Spendthrifts Of The GOP THE REAL RIGHT-WING CONSPIRACY?
By Doug Bandow

(FORTUNE Magazine) – Politics today reflects George Wallace's taunt of three decades ago: "There ain't a dime's worth of difference between the major parties." Last year Republicans in Congress teamed up with Democrats to increase federal spending, raise taxes, and complicate the tax code. President Clinton has proposed $150 billion of new spending for next year, and he's likely to get most of what he wants. Meanwhile, even as the federal government is taking a larger share of people's income in taxes this year than at any time since World War II, conservative intellectuals are busy explaining why the government should get off its butt and do something big for a change.

And all this at a time when conservatism was supposed to be ascendant. What's really ascendant, however, is conservative statism, a peculiar strain of political thinking characterized by right-leaning people arguing for more--not less--government. Republican lawmakers can at least claim political necessity when they concoct new roles for government; conservative intellectuals have no excuse.

Conservative statism is not new. Author and pundit Kevin Phillips made a name for himself as the leading big-government Republican. American Enterprise Institute economist Herbert Stein has regularly advocated higher taxes and more spending, including on foreign aid. More recently, Howard Wiarda of the Center for Strategic and International Studies suggested that the GOP give up trying to cut entitlements, and instead make the case that it can "manage, streamline, and administer the programs better than the Democrats."

The difference with conservative statists this time around is that they're offering a more formal framework for an activist state. In particular, William Kristol and David Brooks of the Weekly Standard, that hive of trenchant big-government skeptics, want government to promote "national greatness." And if the people won't listen (last year no domestic public-policy issue cracked the list of top ten news stories), government will have to conscript the public in a grand crusade. "The civil-society agenda," Kristol explains, "requires a corresponding political agenda."

Self-respecting conservatives like Kristol and Brooks recoil from left-wing statism. But as Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. points out, "Using government on behalf of 'national greatness' could get you right back to the New Deal." Franklin Roosevelt's call to overcome the Depression, Lyndon Johnson's program to end poverty, and even Bill Clinton's proposal to provide universal health care all reflected the kind of "national goal" desired by Brooks. As President Clinton observed last October, "Meeting new challenges in ways that renew our oldest values...is the wellspring of our greatness."

At least the liberals target important issues. When liberals meddle, they meddle. Not conservatives, however. "It would be silly to lay out some sort of ten-point program," Kristol and Brooks write. But what little they propose in the way of specifics looks, well, pretty silly. Brooks cites the Library of Congress, national parks, and antitrust laws as examples of "grand American projects." The Weekly Standard suggests banning gambling. After denouncing "mindless opposition to the state," Eliot Cohen of the School of Advanced International Studies worries about spending "adequate sums of money to acquire, protect, and maintain Civil War battlefields." Kristol and Brooks advocate public works of Panama Canal-proportions, whatever they might be. According to Brooks, specifics aren't the point. "It almost doesn't matter what great task government sets for itself," he writes, "as long as it does some tangible thing with energy and effectiveness."

But in fact, government-sponsored "national greatness" is really just free-spending liberalism in conservative drag. While Brooks advocates a "limited but energetic government," experience suggests that no such government is possible. The state is the ultimate imperialistic institution, constantly seeking to expand. If it is limited, it might still build parks and maintain battlefields. If it can conscript money and manpower for truly grand crusades, however, it is not limited.

Kristol and Brooks go on to ask a traditional liberal question: How is it possible for people to "love their nation if they hate its government"? William Bennett, former drug czar and editor of the bestselling Book of Virtues, makes much the same argument: disdain of government "makes it virtually impossible to instill in citizens a noble love of country." These are curious sentiments coming from conservatives. Brooks may be right to worry that people lose "a sense of grand aspiration and noble purpose" when "they think of nothing but their narrow self-interest, of their commercial activities." But this only establishes why people should give to charity or go to church, not why they should lobby Congress.

The bromides of conservatives cannot turn government projects into vehicles of virtue. Democracy is always dominated by interest-group politics. There certainly was nothing particularly wholesome about Washington, D.C., when the Library of Congress and Panama Canal were built; a new crusade launched by Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrich would prove no more ennobling.

--Doug Bandow

DOUG BANDOW is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.