Ezra Klein on yesterday’s health care summit:
At best, what you can say today is demonstrating is that there’s a sharp contrast in the philosophies on display: Democrats believe the federal government is capable of writing and implementing legislation that will take a big step forward on a hard problem. Republicans believe government doesn’t have that capability, and shouldn’t try. There’s no real compromise available between those two position, but they’re philosophies that the American people can choose between.
The more I think about it, the more I think this is only partially true. Republicans do believe that government has the capability to write and implement ambitious legislation, but only when it involves cutting taxes or invading countries. President Bush’s $1.3 trillion tax cut was an ambitious piece of legislation; it was a colossal reduction in government revenues that — if coupled with appropriate spending cuts — would have tremendously reduced services and programs provided by the federal government. And if anything, the Iraq War was a hugely ambitious attempt at governance: President Bush and the Republican-led Congress committed the blood and treasure of the United States to transforming a poor, authoritarian country into a prosperous liberal democracy.
By any reasonable standard, Republicans have been very ambitious when in control of government. It’s just that they become extremely circumspect when you try to turn that ambition away from wars and welfare for the wealthy, and towards ways of providing economic security for ordinary Americans. Doubly so when its a Democratic president trying to show a little concern for the problems of the non-elites. The short of it then is that Republicans are okay with ambition, as long as it’s conservative ambition, and as long as it is for the purpose of extending American “influence” or redistributing wealth to the wealthy.
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