a party of small government?

I think something that a Republican party that really wants to catalogue its weaknesses and vulnerabilities-- instead of insisting to itself that this is still a conservative country, as it weeps softly over a Tom Collins-- needs to confront is the possibility that small government is popular only as rhetoric and not in practice.

Small government conservatism is supposed to be the lifeblood of the Republican party. That's been the brand for a long time. Much has been made of the Bush administration's seeming abandonment of those principles. As I've said, I think that this was less an act of betrayal than a moment of recognition of the real responsibility of governance. One way or the other, though, the fact is that the Bush White House did not shrink government, and this fact has not been lost on the conservative intelligentsia. With a resounding, dispiriting defeat last night, the opportunity is ripe for the conservative punditocracy to urge the Republican party back towards its small government roots.

Certainly, John McCain didn't run a real small government campaign. Oh, he made dozens of limp gestures towards earmarks and pork. Earmarks and pork, however, are a vanishingly small part of the big government pie. Saying you're going to shrink government by eliminating earmarks is like saying you're going to lose weight by getting your hair cut. It might make some small gains in the right direction, but it has little practical effect and is energy expended in the wrong direction. What else did the McCain campaign have to burnish its small government cred? Not the McCain health care plan. Not the McCain energy plan. Not even the McCain tax plan, which, while an effective sop to the Club for Growth wing of the Republican party, wasn't exactly explicit about which programs were going to be slashed to shrink the government in line with those tax cuts. Certainly, the ultra-neoconservative vision of endless war and military adventurism can't be squared with a dedication to small government. The big government on the right, big military, won't ever be meaningfully confronted by conservative ideology, of course. But neither can it be used positively to demonstrate fidelity to shrinking government.

Yet I'm fairly certain that this recalcitrance towards actual small government isn't some artifact of McCain's position as a "maverick". Indeed, I don't think Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson or Rudy Giuliani or Mike Huckabee would have meaningfully pledged to reduce the size of government, or been able to actually do so if elected. And why? Because shrinking the size of government, really shrinking it, requires entitlement reform, and entitlement reform is massively unpopular.

You didn't hear John McCain agitate against Medicare, or Social Security, or the prescription drug benefit. I highly doubt you would have heard any of his rivals for the GOP nomination do so, either. Being the candidate who tells the American people he's going to cut their benefits is political suicide. It seems that the McCain-Palin ticket performed well with elderly voters in key states like Ohio, Virginia, and Florida. But I invite you to imagine how they would have done if they had been perceived as threatening social security, a cherished (yes, cherished) American institution.

The American population is graying rapidly. We will have an unprecedentedly large number of senior citizens moving forward. Eldery people vote. If there was any ideological space in this country for meaningful entitlement reform, it would be crushed before that simple fact of demographics. I don't think people understand what a massive change for America this prescription drug benefit was. Preventing a new entitlement from being passed is a far easier thing than revoking one which already exists. Of all the reasons conservatives have for anger towards George Bush, I think the existence of this new, enormous and expensive federal entitlement might be the biggest. He spearheaded a new and costly expenditure for the American government that, once calcified and entrenched, has very little chance of being taken away, and no chance of being taken away without massive political consequences.

Some would say that small government conservatism doesn't require entitlement reform. I think this is a strange definition of small government. But suppose conservatives content themselves with chipping away at the margins, shrinking government in the spaces between the vast expenditures of military spending and entitlement programs. I still think the existence of these vast governmental programs undercut the case for small government. Perception matters, and more and more Americans seem to perceive that government is the appropriate vehicle for positive social change. I simply don't see much stigma attached to the use of government assistance, and I find less and less people who feel any real commitment to "getting the government out of their day to day life." They say they are small government conservatives. What can that appelation possibly mean, when they feel perfect comfort in an expanding state apparatus?

Culture is more powerful than politics. Culture, it seems to me, is leading Americans towards more and more comfort with a ubiquitous state. Even for me, a liberal, this is troubling. It does give to me the hope, though, that we will have less resistance to using the state to do good in the effort to increase opportunity and limit random suffering. I hope for at least an America where we are as comfortable with the use of public expenditure to help Americans as we are with its use to kill Iraqis, help eliminate dissidents in Uzbekistan, destabilize foreign governments we don't approve of, prop up hideous dictatorships, and generally spare no expense in the goal of undermining democracy and causing misfortune. A guy can dream.

For as long as I can remember the conventional wisdom has been, among a certain set of culturally-similar brethren (both left and right), that going forward liberalism will win culturally and socially, while conservatism will win economically and militarily. I remain unconvinced. I think calling yourself a small government conservative will continue to be quite popular in the days ahead. I just have very little faith that the label will mean much of anything at all.

Update: Changed some wording above to reflect the reality that elderly voters were McCain's staunchest supporters.