What: "Eat the Future", The New York Times
When: February 14, 2011
Republican leaders like to claim that the midterms gave them a mandate for sharp cuts in government spending. Some of us believe that the elections were less about spending than they were about persistent high unemployment, but whatever. The key point to understand is that while many voters say that they want lower spending, press the issue a bit further and it turns out that they only want to cut spending on other people.
That's the lesson from a new survey by the Pew Research Center, in which Americans were asked whether they favored higher or lower spending in a variety of areas. It turns out that they want more, not less, spending on most things, including education and Medicare. They're evenly divided about spending on aid to the unemployed and—surprise—defense.
The only thing they clearly want to cut is foreign aid, which most Americans believe, wrongly, accounts for a large share of the federal budget.
Pew also asked people how they would like to see states close their budget deficits. Do they favor cuts in either education or health care, the main expenses states face? No. Do they favor tax increases? No. The only deficit-reduction measure with significant support was cuts in public-employee pensions—and even there the public was evenly divided.
The moral is clear. Republicans don't have a mandate to cut spending; they have a mandate to repeal the laws of arithmetic.
Strange times.
It is a strange time, indeed. Diverse currents of American neuroses flow together, producing something very near to crises at the nexus points. Liberals and Democrats in the American political system are ineffectual on their best days, look meek and confused most of the time, and tend toward outright incompetence on their many, many bad days.
To the other, the right wing is approaching a breaking point in both its economic and social factions. Since the 2008 financial collapse and President Obama's election, the entire conservative ideological machinery has come apart. The financial meltdown devastated confidence in our economic schemes; the GOP's stonewall opposition and dedication to voodoo economics haven't helped any. The defense hawks are reeling in confusion as the public wearies of the war in Afghanistan. The social conservatives have been coming apart for years, exhibiting something of the Freudian slow return of the repressed: abstinence leaders admit they don't care if their policies work, yet continue to meddle in the sex lives of teenagers; anti-gay leaders turn out to be gay; adultery inquisitors cheat on their wives; youth ministers across the country frequently convicted of molesting the youth.
It's an exasperating time. Enough so to lead Paul Krugman to wonder, dangerously, "How can voters be so ill informed?"
One must tread carefully around that question, regardless of its validity on any occasion. After all, voters are human, and have egos to bruise. Even setting aside Krugman's issue, though—
In their defense, bear in mind that they have jobs, children to raise, parents to take care of. They don't have the time or the incentive to study the federal budget, let alone state budgets (which are by and large incomprehensible). So they rely on what they hear from seemingly authoritative figures.
And what they've been hearing ever since Ronald Reagan is that their hard-earned dollars are going to waste, paying for vast armies of useless bureaucrats (payroll is only 5 percent of federal spending) and welfare queens driving Cadillacs. How can we expect voters to appreciate fiscal reality when politicians consistently misrepresent that reality?
—we must, at some point, consider that it is those very same voters who send these politicians to their offices.
To wit, the fall of Rep. Chris Lee (R-NY26) last week. And let us set aside the adultery issue itself.
What remains is a man who chose to lie to a woman about his age, occupation, and marital status, even going so far as to send an embarrassing, shirtless photo of himself in response to an online personal advertisement. One might wonder how this could possibly end well.
Even more, though, one sends these messages from their personal BlackBerry. One might wonder how this could not come back to them.
And, yet, one is also a celebrity; in this case, a member of Congress.
Yes, one might wonder just how this could possibly end in any other way than complete, flaming disaster.
The voters of New York's Twenty-Sixth are not alone in this phenomenon. Nor the state's Fifteenth. It is not a Democratic or Republican problem. It is not a New York or California problem. It is an American problem.
Even in locales suggesting their particular congressional delegation is not especially embarrassing, that is only in comparison to the rest of the field. In the end, though, what American voters have produced is a strikingly dysfunctional government. That, in itself, is something of an indictment.
And as the country becomes more concerned with the state of things, how is it that the result of all that clamor is the initiative to make things even worse?
"In a better world," Krugman reminds, "politicians would talk to voters as if they were adults."
And voters would not let politicians get away talking to the public as if we were all stupid.
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