> But Brad -- you are assuming that everything would
be the same but
>for having a Republican in the white House, who would have
a free
>hand. But everything would not be the same! the political
forces would
>be deployed quite differently. As Doug and others have argued,
>Clintont coopted the forces that should have been out there
screaming
>-- over welfare reform, the crime bill -- even AIDS, where
he's been
>terrible but gets credit for feeling pain.
>
Touche...
AIDS I don't know enough about to have an informed opinion...
On the crime bill I tend to say that it was neutral--that
the assault weapons ban was worth paying something to get, that
some worthwhile urban programs got funded under cover of anti-crime
programs... but then I look at the number of new federal death
penalty crimes and at... other things in the bill...
Welfare "reform" was... a crime, a destructive and
breathtakingly cynical act of political expediency, a major mistake
the worst consequences of which we have so far avoided because
we have been lucky enough to have the highest-pressure economy
in a generation, but when the next recession comes the consequences
of welfare "reform" are likely to be very, very ugly
indeed...
After all, when John DiIulio criticizes welfare "reform"
as overly punitive...
And the worst of it is that the f****** incompetent a**h***s
Washington ****** ***** ********* ** media will count it as a
public policy success--no matter what really happens--because
"success" has been and will be defined as reducing
the number of people receiving cash payments.
I know that Daniel Patrick Moynihan agrees with you--that
had Clinton not been so eager to hand out some, in Moynihan's
phrase, "boob bait for the bubbas" by signing something
he could call welfare reform, that the good guys could have held
the line and avoided anything likely to be as destructive as
the non-system we are now putting in place.
And I think he (and you) are probably right.
Hmmm... Reelect George Bush in 1992 (which would have happened
in any case if not for the sudden appearance of H. Ross Perot),
and have even a *small* or a *zero* shift in Congress to the
right in the 1994 election, and it is pretty clear to me that
we would be spending a bunch more on defense, a bunch less on
the EITC, have top marginal income tax rates at 30% rather than
40%, and so forth.
Would the country have then risen up in wrath in 1996 and
thrown the rascals out? And would the resulting configuration
have left America's tattered shreds of social democracy in better
shape now than they happen to be?
I don't know.
But I think of the people I know who wouldn't vote for Humphrey
in 1968 because he wouldn't break with LBJ over Johnson's War--and
the six years of Nixon and two years of Ford that followed. I
think of the people I know who didn't vote for Carter in 1980
on the grounds that the Democratic Party needed a more liberal
standard bearer than the conservative governor of a small southern
state--and of the eight years of Reagan and four years of Bush
that followed.
So my conclusion is, as Bart Simpson never wrote on the blackboard:
I WILL ALWAYS VOTE (AND CAMPAIGN) FOR THE LESSER EVIL
I WILL ALWAYS VOTE (AND CAMPAIGN) FOR THE LESSER EVIL
I WILL ALWAYS VOTE (AND CAMPAIGN) FOR THE LESSER EVIL
I WILL ALWAYS VOTE (AND CAMPAIGN) FOR THE LESSER EVIL
I WILL ALWAYS VOTE (AND CAMPAIGN) FOR THE LESSER EVIL
I WILL ALWAYS VOTE (AND CAMPAIGN) FOR THE LESSER EVIL
I WILL ALWAYS VOTE (AND CAMPAIGN) FOR THE LESSER EVIL
I WILL ALWAYS VOTE (AND CAMPAIGN) FOR THE LESSER EVIL
I WILL ALWAYS VOTE (AND CAMPAIGN) FOR THE LESSER EVIL
...
I WILL ALWAYS VOTE (AND CAMPAIGN) FOR THE LESSER EVIL
I WILL ALWAYS VOTE (AND CAMPAIGN) FOR THE LESSER EVIL
I WILL ALWAYS VOTE (AND CAMPAIGN) FOR THE LESSER EVIL
Brad DeLong
Professor
of Economics J. Bradford DeLong, 601 Evans Hall, #3880