Soccer Dad

Listing to port

The editors of the Washington Post, having endorsed Barack Obama for President now reflect on the consequences of his likely victory in Can One Party Rule?

But we don't believe either party has a monopoly on policy wisdom. We liked Mr. Bush's insistence on accountability in education, tempered by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's reminder that you couldn't fix urban schools without some money. We don't support the Democrats' plan to allow unionization without secret ballots, but we agree with them that National Labor Relations Board rules have tipped too far toward management. And so on. We like to think, in other words, that a process in which both parties play a role can sometimes lead to better outcomes and not always to dead ends.

There's some sense in this. However I fail to see why they would expect such cooperation with a president who has an insubstantial record of bipartisanship especially if he achieves a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. And I also can't imagine such equanimity if the Post's editors were facing the prospect of all three branches being run by Republicans.

The editors continue:

That's harder to imagine, though, as each party's moderate wing shrinks. A Democratic sweep might bring to Washington some relatively centrist freshmen who would provide a check on the most liberal wing of the party. But it might claim as victims some of the few remaining Republican moderates, such as Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon and Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, and some of the real workhorses who are more interested in legislating than grandstanding -- the capable New Hampshire senator John E. Sununu, for example. The defeat of such politicians would be a loss for the country, not just for their party.

Of course it doesn't lament advocating for an extremely left wing President at the expense of a moderate one.

Daniel Henninger doesn't see one party control in such an innocuous light.

The U.S. emerged a superpower, and the tool of that ascent was simple -- the pursuit of economic growth. Now China, India and Brazil, embracing high-growth Cowboy Capitalism, are doing what we did, only their cities are bigger.

Now comes Barack Obama, standing at the head of a progressive Democratic Party, his right hand rising to say, "Mothers, don't let your babies grow up to be for-profit cowboys. It's time to spread the wealth around."

What this implies, undeniably, is that the United States would move away from running with the high GDP, high-growth nations rising today as economic and political powers and move over to retire with the low-growth economies we displaced -- old Europe.

As noted in a 2006 World Bank report, spending in Europe on social-protection programs averages 19% of GDP (85% of it on social insurance programs), compared to 9% of GDP in the U.S. The Obama proposals send the U.S. inexorably and permanently toward European levels of social protection. This isn't an "agenda." It's a final temptation.

Or as Fouad Ajami describes it:

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late Democratic senator from New York, once set the difference between American capitalism and the older European version by observing that America was the party of liberty, whereas Europe was the party of equality. Just in the nick of time for the Obama candidacy, the American faith in liberty began to crack. The preachers of America's decline in the global pecking order had added to the panic. Our best days were behind us, the declinists prophesied. The sun was setting on our imperium, and rising in other lands.

If the Democrats were in the hands of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, I wouldn't worry about one party rule. But Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are no Moynihans. Neither is the man who's likely to be the next President.