In answer to repeated queries regarding David Frum’s republican bona fides and commitments, Frum posted the following reasons, or principles of his continued commitment to a party that he has been eloquently describing as off the rails. He’s a serious contemporary American political thinker and his piece (http://www.frumforum.com/why-i-am-a-republican) raises questions about what it means to be a republican, past, present, and future. Here are my considerations of these principles.
The Republicans are the party of American nationalism. We live in a world in which powerful economic, demographic and cultural forces are breaking down the concept of the nation altogether. But if nations don’t matter, why should rich Americans care about the distress of poorer Americans – who, after all, remain inconceivably wealthy by the standards of poor Africans? The flag-and-country themes of the GOP can be kitschy. They also are the indispensable basis of any idea of social cohesion across the vast continent.
First off, how is the party of FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, and Hubert Humphrey not also a “party of American nationalism”??? I was a bit surprised that he started out with this, as it simply echoes a longstanding republican canard and does so in an uncritical way. But beyond that, what he argues here is that only nationalism, as opposed to social structures and mechanisms can ensure a necessary communitarian break on an unstastainable radical libertarian liberalism. While I applaud his acknowledgment that a successful modern society must locate itself somewhere on the spectrum between communitarianism and [classical] liberalism, and between socialism and capitalism, and that these terms describe outer limits in their purest and most abstract form as opposed to conflicting opposites, it seems odd (particularly in light of the past decade) that he still believes that a nationalist sentiment can and will regulate this balance in a productive and sustainable manner. Furthermore, he can only see nationhood through the lens of a chauvanistic nationalism. There are other options. I agree that some fellow feeling, some cultural and narrative bond between citizens is necessary for a republic of our size. But why can’t it be a sense of nationhood that sees itself as inclusive on the one hand and as participating within a cosmopolitan whole on the other? But again, if he really believes that nationalism can maintain us in a sustainable position on the spectrum between communitarian socialism and liberal capitalism, he’s got to get over his fantasy. And the Democratic Party needs to reexamine this premise as much as the republicans do.
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Republican policies of lower taxes, less regulation, and restrained social spending may be poor medicine for the immediate crisis. But they remain the best formula to support the longer-term growth of the economy – way better than the Democratic preference for high taxes and opportunistic economic interventions. The difference between the US growing at an average of 2% vs. 3% over the next decades will determine not only the life-chances of the next generation of Americans, but the power balance of the planet between the US and China.
Maybe, except for the fact that these same “Republican policies of lower taxes, less regulation, and restrained social spending,” the same policies that he acknowledges “may be poor medicine for the immediate crisis” caused this crisis. How do we ensure that they will not do so again? And once again, he buys into a caricatured dichotomy between the Democrats and Republicans. Clinton’s economic policies functioned according to these very premises and helped land us in this mess. I don’t buy that there is no difference between our two main corpratist parties. There are clear differences. Yet their basic economic assumptions are pretty much the same. The difference is one of degree, rather than of kind.
Like the late Herb Stein, my preferred approach to federal budgeting starts with national defense. Defense and national security are the supreme priority of the state. Only after fully funding defense can you then worry about the appropriate level of spending for everything else, and the appropriate level and form of taxation to pay for that spending.
How is this not a consensus position between Democrats and Republicans? Can anyone name a single Democrat in a leadership position who thinks we should not prioritize national security? We may have different ideas about how to address that priority, but which democrats actually believe that we should decommission the Navy, pour all the money into schools and clinics, and then see what’s left to guard our shores? This is not Frum at his most serious.
I intensely oppose any aid or subsidy to particular companies or firms except in cases of the most extreme national necessity, eg TARP. Solyndra is only the latest example of the zeal of Democratic administrations dating back to Jimmy Carter’s to solve America’s energy problems by inserting government into the business of “picking winners.” Now as in 1977, I say no, no, no.
We need more data as to whether or which government subsidies produce results and to what degree. But Frum completely ignores the fact that our policies and legislation favor particular interests all the time. This is unavoidable in a republic. We are always picking winners. Republicans as much or more than Democrats. TARP was indeed necessary, and he admits it. But it was necessary because de-regulation had picked financial winners who won so big that they almost brought down the system.
The omnipresent system of racial preferences built since the late 1960s in hope of compensating for the effects of slavery and segregation is not only a moral inequity, but also a practical disaster. The gap in wealth between white and black families – 10 x greater than the gap in income – has widened under affirmative action. As the Pew Foundation’s research shockingly demonstrates, the children of the black middle class experience frightening downward mobility, discrediting the most basic assumption on which the racial preference system has been built. And this system is one of the most basic political commitments of the modern Democratic party.
Here, at least, we have a real difference. But this is also a bit of a red herring. One can easily argue that income and wealth disparities between members of different racial and economic groups has grown in spite of affirmative action. On the other hand, one can muster data to argue that we haven’t had enough of it, or that it is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to solve the problem of how ‘the last in’ is almost always ‘the first out.’ There was an upwardly mobile African-American middle class in Detroit, until its white residents picked up and left and until the city’s economy, stupidly resting on a single industry imploded. But Ford, GM, and Chrysler, all three managed by white people get off scott free here. Clearly, trying to extend opportunities to minorities screwed up Detroit. It seems as if the buried premise of those who argue this point, that affirmative action didn’t only fail but contributed to growing disparity, is that extending opportunities makes people less likely to succeed. OK, that’s too nice. It makes [black] people lazy and unproductive.
I disagree. Just because admitting under-prepared minorities to universities doesn’t work without resources to help them succeed (only 9% of male African American students at MSU graduate) doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep admitting them and start actually providing those resources. There are lots of people who be
lieve in economic, as opposed to racial criteria for affirmative action. This would also require better support and resources. But you know what? I’ll throw in with the anti-affirmative action folks on one condition…we fund K-12 education by setting starting salaries for public school teachers at $75,000 and mandate that class sizes not exceed 15 students.
Regardless, there are indeed democrats who oppose affirmative action. We aren’t obsessed with loyalty and homogeneity like republicans. So his distaste for “racial preferences” doesn’t in and of itself mean he needs to continue to align himself with a party in thrall to zealots.
I remember that from Teddy Roosevelt and the national parks to George HW Bush and acid rain, real progress on the environment almost always comes under Republican presidents.
Whatever David. Your candidates all want to abolish the EPA. You may not. But even if your statement is verifiable, that ship has sailed beyond the horizon for now. Run Teddy Roosevelt and maybe I’ll become a republican. He couldn’t even win the republican primary for a congressional seat from Long Island today.
Public sector unions rank as one of the most important obstacles to the improvement of public services from education to transit. And the Democrats are the party of the public-sector unions.
I don’t agree. But let’s have that conversation. This is merely an article of faith. Give us some real data, and be open to interpretations that might credibly prove the opposite.
Democrats were wrong on crime from the 1970s through the 1990s, and I’m still mad about it.
Well, since the Clinton administration saw the republican light on crime, we have excelled at incarceration and it’s been an economic and social loser. But sure, we democrats just want to hug it out with rapists. Beyond that, does he really think that republicans have been right on white collar crime?
I believe that the elected Prime Minister of Israel is a better judge of Israel’s national security than the Assistant Secretary of State for Near East affairs. Democratic administrations typically seem guided by the opposite theory.
Wrong. Democratic administrations have always affirmed Israel’s right to set its own security policies. The result is that things are rolling down hill to a point of unsustainability. The weirdest thing here is that Frum has surely met Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and Bibi Netanyahu, and he still types this without smirking.
I admire business people, and the GOP is the party more sympathetic to business concerns and challenges.
Why upset conventional wisdom with the fact that Wall Street donated more to Obama’s campaign than to McCain’s? Democrats are committed to a keynesian approach. John Maynard Keynes devoted his life to saving capitalism. Keynes was not anti-business. Neither is the leadership of the democratic party for as far back as I have read. So let’s just drop this crap already. Stop using boilerplate to keep yourself in the republican game. You are better than that.
Modern democracies generate a choice between one party offering more public services and higher taxes and another offering fewer services and lower taxes.
Good. So it’s about where you want the needle. There’s actually a spectrum on economic policy, not a manichean war between light and darkness. So what accounts for the entrenchment and demonization?
Under the pressure of the current crisis – intoxicated by anti-Obama feelings and incited by talk radio and Fox – Republicans have staked out an extreme position on the role of government.
Agreed.
They are expressing opinions they have never acted on in office and won’t act on if returned to office.
The Tee Party caucus is already enacting those opinions. Why would you think if they occupy more offices, they won’t enact even more?
They’re talking to relieve their feelings, always a big mistake.
Actually, expressing one’s feelings is both necessary and legitimate, both privately and publicly. Passion is good, at least benevolent passion is, unless it blinds one. Problem is, the people who hold the reins of your party are driven by negative passions into policy blindness.
I remain convinced that the Tea Party moment is a passing infatuation, a rhetorical over-indulgence, that will fade as soon as Republicans re-encounter the responsibilities of governing – just as the Democrats’ over-heated MoveOn.org type rhetoric about the war on terror was quietly retired by President Obama in favor of continuing most of the anti-terrorism policies of the Bush years.
Your confidence is unconvincing. And it’s a false equivalence. MoveOn might engage in hyperbole, but it isn’t devoted to undermining science and basic consensus American institutions.
In a more normal kind of contest between the party of less (not zero) government and the party of more and bigger government, I’m with the party of less government.
But shouldn’t we base our positions on the degree of government and the distribution of its power and policy effects where it is optimal? Is it really an issue of quantity as opposed to quality? And if democrats want X amount of government, will you always want X-1 amount of government? Isn’t this a reflexive relativism?
Especially because I feel confident that as the passions of the current crisis fade, Republicans will return to the kinds of ideas we’ve been advocating here at FrumForum.
Ultimately, Frum presents us with two rationale for refusing to recognize that the Tee Party, with its powerful patrons (anyone need a Koch?), will not simply blow over. The first is that governing will temper them. How is that working in the House? Maybe we should all vote for the most irresponsible candidates…because governing will make them responsible. Governing is therapy for political insanity. That’s its purpose. Why elect anyone sane? The second is that the economic crisis will pass and everyone will calm down. But the zealots in the house wanted to default on our debt. Electing republicans at this point, who are ALL functionally Tee Partiers for the foreseeable future whether they share their convictions or not, promises to extend and exacerbate the crisis that maintains their fervor.
You want your party back David? Better throw in with the democrats for awhile. And yes, we’ll be happy to discuss affirmative action and public sector unions with you. And you’ll be free to dissent on this or that issue without being branded…gasp!…a liberal.
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