Saturday, January 05, 2008

Brooks on Huckabee

I'm not the first to single out this very interesting column by David Brooks in Friday's New York Times. His key point is this defense of Mike Huckabee:

Huckabee understands how middle-class anxiety is really lived. Democrats talk about wages. But real middle-class families have more to fear economically from divorce than from a free trade pact. A person’s lifetime prospects will be threatened more by single parenting than by outsourcing. Huckabee understands that economic well-being is fused with social and moral well-being, and he talks about the inter-relationship in a way no other candidate has.

In that sense, Huckabee’s victory is not a step into the past. It opens up the way for a new coalition.

A conservatism that recognizes stable families as the foundation of economic growth is not hard to imagine. A conservatism that loves capitalism but distrusts capitalists is not hard to imagine either. Adam Smith felt this way. A conservatism that pays attention to people making less than $50,000 a year is the only conservatism worth defending.

I agree! These are points I argue in the new book. The median American worker earns $44,000 a year. The median American family has a joint income of $70,000. Our Republican party is in trouble - President Bush is massively unpopular - very largely because these people are no better off today than they were in the year 2000.

There is no future for the GOP until the party reinvents itself as the party dedicated to alleviating middle-class anxieties and improving middle-class life chances.

So why don't I thrill to Huckabee? Brooks suggests that Huckabee suffers from a competence deficit.

The past few weeks have exposed his serious flaws as a presidential candidate. His foreign policy knowledge is minimal. His lapses into amateurishness simply won’t fly in a national campaign.

That's part of the problem. But here's the larger concern:

Kudos to Huckabee for highlighting the economic problems of the middle class. No other Republican candidate, including alas my own Rudy Giuliani, has as yet spoken to this theme. So that's an excellent start.

But having highlighted the issue, aren't you obliged to offer some ideas for solving it? And there, Huckabee draws a blank. No, worse than a blank: His one big domestic economic idea, the so-called Fair Tax, would do nothing to help - and much to hurt - the people Huckabee speaks for. Worse is the casual, even negligent, way in which he seized on the Fair Tax: He read The Fair Tax Book and signed up on the spot, without any further due diligence. It seems to me that a would-be president ought to do more work than that before adopting a radical new policy idea. Maybe he should read two books. Possibly a third. Couldn't hurt to sit down with some knowledgeable experts and ask them: "So what's the strongest objection to this idea?" That's what you do when you really care about the real-world consequences of policy ideas. That's what you do when you really care about the travails of middle-income America.

If Comeback has any merit, it is that it offers a slew of practical workable ideas to address the concern that Huckabee invokes:

* universal health care provided by private companies via competitive markets;

* cuts in payroll - not income! - taxes for parents, to be financed by new taxes on energy use;

* lower taxes in saving and investment, higher taxes on consumption by upper-income Americans;

* tight restrictions on unskilled immigration;

* government action to support marriage, discourage single-parenthood, and fight obesity;

* an energy policy that supports nuclear power and discourages petroleum and coal;

* education reforms that include curtailment of racial preferences so as to prod minorities to higher performance;

* macroeconomic policies that focus on long-term growth: free trade, corporate governance reform, lower corporate income taxes, a higher dollar - without the special favors and individual breaks that yesterday's Republican party lavished on K Street with shameful eagerness. .

These are not Rudy-specific ideas, indeed the Rudy campaign has adopted none of them. They are made available as a public service, to any conservative who wants them. My great hope is that the party will begin to explore these themes in 2008. My inward fear - and growing suspicion - is that the party will first have to suffer a very bad beating before it recognizes the need for change.

The paperback will come out in early 2009. I sometimes worry that I should have titled the hardcover, Will You Listen? and the paperback, OK - Will You Listen NOW?

01/05 09:34 AM