By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, November 22, 2013
If the Republicans can't fight wars and the Democrats stink
at socializing medicine, what good are they?
That would not be an altogether unreasonable question for
a typical American today.
No doubt spokesmen for the respective political parties
would offer all sorts of objections to that summation. And many of those
objections would be fair. A defender of George W. Bush's stint as commander in
chief would point to the quick toppling of Saddam and the Taliban. He or she
might argue that the Democrats undermined a wartime president and fomented
defeatism.
As for the Democrats, a partisan might claim that
Obamacare was never intended to "socialize" medicine. While the
president said that he'd prefer a single-payer system, what he proposed fell
far short of that and included some Republican ideas. A Democrat-defender might
also note that the Republicans are "invested in failure," as the
president recently put it, and have done everything they can to undermine the
Affordable Care Act.
Let's just concede there are many arguments and
counterarguments to all of that.
But such arguments are for professional political
protagonists. For the normal American who doesn't live and breathe politics,
the simple fact is that Democrats and Republicans alike have failed to live up
to their brands.
Consider war, which used to be considered part of the
GOP's core competency. There was a time when Americans understood that war
involved a lot of warlike stuff: tanks, bombers, civilian casualties and, of
course, American casualties. But over the last 30 years, as technology has improved
and our military might has become unrivaled, the American public has raised the
bar in terms of what it expects. Politically and morally, we have a much lower
tolerance for bloodshed. That's one reason Obama uses drones so much: They can
be guided around a lot of political problems.
The Iraq war was sold, at least at times, as a war that
would find weapons of mass destruction, end quickly, pay for itself and usher
in a new era of democracy for an Iraqi people who would be grateful for being
liberated from a tyrant. Suffice it to say that the Bush administration didn't
check every one of those boxes.
Now consider health care. Liberals have been pushing for
some version of universal, single-payer health care for over a century. But
President Obama couldn't deliver that, even with total control of both houses
of Congress. Why? Because vast numbers of Americans didn't want to lose what
they had or didn't think government could offer something better. Obama
understood this. So, rather than try to persuade the American people to
downgrade or otherwise adjust their expectations, he simply lied to them. He said
everyone in America satisfied with the health-care status quo could keep the
health-care status quo, period. Like your doctor? Keep your doctor. Like your
plan? Keep your plan.
Moreover, anyone dissatisfied with the status quo would
get everything they wanted, too. It would be better! Cheaper! Faster, stronger,
bionic! Whatever you want, he promised it.
But that was an impossible, have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too
promise.
Americans blame the parties for a lot, but a lot can be
blamed on Americans. I don't necessarily mean that in a negative or accusatory
way. I merely mean that the parties tend to lag behind the times. Culturally,
Americans want all the upside and none of the downside. Fight the war on terror
but don't violate my privacy. Kill our enemies but don't kill anyone by
accident. Contain threats but don't cost too much.
When it comes to government services, the same mind-set
rules. A lot of it has to do with technology, which changes culture far more
than any sitcom, song or movie. ATM machines, iPhones, apps, GPS, debit cards,
you name it: All work so seamlessly we've come to think this is the way things
-- all things -- are supposed to work. It's not an intellectual conclusion but
a feeling stemming from lived experience. In pitching Healthcare.gov, Obama
pandered to that expectation, vowing the site would work as well as Amazon.com.
But the government doesn't work like Amazon.com. It literally can't work like
Amazon.com.
In the aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan, many
Republicans are growing more skeptical about the national security state and
foreign interventions. If Obamacare continues to unravel, it will be
interesting to see if Democrats undergo a similar readjustment, and stop
overpromising and underdelivering.
But the far more important development will be when
Americans start to downgrade their expectations of what government can do.
No comments:
Post a Comment