JONATHAN CHAIT APRIL 11, 2011
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I have a Newsweek column on the philosophical underpinnings of Paul Ryan's "Road to Prosperity." Basically, Ryan is an Ayn Rand nut who thinks the Obama administration's agenda is an eerie reprise of "Atlas Shrugged" and is precipitating a total collapse, and he proposes to address that by slashing tax burdens on the rich and benefits for the poor and sick. Obviously, this is not the interpretation of Paul Ryan that's being conveyed in most of the mainstream media, but I do think it's the one that best fits the available facts.
I notice that Ross Douthat today expresses some frustration with the Ryan plan while pining for a more egalitarian GOP:
As Republicans refine their proposals, though, they need to focus more on economic mobility than the Ryan budget does. Public policy is going to be made from inside a fiscal straitjacket for the foreseeable future. But within that straitjacket, Washington can favor policies that enhance working-class opportunity, while ruthlessly paring back those that subsidize the affluent. The goal shouldn’t just be small government, but what the economist Edward Glaeser calls “small-government egalitarianism.”
There are elements of this vision woven into the Ryan budget — cuts to farm subsidies, means-testing for Medicare, and promises to go after tax expenditures that primarily benefit the rich. But at least in its initial draft, too much of the budget’s austerity is borne by downscale Americans.
The Ryan proposal would repeal the Obama health care plan without replacing it, throwing the uninsured back into a broken insurance marketplace. It would trim Medicaid more enthusiastically than corporate welfare. And its central economic premise — that lowering marginal tax rates guarantees widely shared prosperity — was tested and found wanting during the Bush era.
A budget more completely informed by small-government egalitarianism might try to make the recent payroll tax cut permanent, rather than just cutting income tax rates. It might attack handouts for oil and natural gas companies as well as those for alternative energy, and slash agricultural subsidies more dramatically than the Ryan budget does. While thinning out the maze of tax deductions, it might expand the earned-income tax credit and the child tax credit, both of which make it easier to earn a decent living and form a stable family. While trying to repeal Barack Obama’s health care plan, it would insist on replacing it with the kind of universal tax credit that Ryan himself has previously championed.
I like Douthat a lot. He's smart, interesting, well-informed and an excellent writer. But he insists on inhabiting a world in which the Republican Party bears little relation to its actual incarnation. From the time of Gingrich to the present day, the Republican Party has been single-mindedly pursuing an agenda that advances the interests of the rich. I'm not saying that's the sole conscious goal of every member of the conservative coalition, but I am saying that this is the end result. And for quite a while Douthat has been naively expressing his hope that the party can move in a different direction without showing any grasp of the unlikelihood of this happening any time soon.
We've debated before about Ryan and his devotion to Rand, which Douthat has minimized as Ryan having "said kind words about Rand." That was after Ryan had appeared at a conference devoted to Rand and described her as the single thinker who motivated (and continues to motivate) his behavior as a public official, but before Chris Beam reported that Ryan requires his staff to read Rand. If this was just some kind of Ryan office book club -- maybe next month Ryan will have his staff pouring over "Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants" -- I apologize. But I suspect that once again, Douthat has invested time in hoping a Republican official will craft an egalitarian agenda when in fact that official is deeply committed to anti-egalitarianism.
Douthat's ideal is very pleasant. I would very much like it to come true. But it's sort of like supporting la Cosa Nostra because you like the concept of a group dedicated to helping down-on-their-luck Italian-Americans. You can find bits and pieces of this behavior here and there, but it's fundamentally not what la Cosa Nostra does. And yet here we have Douthat once again reviewing the Gambino family's fiscal year 2012 business plan and hoping that maybe they can tone down the racketeering and the extortion and perhaps concentrate more on helping poor Italian widows pay their rent.
Look, Ryan's plan goes after programs for the poor with a laser-focus. It eliminates health insurance for 30 million people without even waving at an alternate solution. Yes, it offsets its large rate reductions for the rich by closing unspecified deductions, but at this point, the conservatives who want to believe Ryan plans to go after benefits for the rich instead of, oh, the EITC are flying in the face of the man's entire career and philosophy. I think it's a good and vital thing that people within the conservative coalition are pushing for more egalitarian policies. But the competing demands of supporting egalitarianism and still maintaining a non-hostile stance toward actually-existing Republican policies makes the task of describing reality accurately very difficult.
17 comments
I think Douthat's take is an entirely defensible view of the Ryan budget from a center-right perspective. But you are right that he, David Brooks, and other "reasonable" conservatives do engage in a bit of wishful thinking when it comes to the core nuttiness of many GOP leaders. Douthat would like us to think that Ryan's interest in Ayn Rand reveals little more than than a general political orientation, not a comprehensive and deeply-felt worldview with specific policy consequences. The truth, as you and others have revealed, seems quite different. That's scary, and it's not easy to come to terms with -- but to pretend otherwise is naive at best.
- npippenger@gmail.com-old
April 11, 2011 at 12:42pm
Boy, does this column hit the nail on the head. Anyone who thinks there is even a small chance of today's Republican Party doing what's right for the nation as a whole is living in a dream world. Until the GOP is either crushed or forced by public opinion to move back toward the center, nothing progressive will get accomplished in this country.
- DAVIDDREIER@EARTHLINK.NET-old
April 11, 2011 at 12:48pm
I too like Ross Doutbhat but you are entirely correct to note that it is a fantasy to wish for a GOP with more egalitarian ideals at this point in time, J. Maybe in the future, but not now. Of course, that is how you start, a brick at a time, but you have Ross with one brick facing up to a Tower of Babel of bricks on the Norquist side of the party. And good luck to you, Ross. Ross has any number of fantasies, so the Disney road is not unfamiliar to him. His longing for the return of atavistic sexual mores is just so out there.
- liberalref
April 11, 2011 at 12:49pm
Oops, that should be "Douthat." I caught my error just after I hit "Save", too late to retrieve and change my post.
- liberalref
April 11, 2011 at 12:51pm
Gingrich? You're not going back nearly far enough. it goes back AT LEAST to Reagan.
- miceelf
April 11, 2011 at 1:09pm
Small government egalitarianism sounds like "compassionate conservatism," which was nothing more than a slogan.
- Nusholtz
April 11, 2011 at 1:23pm
Chait, I think you shouldn't worry about this media honeymoon period with Ryan. That Ryan is a actually a tool is already becoming evident. Ryan had filled a vacuum left by the Obama administration, so his budget was welcomed as 'serious' in part as a rebuke of Obama for not presenting a budget first (which would've been suicidal, btw), and not because of actual analysis of the plan. Ryan's budget is like the post-breakup first date that seems great, until you realize you're dealing with an axe murderer. Keep on hammering away, though, by all means. I still don't think that the 4/8/11 budget was the right place for Obama to pull out all the negotiating stops. We'll find out shortly if Obama is a master chess player, as I think he is, and which ACA's success alone would suggest, or if he is playing checkers.
- sokol8
April 11, 2011 at 1:29pm
Blogging heads! Blogging heads!
- timcrim1
April 11, 2011 at 4:19pm
In real estate, it often takes an outsider to see the potential of property; knowing too much, having too many scars, obscures the potential. And so it is with youth and ideas. Which brings me to Douthat, God bless him. I would like to believe, as Chait apparently does, that Douthat read Ryan's proposal, found it wanting, and penned today's column. More likely, Douthat was blessed with better timing than poor Brooks, who penned his love letter to Ryan just as Ryan's proposal was being exposed as a fraud. Brooks has made a career of playing the fool, so I don't expect him to suffer much from his latest humiliation. Douthat, on the other hand, comes closest to the pure conservative, not yet knowing too much, having the scars. I'm an old-fashioned economic liberal, who winces every time Chait writes about using government to redistribute income. My goal is an economic policy that supports a stable democracy, while checking the power of the wealthy from looting the treasury. That's the difference between Douthat and me: he is too young to understand that there are no conservatives in politics, just thieves.
- rayward
April 11, 2011 at 4:47pm
"I like Douthat a lot. He's smart, interesting, well-informed and an excellent writer. But he insists on inhabiting a world in which the Republican Party bears little relation to its actual incarnation." So why exactly do you like him and consider him smart and a good writer if he's delusional? Every woman I know loathes him, if it matters to you JC. He's an immature sexist jackass on anything to do with women's sexuality. He's a bizarre pet of the liberal press and a sad emblem of its insecurity - someone who is potty trained at best, and therefore celebrated. The whole Douhat phenom makes me insane.
- WandreyCer
April 11, 2011 at 7:17pm
I am reminded of what Bill Maher asked David Brooks recently. He brought up that a majority of GOP primary voters think Obama is not an American and a Muslim. He brought up their woeful knowledge of science. He asked Brooks at what point does a thinking person no longer associate with these people. Brooks was wishy-washy and said he was a "conservaitve" not a "Republican." I feel the same question can be asked Douthat and on some level Frum. At what point, especially after reading Ryan's socio-pathic budget proposal can you as a thinking patriotic American still associate with this party that was once a rational center-right party but is not full of all that is ugly in America?
- MikeB.
April 11, 2011 at 9:12pm
We (JC and me) like Ross Douthat because we are not - envelope please - ideologues.
- liberalref
April 11, 2011 at 9:38pm
"[Douthat's ] an immature sexist jackass on anything to do with women's sexuality." What are you talking about? You know, people can deviate from the liberal line on choice without being immature or sexist or jackasses. One of the most remarkable things about Douthat is the temperance of his rhetoric.
- timcrim1
April 12, 2011 at 12:11am
Wandrey, I agree with you about his sexism, and that he has a couple of delusions. But you have to compare him to the typical conservative commentator. (timcrim1, it's not just about choice, but his publically stated views about sexual mores generally- it's pretty weird stuff.) He's still less sexist than is typical and a whole lot more clued in about race and class. And his couple of delusions makes him about a dozen short of where even the "smart" conservatives like George Will are.
- miceelf
April 12, 2011 at 10:05am
Relieved to see you used the scare quotes around "smart" for Will. George Will is about as smart as I am pretty. I can't find any photos to back it up, but I'd bet dollars to donuts he first donned that priggish little bow tie of his long about his sophomore year at college. His sartorial sense hasn't advanced since then, and neither has his intellect. And just so's y'all don't think that I think all conservatives is dumb, William F. Buckley, that old Jesuit, was as smart as they come and as dangerous as a rattlesnake.
- AaronW
April 12, 2011 at 10:22am
I'm not at all familiar with Douthat; I simply haven't paid attention. Brooks strikes me as a kind of demoralized character. It seemed to me in his recent hagiographic column on Paul Ryan, more than anyone else he was trying to persuade himself. And now today he's again hiding inside this pop-social science pablum to which he devoted his recent book. It's pretty obvious he's in a mode of withdrawal. He, Brooks, can't abide what the conservative movement has become--at least not without actively deluding himself as to the bill of particulars as he did when writing about Ryan's budget proposal--but he cannot public renounce conservatism without making a mockery of his entire life's work. So instead he drifts off into highly paid, middlebrow irrelevance.
- AaronW
April 12, 2011 at 10:37am
Mr. Chait, I very much appreciate your reporting on the growing influence of Randism. It is a very real threat to the Republic and needs exposure for what it is. Conservative Christians in particular, need to reexamine their affection for the new Republican party guided by this explicitly anti-Christian ideology.
- mjhill
April 14, 2011 at 12:12am