Archive for category National Politics
Presidential Statements & Presidential Silence
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics on December 21st, 2014
I guess I’m glad the president finally condemned attacks on policemen with the same vehemence he usually reserves for Israeli housing construction.
One normally only condemns that which requires condemnation, something about which there exists doubt as to its moral status. When he finds it necessary to remind us that the cold-blooded murder of police officers is a bad thing, to whom, exactly, is he speaking? Not to me, nor to anyone I personally know. We already have no doubts on that score. It means that there’s almost nothing he could say that would be strong enough.
Why has he put himself in this rhetorical box to begin with? No comment should be necessary. The only reason we were waiting for one from him is because he’s opened his mouth so many times, on so many other subjects, that to *not* say something here would carry its own weight.
That doesn’t even touch on the quality of Obama’s comments about the Cambridge Police, the New York Police, or the Ferguson Police, all of which have tended to assume that there was some police misconduct, even in the absence of credible evidence to that effect.
I think that people who claim that Obama is in large part personally responsible for either the police murders, or the environment that makes them acceptable to some people, are going too far. I do think he’s in some small part responsible. People don’t talk unless they believe that their words will have some effect, Presidents especially so. In the past, that meant that presidents weighed their words and the occasions for them carefully.
Not everything requires a presidential comment. In this case, he’s got enough on his plate trying to manage the executive branch of the federal government without trying to be the country’s police commissioner, to be sure.
Keystone XL 2015
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Business, Economics, Energy, National Politics on November 18th, 2014
Today, Harry Reid’s Senate committed one more act of legislative malpractice by failing to override a filibuster of the bill to move the Keystone XL pipeline forward. The vote was taken for the sole purpose of giving political cover to nearly former Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who’s in a runoff election. Much of her campaign has been based on her effectiveness in representing Louisiana’s interests. Louisianans overwhelmingly support the pipeline. But Harry Reid has willingly run interference for a White House that doesn’t want to make a decision, and risk alienating either the blue-collar wing or the environmental wing of its coalition. So the trick was to get to 59 votes, but not 60.
Apparently the Democrats thought Landrieu might be able to make some use of it. I’m not sure what failure was supposed to prove, but the fact that it was done at all proves that Harry Reid, like Dorothy, had the power to do so all the time. The message that comes through loud and clear is, “We’ll do anything to hold onto a Senate seat.”
Republicans have solidly supported building the pipeline, and will have no such aversion to embarrassing the White House, so it’s a fair bet that it will come up for a vote in the new Congress. How will it fare?
On the surface, things look pretty good. Supporters only need to get one more vote to move it to the President’s desk. Can they?
We can safely assume that all 54 Republicans will vote for the pipeline. So they need to find six Democrats to go along. Here’s the list of today’s Democrat aye votes:
Carper (D-DE)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Warner (D-VA)
Bennet (D-CO)
Casey (D-PA)
Donnelly (D-IN)
Manchin (D-WV)
Heitkamp (D-ND)
Tester (D-MT)
Begich (D-AK)
Hagan (D-NC)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Pryor (D-AR)
Walsh (D-MT)
Of the 14 ayes, five won’t be around for the next session, because they were or will have been voted out of office:
Begich (D-AK)
Hagan (D-NC)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Pryor (D-AR)
Walsh (D-MT)
That leaves these six:
Carper (D-DE)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Warner (D-VA)
Bennet (D-CO)
Casey (D-PA)
Donnelly (D-IN)
Manchin (D-WV)
Heitkamp (D-ND)
Tester (D-MT)
Only one, Colorado’s own Michael Bennet, is up for re-election in 2016, so he’s probably a safe bet to stay in the Yes column. Gov. Hickenlooper’s reticence to take a position notwithstanding, Keystone remains popular here in Colorado. All the other Democrats up for re-election in 2016 voted No, which tells you that Dems either think those are safe seats, or that people in those states will have forgotten this vote by then. In any event, there’s little reason for them to change their votes to yes between now and 2016.
Casey, Donnelly, and Manchin all come from states with substantial coal production. These are fossil-fuel friendly states, these guys are up in 2018, and none of them won their seats by being economic suicidalists. McCaskill has been a vocal supporter of the pipeline in the past, as well. That gets us to five, and leaves us with:
Carper (D-DE)
Warner (D-VA)
Heitkamp (D-ND)
Tester (D-MT)
Warner also comes from a coal-producing state, and that part of Virginia almost delivered the election to Gillespie this year. Almost, but not quite. Warner doesn’t need to run again until 2020, and his colleague, Tim Kaine, voted No. Carper voted yes, but issued a pretty weasily statement back in 2013. I wouldn’t count on him.
Honestly, I think either Tester of Heitkamp could stay as Yes votes, and largely for the same reasons – they’re Democrat senators in increasingly Republican states. Montana just elected its first Republican senator in 100 years; Tester must be paying attention. Rob Port sees the vote as bad news for Heitkamp.
If Reid does decide to run for re-election, he could be facing a stiff challenge from jaw-droppingly popular Governor Sandoval, who would likely make much of whatever arm-twisting Reid needed to do to keep 41 members in line. On the other hand, he only needs to hold on to one of these senators, 2016 could be a good year for Dems, and it’s always more fun to be on the good side of a petulant Majority Leader with a long memory than on his bad side.
Still, it looks as though Reid could have his work cut out for him.
Republicans – A State-Level Powerhouse on a National Scale
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics on November 6th, 2014
The Republicans are now America’s majority party at all levels of government, proving at least as adept as the Democrats in adapting to local conditions.
The facts are indisputable. Republicans control nearly 2/3 of the governorships, will end up with 54 Senate seats, and a postwar high in House seats, possibly as many as 250.
The takeover of state legislative chambers has been breathtaking. From the plugin below, you can see that it has been going on for some time, but really finished off the Dems in the South in 2010.
From its founding until 1994, the Republicans had really been a sectional party, able to compete effectively in the north and west, but locked out of the south. In his four presidential elections, FDR won well over 90% of the vote in the Solid South. (In none of those did the Republican nominee break 5%. In 1944, Roosevelt fell below the 90% line, but the Republican Thomas Dewey finished third, behind the Southern Democratic Party, which didn’t actually nominate anyone.)
As the party moved south, it increasingly ceded the northeast to the Democrats, but the party was never entirely moribund there, either.
The price of this national success was something that the Democratic Party has been struggling with since its inception – the regions of the country are, in many ways, not very much like each other. It makes governing as a party hard, because it creates a tension between the objectives of the national party and the desires of one’s constituents back home. But it’s part of the design of our system that deserves to be celebrated, rather than denigrated.
The Democrats traditionally dealt with this problem by uniting around the one thing that every political party can agree on – staying in power. So much so that they have come to stand for little else. They’ve been so good at uniting around power that, had it not been for Reconstruction, it’s almost certain that the country would have found itself with a Democrat president long before Grover Cleveland won the 1884 election.
Sometimes, a party is able to overcome that tension long enough to get things done. The Democrats used a large House majority and 60 votes in the Senate to pass Obamacare, and promptly proved the limits of that strategy. But on the flip side, I’m fond of pointing out that Jesse Helms couldn’t have won in Minnesota, and Rudy Boschwitz couldn’t have won in North Carolina, but they both helped pass the Reagan tax cuts.
The question is, now that they are a national party, can the Republicans find a reason for governing that unites these various regions? It’s a question they’re going to have to answer if they want to win the White House and actually govern.
Foreshadowing 2016 with 1966
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics on October 8th, 2014
Many people are looking at who’s visiting Iowa and New Hampshire. Who’s campaigning for Senate and gubernatorial candidates is more interesting.
Obviously, for the most part, not Barack Obama, although Michelle seems to be in some demand. Gotta keep those policies off the ballot, after all.
Who is stumping for candidates? Mitt Romney. And Bill Clinton – not Hillary Clinton.
Why does this matter? One of the lessons I took away from Teddy White’s “The Making of the President 1968” was that Nixon solidified his support in the party and his standing as a national figure by aggressively campaigning in the 1966 mid-terms for Congressional candidates. Almost all of them won.
Romney may or may not have enough left to make a serious run.
What’s more telling is that Bill is either the more popular or more influential Clinton, or both. Apparently, not even most Democrats are really Ready for Hillary, they’re just Nostalgic for Bill.
Don’t underestimate nostalgia. Nostalgia for Bush I was largely responsible for putting his son in the White House in 2000, when people were tired of the Clinton Drama, on the ballot in the form of his Vice President. But George W. didn’t have Hillary’s resume or long, long, long history in the national spotlight. He may have found it useful to ride Clinton fatigue with his own relative novelty and memories of what it was like when adults were in charge.
The fact that Hillary, who has had decades – literally uninterrupted decades – to make her case to the American people, is having to do the same thing, should be a yellow flag to those who think she’s a done deal.
Liberals And Your Soul
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Foreign Policy, History, National Politics on October 7th, 2014
Remember when Michelle Obama promised that Barack would heal our broken souls? In my lifetime, that’s pretty much been the refrain of liberalism – a concern for the well-being of your souls, if not of yourselves, despite the stereotype that this is a feature of the religious right. It goes to the heart of the liberal trope that intentions matter more than results, and that government action is inherently more virtuous than private initiative.
It turns out this was a characteristic of liberalism even when it was relatively new and driven by Evangelical concerns. From Paul Johnson’s The Birth of the Modern, and his chapter on Britain’s rise in the role of World Policeman, comes this description of the conflicting British attitudes about the Barbary pirates and their slavery:
The West’s supine attitude toward the horrors of Barbary piracy had long aroused fury in some quarters. Officers of the British navy were particularly incensed since seamen were frequently victims of the trade. They could not understand why the huge resources of the world’s most powerful fleet were not deployed to root out this evil affront to the international law of the sea, once and for all. They could not understand why liberal parliamentarians, who campaigned ceaselessly to outlaw the slave trade by parliamentary statute, took no interest in Christian slavery….But William Wilberforce, MP, and the other Evangelical liberals, who finally got the slave trade made unlawful in 1807, flatly refused to help. They were concerned with the enslavement of blacks by whites and did not give the predicament of white slaves a high priority on their agenda, an early example of double standards.
I’m sure this account of Wilberforce is going to make some people unhappy, but it shouldn’t be taken as ad hominem. He’s merely the most prominent representative of the cause, and therefore of the cause’s flaws. Liberalism suffered from double standards when it was new, and now that it’s old, when it was religious, and now that it’s secular.
Transcription Services
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Defense, Foreign Policy, National Politics on May 27th, 2014
The media appear to have bought, without question, the White House line that the publication of the name of the CIA station chief in Afghanistan was accidental.
It might have been accidental; it’s certainly the simplest explanation. Someone puts together a list of military personnel meeting with the President during his scandal-distraction photo-op visit. The station chief, being under cover, is on the list. The guy transcribing the list isn’t really paying attention, and he writes down the name, and sends it out to the press. He has an embarrassing “oops” moment, and then sends out another list without the name, which only succeeds in drawing more attention to him. You could completely see someone who’s been promoted beyond his level of functional literacy doing this.
If so, I can understand the reluctance to throw the poor schlub to the wolves, but a man’s life has been put in danger here. He can probably find employment elsewhere doing something. Too bad for his bureaucratic career, but I wouldn’t want to place anyone else’s life in his fat-fingered little hands.
And it might have been deliberate by whoever did it. I can think of a number motivations for an underling having done so. None of these is a good reason; people have been known to do all manner of damage while thinking that they were doing the right thing.
First, and basest, the leaker may have had a personal grudge of some sort against the station chief. It’s been known to happen. It’s also pretty much the single most unprofessional thing someone could do, and deserves swift and unmerciful punishment.
It’s also possible that the leaker had a professional complaint. Perhaps the station chief was obstructing some administration policy, or proving to be an effective voice in opposition to some policy change. Perhaps the CIA operation in Afghanistan as a whole was proving to be difficult to dislodge, or to move on some question. This is localized – and dirty – bureaucratic warfare.
It’s also possible that this is bureaucratic warfare of a more generalized kind. This administration has managed to centralize control of foreign policy to a degree unusual for any administration. One organization that steadfastly and successfully resists that kind of political centralization is the CIA, largely because of its finely-tuned skeleton sensors, and talent for exhuming bodies. By exposing the name of the station chief, not only would it throw the Agency off-balance at a key time, it would also send a message to other field officers that they aren’t safe, either.
Up until, oh, January of 2009, this sort of behavior would have been unthinkable. But then, up until January of 2009, having the FEC and the Attorney General coordinate with the IRS on the auditing and prosecution of political opponents would have been unthinkable, too.
When we had a real WH press corps, they would have considered those alternatives and asked questions about who did it. They certainly wouldn’t have meekly accepted an innocent explanation – especially from an administration with a track record like this one when it comes to explanations.
For a group that derides extended quotes as “transcription,” they’ve looked a lot like a White House transcription service for about 5 1/2 years now.
Team Sport
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics on April 20th, 2014
Jay Cost, prize student of the history of American political coalitions, writes (among other things), the following:
Facing the liberalism of today’s Democratic party, all factions of the GOP can usually agree on quite a lot. Virtually nobody in the coalition supports the Democrats’ efforts to increase taxes or federal regulations, especially when the beneficiaries are labor unions or the environmentalist left. Yet that unity can mask a historical irony: The rise of the modern left has pushed many of the country’s old political disagreements into the GOP. The skeptics of big government might once have been Democrats in the mold of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, but now they are joined with the heirs of Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay, who prefer to use the power of government to promote the private economy.
Considering how hot the conflict burned between these two forces when they were in different parties—the elections of 1800 and 1832 were particularly vitriolic—it is little wonder that today’s Republican establishment and its voting base can seem to hate each other more than they do the Democrats. Yet both sides must confront a stark reality: The American left is so strong today that neither half of the Republican party can do without the other.
The GOP has poached most of the conservative voters of the Democratic party. Those who remain committed to the liberal program are so numerous that the Democrats’ share of the vote is unlikely to fall below 45 percent, barring realignment. A united GOP, similarly, can count on about 45 percent support, meaning that politics today hinges on winning the support of that disengaged and unaffiliated middle 10 percent of the country.
Among those who would currently be identified in the “libertarian” wing of the party there are those who are, simply, advocating for their preferred view on these matters. But there are others, those who cry “RINO!” or “Ogre!” or complain about “voting for what you don’t want,” or talk blithely of how unimportant winning is. They tend to be either impatient or don’t do well with ambiguity. (This tendency isn’t limited to the libertarian wing, but I tend to see more of it from there. Bret Stephens’s recent column about Rand Paul is one example from the other side.)
There are others singing a siren song of purity, sometimes from outside the party, sometimes from inside. By focusing on disagreements, they would have others believe that Mitch McConnell has more in common with Barack Obama than with Ronald Reagan. (Come the fall of next year, they’ll be saying the same thing about Scott Walker.) Drawing sharp distinctions, using the old political sleight of hand that 99 is no better than 0, is useful if you’re drawing a line where more people are on your side than the other. Democrats do that, to keep the race-based portion of their coalition in line, by pretending that since personal color-blindness is impossible, the only alternative is to write race-obsession into law.
I don’t see much utility when it’s the difference between leading a party of 25% of the electorate and leading one of 45%. Of course, if you’re interested in “influencing” without the responsibility of governing, that might have some appeal; don’t count on too many people staying around more than a cycle for that party.
There are plenty of disagreements and frustrations within the Republican party. There are too many Republicans who aren’t willing to roll back the errors of the Left, and others who have compounded those errors with unforced errors of their own. But the main difference – between the grassroots and the establishment – goes back to the party’s origins. It’s reasonable to take the current Democrat party at its word, that it represents ideas meant to fundamentally transform America away from its founding ideas. As Cost writes, the internal debate within the Republican mirrors many of the historical divisions within the country as a whole.
Pretending that Henry Clay has more in common with Karl Marx than George Washington isn’t a route to being trusted with government.
The Slickest Three Minutes In Politics
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics on April 3rd, 2014
Wednesday night, former President Bill Clinton made a campaign appearance on behalf of his wife the Clinton Global Initiative on the Jimmy Kimmel show. It was vintage Clinton, folksy charm on display even as he says the worst about his past, present, and future political opponents.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cAxh2_l4LI[/youtube]
Kimmel: Do you think that this current climate, where the parties are so divided, and really have a difficult time working together on almost anything, is a temporary situation?
Clinton: I don’t know. But I think – here’s what I do believe. <pause> You know, I had a Republican Congress for six of the eight years I was president. And I had some of the same problems the president has.
One of the problems with young people, and with lower-income working people that have kids and trouble voting, is that they’ll show up in a president election, and if their candidate wins, they think that’s all they need to do. So then they don’t show up in midterms, when the Congress is elected – a third of the Senate in off-year elections, and all of the House of Representatives, and most of the governors, and state legislatures. So then they wonder why nothing happens.
So we have – the president and I – have talked about this a lot, about how the number one thing we gotta do is try to get voting up in the non-presidential years.
But I think it was easier for me to get cooperation in my second term, and remember, they were trying to run me out of town. And I just kept showing up every day like nothing had changed, and I just kept knocking on the door, and just kept trying to work with them, because that’s what people hire you to do, to get something done.
But it is – when you have economic adversity – and people are pessimistic and frustrated with their own circumstances, it is easier to polarize the voter. And I think you see that in other parts of the world too, that…
Like when the Arab Spring started in Tahrir Square in Cairo. All the young people that were in Tahrir Square were among the most impressive young people I’ve ever seen in my life. But the vast majority of people who live in Egypt live in rural areas, and were having a hard time keeping body and soul together, and the only organized political force there was the Muslim Brotherhood. So they won the election, and the young people never gave any thought to how they should form a political party, go out and campaign, have a program.
And that’s what happens in a lot of places. The young people Ukraine, in the square in Kiev, were immensely impressive, and they want a modern country that is not – despite what President Putin says – against Russia, but gets along with both Russia and Europe, and is a bridge between the two, which is what they want. But, the power brokers say no, you gotta be on our side or theirs.
That’s not what people want. But all these people, who have these feelings, who want to build modern, cooperative, prosperous societies have got to understand that no matter how distasteful they find politics, if you don’t play it, somebody will, and you will lose if you sit it out. And it always happens. You gotta suit up and play the game.
This is Clinton at his best/worst. He appears to blame situations rather than people, even as he then turns around and blames his opponents for creating the situations. And don’t be fooled by the dramatic pause and sigh at the beginning of his remarks. He knows exactly what he plans to say before he starts to say it, before he even walked out on stage.
The Republicans are the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, or both corrupt sides in Ukraine, manipulating the rubes who don’t know anything other than their own desperation. It’s a supremely patronizing view of the American people. And this, from a president of the party that has practiced unceasing class warfare and ethnic balkanization for well over a generation.
Remember, this is the president who blamed talk radio for the Oklahoma City bombing. Clinton also hosted the gala retirement party for Julian Bond, who later famously referred to the Tea Party as the “Taliban wing of American politics,” so it’s fair to say he knows something about polarization and demonization.
He’s picked a couple of the most incendiary examples in recent world politics, which makes the comparison absurd. American political categories almost map onto British or Canadian ones, match up poorly with traditional European ones; they’re like fitting round pegs into watermelons for almost anything else. If he really wanted to make a political point, there are plenty of examples from American political history he could have drawn from.
Of course, it’s part of a pitch to get young people to vote this year, presumably pro-Obama, although recent polls have shown the bloom off that rose, especially among his youthful former supporters. Being forced to buy products they don’t want at prices they can’t afford will do that to people. Clinton will eventually say that it’s the mission of young people to vote, to rescue us from the curse of polarization.
Clinton has never been one to let the facts get in the way of a good story, and here he’s true to form. Young people and working class families with children “have a hard time voting,” when in fact, voting has never been easier. His timing here was off, although I suppose it’s not his fault that his appearance was scheduled for the day that North Carolina revealed that tens of thousands of its citizens had found it so easy to vote, they did so more than once. Egypt is not overwhelmingly rural; about 56% of its population lives in rural areas, although it’s true that that’s where the Muslim Brotherhood had been organizing for decades.
Perhaps the biggest whopper was one we’re going to hear a lot of, that Democrats lose mid-terms because young people don’t turn out. Moments before, he had been reminiscing about the Republican impeachment attempt of 1998. That was an off-year election, and Democrats picked up seats, in the 6th year of his presidency, and election that usually poisonous to the party in power. I guess his memory last night wasn’t any better than it was under oath.
While routine appearances by sitting presidents on late-night talk shows cheapen the office, appearances by former presidents serve to emphasize the Cincinnatus-like qualities of the office, since they appear as private citizens. They also show us, I think, that the presidency doesn’t usually change people, it just brings out their core personalities. And it’s often helpful to be reminded exactly what those personalities are.
Grayson’s Parallel Universe
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Defense, Foreign Policy, National Politics on March 26th, 2014
Alan Grayson (D-Cloud Cuckooland), has long been given to weird and outrageous comments. A cursory search reveals many of them, including his speech in favor of Obamacare, claiming that Republicans “want you to die quickly.” Presumably this is to differentiate them from the Democrats who want to place in charge of your health care, a bureaucracy utterly indifferent to your fate.
Yesterday, he delivered one of the more stunning apologias for tyranny that I’ve been privileged to witness since the end of the Cold War, in his defense of Putin’s wrenching of the Crimea, and most of Ukraine’s Navy, away from Ukraine.
Now, you may say that he (Yanukovich) was thrown out of office for good reason. There are allegations against him that he was corrupt. There are allegations against him that he used the military against his own people to stay in power. But the fact is that from the perspective of the Crimeans, their leader, the one that they placed in charge of their country, was thrown out of power.
So it should come as no surprise, as Secretary Kerry recognized, that the Crimeans had had enough, and they wanted to leave this artificial entity called “The Ukraine.” Now, in fact, the Russians did assist. They assisted by disarming the local Ukrainian Army and Navy, that’s what they did, and they did it virtually bloodlessly. They did it so the Ukrainian Army and Navy could not interfere in the referendum that was held.
That’s the fact of the matter. Why are we pretending otherwise? Why are we speaking about “naked aggression?” Why are we speaking about “stealing Crimea?” Why are we speaking about bullying, or the new Soviet Union, or thuggery, or audacious power-grabbing, or “Bully-Bear Putin,” or Cold War II? I’m surprised that Judge Poe didn’t tell us that he was saddened that the Iron Curtain had descended over Sevastopol.
This fact is, as the Chairman has recognized, this is not some new Cold War that is occurring. In fact, it’s quite the contrary. We should be pleased to see – pleased to see – when a virtually bloodless transfer of power establishes self-determination for two million people somewhere in the world, anywhere in the world.
And in fact, what we’re seeing here, instead, is the vilification of Putin, the vilification of Yanukovich, the vilification of anybody who we try to identify as our enemy. Before that it was Saddam Hussein. Before, and since then, it’s been Assad. This does not help. The basic principle here is self-determination, that’s what’s happened in the Crimea, and it’s not for us to determine otherwise.s
These comments are best described by Mary McCarthy’s critique of Lillian Hellman’s writing. Others, such as California’s Dana Rohrabacher, opposed sanctions on the grounds that they wouldn’t serve US interests. That’s a debatable proposition, but at least it’s debatable, and the people putting it forward appear to live in the same universe as the rest of us. Grayson appears to have been starring in a trailer for an upcoming science fiction movie involving travel between worlds.
As noted before, Grayson has a history of this sort of nonsense, usually directed at Republicans, so it barely causes a ripple. If we had an actual media, they’d ask every Democratic member of Congress about Grayson’s absurdities, but there’s little hope of that.
There is, however, some hope that the voters of Florida will rid us of this turbulent representative. He was first elected, somewhat narrowly, Florida’s 8th District, in 2008, and then crushed by Republican Daniel Webster in 2010 in the same district. Redistricting seems to have given him a new lease on political life, as it put Webster in the 10th, and Grayson in the 9th, where once again, he was returned to office. Perhaps, after November 2014, with Obama having turned from aid to anchor, Grayson will once again have to find gainful employment outside of the public payroll.
Libertarians and Classical Liberals
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics on February 6th, 2014
At his Defining Ideas blog at the Hoover Institution, Richard A. Epstein has an important piece discussing the differences between classical liberals such as himself, and hard-core libertarians like Rand Paul. He does this in order to draw some important intellectual distinctions, but also to identify some areas where libertarians appears to be sidelining themselves on policy discussions:
The renewed attention to Paul exposes the critical tension between hard-line libertarians and classical liberals. The latter are comfortable with a larger government than hard-core libertarians because they take into account three issues that libertarians like Paul tend to downplay: (1) coordination problems; (2) uncertainty; (3) and matters of institutional design….
…Again, strong libertarians are on solid ground in defending (most) private contracts against government interference…. Yet the hard-line libertarian position badly misfires in assuming that any set of voluntary contracts can solve the far larger problem of social order, which, as Rothbard notes, in practice requires each and every citizen to relinquish the use force against all others. Voluntary cooperation cannot secure unanimous consent, because the one violent holdout could upset the peace and tranquility of all others.
The sad experience of history is that high transaction costs and nonstop opportunism wreck the widespread voluntary effort to create a grand social alliance to limit the use of force. Society needs a coercive mechanism strong enough to keep defectors in line, but fair enough to command the allegiance of individuals, who must share the costs of creating that larger and mutually beneficial social order. The social contract that Locke said brought individuals out of the state of nature was one such device. The want of individual consent was displaced by a consciously designed substantive program to protect both liberty and property in ways that left all members of society better off than they were in the state of nature. Only constrained coercion can overcome the holdout problems needed to implement any principle of nonaggression.
(I don’t think the ellipses have done any violence to the main thrust of Epstein’s argument, but of course, you’ll want to read the whole thing.)
This is neatly encapsulated by Walter Russell Mead’s statement that having the Interstate Highway System makes us freer. Epstein then goes on to provide concrete examples of the three classes of problems he cites above. On taxes, for instance:
The classical liberal thus agrees with the hard-line libertarian that progressive taxation, with its endless loopholes, is unsustainable in the long run. At the same time, the classical liberal finds it incomprehensible that anyone would want to condemn all taxes as government theft from a hapless citizenry. The hard-line libertarian’s blanket condemnation of taxes as theft means that he can add nothing to the discussion of which tax should be preferred and why. The classical liberal has a lot to say on that subject against both the hard-line libertarian and the modern progressive.
Hard-core libertarians will retort that classical liberalism as espoused by Epstein hasn’t done anything to arrest the historical drift in the wrong direction. I’d respond that the hard-core libertarians provide True North; indeed, it’s probably what Reagan had in mind when he famously said that libertarianism was the “heart and soul” of the Republican party. It anchors the discussion, and acts as a conscience in some ways to classical liberals by constantly asking, “How much freedom are you trading away, here?”
However, as Epstein shows, right now it’s engaged mostly in discussion with itself, and it runs the risk of isolating itself from broader policy discussion by being unable to talk in concepts that 90% of the country uses. This is what happens when hard-core libertarians insist that there’s “no difference” between the two major parties. Of course, there’s a difference, and libertarians know it. But for rhetorical effect, and to maximize their own leverage, they end up in effect arguing that there’s no practical difference between Progressive Leftism and Classical Liberalism, which is absurd. Some people end up buying this, but in the end, it’s self-limiting, because they’re just not using the same political categories as everyone else.
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