First Principles

I was looking at some old comment threats from the Federalist Society Blog I contributed to frequently in law school.  One of the comments from an avowed libertarian caught my eye.  He said:

[P]utting the Democrats in charge of one or both houses of congress can’t possibly make matters worse, with Bush in the presidency. […  T]here are a *lot* of libertarian voters across this country who will vote for Democrats just to create divided government. Personally liking the candidate is an added bonus, but it isn’t a necessity.

Republicans can’t take the libertarian vote for granted, and they’re about to find out.

Well, let’s see.  Have things in the past two years gotten better, worse, or stayed the same (particularly from a libertarian perspective)?

So except for unemployment, which stayed pretty flat on average, each of these economic indicators, in fact, got significantly worse once the Democrats took over the Congress  (and unemployment is currently at its highest rate of the Bush Presidency and climbing).

Ironically, the only thing that demonstrably improved during the past two years over the previous six was our progress in Iraq.  And that was due to a policy Democrats opposed rather than supported, and in an arena where the President is at his most independent.

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The reason for this is that I’ve been hearing a lot of people saying lately, perhaps sensing their own expectations are too high, that, “Well, whatever happens, it can’t be any worse than the guy in there now.”  I’ve even heard of the past eight years referred to as “this hell we’ve been living through.”

I can hardly think of a more idiotic thing to say.  Of course things can get worse.

They can get much worse.  (See Carter, Jimmy)

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Libertarians have a knee-jerk affinity for divided government, and there is something to that theory.  If Democrats and Republicans share power and are at odds, they can obstruct each other and less gets done, or better, weaknesses in current policies are exposed and corrected.  This is what happened in the case of Iraq.  And when exactly this kind of obstructionism led to the government “shut down” in 1995, does anyone remember the horrible suffering of the American people for the feds not being there for us?  Neither do I.

But when it comes to economic policy, libertarians voting for Democrats is pure folly.  The levers of the economy – spending, taxing, budget management, business regulation – are controlled almost exclusively by the Congress.  The President is left being entirely re-active, his only tool being his veto pen.  And when you have a big spending, big government Republican President with an unusual aversion to the veto, nothing in the chart above was unforeseeable.

There is something to be said for divided government from a libertarian perspective, and one can understand the libertarian frustration with Republicans.  But who is actually running the divided government matters a great deal to that argument.

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As of this writing, there have been no significant domestic terror attacks since 9/11.  We are still phenominally prosperous as a nation.  We are not in a depression.  The middle class has not disappeared.  There are no Hoovervilles (Bushvilles?) or breadlines to be seen.  Iraq continues to stabilize.  Russia’s aggression has been muted, and (as far as we know) the Iranians don’t yet have nukes.

The economy is weak, but hardly broken.  Jobs are still available to those willing to work.  People who bought more house than they can afford are not living under bridges, but are moving into rental properties where they should have been in the first place.  Restaurants are not empty, and Christmas shopping will still be a multi-billion dollar extravaganza this year. The President is weak, but at least isn’t going on TV begging us to turn down our thermostats and put on sweaters.

It will be interesting to re-visit this post in two and then four years from now.  After all, things might be better!

But they can always, always get worse.