Chip Taylor

A new era of big government is upon us

Last week I said:

[W]hat most voters want most of all is not greater freedom and limited government. They either actually support less freedom (or at least more "security") and more pervasive government or are willing to subordinate their desires for greater freedom and limited government in order to pursue other goals.

This week, Sebastian Mallaby provides a fuller explanation:

Last week's Reagan-Bush comparisons emphasized the similarities between the two presidents. But the biggest contemporary change in American politics is revealed by the difference between them. Whereas Ronald Reagan promised in his First Inaugural Address "to curb the size and influence of the federal establishment," George W. Bush has no such ambition. He has expanded the Education Department that Reagan threatened to eliminate; he has created a vast new prescription drug entitlement; he has proposed a $1.5 billion government program to promote marriage. When even a self-conscious Reagan imitator behaves this way, something serious is changing. The anti-government era of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich has ended. A new era of big government is beginning.

What explains this? To put the answers simply: Politicians like big government; voters like big government; and the assumptions of small-government crusaders have recently been challenged.

Voters like big government? Really? Yes:

If you ask people what they want more of, the answer is quite likely to be things that the government provides: security (from local criminals and from terrorists), clean air and water, food whose safety is guaranteed by regulators, a health system for retirees, public education. As people grow more prosperous, such public goods probably matter to them more than private ones such as extra DVDs or fancier vacations. Hence the fact that as countries grow richer, the share of government spending in the economy nearly always goes up.

Finally, the depressing, but correct (in my opinion), summary:

So if last week's Reagan retrospectives emphasized his lasting influence on history, it's worth remembering that his small-government crusade is one area in which his influence has come and gone. The dominant assumption of most political commentary in the 1990s -- that, as Bill Clinton put it, the era of big government is over -- now needs to be discarded. Political and intellectual forces, coupled with the swelling ranks of retirees, suggest that an era of steadily bigger government is upon us.

More and more I come to believe that the fight against big government is best fought issue by issue (rather than through partisan political activism) and often at the local level.