The supreme policy question driving a large percentage of the current political climate is a simple one: how much is enough? How much does it take to insure everyone an equal education? How much does it take to move a family out of poverty? How much does it take to provide adequate health care for all?

Presently, no one has any adequate answers to these questions–at least answers backed up by decent data. Absent any good solutions, politicians have fallen back on ideology and rhetoric and when ideology and rhetoric reign so does nastiness and divisiveness.

So the right has fallen back on the conservative shibboleths and religious absolutism of the Counterrevolution. Part of their objection to any government assistance to the less fortunate is driven by the fundamentalist doctrine that people by nature are flawed and evil, and as such as largely to blame for their own misfortune. These flawed people would only screw up government programs, causing them to be characterized by corruption and abuse. For the Counterrevolution the old saw about the welfare Cadillac is not only true but the inevitable result of any government assistance.

The Counterrevolution also asks, “Who pays?” This conviction dates back to the nineteenth century, when opposition to things such as taxes, unions and government regulation first began. For over a century, the extreme right wing of the Republican Party has held that the principles behind such ideas as the progressive income tax are inherently confiscatory–”class warfare” is the current phrase of choice. To those zealots the rich are entitled to every penny they earn and entitled to spread this bounty wherever they see fit. Corporations function best in so-called “free markets” where the only rule and the only morality is the bottom line.

Until recently, there were moderate Republicans who conceded that some regulation and some redistribution of wealth was necessary.  In fact during the Eisenhower and Nixon Administrations (remember it was Nixon who proposed a guaranteed annual income), this represented the center of the GOP. However, in the current climate these so-called “moderates” have found themselves driven out of the Republican Party as soft-hearted. This has made the United States the only advanced industrialized nation without a system of universal health care as well as one where the salaries of corporate CEOs exceed the perks accorded medieval aristocrats.

Meanwhile where the Counterrevolution has fallen back on principles dating back at least a century, the left has fallen into disarray. With the word “liberal” now become an insult or ignored; one hears few public figures on the left evoking basic principles. The ideals that sparked the ringing rhetoric of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John Kennedy are no longer evoked by the Democratic Party or its politicians. Instead one hears other answers to “how much is enough.”

The first can be described as the “entitlements” argument. As many federal and state initiatives have come to be classed as “entitlements,” any attempts to modify these programs have been branded as attacks on the groups they serve. This has resulted in a profound change in political rhetoric and tactics, with politicians no longer defending principles, but programs. Even when principles are evoked they have become so entangled with particular programs that it is hard to separate them.

Some of this is driven by a second set of beliefs on the left that can only be described as “accommodationism.” These are elements of the Democratic Party who believe that in order for the Democrats to reassert power they must reach an accommodation with the Counterrevolution. Lead by the Democratic Leadership Council, these so-called New Democrats concede that some programs do not work and some are excessive. The difference is that, as the “entitlements” argument has weakened, the New Democrats have become a major force in the Party.

In partisan terms, the GOP has become intensely ideological and uncompromising, as expressed by leaders such as Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney and master strategist Karl Rove.  Meanwhile, having abandoned ideology and principle, the Democrats have been captured by the accommodationists.

While Liberal America seems on its deathbed, it would be unwise to write an obituary of liberal principles. The notion of the level playing field that lies behind American liberalism has periodically been given last rites by regimes throughout history, but just as assuredly has risen from the ashes to once again assert itself as those who worship inequality have become seen as ideologues defending excesses of all types.

Meanwhile the question of “how much is enough” still awaits an answer relevant to this new century. Perhaps that is why so many surveys of the current mood seem almost paradoxical, people want better health care but are against more taxes to pay for it, people want better schools but keep voting down levys to support them.

What the climate cries out for is a principled approach with practical solutions–one that supports the long-standing Liberal ideal of the level playing field and yet also offers concrete proposals. While historians have chewed over the New Deal so much that what is left sometimes seems as unappetizing as the end product of a masticating cow, there is some consensus that the 1930s were a remarkable blend of principal and practical.

As I write this, the neither campaign has yet focused on an innovative answer to the question of how much is enough. That is because neither can.

I have a theory about why this is happening, it’s one of those big picture things that periodically crops up in bookstores: that is that we are at the end of the ability of current planning methods to cope with our problems. MIT’s Jay Forrester likens the situation to a juggler with too many plates in the air: the complexities, the interrelationships and the global nature of all our problems are beyond the ability of the old methodologies to keep track of them.

We should not blame the candidates so much for this or even Party officials as the various policy advisors on each side. The sad truth is that the failure to answer the “how much is enough” question is an intellectual failure and that failure is a failure of America’s researchers, particularly in academia and particularly in the social sciences.

A lot of grant money has gone to research and programs focusing on issues from criminal rehabilitation to the drug problem to housing to how to get people out of poverty. The Counterrevolution is right about one thing–some are not working. But they are wrong in their desires to eliminate help for those who face a tilted playing field and wrong in their desire to cut research funds.

In fact it could be argued that in part the lack of innovative solutions to the “how much is enough” question is because foundations and government agencies have had their budgets cut and so stick to mainline solutions rather than trying out innovative ones. It is as if Herbert Hoover had been running the New Deal, for unlike FDR, Hoover wanted to stick with solutions he knew, ones that dated back to his days working with the carnage wrought by the First World War.

If we are, as some believe, at the end of one era thinking and at the dawn of another, what promising ideas are out there that might offer some hope? Stay tuned on Friday for some surprising answers.

Tagged with: absolutism • adequate answers • adequate health care • class warfare • corporations • counterrevolution • Democratic Leadership Council • Democratic Party • Democrats • Dick-Cheney • divisiveness • Franklin Roosevelt • free markets • Gingrich • GOP • government assistance • government programs • Harry Truman • Herbert Hoover • inequality • John Kennedy • Karl Rove • level playing field • nixon • policy question • political climate • progressive income tax • redistribution of wealth • republican party • Tom DeLay • United States • Woodrow Wilson • zealots