"At Some Point, Reality Has Its Day"

Those words were spoken by Al Gore in an interview published this week by Newsweek. It was a passing comment, a digression from Gore's larger point about the unwillingness of our current Republican leadership to acknowledge the danger posed by global warming. He observed that "the temptation to reject the truth and try to manufacture your own reality is what got us into Iraq--it's what got us into these deficits. At some point, reality has its day."

I think Gore's comment perfectly captures the point in American political history where we find ourselves at the moment. The modern Republican party is a movement built upon a collection of ideas dreamed up by people far removed from the realities of actual governance. These half-formed policies--slogans really--were borne out of anger and powerlessness, not empiricism and dispassionate inquiry. They were not designed to be effective or workable, but rather to be consistent with pre-existing ideologies and, of course, easy to sell. Not surprisingly, this resulted in a governing philosophy that sounds great in the abstract, but is incoherent and ill-suited to the task of actually governing. For the last six years, our entire federal government has been under the control of adherents of this philosophy, and, predictably, reality is about to have its day.

The father of the modern Republican party was Barry Goldwater. Though he was trounced by Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Goldwater's particular brand of conservatism really struck a chord among those who were fed up with the prevailing liberal governing philosophy, thereby spawning a whole generation of followers. This movement was defined by a hostility toward taxes and government spending and a reflexively bellicose foreign policy.

Many people point to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 as marking the ascendancy of modern Goldwater Republicanism. This is true in a sense. Reagan's election did mark the ascendancy of Goldwaterism as the guiding political philosophy of the GOP. But Reagan had to contend with a Democratic Congress which greatly limited his ability to implement his party's platform. The same was true in the 1990s, only in reverse. The constant threat of a Clinton veto kept the Republican-controlled Congress at bay. For those two decades, the modern GOP was able to campaign on a largely untested set of principles and policies.

But all that changed in 2000 when George W. Bush took office. For the first time, the modern GOP controlled both chambers of Congress and the presidency. It was finally time to put Goldwaterism to the test. Given that the GOP had spent the better part of two decades branding itself as the anti-tax party, it was hardly surprising that Bush's first move was to champion a massive tax cut (which, of course, disproportionately favored the ultra-wealthy). As the economy began to sour, the GOP passed additional tax cuts. After 9/11 and the beginning of a war, still more tax cuts. Little, if any, consideration was given to the deficit, which was quickly spiraling out of control. Why worry? After all, according to the economic theories Republicans had been peddling for decades, lowering taxes actually increases tax revenue. This economic theory simply has to be true because taxes are bad.

As for government spending, Republican rhetoric quickly came face to face with an inconvenient fact, there just isn't a lot spending that can realistically be cut. Discretionary spending accounts for only a small fraction of our annual budget, so even if we cut it all, it wouldn't make that much of a difference. And that's assuming you can get members of Congress to stop funding pet projects for their constituents, something the Republican party has shown absolutely no willingness to do.

The real bulk of the budget goes toward entitlement programs and defense spending, and the GOP has never had any intention of reducing the latter, even in times of peace. That leaves only entitlement programs as potential sources of sizable spending cuts. But here reality has hit the GOP hard as well. The two biggest entitlement programs, by far, are Medicare and Social Security. These programs are not only immensely popular but also absolutely indispensable. Taking away the medical insurance of America's elderly is simply not an option. If anything, this care needs to be supplemented, something that Bush and the Republican Congress acknowledged when they passed the prescription drug benefit program. As for Social Security, the GOP knows there is no money to be saved there either. Bush's Social Security reform plan would actually have dramatically increased the cost of the program by racking up enormous transition costs.

So, in short, the defining feature of the modern Republican party, its economic policy, is wholly unsustainable and entirely divorced from reality. Conservative columnist David Brooks actually admitted this in an interview last September:

I think Republicans have in their minds we are the
anti-government party. We came to shrink
government. So they say that out on the campaign
trail. But when you are the majority party actually
governing, it doesn't work. People want the problem
solved. So instead of having a governing philosophy
that will tell them I'm going to spend it here but not
there, they have a governing philosophy that is
irrelevant to actually governing. So they take that
anti-governing philosophy and they just toss it out
the window and when they get here and spend like
sailors. So what you have is a governing philosophy
that doesn't apply to the real world . . . .

Brooks actually understates the problem. It's not that modern Republicans have a governing philosophy that is "irrelevant to actually governing"; it's that they have a governing philosophy that is incompatible with actually governing, at least in the long term.

The same holds true with respect to the other defining characteristic of the modern Republican party, it's knee-jerk hawkishness on all matters related to foreign policy. Ever since Goldwater, Republican foreign policy rhetoric has been notable more for its bellicosity than its substance. It has been characterized by its embrace of American exceptionalism and disdain for multilateralism and international institutions. Gradually this gave way to a neo-conservative belief in the need to shape certain key regions of the world through the use of military force, unilaterally if necessary. Fortunately, for most of the 1980s and 90s, Republicans lacked either the opportunity or the will to follow through with these plans. Those who felt the strongest about these issues--Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, etc.--could only issue policy statements such as those put out by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) calling for, among other things, the invasion of Iraq.

But then came 9/11, and suddenly all these half-baked plans were on the table. After decades of talking the talk, it was finally time to walk the walk. With the same chronic near-sightedness that affects their domestic policy, the Republican leadership readied itself for invasion. Diplomacy was non-existent. Long-standing allies were publicly mocked by administration officials. Intelligence was cherry-picked and ignored to make the public case for war. No one gave any real thought to what would happen after Saddam's regime fell. Anyone who expressed any reservations or concerns was dismissed and/or ridiculed. The invasion of Iraq was touted as the first step toward remaking the Middle East from the ground up. Next was Syria, then Iran.

But alas, reality eventually has its day.

Not that long ago, David Brooks said the following on Meet the Press:

Sometimes in my dark moments, I think
[George W. Bush] is "The Manchurian Candidate"
designed to discredit all the ideas I believe in.

As funny as that is, the truth is that there is nothing particularly special about George W. Bush. Contrary to what many conservatives are now saying, Bush has not abandoned the Reagan/Goldwater legacy. He's just proven how substantively empty that legacy is. Goldwater Republicanism was never a coherent governing philosophy; it was a collection of slogans. George W. Bush is the first president who has really had the opportunity to translate those slogans into actual policy, and it's been an unmitigated disaster.

Perhaps from the ashes of the Bush presidency, the Republican party can develop a new governing philosophy, preferably one that bears some relevance to actually governing.