In the wake of the primaries: the real American debate

This is actually a debate that's been going on for a while now, but the Republican primaries have brought it into the open in a way it really hasn't been previously. For one thing, virtually the whole of the liberal-left, including the whole of the Democratic Party, has been, and remains, largely irrelevant to it. Perhaps out of shock at how quickly what looked like their epochal 2008 victory has dissipated, or exhaustion trying to defend widely disliked legislation on healthcare and the stimulus, they've been stuck in a purely reactive mode for a long time now, reduced to little more than making repetitive charges of racism.

But some of that has been mirrored on the conservative-right as well, as we see the old conservative and Republican establishments, concerned to retain their tolerated niches within the liberal elite, making condescending, even sneering remarks about, e.g., the Tea Party phenomenon or the Palin-Beck-Limbaugh triumvirate. The Tuesday primaries, though, may have been enough of a shock to that establishment that they're finally realizing they need to actually confront the upstarts on an intellectual plane. In any case, we can see David Brooks (one of the "two mighty Davids of conservative intellect") now trying to make an argument, as opposed to a snark, in favor of what he calls "limited but energetic government". He doesn't do much of a job explaining just what that is (he uses FDR's New Deal as an example), or how it might differ from the liberal-left's simpler "energetic government"  -- but, hey, at least he's putting some cards on the table.

What makes his attempt particularly interesting, though, is that you can see the other side quite plainly -- it's a piece in the Wall Street Journal by Arthur C. Brooks and Paul Ryan, the latter one of the lights of the Republican Party, accurately entitled "The Size of Government and the Choice This Fall". Unlike Brooks, in other words, they clearly sound the "choice not an echo" theme, and moreover, they focus this choice on exactly the right issue -- the size of government. Here's where you can see the contrast between David Brooks' efforts to obscure that issue, and theirs to clarify it -- first Brooks' almost comic litany of despair:

The social fabric is fraying. Human capital is being squandered. Society is segmenting. The labor markets are ill. Wages are lagging. Inequality is increasing. The nation is overconsuming and underinnovating. China and India are surging. Not all of these challenges can be addressed by the spontaneous healing powers of the market.

The last statement is tacked on as an article of faith, I suppose, and he gives no indication that at least some of his "challenges" might be due to the inadvertent infecting powers of the state (and some might not  necessarily even be seen as "challenges"). Ryan and the other Brooks, on the other hand, present alternatives in a fairly straightforward way:

Data support the proposition that Americans like generous government programs and don't want to lose them. So while 70% of Americans told pollsters at the Pew Research Center in 2009 they agreed that "people are better off in a free market economy, even though there may be severe ups and downs from time to time," large majorities favor keeping our social insurance programs intact. This leads conventional thinkers to claim that a welfare state is what we truly want, regardless of whether or not we mouth platitudes about "freedom" and "entrepreneurship."

But these claims miss the point. What we must choose is our aspiration, not whether we want to zero out the state. Nobody wants to privatize the Army or take away Grandma's Social Security check. Even Friedrich Hayek in his famous book, "The Road to Serfdom," reminded us that the state has legitimate—and critical—functions, from rectifying market failures to securing some minimum standard of living.

However, finding the right level of government for Americans is simply impossible unless we decide which ideal we prefer: a free enterprise society with a solid but limited safety net, or a cradle-to-grave, redistributive welfare state. Most Americans believe in assisting those temporarily down on their luck and those who cannot help themselves, as well as a public-private system of pensions for a secure retirement. But a clear majority believes that income redistribution and government care should be the exception and not the rule.

What's key to the above is the idea that what needs to be decided upon is an aspiration or aim, and this is what Reihan Salam, in a short article that compares the two essays above and tries to play peace-maker, focuses upon as well:

Politics is not always about highly technical debates concerning progressive price indexing. It is often about shaping our shared normative understandings, and, as Ryan and Brooks argue in their Wall Street Journal essay, our shared aspirations for the kind of society we’d like to live in. And on those grounds, at least, Ryan and Brooks are offering an attractive alternative to a society that looks first to the federal government to solve problems.

Salam, I think, tries to keep a foot in both worlds -- conservative establishment, and Tea Partyish insurgents -- but in this article we can maybe see his weight starting to shift. In any case, though, the engagement of all three pieces  in real and far-reaching political themes is at least an indication of the kind of thoughtful ferment taking place on the right now, in marked contrast to the left.