After the storm over health care reform in August, it is clear that the Obama Administration is no longer leading public opinion. In fact, the Administration and the Democratic Congress very clearly misread their mandate. Holman Jenkins recent column in the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB40001424052748704471504574442772173150440.html?mod=wsj_share_facebook) very accurately describes what went wrong.
The question is: how does the Administration get back on track?
As demonstrated this summer, the rhetoric of the Republican Party far better fits the zeitgeist than that of the Democrats. Sean Hannity's "Top 10 Items for Victory" (http://www.hannity.com//Article.asp?id=1193278) resonates with average people: national security; tax cuts and financial responsibility; and free market solutions to universal health care coverage, education and energy independence. The problem for the Republican "brand" is that the G.W. Bush years demonstrated to most people, even those who actually believe in its stated positions, that while the Republicans can "talk the talk," they can't "walk the walk." Instead of free markets, we got crony capitalism. Instead of National Security, we had the debacles in Iraq and in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. Instead of financial responsibility, we got the Troubled Asset Relief Program ("TARP").
Currently, with a Democratic Congress and the Obama Administration, we have tax and spend Keynesian approaches, not truly different than the TARP, rather than new approaches. While we appear to be having difficulty finding our way in Afghanistan, new trials loom in the Horn of Africa. Health reform languishes, despite the large majority Democrats enjoy in the House and Senate.
We live in a new Century. We need to take new approaches. We need to rediscover old wisdom. I see less of this with this new Administration and this new Congress than I would like to see, although the potential is vast.
To ensure victory in 2010 and 2012, Democrats must embrace Federalism and the Tenth Amendment. This is not the old code language of "States Rights." Instead, it is the fundamentally American idea that the Federal Government is one of limited powers but one that is supreme in those spheres. It is the idea that all other rights and powers are vested in the States and, more importantly, in individuals and groups of individuals. We must embrace the idea that we need to decentralize and to allow people to develop systems and organizations to improve the commonweal locally, so as to maximize both legitimacy and resiliency, as thinkers on the Right, like Joseph McCormick, on the Left, like James Kuntsler, and in the Center, like John Robb and Joshua Cooper Ramo, advocate.
Specifically, I would recommend:
1. If the 20th Century, from Lochner, through Griswold to Roe v. Wade, was the century of the Civil War Amendments, the 21st should be the Century of the Tenth Amendment.
2. The great, looming realities of the 21st Century are: 1) we will have to compete for foreign capital with everyone else; and 2) we will have a less affluent population and a slower rate of growth. Ever see those commercials for investment in Macedonia on Fox and CNBC? They are the competition.
3. These two constraints mean: 1) we will have to have to allocate a lower percentage of our GDP to government to attract investment; and 2) we will probably have a shrinking tax base in any event.
4. There will, however, be needs that will have to be met and investment rarely comes to unstable nation-states or to those without a properly educated work force.
5. The key to dealing with items 3 and 4 above is the Tenth Amendment.
6. The Federal Government needs to shrink, performing only its Constitutionally enumerated powers, as Madison believed it should, even though this is not the current state of the law.
7. Things like Education, properly a State (or, better, a local) function, would be returned to that level and the Federal Education Department could be eliminated. Something new needs to replace the current model of property-tax-funded, free, universal K-12 public education. We need as many incubators as possible to develop best practices.
8. Universal health care could be pursued through legal reform and the establishment of not-for-profit buying cooperatives. Instead of creating a centralized government bureaucracy like the DMV (or continuing the current employment-based system), Americans should get their health insurance through competing not-for-profit groups like USAA. The Federal Government, post Iraq and Katrina, does not have the legitimacy to make hard choices in this immensely personal area.
9. If this proves successful, Social Security and pensions could be privatized on a similar model.
10. National defense is a (perhaps "the") critical function of government but it does not require continuing to buy weapons for the Cold War. More money, time and effort need to be given to State and USAID. The Department of Defense needs to think, not only about the current war(s), but the next. This would best be done through investing in the development and honing of the Military's current stable of exceptionally experienced Officers and NCOs. Why not try to make them all McMasters and Nagles? GEN Peterus's exceptional brain trust in Iraq needs to become the norm, not the exception.
11. The Troop Program Units ("TPUs") of the Army and Air Force Reserves should be reassigned to the states. State National Guards and Militia ought to be capable enough to handle a disaster at the Hurricane Katrina level on their own. If these forces are deployed in Federal service, there should be Inter-state compacts that handle the issue. As a result, FEMA should be stood-down, saving money and decentralizing disaster response and recovery.
12. Returning Education to the States and allowing individuals to come together to solve common problems though voluntary organizations is not only more efficient, it is more resilient, an issue identified by thinkers like Ramo and Robb and William Lind.
After disgrace over private sexual misconduct ended his brilliant career as Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton became one of the most successful lawyers in the State of New York at the turn of the 19th Century. He did this, not by being brilliant, but by returning to first principals and applying them to an increasingly complex world of inter-state and even inter-national commerce and markets.
Democrats today must look beyond the old Liberal tax and spend nostrums and seek to improve the commonweal by the application of basic principals in new ways. They must also avoid the temptation to talk a good game, as the Republicans did under President Bush, without walking the walk. Finally, they must remember Cromwell's maxim, which best describes what free people seek in their leaders:
If you choose godly, honest men to be captains of the horse, honest men will follow them.
