Contested Ground, Not Common Ground

[Valin]

National Review:

Obama is wrong about the role of government.
Michael Tanner
1/26/11

President Obama spoke eloquently during his State of the Union address last night about civility and the search for common ground. And certainly a bit more civility would be a welcome change. Yet, at the same time, the president’s speech showed just how little common ground there is between two distinctly different views on the role of government.

The president clearly believes in using government broadly as a force for good in society. Despite the lip service paid to the need to put our fiscal house in order, the president’s answer to the problems facing this country is for government to do more and spend more. The president may call these new initiatives “targeted investments,” but what he means is “more expensive government programs.”

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On the other side of this grand political divide are those who believe that government is already too big, too intrusive, and too costly. Rather than “invest” in new programs, they want to cut back the programs we already have. Rather than seeing Washington as the font of all wisdom, they see the 50 states as, in Louis Brandeis’s immortal phrase, “the laboratories of democracy,” and seek to devolve more authority and responsibility to state governments. Rather than federal money and regulation, they see increased competition and parental choice as the answer to failing schools. Rather than a government industrial policy, they see the free market as the route to economic growth, and call for lower taxes and less regulation to unleash that market. And rather than increased government control of our health-care system, they seek a consumer-centered health reform.

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