Republicans and Their Faulty Moral Arithmetic. By Arthur Brooks. Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2013.
Brooks:
In the
waning days of the 1992 presidential campaign, President George H.W. Bush
trailed Bill Clinton in the polls. The conventional wisdom was that Mr. Bush
seemed too aloof from voters struggling economically. At a rally in New
Hampshire, the exhausted president started what was probably the fourth
campaign speech of the day by reading aloud what may have been handed to him as
a stage direction: “Message: I care.”
How
little things have changed for Republicans in 20 years. There is only one
statistic needed to explain the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. An
April YouGov.com poll—which mirrored every other poll on the subject—found that
only 33% of Americans said that Mitt Romney “cares about people like me.” Only
38% said he cared about the poor.
Conservatives
rightly complain that this perception was inflamed by President Obama’s
class-warfare campaign theme. But perception is political reality, and over the
decades many Americans have become convinced that conservatives care only about
the rich and powerful.
Perhaps
it doesn’t matter. If Republicans and conservatives double down on the
promotion of economic growth, job creation and traditional values, Americans
might turn away from softheaded concerns about “caring.” Right?
Wrong.
As New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has shown in his
research on 132,000 Americans, care for the vulnerable is a universal moral
concern in the U.S. In his best-selling 2012 book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good
People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” Mr. Haidt demonstrated that
citizens across the political spectrum place a great importance on taking care
of those in need and avoiding harm to the weak. By contrast, moral values such
as sexual purity and respect for authority—to which conservative politicians
often give greater emphasis—resonate deeply with only a minority of the
population. Raw money arguments, e.g., about the dire effects of the country’s
growing entitlement spending, don’t register morally at all.
Conservatives
are fighting a losing battle of moral arithmetic. They hand an argument with
virtually 100% public support—care for the vulnerable—to progressives, and
focus instead on materialistic concerns and minority moral viewpoints.
The
irony is maddening. America’s poor people have been saddled with generations of
disastrous progressive policy results, from welfare-induced dependency to
failing schools that continue to trap millions of children.
Meanwhile,
the record of free enterprise in improving the lives of the poor both here and
abroad is spectacular. According to Columbia University economist Xavier
Sala-i-Martin, the percentage of people in the world living on a dollar a day
or less—a traditional poverty measure—has fallen by 80% since 1970. This is the
greatest antipoverty achievement in world history. That achievement is not the
result of philanthropy or foreign aid. It occurred because billions of souls
have been able to pull themselves out of poverty thanks to global free trade,
property rights, the rule of law and entrepreneurship.
The
left talks a big game about helping the bottom half, but its policies are
gradually ruining the economy, which will have catastrophic results once the
safety net is no longer affordable. Labyrinthine regulations, punitive taxation
and wage distortions destroy the ability to create private-sector jobs.
Opportunities for Americans on the bottom to better their station in life are
being erased.
Some
say the solution for conservatives is either to redouble the attacks on big
government per se, or give up and try to build a better welfare state. Neither
path is correct. Raging against government debt and tax rates that most
Americans don’t pay gets conservatives nowhere, and it will always be an
exercise in futility to compete with liberals on government spending and
transfers.
Instead,
the answer is to make improving the lives of vulnerable people the primary
focus of authentically conservative policies. For example, the core problem
with out-of-control entitlements is not that they are costly—it is that the
impending insolvency of Social Security and Medicare imperils the social safety
net for the neediest citizens. Education innovation and school choice are not
needed to fight rapacious unions and bureaucrats—too often the most prominent
focus of conservative education concerns—but because poor children and their
parents deserve better schools.
Defending
a healthy culture of family, community and work does not mean imposing an alien
“bourgeois” morality on others. It is to recognize what people need to be happy
and successful—and what is most missing today in the lives of too many poor
people.
By
making the vulnerable a primary focus, conservatives will be better able to
confront some common blind spots. Corporate cronyism should be decried as every
bit as noxious as statism, because it unfairly rewards the powerful and
well-connected at the expense of ordinary citizens. Entrepreneurship should not
to be extolled as a path to accumulating wealth but as a celebration of
everyday men and women who want to build their own lives, whether they start a
business and make a lot of money or not. And conservatives should instinctively
welcome the immigrants who want to earn their success in America.
With
this moral touchstone, conservative leaders will be able to stand before
Americans who are struggling and feel marginalized and say, “We will fight for
you and your family, whether you vote for us or not”—and truly mean it. In the
end that approach will win. But more important, it is the right thing to do.
