After 88 days in office, it is evident that President Barack Obama sees a role for government intervention. He has not been shy about the need to develop modern health care and energy systems to maintain America’s infrastructure and — not least — to spend trillions of dollars in stimulus money. But he is neither calling for government-run universal health care nor temporary nationalization of the biggest of the insolvent banks, nor absolute protection of the big three automakers from bankruptcy, which are all, by and large, favored by progressives. Instead, the president is taking the path he deems to be most effective, while remaining viable and politically practical.
Obama the pragmatist, not the ideologue.
He has taken action, despite some unease from ideologues on both sides of the political spectrum. The sentiment of the left is characterized by Paul Krugman, who doesn’t think the administration is doing nearly enough to combat the recession. On the right, Rush Limbaugh and newcomer Glenn Beck favor an anorexic government absolutely.
“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Those famous words, spoken by Ronald Reagan on the occasion of his first inauguration, have been a guiding force for Republican opposition to President Obama. GOP leaders have been steadfast in their insistence that the government should stand out of the way of the free market forces that, they believe, will be able to solve this crisis unaided. Republicans view their opposition in light of fierce ideology. In the face of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, they have proposed little more than massive tax cuts and a cessation of government spending.
Of course, the party has no chance of passing any legislation on its own, and the party leaders know it. Their proposals are all politics, hoping that come the 2010 midterm elections, voters will remember how strongly they stood up for small-government conservative values.
Unfortunately for them, Americans are no longer concerned with who is staying more “true” to his or her professed ideology. Rather, they want an economic turnaround, and pronto. They aren’t afraid of the big-government boogeyman Republicans would have us believe Obama is. In a remarkable poll released last week by Rasmussen Reports, it was gauged that just 53 percent of Americans favor capitalism over socialism. Now to be fair, most Americans don’t know what true socialism is, thanks to Republican mincing of the concept of a “social democracy.” And needless to say, Obama is not suggesting a socialist revolution. But the poll is evidence of just how unimportant staunch ideology is to most Americans.
In this way, Obama is much like President Reagan. Not the make-believe Reagan Republicans invoke as the effigy around which all free-market loving, commy-hating politicians should be molded, but the pragmatist Reagan who raised taxes on multiple occasions because he deemed it fiscally necessary. If the Republican Party wants to be seen as relevant to the American people, they must abandon stringent ideology in favor of realistic policy.