Karl Rove’s Big-Government Myth
Karl Rove, the architect of Republican victories in 2000 and 2004 and Democratic victories in 2006 and 2008, denounces President Obama’s “spending binge” and “liberal activism” as described in the State of the Union address. The Wall Street Journal‘s tagline on the column is, “On Tuesday, Republicans offered an alternative to the president’s big-government vision.” What Rove omits is that he and President Bush started the spending binge, delivered big government, and indeed came into office with a big-government vision, as Ed Crane pointed out in 1999.
Just take a look at the analysis in Rove’s Wall Street Journal column:
Most of his hour-long speech was a paean to liberal activism, as the president called for redoubling outlays on high-speed rail and “countless” green energy jobs.
Liberal boondogglery indeed. But Rove’s former colleague, White House speechwriter Michael Gerson, wrote on the same day in his Washington Post column:
In his 2006 State of the Union address, which I helped write, President George W. Bush proposed a 22 percent increase in clean-energy research at the Energy Department, a doubling of basic research in the physical sciences and the training of 70,000 high school teachers to instruct Advanced Placement courses in math and science. I have no idea if these “investments” passed or made much difference. I doubt anyone knows.
Green nonsense is rampant in Washington.
Rove criticizes Obama for
a federal budget that’s increased 25% in two years, raising government’s share of GDP to 25% from roughly 20%.
Obama is a world-class spender. But spending increased 83 percent during Bush’s presidency, from $1.863 trillion to $3.414 trillion. He increased federal spending faster than any president since Lyndon Johnson. And yes, Obama is pushing the government’s share of GDP up; but Bush increased the federal government’s share of GDP by 2.2 percentage points, before the financial crisis, the bailouts, and TARP.
The New York Times Undermines its Narrative
The New York Times has an odd story today on campaign finance on its front page. The story argues that organizations which do not have to identify their donors are sponsoring ads that criticize candidates for office. Complaints about secrecy notwithstanding, the third paragraph of the story discloses one of the major contributors to a group and reveals his putative interests in becoming involved. It also goes into great detail about the donor, his political associates, and even meetings his associates attended and what decisions were made therein. Later parts of the story recount the already disclosed names of supporters of Karl Rove’s efforts in this cycle. True, the story does not reveal everything the reporters believe should be disclosed about donors. But the groups and their donors are hardly secret given what is revealed in the story itself.
The story also cannot get its story straight. The Times‘ reporters evidently wanted to fit what they have found into a standard, “special interest” template: the organization in question – the American Future Fund – as a front for energy interests. The story also says the group has sponsored ads on general themes like too much spending, Obamacare, and another stimulus. But the reporters are determined to see “suggestions of an energy-related agenda,” their own reporting notwithstanding. This forcing of facts into a template comes along with a recognition that the politics of energy and ethanol have become more complicated making it difficult to say what interests are actually being advanced in the American Future Fund effort.
So the story discloses, while decrying secrecy, and both asserts and denies the domination of special interests. In the end, the story holds fast to a simple, conventional theme which is then undermined by its reporting. We should admire, I guess, that the Times‘ reporters were willing to undermine their own narrative. But why not just embrace complexity? They are writing the first, not the final, draft of history.
The story also reports that donors desire anonymity because they wish to avoid taking sides in political disputes in public. The story does not say why they desire to avoid taking sides. Perhaps a quick call to the Koch family or George Soros might have provided an answer to that question.
Karl Rove’s Spending
Former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove enjoys complaining about the spendthrift ways of President Obama and the Democrats. But I noted in a Wall Street Journal letter today:
Annual average real spending grew faster under President George W. Bush than any president since Lyndon Johnson… Even leaving out defense, President Bush was the biggest spender since Republican Richard Nixon.
My letter pointed to two prior op-eds by Rove, but he was at it again yesterday in the Journal. He said that his former boss “cut in half the growth of discretionary domestic spending from the sizzling 16 percent rate of President Bill Clinton’s last budget.” Call me crazy, but I don’t think supporting domestic spending growth of 8 percent during a time of very low inflation is an acheivement to crow about.
Over at National Review, Veronique de Rugy apparently gets just as annoyed as I do hearing big-spending Republicans complain about big-spending Democrats.
Mr. Rove’s columns are usually very interesting, but I’d like to see him accept at least some of the blame for the exploding size of government during his tenure at the White House.
Pinocchio Rove Strikes Again
George Bush ranks as one of America’s most fiscally irresponsible presidents. He increased overall spending from $1.8 trillion to $3.5 trillion and most of that new spending was used to create or expand domestic programs (no-bureaucrat-left-behind education spending, pork-filled highway bills, sleazy Wall Street bailouts, corrupt farm spending, new Medicare entitlements, etc.) that are not legitimate functions of the federal government. So it is galling to see his former senior adviser writing columns complaining about Barack Obama being a big spender. Many of the criticisms about the Obama Administration in his latest WSJ column are correct, to be sure, but Karl Rove has zero moral authority to make those arguments. Moreover, Rove once again engages in sloppy or dishonest (you choose) analysis by blaming Obama for some of Bush’s mistakes. In the excerpt below, he blames Obama for any of the Fiscal Year 2009 debt that was incurred after January 20 of last year. But as I’ve already explained, 96 percent of the spending in FY2009 is the result of Bush’s policies:
Consider that from Jan. 20, 2001, to Jan. 20, 2009, the debt held by the public grew $3 trillion under Mr. Bush—to $6.3 trillion from $3.3 trillion at a time when the national economy grew as well. By comparison, from the day Mr. Obama took office last year to the end of the current fiscal year, according to the Office of Management and Budget, the debt held by the public will grow by $3.3 trillion. In 20 months, Mr. Obama will add as much debt as Mr. Bush ran up in eight years. …Mr. Bush’s deficits ran an average of 3.2% of GDP, slightly above the post World War II average of 2.7%. Mr. Obama’s plan calls for deficits that will average 4.2% over the next decade. Team Obama has been on history’s biggest spending spree, which has included a $787 billion stimulus, a $30 billion expansion of a child health-care program, and a $410 billion federal spending bill that increased nondefense discretionary spending 10% for the last half of fiscal year 2009. Mr. Obama also hiked nondefense discretionary spending another 12% for fiscal year 2010.
Correction: In an earlier post on one of Rove’s columns, I incorrectly claimed that Bush never vetoed a bill because it spent too much.That was wrong. He did veto a handful of bills once Democrats took control of Congress.
Ponnuru: Stop Socialized Medicine, in All Its Forms
As usual, National Review‘s Ramesh Ponnuru offers sound advice on how Republicans, etc., should approach the Democrats’ health care reforms:
Karl Rove’s WSJ op-ed on health care reflects the thinking of a lot of Republicans. He concludes, “Defeating the public option should be a top priority for the GOP this year. Otherwise, our nation will be changed in damaging ways almost impossible to reverse.” In my view, Rove is defining Republican goals too narrowly.
Congress and the president can expand federal control of the health-care system a great deal without a “public option” (that is, a new government program to provide health insurance to people who choose it). They could set mandatory minimum standards for health insurance, impose price controls, mandate that individuals or employers buy insurance, and so forth. If Republicans say that the public option is the chief defect of liberals’ approach to health care, they may be leaving themselves with no rationale for opposing these steps if the Democrats drop it—which they might just do. (Or they might cosmetically weaken the public option in various ways. They could, for example, set up a “trigger” that brings the option into being only if certain conditions in the health market are met, and then design those conditions so that they will be met.)
The public option appears to be one of the biggest political vulnerabilities of the Democrats’ emerging health-care plan, but it isn’t the only one, and it shouldn’t be targeted to the exclusion of the plan’s other features—or of its general government-first orientation. Republicans ought to be making the case against individual mandates and employer mandates as well, both of which are disguised tax increases.
It isn’t incumbent on Republicans to see that a health-care bill passes Congress. To warrant conservative support, a bill should have no public option—but also no mandates and no price controls. Which is to say: No government-directed health-care system.
Beyond Irony, Part II
In a previous post, I noted the irony of taking advice from Karl Rove on how to fight big government. It appears that Rove is not alone in having a battlefield conversion. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Chamber of Commerce is planning to spend $100 million as part of a “Campaign for Free Enterprise.” This sounds great, and I hope it helps, but is it rude of me to point out that this is the same organization that endorsed the bailout last year and the so-called stimulus this year?
Beyond Irony
Karl Rove should have been named Man of the Year at some point by the Democratic National Committee. The political consultant/Bush adviser played a big role in expanding the burden of government, convincing Bush to saddle the nation with fiscal disasters such as the “no-bureaucrat-left-behind” education bill, the corrupt farm bills, the pork-filled transportation bills, and the horrific new entitlement for prescription drugs. He also helped ruin the GOP image with his inside-the-beltway version of “compassionate conservatism,” thus paving the way for big Democratic victories in 2006 and 2008.
I can understand why libertarians have no desire to listen to his advice, but I’m baffled why Republicans or conservatives would give him the time of day. Yet he is a constant presence on FOX News and has a weekly column in the Wall Street Journal. With no apparent irony, his latest WSJ column is entitled “How to Stop Socialized Health Care.” Too bad he didn’t follow his own advice in 2003 when pulling out all the stops to enact the biggest entitlement in four decades.
Cato on Facebook
Cato on Twitter
Cato on Google+
Cato on YouTube
