Written by Winston P. Nagan   

In general, the crucial independent voters are still unclear about what the real issues are in this election. Indeed, it is not easy to get at these issues from the deluge of partisan advertisements and political propaganda that has been issued in the cause of either political party. A part of the problem has been the concern in particular of the Republicans that matters that have given them political traction in the past also provide a convenient level of misdirection from the core issues that they see may disadvantage them. A better understanding of these issues requires a glance at relatively recent historical experience. A convenient starting point was the Great Depression of 1929.
The Depression was in large measure a consequence of unregulated, and unaccountable free market capitalism. This was indeed a crisis for a political system that valued capitalism as an indispensable foundation for the promise of freedom and justice under the Constitution. However, the damage done to the American people by the failure of unregulated and unaccountable free market processes meant that a majority of the electorate lost faith in the notion that the government could and should, do nothing to revitalize and regularize the economic foundations of American freedom and liberty.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected as a Democratic president. He inherited the crisis. The banks were failing and Americans had no faith in the security of their savings in the banks. He recognized that the threat posed by a rapidly failing economy had generated a widespread lack of confidence in the institutions of modern capitalism. The first hurdle was psychological. The nation had to be liberated from its fear of catastrophic economic losses. As Roosevelt put it, “the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” What followed was an effort to revitalize the national economy by public intervention and public expenditure to create employment and important public works projects. This was the beginning of the New Deal. Important in the New Deal was the promise that the government was not the enemy of the people but its ally. During Roosevelt’s time, his Republican opponents used every opportunity to vilify the New Deal. Indeed, roughly the same arguments were made then as are made now to reduce the role of the state in facilitating an economic recovery. Additionally, the Republicans were supported by the pre-New Deal Supreme Court which used its authority to strike down congressional legislation meant to enhance the economic recovery.
Roosevelt had many brilliant insights into the nature of freedom itself. One of those insights was that the victims of the Depression who were necessitous and essentially deprived of liberty and freedom. Notwithstanding the virulence of the Republican opposition, including the claims that governmental expenditure would create debt, which would be inflicted on future generations, the New Deal proved to be a great success. Indeed, the fact that Roosevelt was elected for four consecutive terms on his New Deal record was, and remains a permanent nightmare of his Republican opponents. What Republicans discovered after the war was that the New Deal had the consequence of creating the largest middle class in world history. Such was its success. Additionally, the idea that Republicans could campaign on the destruction of the institutions of the New Deal proved unpopular with the electorate. In effect, the New Deal had secured a national social compact between the people and the government of the nation.
The Republican strategy, noting the emergence of nuclear weapons of mass destruction focused on global security, and the fears of global communism. This strategy had traction because both the U.S. and the Russians were armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. Still Republicans had largely to live with New Deal values and from time to time, packaged themselves as so-called compassionate conservatives. The value of the New Deal to the Democrats had other electoral advantages. Government expenditure meant Democrats in Congress could bring federal benefits to their home districts making them attractive for re-election.
It was the Reaganites who stumbled on the strategy that if you spent as much as you could from the federal treasury there would be nothing in the budget to support the New Deal promises identified with the Democrats. Reagan’s strategically brilliant move was to vastly enlarge military spending (some may remember the $700 screwdriver). Ostensibly, this was justified by the idea that the Russians would try to match this and bankrupt themselves. Nevertheless, it also served to limit recourse to New Deal values by cleaning out the budget.
An effort to get more systematically at the New Deal institutions was reflected in Gingrich’s Contract with America proposal. This was a proposal to destroy the New Deal compact and return to a situation where everyone was on his own. Even Gingrich and his supporters could not move the American people to demolish the pillars of the New Deal legacy: social security, Medicare and Medicaid. During the Bush era the appeal to short term greed to privatize social security fell like a lead balloon. The most ambitious and current effort to destroy the social compact started by the New Deal was the Ryan Budget. The American people owe Ryan a debt of gratitude. Ryan put out on the front burner the core issue confronting the American people in this election. Are we for the government compact with the people or are we committed to destroying it? As we sift through the current political debates Mr. Romney, having chosen as his running mate the most explicit commitment to the destruction of the compact with the people, has now found that this position is extreme and vastly rejected by most Americans. He has therefore sought to pretend that he is a compassionate conservative and a friend of social security and health care. Here he is obviously covering up the core economic perspective that he represents. Namely, the complete destruction of the compact between the people and the government in providing the necessary support when capitalism on its own fails to deliver to the people. What Obama stands for is not the destruction of capitalism but on the contrary, providing wise and tactical support to the institutions of capitalism (the banks, auto industry, international trade and investment, skilled labor force, etc). Such tactical support emerges in infrastructure spending, educational investment and the government’s role in supporting investments in the new science and technology for the future. The choice is abundantly clear. A vote for the Democrats would be a vote for the future. A vote for the Republicans would be a resounding endorsement of the mess of 1929.