If you aren’t American, the possibility that this electioncould hinge on abortion rights may seem absurd. Surely the stagnant worldeconomy, the relative decline of U.S. power and climate change, just to namethree, all trump reproductive freedom as issues that should be at the top ofthe national agenda.
The spotlight on abortion rights is also the product of afamily feud inside the Republican Party. Republican grass-roots activists aredesperate to propel the issue to the top of the national agenda, while theparty’s elders “ and their presidential nominee “ are equally desperate to stopus all from talking about it. If Mitt Romney has his way, the focus willeventually swing back to the issue that most voters spend the most timethinking about “ the economy. And if that happens, a man worth talking to is RGlenn Hubbard, a top Romney adviser who served as the chairman of George WBush’s Council of Economic Advisers and is now the dean of Columbia BusinessSchool in New York.
Hubbard sees this election as one that offers Americans asharp choice about the kind of country they want to live in. “The real issuefor the public is to figure out which narrative do we want,” Hubbard said in aconversation in his office on the Columbia campus this week. “We can have abigger government, if that’s the public’s choice. It’ll just require highertaxes on every American.” “Do you want that,” he asked, “or do you want smallergovernment, smaller taxes?”
Hubbard is right that the ideological choice US voters facewhen it comes to the economy and, indeed, the nature of their country morebroadly, is clear and significant. There’s a reason the political debate is sopolarised right now: The United States is at a very real crossroads. While bothparties are happy to describe this contrast in broad terms, when it comes toexplaining their visions in more than a single sentence each side is unwillingto trust voters to understand the full implications of their position.
The Republican hypocrisy is to promise lower taxes, abalanced budget and spending cuts that avoid curtailing the essentialgovernment services Americans cherish. Eliminating waste and making the statemore efficient only goes so far, and Republicans are reluctant to spell outjust how much the state would have to shrink to allow a President Romney toboth enact his promised tax cuts and balance the budget.
There is, of course, another way to square Romney’s fiscalcircle: to adopt the credo of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who arguedthat Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter. Under this approach, aRepublican administration would focus on cutting taxes first and leavebalancing the budget for a little later. The point of hypocrisy is to say onething and to do something rather different. But even in these pre-election daysof talking points, Hubbard makes very clear that the ticket shared by Romneyand Rep. Paul D. Ryan has absolutely no interest in British-style shocktherapy.
“Definitely not,” Hubbard said, when asked him whetherRomney was proposing a British scenario. “Part of the problem in Europe and inBritain is that austerity has the impression that we have to make every changetoday. That’s not true in Europe and it’s especially not true in the UnitedStates. What we need is a glide path to fiscal sustainability. It doesn’t haveto happen today.”
The Democratic hypocrisy also involves squaring pledgesabout taxes with promises of fiscal prudence. President Barack Obama vows tomaintain a supportive state “ and to extend health care coverage “ while notraising taxes for the middle class, and eventually balancing the budget. Thismath, as Hubbard pointed out, doesn’t work either. The state programs that manyAmericans depend on today cost more than what they pay in taxes. Increasingtaxes on the rich will help, but that is not enough. Yet, just as theRepublicans won’t admit that they can’t balance the budget and cut taxeswithout shriveling the state to levels many Americans would not tolerate, theDemocrats won’t tell you that the more generous state they believe in will onlybe sustainable if quite a few Americans pay more for it.
