Ask Not What Your Country can Do For You

The legacy of John Fitzgerald Kennedy is alive and well. “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Millions of Americans went to the polls this month with that spirit in mind and reelected George W. Bush president of the United States of America.

On November 5, 2004, The Washington Post ran a feature story by David Finkel that clearly describes how tens of thousands of hard working people appeared to vote against their best economic and political interests to support the Republican nominee. In one case, the paper relates how a resident of rural Ohio was earning about $55,000 in September of 2001 and on Election Day was earning about $20,000 less and yet he is pleased with the result.
That man did not blame President Bush for, “…anything that’s happened to my income.” Rather, because the president believes in “personal responsibility”, he voted for Mr. Bush.
The article made the point that this man is far from unique especially in rural parts of the country. Mr. Finkel’s article tracks many other newspaper pieces and television news stories that ran during the election cycle.

What are we to make of this? At its most primary level, I find this attitude to be as admirable as any that could be imagined and an affirmation that good honest people from across the land would willingly sacrifice for the good of the nation and note that it is completely in accord with the sentiments expressed in the Preamble to the Constitution.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the defense, promote the general Welfare, and to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United Sates of America.”

However, after many years of public service, I often find myself in tune with the wag who described the purpose of government is to determine “who gets and who pays.”

In the 1960s when the Kennedy administration was celebrating its tax cut victory on Capital Hill, the Republican Party was on the ropes and being beaten to within an inch of its viability. So how did the Democrats fall into the sorry state that the party finds itself today? Of course the Vietnam War was very high on the list of reasons. But it is more than that.

As most know, the Republicans were the dominant party from the Civil War until the stock market crash of 1929. At that juncture the people lost confidence in the G.O.P., its president, and Congress all of whom were simply unable to cope with the social and economic devastation, and Franklin Roosevelt, a political genius, put together a program and political apparatus that is in some ways still recognizable.

Over a period of many decades, the parties realigned themselves. The Democrats, in the New Deal and for some decades thereafter, were the champions of the downtrodden and disadvantaged. From the perspective of the upper classes the equation as they saw who gets were the unemployed and those on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder and they were the who `who pay”.

Long after the Great Depression and W.W.II, the disadvantaged diminished relatively into a smaller slice of the society and the coalition of the Democratic Party was a grouping of large interest groups seeking to become the recipients of federal largess and support. Thus, for example, educators developed arguments that siphoned money from various other parts of the coalition to their sector. Labor leaders sought protections for their members. The bottom line was that many of those perceived to be victims during bad times had been broadened and the need to fund the new initiatives had to come from a broader coalition on the other side of the question.

The Republicans came back to power with a vengeance after the excesses in war and peace during the Great Society initiatives of President Lyndon Johnson.

In my judgment, the equation of who pays got too big for the coalition of who gets and tipped in favor of the Republicans, and during the last four decades they have been better at framing the debate between getters and payers and how much of the national wealth should be redistributed.

John F. Kennedy was fully aware that the government’s share of the gross national product was becoming too great, and his tax cut was stimulating to the economy. But the Democrats were unable to win their own internal struggle on this and related arguments, and Republicans gained greater success at the polls.

While the Democrats were not shut out in elections, it is very clear that only when bad things line up, do they have good shots at controlling the federal government. But the battle lines are still quite even, and it is the Republicans who have built to successful coalitions of the last generation.

But the Republicans have pushed the pendulum a very far in their direction, and, while they appear to be riding high, I think that they are in a position to suffer great reversals at the polls in just a few years. The Democrats have successfully defined the economic policies of George W. Bush as greatly in favor of the wealthy minority, and while the Republicans made much hay on questions such as national defense, their coalition does not look nearly so solid as it might.

The new Republican Party is dependent on large corporations and other groups successful at the federal trough such as farmers. But as these groups shrink as a percentage of the electorate, the party has had to mine votes elsewhere, and the mother load has been conservative Christians, those to whom the party championed itself as the protector of the nation’s moral values.

The Republicans made much of moving to support its hard right base. Naturally, this caused its moderates to find themselves in difficulty with other elements of the party. Thus while the party finds itself doing very well at the polls, it has yet to find a way to pay off one of its key coalition members. Obviously, the leaders of the party and President Bush recognize the debt and have given much lip service on values and have moved to pump funds for social services to religious organizations to promote social services, but the financial rewards are not great for the fundamentalists and values oriented individual voters.

Were some of the initiatives promoted by the religious right such as overturning Roe v. Wade to come about in their favor by means of the appointment of Supreme Court Justices, the reaction of the other side would be very extreme. But if little of their agenda ever succeeds why should people who are being largely ignored by the real nuts and bolts government continue to support politicians all the way to the top who just give lip service to their concerns? A few jobs in religious social organizations and getting their entitlements through friendly institutions hardly compares with their need for health insurance and jobs to replace those lost to other countries.

Even in the wake of this election, the Democrats are moving to assure the religious among us that they are loved and respected and that the party is not entirely secular. Over a not too long time span, it is likely that if the Democrats can find a way to convince sizeable numbers in that block of voters that they are being used by the Republicans without much real return in the form of the values argument, the Democrats will be able to troll for votes in what at this moment looks like such a solid group.

Gay marriage serves an example. The Christian right was very successful in striking a blow to the societal movement of better treatment of gays and lesbians. When all of the laws are passed defining marriage as between men and women, how much will the values people have won? While the real or psychological damage done to the gay community is great, surely, the trend toward greater legal and social equality of gays will continue and some among the hard right of the G.O.P. will see their victories at the polls as not much more a distinction without a difference except for a single word, marriage.

In the meantime, a number of the successful economic groups in the Republican coalition such as large corporations, defense contractors and farmers will be seen as greatly profiting while the Christians got one word instead of real reform. How long will the Evangelicals turn blind eyes to their true plight within the coalition? Billions for farmers, billions for defense contractors, billions in tax cuts for the wealthy and very little for those who may have worked the hardest for the Party, somehow even those most dedicated to values and the welfare of the nation will begin to question their loyalty to a party that uses them rather rewarding them.

Thus, as the parties succeed in luring members of the opposing coalition such as a greater share of Hispanics voting for President Bush, surely the Democrats will find ways to cherry pick within the religious portions of the Republican body. While the faith based Christian right is very solid, even monolithic appearing, there may well be chinks in the Republican armor. Tens of thousands of the Evangelicals judge themselves by their faith, but millions more are willing to add good works to their identity.

As the members of the Evangelical portion of the Republican coalition see little coming from their hard work in electing politicians who bask in their values, many members will begin to reassess the situation in which defense contractors make billions from weapon systems suited for Cold War type adversaries rather than the conflicts likely to occur in the War on Terror, the rich are given huge tax breaks and groups such as farmers prosper and the reward for Evangelicals is often little more than the word marriage.

Many of these Evangelicals could be moved by the prospect of actually doing good, and, if the Democrats are not idiots, these good people may be lured by the programs proposed by Democrats to actually assist the downtrodden in our society in the form of economic development and health care, and, at the same time find themselves the recipients of some good old fashioned pork in the process.

So like Lyndon Johnson, President Bush is taking his election as a mandate to implement his programs that are as far from the norm in one direction as the Great Society’s were in the other.
The War in Iraq is George W. Bush’s war as few other conflicts can be pinned on his predecessors. Even if he is successful in removing our troops, how long can the newly elected government survive? The budget and trade deficits will not go away, and the tax cuts exacerbate the president’s ability to do anything curative. This is President Elect George W. Bush’s world, and as he rides high on his way to inauguration, surely a little bird must be whispering a sad song in his ear.

The Democrats lost, but I sure like their chances in the future. They should not despair too greatly. They must convince a large number of good people that the Democrats are not the lions. Rather they must convince them that they are being herded into coliseum by lions in sheep’s clothing. It’s daunting but far from impossible.