Successful political messages are simple, and by succeeding with
the simple message of Change and Hope, Barack Obama has at least
spared us the usual post-election complaints of Democrats that
they lost because their message was too “nuanced.”
Victory, however, creates a new problem for Democrats —
governing. This problem is especially tricky now because
Democrats won’t be able to blame their failures on Republican
scapegoats.
Democrats will hold at least 256 House seats when the
111th Congress convenes, the largest Democratic
majority since the 104th Congress ended in 1995. As
liberal blogger
Matthew Yglesias says, this renders House Republicans
irrelevant in terms of shaping the legislative process.
The situation is only marginally better in the Senate where, with
Sen. Norm Coleman apparently a recount survivor in Minnesota,
Republicans will have 42 seats, allowing at least the theoretical
threat of a filibuster. Given the number of moderates and
mavericks in the Senate Republican caucus, however, that threat
is likely to remain theoretical.
Such powerlessness will be discouraging to the GOP, but if there
is a bright lining to the dark cloud of Republican irrelevancy,
it is that it puts Obama and congressional Democrats on the spot.
As of Jan. 20, Democrats are in charge of the legislative agenda
and, for the first time since the early years of the Clinton
administration, they won’t be able to use Republican opposition
as an all-purpose excuse for failure.
Failure is a foregone conclusion for the Democrats’ economic
agenda, and Republicans seeking a coherent conservative response
can boil their message down to three words: It won’t
work.
Infrastructure “investments”? It won’t work.
Pump-priming “stimulus” payments? It won’t work. More
taxpayer-funded bailouts? It won’t work. Go through the
familiar liberal litany of economic prescriptions that Democrats
are now suggesting, pick any proposal, and the message is the
same: It won’t work.
The unfortunate truth, as sober economists freely admit, is that
there is no easy cure for the financial mess caused by the
collapse of the housing bubble. Contrary to John McCain’s
now-infamous September declaration that
“the fundamentals of our economy are strong,” the fact is, as
Michelle Malkin said, the fundamentals suck.
Whatever policy Washington pursues, a quick and painless recovery
is not going to happen, and the only real question is whether
Democrats will delay recovery by implementing liberal policies
that make a very bad situation even worse.
Predictably, Obama’s choice as chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has
already
claimed that the crisis justifies “big, bold things” — and
nationalizing America’s health-care system is surely high on the
list of “big, bold” plans Democrats have in mind. But whatever
the arguments for a government health care takeover, such a move
will do nothing to promote economic recovery. It won’t
work.
Obama himself is already seeking to lower expectations, telling
Tom Brokaw the recession is “a big problem, and it’s going to get
worse.” In the same interview, however,
Obama argued for “a strong set of financial regulations” and
neo-Keynesian “investments” in deficit-funded infrastructure
projects that he called “down payments on the kind of long-term
sustainable growth that we need.” It won’t work.
Some Republicans will reject that message as too negative,
arguing that the GOP needs to offer its own “positive” policy
alternatives.
Bobby Jindal, for instance, has declared that Republicans
“can’t be the Party of No.” Well, what’s wrong with “no”?
Practically powerless to stop the Democratic agenda, and even
less able to enact their own agenda, why should Republicans
entangle themselves in the details of specific alternatives, when
they can reap a bounty of political capital by repeating the
simple truth?
This is not to say that no Republican alternatives should be
proposed. Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert’s idea of a federal tax
holiday is exactly the right kind of “libertarian
populist” alternative, with an ideological appeal to
limited-government conservatives and a common-sense appeal to
independents. Democrats are sure to oppose it, but they will have
a hard time explaining why Washington can’t get by with a dime
less of tax revenue while ordinary Americans everywhere are
tightening their household budgets.
Ordinary Americans are already
telling pollsters that they oppose a bailout of the Detroit
automakers — a bailout that Democrats desperately want as a sop
to their union supporters. Most industry analysts, however, don’t
think Detroit can survive without major restructuring, and thus a
bailout will merely dun taxpayers to waste billions in a futile
delay of the inevitable bankruptcy. It won’t work.
However, polls also show most voters are
confident that Obama can fix the economy, which is actually
bad news for Obama, since nothing he does can bring recovery
before the 2010 mid-terms. And if he pursues the big-government
interventions favored by liberal Democrats in Congress, the smart
bet is that we won’t see a recovery by 2012.
In the short term, Obama’s charisma and a “honeymoon” with the
Washington press corps will shield the new president from blame
for the economic slump he inherited. Yet not even the media’s
leg-tingling infatuation will protect Obama forever.
Just as the failure of the Democratic economic agenda is a
foregone conclusion, their political agenda — expecting voters
to wait patiently for the delivery of the promised Hope — will
meet the same nuance-free fate: It won’t work.
