A friend pointed me to this column by Peggy Noonan in last week's WSJ, "We're Governed by Callous Children." I think she is right in her main point about a disheartened leadership class in business and a mindless leadership class in government.
But she makes the same mistake that other Republican commentators make when they criticize our current leadership. Specifically, she does not come out forthrightly to identify the one characteristic that separates adults from children: children don't have to balance their budgets, but adults do. As much as she may admire Reagan, it was his administration that began our 30-year fascination with outsized deficits. (The deficit mentality nearly went away with Clinton but came back with a vengeance with his successor.)
We will not get out of our current predicament until we face up to the reality that we cannot continue to spend more than we earn (or in the government's case, tax), and that the limits on spending ought to come naturally precisely because we observe not just the benefits but the costs in real time.
I think that what has people disheartened is that there is almost no one in Washington -- not even an identifiable faction of one of the two main parties -- who is willing to act on this fact. So people expect the so-called solutions to make the underlying problems worse. To suggest that callousness or mindlessness (her words) are features of only the current administration and Congressional leadership is ridiculous.
Hey, this is America. If you don't like the current leaders, we can always get some new ones. Is it too early to start the "Bruce Bartlett in 2012" campaign?
This reflects the incoherence on the right
The current conservative movement has still not reconciled themselves to what "fiscal conservatism" means; It has become a hollow platitude, a phrase bandied about like a foam finger at a football game.
It is striking that none of the leading conservatives- Palin, Pawlenty, Jindal; or the talkers on the radio- Rush, etc., have even mentioned the words "balanced budgets".
As you note, it is because balancing the budget requires the sort of difficult choices and painful sacrifices that adults make, that the politicos prefer to dwell on hot button issues instead of serious policy.
Shouldn't Bush Senior get some credit?
He got severely criticized for a tax increase designed to get us back on the path to fiscal sanity. Didn't work out to well for him, however.
It is a bit rich to criticize the 'current conservative movement' for not worrying about balanced budgets; I would aim that criticism at the current leadership of the Republican and Democratic parties instead. The current conservative movement (read: the Tea Partiers) seem to be the only political movement of any strength that is interested in fiscal conservatism and our economic future.
the big spenders
Democrats have an awful reputation as big spenders, but in my lifetime it has been the Republicans who have been the party of reckless spending. Worse, the Republicans tend to borrow and spend, and squeal like stuck pigs when the bill comes due. Sometimes it pays to look at what people do, not what they are said to do.
Given the crazed spending patterns of the previous administration - a trillion on tax cuts, a trillion for Iraq, a trillion on bonuses for incompetent CEOs, and so on - I don't think Obama has to worry about his reputation as a big spender. Remember, the big Bush tax increase is coming on stream in a year or two, so he might as well spend a trillion on health care reform or any other pet project. With enough government waste, we might get out of this depression we're in.
When it comes to spending, I
When it comes to spending, I haven't seen a fiscally conservative President in my adult lifetime. Reagan cut taxes, but also spent our way out of fiscal trouble. (When Reagan did it, he was a saint, but when Obama does it during much worse economic times, welllll...)
The big problem I have with Reagan is not that he spent big in his first year, but that he spent big in his last 4. Deficit stimulus all day, every day just isn't sound economic policy.