AND TO DEFEAT HIM....:

The Fighter Fallacy (DAVID BROOKS, 10/27/11, NY Times)

The elemental question in American politics is: Do voters trust their government? During the middle of the 20th century, more than 70 percent of Americans said that they trusted government to do the right thing most of the time.

During the 1970s, that fell. By the Iraq war, only 25 percent trusted government. Now, amid the economic slowdown, public trust has hit an all-time low. According to a CNN/ORC International poll, only 15 percent of Americans asked said that they trust the federal government to do the right thing most of the time.

This is a problem for Democrats. But Democrats can win elections in this climate if they defuse the Big Government/Small Government ideological debate. With his Third Way approach, Bill Clinton established that he was not a Big Government liberal. Once he crossed that threshold, he could get voters to think about his individual policies, which were actually quite popular. Clinton made a national election feel like a state election (state and local governments are still trusted and voters are less ideological when voting for those offices).

Barack Obama also crossed the ideological threshold in 2008, running as a postpartisan unifier. But the government activism of his first two years reawakened the Big Government/Small Government frame. Independents and moderate conservatives recoiled.

...all the GOP candidate has to do is make voters feel that he personally believes "small government" can provide for social welfare better than big.

Posted by oj at October 27, 2011 7:25 AM
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