The hits keep on coming. Today's conventional-wisdom-masquerading-as-deep-insight is called Make It Stop! How Obama can Get Behind the Idea of Limited Government. Are you looking for a succinct description of the subservient, paralyzed thinking that goes by the name "liberal" these days? Well look no further:
It's not unreasonable to worry that, in responding to the biggest economic slump since the Great Depression while fighting two wars, the United States will find itself with a more expensive, more intrusive public sector and a less free and dynamic private one.
It's funny, because if I were a Martian who just arrived on Earth and read this sentence, I'd figure that the biggest economic slump since the great depression and two wars we're fighting would probably be the most important things we have to worry about. But I guess those things pale in comparison to the real specter that haunts our dreams: our government might be getting bigger. Yikes!
Now, I know free and dynamic private enterprise=jesus and intrusive public sector=satan. I know this. The American public certainly knows it. And "liberal" Jacob Weisberg knows it. It's so obvious, it's not even worth parsing. Whatever.
Politically, the backlash against expanding centralized government is hardly a new problem for Democrats. In the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt faced a largely class-based reaction to the New Deal's extension of Washington's role into social insurance, regional development, and last-resort employment. In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson was confronted with a racially tinged reaction against his use of federal power to fight poverty and advance civil rights. Since California passed Proposition 13 in 1978, distrust of government has been a primary driver of Republican advantage and a dagger pointed at Democrats, who have only really thrived when they took calls to limit government seriously.
Now Jake, you know you're not really delivering the propaganda the right way. See, you talked about FDR at the beginning of the paragraph--you know, the guy who presided over the biggest government expansion in American history; the guy who created the "welfare state;" the guy who built a liberal coalition that dominated national elections for 40 years; the guy whose agenda was predicated on the notion that government has a moral and practical responsibility to provide relief to its citizens in the form of taxpayer-funded social programs and economic intervention. When you throw FDR in there it kind of confuses your otherwise totally obvious and common-sense point about Democrats only "thriving" when they do the exact opposite of what FDR did. But whatever.
Shifting to the present day, our intrepid reporter explains how Obama is failing to appreciate this totally natural and not at all ginned-up fear of expanded government.
Even now that the fear of excessive, irreversible public-sector growth has provoked an agenda-stalling backlash and resulted in serious people claiming that his proposals equate to socialism, Obama has yet to clarify his ambiguous view of government's role.
For helpful hints about what sort of "serious people" think Obama is a socialist, we can click on the link, which takes us to a Weisberg column from March of last year in which our hero bravely takes on two intellectual dragons, Charles Krauthammer and Newt Gingrich.
(Incidentally, in this column Weisberg helpfully informs us that modern European democracies that provide social benefits to their citizens comes from a historical tradition that "stretched back to Bismarck and Germany in the 1880s," which would make sense if Bismarck wasn't, like, a mortal enemy of trade unions who founded the German state on a profound hostility to workers' movements.)
But whatever. Now that he's proven that it's both possible and necessary for Obama to fix the economy and wage two wars while shrinking the government, Weisberg moves on to the real point of the column: Weisberg!
How, at this late stage, might a Democratic president go about establishing himself as a limited-government liberal? As a younger, more idealistic journalist, I wrote a book trying to square my belief in federal activism with a commitment to limited government. In the 15 years since, my advice hasn't much changed (or been taken). New Democrats and Blue Dogs aside, the party's congressional leadership has never really recognized that the problem of government excess and failure is grounded in reality as well as in the other side's distortions and misperceptions.
I hate to say it Jake, but writing a book about the wonders of "small government" as though you invented the idea, and pretending as though you were some lone soldier fighting back against all those socialists who wanted crazy government expansion back in the 1990s isn't really indicative of "idealism." Ah, Jacob Weisberg, that hopeless romantic. Some say he's crazy, with his theory that liberals should try getting elected on a small government platform. If only they'd taken his advice! (Well, I guess technically they didn't really take his advice because THEY'D ALREADY BEEN DOING IT FOR FUCKING EVER. But whatever.)
Anyway, Weisberg is going to lay his good advice on us now. It's the moment we've been waiting for. How can Obama make it work? How can he trump the tea party nutbags and neutralize the Republican opposition? How can he enact the liberal agenda?
At this point, Obama and the Democrats may be destined to learn the old lesson once again. But if they hope to avoid a repeat of Clinton's 1994 fate in 2010, the president and his party might think about fixing a long-term upper limit on the size of government. Because of the bank bailouts and stimulus, federal spending will exceed 25 percent of GDP this year, and public spending at all levels will exceed 44 percent. But if liberals were clear that, in normal times, federal spending shouldn't be more than 22 percent and that the public sector as a whole shouldn't exceed a third of GDP—the level during Clinton's second term—the fear of Democrats covertly foisting a social-democratic model on America would begin to melt away. This kind of ceiling would mean that government couldn't grow at the expense of the economy, because it couldn't grow faster than the economy as a whole. To substantiate his commitment, Obama should unilaterally propose large, specific cuts in programs and subsidies to be phased in as the need for stimulus spending recedes. Raising the retirement age, privatizing space exploration, and eliminating agriculture subsidies would make a decent start.
I haven't really really been focused on politics for very long. I guess Bush II is who really got me going, and the 2000 election really wasn't that long ago. But I am so exhausted at all the lies. Every time I watch the news or read an editorial I feel like an old man. The bullshit is so broad and institutionalized; so subconscious. One in awhile it gets challenged, usually weakly, by a Democrat who's instantly neutralized by the he-said-she-said news drama thing, and anyway he's probably a crook too, so who cares, blah blah blah. It's so demoralizing. Even when truth does come out it seems like we can only use it to play defense--never to actually have constructive discussions of what we'd like our society to be, because we're too busy pointing out how fucked up it is.
That's why when people like Obama come along and speak positively about liberal ideas, about helping the less fortunate and trying to make things fairer and more equal, it really strikes a chord with people. It's like a breath of fresh air. Listen to Sarah Palin or some other mean little person talk about taxes and terrorist professors over and over and it just makes you desperate for someone who can talk with a tiny bit of conviction about values that aren't based on capitalist greed or dumb white people's sexual/racial/economic insecurities.
Liberalism isn't just a set of governing ideas; it's a philosophy that stands in direct contradiction to the petty selfishness and small-mindedness that comprise most everyone's worst instincts. When columnists talk about liberalism, it's very important that they speak honestly about what it is and what it is trying to accomplish. Conservatives, of course, have been lying about liberals forever. But it's only recently that self-avowed liberals have begun lying about liberalism.
Weisberg is, of course, an unbelievable idiot for believing that if Obama would only cut social programs and promise to keep the federal government from growing, then "the fear of Democrats covertly foisting a social-democratic model on America would begin to melt away." This man actually believes that if Democrats just do what Republicans want them to do, they'll stop accusing them of being socialists. Keep in mind, this man writes for Slate and Newsweek. He reaches millions of people. He is criminally stupid. And dangerous.
But beyond even this is Weisberg's most utterly retarded idea: that liberal goals, and liberal policies, can somehow be enacted through a shrinking of government. That there is a hard limit to the amount of money we should be willing to pay to provide for education, health care, social security, for providing basic services to the desperately poor. That while these are noble goals, liberals really shouldn't SCARE Americans into thinking that we believe in those goals too much or that we believe in some moral commitment or anything. That in the middle of the "worst slump since the great depression," liberals need to cut spending in order to achieve liberal goals. One wonders just what Weisberg's liberals aim to achieve, aside from losing elections and further alienating an already furious public.
But whatever. "There's also a risk of Democrats responding in a way that leaves behind more government than we want or need," he concludes.
What do you mean, "we," white man?
