David Brooks, in the New York Times:
…Britain has hit its reality moment. The Brits are ahead of us when it comes to public indebtedness and national irresponsibility. Spending has been out of control for longer and in a more sustained way.
But in that country, the climate of opinion has turned. There, voters are ready for a politician willing to face reality. And George Osborne, who would become the chancellor of the Exchequer in the likely event that his Conservative Party wins the next election, has aggressively seized the moment…
…In the U.S., the economic crisis has caused many to question capitalism. But Britain has discredited the center-left agenda with its unrelenting public spending, its public development agencies and disappointing public-private investment partnerships.
Osborne and David Cameron, the party leader, argue that Labour’s decision to centralize power has undermined personal and social responsibility. They are offering a responsibility agenda from top to bottom. Decentralize power so local elected bodies have responsibility. Structure social support to encourage responsible behavior and responsible spending.
If any Republican is looking for a way forward, start by doing what they’re doing across the Atlantic.
Unfortunately, any observation based upon equating American Republicans with British Conservatives in ideological terms has for several decades been weak at best. And, in this case, so is the timing.
To begin with, British Conservatives are less frightened of public services, which are perhaps in Britain epitomized (as is constant news currently in the U.S.) by the extremely popular National Health Service. In that, they are in synch with the public, which doesn’t want the NHS underfunded. Rather Britons want their taxes spent more wisely than Labour has done, with its plethora of wasteful, questionable (often at best) initiatives.
Which is a major reason why the Labour party leader is now much like the George W. Bush of Britain. The public has long since tuned out Gordon Brown. If President’s Bush’s popularity drop had begun with Katrina, Mr Brown’s began when, as a reasonably popular newly appointed successor to Tony Blair, Mr Brown made what is always a fatal political mistake: he vacillated. Apparently desiring an absolutely guaranteed sure victory, during autumn 2007 he failed to call an early general election — despite the fact that a victory would have made him “his own man.”
Instead, the public was subjected to weeks of media speculation as to “Will he, or won’t he?” When, in the end, he didn’t, from that point on he has been viewed as an “unelected” prime minister and immediately began his plunge in opinion polls.
Ever since, the public has also been treated to repeated promises, every so many months, of the latest “fightback“. Mr Brown has always been about to reassert himself and wrest the policy initiative away from the opposition Conservatives. That when what the public really has wanted all along was not another raft of “plans,” but instead to have a chance to render a verdict on him at the polls.
Thus he faces what is near certain defeat by June 2010. By then time will have run out: he must by then ask the Queen to dissolve parliament, by law, and call the election that should probably have been held in 2007. Matters are now so bad in a public opinion sense that Mr Brown could likely take to the GMTV sofa, sit across from Andrew Castle and Emma Crosby and announce how he had just discovered the cure for cancer . . . and the public would likely respond with a collective, indifferent, disbelieving shrug.
To say nothing of the Daily Mail probably immediately headlining, Has Brown found a new way to tax Britain’s families for even longer?
On more familiar U.S. ground, Mr Brooks forgets that American Republicans have just been badly trounced in a presidential election and control neither house of Congress. Even worse, they lack a credible “leader of the opposition” to step into the vacuum created by those defeats. The likes of Sen Mitch McConnell are never going to win over many independents and conservative Democrats to the Republican column.
In short, by in the spring Labour will face its own version of Republicans’ November 2006 and November 2008. Which were effectively American Republicans’ versions of British Conservatives’ May 1997. As was the case with British Conservatives following their 1997 defeat (during which span they lost two further general elections decisively in 2001 and 2005), Republicans seem likely also to take some time to recover electorally.
Because “the Republican brand” is damaged. Thus the notion bouncing around among Republicans that President Obama is “bound” to be a one-term president is based, at this point, on nothing but wishful thinking. Another Jimmy Carter they may fervently hope him to be, but to become another one a credible alternative to him must emerge.
Aside from perhaps Mitt Romney, who has experience, depth, and charisma, and, most importantly — and like David Cameron — does not come across as a “cold conservative”, there is, as of now, no one approaching a “Ronald Reagan” waiting in Republican wings. Yet while the country has already chosen the son of a Muslim as president, too many Republicans are evidently still fixating on Gov Romney’s Mormonism — a Mormonism that is, ironically, itself a very American faith. Such an attitude hardly bodes well when it comes to Republicans’ reaching out to “rebuild the brand.”
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