Paul Ryan endorsement: Is The Economist getting old?

One of the cruelties of keeping your faculties while growing old is seeing so much more that is wrong and having steadily less energy to stop it.

One of the palliatives is to accept some portion of the pipe dreams that hold the wrong-headed in thrall. The Economist’s greatest editor, Walter Bagehot, was charitable but never fooled by this expedient. He depreciated his own acceptance of the British crown with a shrug: “We must not let daylight in upon the magic.” He assumed that good political economists die with few friends, and warned that: “One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.”

Bagehot’s legacy of unrelenting skepticism and hope has been a rock of certainty for rational people everywhere. It has defended its big idea—free markets and free societies—against optimists, moralizers, and engineers on the right and left. It uses the social sciences and great writing to promote workable solutions and scorn futile gestures.

American greatness has always been a workable idea to this English magazine. So, it had few problems with the early enthusiasms of Reagan conservative reformers.

However, over the last 20 years—the years young Paul Ryan has spent in Washington—it has found that its concerns and its rigor have less and less to offer ambitious Republicans that still read international opinion magazines. Whether it be about climate change, tax reform, gay rights, religion in politics, structural deficits and the social safety net, it found the Republicans to be either hysterical or in denial.

It has looked beyond what Republicans say is in their hearts—but this week, with Paul Ryan, The Economist blinked.

In its editorial “The Man with the Plan” and in its wonderful politics column “Lexington," it enthused, calling Paul Ryan an athletic, brainy, forthright, down-to-earth, charismatic, outspoken, daring, and fearless truth-teller. Really!

Ryan could be all those things, and be a politician, too—and still not challenge a single one of the Republican pieties that has offended The Economist over the last two decades.

In its editorial, it includes a caveat for its own future protection, if not for the benefit of the American voter:

“He says that his tax reforms will be revenue-neutral, because he will sweep away exemptions to offset the cost of his cuts, of around $500 billion a year.

“In principle, this is laudable; but there is a worrying gap in Mr. Ryan’s plan. His blueprint does not begin to spell out which exemptions will go, which will stay and which will be means-tested; and exemptions are notoriously hard to get rid of. Until he is more specific, the fear must remain that the Republicans will deliver the spoonful of sugar but not the medicine, as they did under George W.”

The fear must remain? Until pigs learn to bike.

This is pardonable cleverness for a naïve political observer—but not for the English-speaking world’s most influential journal of political economy.

The Economist knows that you can’t find $500 billion dollars without talking to Americans about paying more taxes, that even the term “revenue-neutral” is itself a candy lie.

A modern, honest conservative republican leader has yet emerged to tell the truth: Fellow Americans, we aren’t paying for the goods and services that even the most efficient and most responsible governments will have to keep providing.

Making a dangerous US election: One crazy side is enough

The foulest complaint of the week is: What a boring election; nobody is saying anything interesting. Sullen columns by David Brooks and condescending editorials in The Economist tell Americans they aren’t being offered a significant choice. This is dangerous and untrue.

Telling voters that it’s a dull election is as good as telling them not to bother to vote. And not voting in this election would be an outrage.

At the heart of the election’s image problem is the media’s distorted shorthand: both sides exaggerate, answer to millions, represent elites, and carry ideological baggage; so, covering the election is mostly about conflicting sound bites and the competence of two professional campaign teams—just two gray calculators, so relax.

In fact, Obama is graying and possibly is the most calculating president since Lincoln. A conservative, if you will. Romney, however, is not.

The Economist understates their differences by putting both equally off center:

“But the Republicans’ main problem is taxes. Successful deficit-reduction plans require at least some of the gap—perhaps around a quarter—to be closed by new revenue. If the Republicans got rid of loopholes, they could cut all the main tax rates and still raise more money.

“The Democrats’ challenge is more on the spending side. Productivity has been flat in the public sector at a time when it has doubled in the private sector. Mr Obama needs to decide whether he is on the side of taxpayers or public-sector workers (who, if they work for the federal government, earn more than their private-sector equivalents do in wages and benefits). He needs to get serious about cutting back regulation, rather than increasing it; and he needs to spend more time listening to successful business leaders rather than telling them all is fine.”

Click on: http://www.economist.com/node/21559630

Obama’s spending challenge is America’s challenge—it’s embedded in the country—and is acknowledged by the president and most of his party. Indeed, his spending performance during his first three years is actually better than that of his Republican predecessor.

Click on: http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/05/big-government-obama.html

Romney’s tax problem is entirely self-inflicted and threatens America’s financial and social order. It is the child of a novice fanaticism; it excuses paranoia; it has made compromise impossible; and it tells Americans to give up on their own creation—government for the people.

Government isn’t your servant, stern young Republicans insist. If you want one of those, ask your daddy for one of his.

Obama offers more incremental management, a slow, united recovery. Whether sincere or utterly without conviction, Romney would lead a radical, coordinated Republican effort to transform Washington along the lines of a sugary illusion about daddy’s 1950’s America.

The Economist well represents the assumption that Romney is simply an expedient liar. That in office, he and Republican intellectuals would bend to the data that they’ve ignored for years and find a way to do “something sensible” on taxes, loopholes, and spending that would allow the budget to balance later in the decade—and all this while providing for a strong defense and presenting levels of support to an aging society.

Rational conservative voices like The Economist and David Brooks seem to believe that while Romney’s Republican platform is incredible, it’s reasonable to trust that he has a sensible plan of his own.

The idea that Romney has a hidden agenda to be a moderate president deserves no more respect than the fear that Obama, locked away in his hope chest, has a blueprint to turn America into a European socialist state.

Partisan leaders—the great unifiers

Gurus, psychologists, and demographers churn out books predicting the disintegration of heterogeneous mass democracies. The United States—the world’s greatest project in mass democracy—is overextended. On the little things, it answers to money; and on the big things, it is paralyzed by divided electorate. Furthermore, the divisions are intensifying; they reflect the way Americans want to live.

Communication technologies help extremists find friends while the open road makes it easier for Americans to avoid even living near the “wrong people.”

The Economist was struck by Bill Bishop’s new book “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart.” Bishop demonstrates that Americans—like people everywhere—generally favor living in likeminded communities and that their exceptional mobility is now further dividing American politics. It’s getting smarter and smarter for political activists to establish themselves on the extremes in both national parties. The Economist offers thin comfort:

“America, says Mr Bishop, is splitting into 'balkanised communities whose inhabitants find other Americans to be culturally incomprehensible.” He has a point. Republicans who never meet Democrats tend to assume that Democrats believe more extreme things than they really do, and vice versa. This contributes to the nasty tone of many political campaigns.

“Mr Bishop goes too far, however, when he says the 'big sort' is 'tearing [America] apart'. American politics may be polarised, but at least no one is coming to blows over it. 'We respect each other's views,' says Mrs Wortendyke of the few liberals in the home-schooling movement. 'We hate each other cordially,' says the liberal Mr Balis.”

     Click on: www.economist.com/node/11581447

That’s elegant but inaccurate.

America is not standing in one place and Americans generally are not frozen by hate. Its national leaders continue to make changes and test the social fabric by changing sides.

This week, Obama demonstrated once again the importance of the Office of the Presidency as a unifying national institution.

His decision to endorse same-sex marriage was explained in personal terms. However, it was the kind of decision that that institution encourages the most politically ambitious to make.

You can go a long way in national politics in the US and in a parliamentary democracy like Canada, for instance, by upholding the most extreme or distinct opinions of your community or region—think: eliminating English as an official language in Quebec, living in Texas and opposing any support for the auto industry, or living in Toronto and opposing fossil fuel development in Alberta. However, if you want to lead—and be effective once you get to the top—you also have to help the whole society change its mind.

This involves going against the grain of day-to-day politics and isn’t done too often. Nevertheless, the capacity of national political parties to recruit and promote men and women who can manage society-wide change shouldn’t be overlooked when speculating about whether America still works.