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Potomac Crossings
--By George Mason
Forget the Bridge, Hold the Fort
Let's get ready to rumble! Both party conventions are over and the candidates have revealed themselves and their
plans. The national economic question is whose policies will maintain prosperity? The foreign policy question is
whose policies will maintain peace? The governance question is: are there capitalist answers to social dilemmas?
The Republican Party has a central theme. As defined by David Limbaugh "they champion freedom by restricting
the federal government's role to its constitutional purposes and safeguarding the liberties guaranteed by the Bill
of Rights." The Democrats do not present a coherent set of policies stemming from a central purpose. Their
primary concern is the reactionary one of preserving the status quo, meaning the continued growth of the welfare
state as derived from socialist thought. Their problem is explaining how expanding an unlimited, unaccountable
welfare state will even maintain, let alone stimulate the economy. In fact, the historical case is that wealth
created in the private sector can be smothered by anti-free market policies enacted by government.
Just one example. Pet owners in public housing who aren't disabled or elderly are exempt from the following
rules. If someone is elderly or disabled, however, the following rules were finalized August 9th by the Clinton-Gore
administration. Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Part 5, Subpart C: "Pet Ownership for the Elderly or Persons
with Disabilities, " In the case of cats or other pets using litter boxes, the (Federal) pet rules require
the pet owner to change the litter (but not more than twice each week), may require pet owners to separate pet
waste from litter (but not more than once each day), and may prescribe methods for the disposal of pet waste and
used litter."
Presidential elections are a mixture of a referendum on the immediate past and a determination of the candidate's
character, values and judgement. Issues are complex, easily distorted and often blurred. The electorate cannot
specifically know the future, so it picks men and women to represent their interests and make judgements as situations
arise. With our Constitutional system of checks and balances, we do not have a direct democracy but a representative
republic.
The underlying issue for capitalism is that it is efficient. Therefore, is there a capitalist answer to help the
less efficient? For example, Gore has proposed a $42 billion expansion of the Hillary Clinton government health
care plan called SCHIP. The Federal State Children's Health Insurance Plan would thereby cover an additional one
million children for an annual cost of $42,000 per child. Equivalent insurance purchased in the private sector
would cost an average of $1,000 per child. The reason is that SCHIP money doesn't actually go to pay for insurance
but for government operated school-based clinics and health programs. In the past, the debate has been lost by
those Republican elements that vigorously opposed the $42,000 answer without offering the $1,000 solution. Bush
seems to understand the difference. There is a compassionate answer consistent with capitalism. Market-based reform
can be an ally in programs to relieve human suffering.
By understanding that the modern electorate really wants an efficient government that has answers to problems,
Bush puts Gore in a circle that he cannot square. When Gore moves left, he alienates the center. When he moves
to the center, he alienates his liberal base. The limits of Clinton triangulation may become apparent soon. Jonathan
Chait describes the problem this way, "When the Third Way takes power (as it did with Clinton) it alters the
equation. The Third Way no longer sits between the two poles of the political spectrum: it becomes the left pole.
The calculus has changed, and, in order to retain the center, the Third Way politician must shift right again.
Originally designed to produce victory by standing between the center-left and the center-right, the Third Way
becomes an ever-shifting median moving both left and right to the right."
In reaction to Clinton's Third Way politics, Gore has decided to prove that he is his own man by revealing that
he is a true classic liberal like his father. His agenda is to tie people to the state, make them dependent and
thereby control them. However, as McGovern, Mondale and Dukakis have proven, you can't win the presidency with
an overt socialist agenda.
The American people always believe in American opportunity. Those in the bottom 20 percent of economic circumstance
don't stay there. They believe they can be upwardly mobile and prove it in their daily lives. To the great frustration
of the left, they reject proposals that limit their chance to rise above circumstance. The entrepreneurial, Internet-wired,
independent small-business world of borderless trade and commerce is creating new wealth and new jobs every day.
They want their share. There is no hunger in the land for someone who will "fight for us." There is a
hunger for political peace and an end to fruitless gridlock. In the era of an inclusive, bi-partisan center, HillaryCare
is passe.
The Gore strategy of discarding the Clinton record and Third Way centerism and returning to the Walter Mondale
Left of 1984 is not an advance across the bridge to the 21st century. It is a retreat to holding the fort for public
sector unions and other special interests who are largely dependent for their livelihood on tax revenues.
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| George Mason, 1725-92, was known as the Sage of Gunston Hall.
His Virginia declaration of rights, written in 1776, was the model for the first section of the Declaration of
Independence. A friend of Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, Mason was an original drafter of the Constitution
and the first ten amendments to the Bill of Rights. He refused, however, to sign the final version of the Constitution
because he thought it did too little for individuals and, without the Bill of Rights, gave too much power to the
government.This column honors his memory. |
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