The temptations to envy a neighbor?s success and to use coercive means to acquire the earnings or possessions of others are deeply rooted in human nature. There is no question about that. Most of the world?s great religions warn against giving into these temptations, as Jews and Christians are instructed in (depending on your particular denomination) the 8th, 9th and/or 10th Commandments. Obviously, as is the case for others, these teachings are not always rigorously adhered to, though the world would be a better place if they were.
There is nothing really new in John Edwards? ?Two Americas? spiel. Al Gore said in 2000 he?d be for ?the power against the powerful.? Various demagogic politicians in American history have promised various ?deals? to voters suggesting that government should rectify the economic or social circumstances in which voters find themselves.
Indeed, ambitious politicians have been appealing to voter feelings of disenfranchisement and suspicions about political elites ? often in both cases justified ? for as long as representative government has existed in one form or another. Moreover, sometimes this kind of grievance politics has been combined, as Edwards does, with populist, redistributionist economic nostrums. During period of severe economic recession or outright depression, as in the 1890s and the 1930s, this message can soak through the constitutional and ideological barriers that America?s founders and early leaders erected against governmental encroachment and result in muddy but significant transformations of politics and government.
The 1890s period helped to radicalize both political parties, Populists among the Democrats the Progressives among Dems and Republicans. The Republicans experienced a brief ideological correction in the 1920s, but their continuing economic sins of protectionism and monetary manipulation helped to generate a Great Depression that further transformed both parties and greatly expanded the federal government?s power over our lives. More recently, I would argue, both parties have taken at least half-hearted steps back towards economic sanity, with salutary results. The Reagan Revolution of the 1980s was more like an evolutionary missing link, combining strands of Goldwaterite libertarianism with a dash of Carter-era deregulation and the supply-side critique of misguided Keynesian notions about tax rates and inflation. The result was an economic boom.
The Clinton era of the 1990s showed that Democrats were affected by some of these political and policy trends, as well. Even before the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, Clinton (and Gore) made laudable efforts to reduce taxes on consumer goods and stock-market returns ? I?m referring to quotas and tariffs on foreign trade ? and their tax-increase package of 1993, while wrongheaded, kept the top marginal tax rate well below what Reagan cut the rate to in the early 1980s. From 1995 on, Clinton played effective defense against some GOP ideas but signed tax cuts, balanced budgets, and even toyed with the idea of injecting market forces and personal control into Social Security and Medicare, though he characteristically chickened out when push came to shove. On balance, the result was to continue and broaden the economic boom.
The recessions of the early 1990s and early 2000s were too mild to create an opportunity for populist, redistributionist politics to gain further ground, I think, so Republicans should for the most part welcome the Edwards ?Two Americas? divisiveness as probably more helpful than harmful to their cause. I see little evidence in polling that most Americans feel trapped, tyrannized, or terrified. Our economy is still vibrant, joblessness is relatively low, upward mobility remains commonplace, and a cornucopia of new products and services is making life better and more enjoyable in ways that aren?t adequately captured in the tendentious reading of data some pessimists offer.
In short, Edwards may bring some important political assets to the national Democratic ticket. But a salable ? and factual ? message is not one of them.
