance to have decent job and raise a proud happy family.

The special election in New York State’s 26th Congressional district confirmed that Medicare is a full-fledged American institution. The extraordinary election of a Democrat in this district signaled clearly that voters are not prepared to turn Medicare into a consumer voucher. Middle aged voters are not eager to spend their golden years shopping for adequate or ideal private health insurance. While Democrats and Rep. Paul Ryan might like to make Paul Ryan the ballot issue, NY-26 settled the issue.

However, this one special election does not mean that the center, the status quo, is safe. The Tea Party’s candidate Jack Davis not only captured 9 per cent of the vote. He took those votes from Democrats as well as Republicans, and campaigned on a larger, even more intractable issue: America’s ability to defend and restore its economy—an economy that once generously underwrote their participation in the American dream. That issue is being forced to the surface, not by political miscalculation in Washington but by harsh circumstances across the country. It will be the ballot issue next year not Paul Ryan’s or Timothy Geithner’s fiscal plan.

Tea Party candidate Jack Davis made it clear that Obama’s vision of collective social responsibility will not be the only proposition up for review in 2012. America’s economic contract—free markets and shared prosperity—will also be challenged. Davis campaigned as classic can-do protectionist:

“‘We have to grow, dig or manufacture to produce wealth,’ Davis said. ‘Unless you do that, you’re just growing your debt. We have to make everything we use or consume.’

‘Cities and communities that have lost the jobs are a lot more receptive to my message of saving jobs and getting out of those free trade agreements,’ he added.

Davis isn't against all trade with foreign countries. He just thinks it should be fair trade. If we trade with another country, he said, that country should buy as much product from the U.S. as we buy from them. If not, they get slapped with a tariff on the difference.”

Click on: http://thebatavian.com/howard-owens/jack-davis-its-all-about-saving-american-jobs/26115

Moderates and their exceedingly comfortable allies in American centers of global capitalism must appreciate that if they don’t soon put the mixed economy—a financially stable public sector and an investing private sector—back to work radicals will make constructive market-based reform much more difficult.

In politics, as in industry, if you’re not going to bother to maintain your machinery you had better figure out how to live without it?

Should Republicans add unions to their hit list?

Along with Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, extravagant public service benefits offend the public and stress government finances. The reputations of a dozen governors will be determined this year on how they manage employee payrolls and pension liabilities.

Public sector unions will be challenged to restrain their wage demands and to pay more for their benefits. They won’t be able to argue that their employer has the funds or that they should receive more money and benefits than equivalent private sector workers. The governors of the two largest troubled states—California and New York—are nationally recognized Democrats. So, there’s a good chance both Democrats and Republicans are going to anger the union movement.

It needn’t become as divisive an issue as healthcare, and poison Washington. Nevertheless, the campaign of Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin to strip down state collective bargaining rights and effectively turn unions into hand-to-mouth charities is exciting national Republican and right-wing ideologues.

This phenomenon is neatly described in “Dixie Madison” by Ed Kilgore in The New Republic. Click on: www.tnr.com/article/politics/84170/republicans-wisconsin-labor-unions-south?page=0,0

Of course, standing with taxpayers who are not in unions sounds irresistible. With 10-to-1 odds in your favor in swing states, union bashers can bear some leakage. They should be able to survive the charge of demagoging a complex management problem!

There’s no way to conclude now that Washington Republicans won’t do it. However, conservatives and conservative business leaders—whose primary concerns are the deficit and ongoing support for open markets and less government—should be careful about making unionization itself an issue.

Fear is not a static condition. The recession radically alarmed middle class Americans about their financial security. One early response was to blame Wall Street and Washington negligence and corruption. Cadillac public service benefits fit well into this narrative.

However, fear doesn’t automatically turn you against big government and against neighbors with greater collective power than you. Fearful times ultimately favor protectionism and solidarity over rugged individualism. Indeed, there is something comically naive about wonky libertarians who see in mass unemployment and wage stagnation an opportunity to sell self-reliance and denigrate the social safety net.

Unions have demonstrated that, indeed, there is strength in unity. When you’re feeling weak, are you not tempted to value strength? Whether as organized labor or the resurgent state? Would you not at least be a little nervous about voting for pre–New Deal working conditions?

Big business and billionaires secured their riches under moderate governments. Moderate Democrats made tax cuts, deregulation and free trade possible. In a 50/50 America, do they want to paralyze Washington and drive the Democrats further to the left on entitlements, trade, corporate taxes and business regulation? That may work for Republican ideologues and political dramatists, but would it be good for business?

Mulroney’s prescription for Canadian healthcare is not reform

Retired politicians often get their best press when they’re showing up their successors.

Former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney recently prodded current Prime Minister Stephen Harper to concentrate on the “big ticket items” and set up a   “blue ribbon panel of distinguished Canadians” to fix the financing of Canada’s burgeoning healthcare budgets. Click on: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/mulroneys-advice-to-harper-do-something-big/article1879648/

“We are facing a genuine, genuine problem of quite enormous dimensions,” Mr. Mulroney says. “We have a pretty good system here, but obviously the financing is completely out of whack.

“Someone has to provide some unbiased, thoughtful but effective leadership in the thinking on this,” he says. “Without some new thinking and some visionary approaches, health care is going to consume 70 to 75 per cent of provincial budgets.”

Classic Brian Mulroney.

Before teeing up for another favorable reference to his big ticket accomplishments, however, Mulroney could have acknowledged Harper’s radically different political circumstance. Mulroney himself went big on free trade with the US and introduced the Goods and Services tax in a majority parliament, after winning an electoral majority without reference to either issue. Indeed, in the election Mulroney was either silent on these latent issues or postured as a red-Tory nationalist.

While not always first to those issues that call for boldness, Mulroney has every right to offer bold advice and to be listened to carefully. Once committed to act, great projects did bring out in Mulroney great talent and resolve. Unfortunately, his advice on this occasion is not bold and, indeed, could lead to less change, not more.

Red Tories, like Mulroney, reflexively send big problems to Ottawa. They are the same as liberal Democrats in the US.  Once they see that a significant problem growing in every province in the country, they look for a federal response. However, in the case of healthcare costs Ottawa may, in fact, be the worst place to turn for effective solutions.

Fundamentally, the principal national challenge—universal access across Canada--has been long resolved. The federal government—through equalization payments and per capita health grants to the provinces—provides incentives and support to ensure each province maintains universal and portable healthcare services.

That federal contribution has grown with the growth of provincial costs and there is broad agreement that Ottawa maintain is share.

The provinces are almost entirely responsible for the delivery of those services and, as important, have the competence and political responsibility to manage the individual provincial systems.

In Ontario, for instance, the Ontario government operates a $47 billion health system and pays for approximately 80 % of the costs. A new national vision might end up simply increasing the federal share to above 20 % and, thereby, relieve the province of a fraction of the political and managerial challenge of keeping the system affordable and up to date.

Recent federal silence on changing the status quo, however, hasn’t necessarily been a bad thing. It’s now clearer in people’s minds that the provinces are actually responsible. And governments in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and elsewhere are implementing and testing new ideas.

Other than re-opening demands for $billions more from Ottawa, Mr. Mulroney’s blue ribbon panel could actually distract the provinces and only confuse the public about who is accountable.