I’ve spent a bunch of time thinking about the upcoming presidential election. One of the ways I’ve approached the debate is to search for the deeper issues lurking below the pageantry, the bluster, the ads, the soundbites, and so on. The first observation is that the political spectrum in the U.S. is severely truncated, as compared to many European countries or Israel, for example, meaning that there is no viable party of the far left or right, when compared to the range of positions taken in other countries. One of the outcomes of the semi-establishment of our two parties in the official mechanisms of our country’s governments (such as the requirements for third parties to demonstrate specific levels of support to get names on ballots), is that both parties represents a diversity of causes and approaches within their boundaries. This, perhaps, is how diversity manifests itself here —in lieu of the rise of multiple viable parties. Despite the phenomenon of this two-party entrenchment, there remain some deeply distinctive approaches that divide the majority of Democrats from the majority of Republicans. Evidence of this divide includes meaning different things despite using the same words and using different words to describe concepts key to each party. This makes true conversation between the parties more difficult.
It’s been enlightening to plough through The Federalist Papers (a little more than two-thirds of the way, so far). James Madison and Alexander Hamilton sketched the differences between these two views in 1788. Little new has emerged since then. The debate then, as now, seems to hinge on what one sees as the fundamental unit of society. It’s a bit of an overstatement, but not horribly so, to say that one party sees rights, benefits, permissions, and so on flowing from government to the people, while the other party sees government receiving its powers from the people. One would be the Democrats, the other the Republicans. Where most of the conversations get caught is in both sides missing the point that one cannot prove the validity of one position over the other in any kind of empirical fashion. These beliefs operate as precisely that—beliefs. Because one person believes that government derives its power and authority from that which individuals delegate to it, that person then embraces the point of view that follows from that. One could—and many do—believe otherwise.
So, in many ways, the debate, such as it is, is exactly what we need to have, because the issue at the root is the issue at the root of civic faith. One side will never prove the other false, but one can or another can persuade converts to join up, shifting the balance of power. The performance of parties when in power is one tool of persuasion. This underlies the metric embedded in James Carville’s dictum, “It’s the economy, stupid.” When one looks at the economy as it performs when party X is in power, is one inclined to grant that party another term to place its hand on the tiller?
A new column appeared yesterday on the Web site of the London Telegraph. Written by a British columnist, it offers an outsider’s observation of our current debate. One might be tempted to say the writer, Janet Daley, doesn’t have a dog in the hunt, but the truth of the matter is that, given the role of the United States in global society, everyone has a dog in the hunt of this campaign. Even so, the perspective of someone who stands a little to the side of our national conversation is worth our attention. In her column (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-politics/9513687/We-should-tune-in-to-the-Romney-and-Ryan-show.html), she writes:
What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time. The magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state—from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it—has gone bust. … The fantasy may be sustained for a while by the relentless production of phoney money to fund benefits and job-creation projects, until the economy is turned into a meaningless internal recycling mechanism in the style of the old Soviet Union.
Or else democratically elected governments can be replaced by puppet austerity regimes which are free to ignore the protests of the populace when they are deprived of their promised entitlements. You can, in other words, decide to debauch the currency which underwrites the market economy, or you can dispense with democracy.
This is how the perennial debate has manifested itself at the root of the divide between the parties in this election. If one buys the premise that we “… can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time,” then one will find oneself much more comfortable in the Democrats’ fold. If one believes the premise is rather the converse, that we “… can have free market economics [or] a democratic socialist welfare system[, but not both] at the same time,” then one will find oneself much more comfortable in the Republicans’ fold.
One can extract programs and policies from these two premises. The Democrats propose to go “forward,” as the President’s campaign slogan phrases it, along the road of pursuing both. Republicans propose to choose free market economics on the grounds that the other premise is both untenable given the evidence provided by attempts to enact it and contrary to the roots, aspirations, and genius of American society. In short, Republicans say, “we will not debauch the currency which underwrites the market economy, nor will we dispense with democracy,” noting carefully that we’ve not yet dispensed with it, but that we are leaning towards the steps would take us to its dispensing. Rather, as Ms. Daley observed,
Contrary to what many know-nothing British observers seem to think, the message coming out of Tampa was not Tea Party extremism. It was just a reassertion of the basic values of American political culture: self-determination, individual aspiration and genuine community, as opposed to belief in the state as the fount of all social virtue.
So, can we find in our political opponents people worthy of engaging in a real debate over the root issues because the conversation is serious and involves existential questions? Can we acts as worthy heirs of our country’s founders, speaking as individuals who take the questions seriously because they mattered to Madison and Hamilton, Adams and Jefferson? Can we look at one another and say, “This is a fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. Let’s get it cleaned up so we have an exceptional America to hand on to our children”?
I believe we can.