The Constant Gardener

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As I said, the economic crisis we are now in presents a golden political moment for those of us who care about our country. But first we must isolate the problem.

As the economic growth of America has surged ever upward these last twenty years, I have heard more and more conservatives question the quality of that growth (Liberals too, but they merely mouth political talking points. They are too uninterested in the science of economics to have any helpful opinions about the matter). The main point, I take it, is that as the economy has grown, personal incomes (in real terms) have remained flat. This is an excellent and worrisome point. But the analysis I have seen always seems to miss the obvious point: as economic growth has surged these last decades, so too has the regulatory state. The cost of doing business has gone upward, ever upward, to comply with regulatory rules, paperwork requirements, tax code minutia and securities laws, and businesses have had to compensate with evermore efficient ways of doing what they are supposed to be doing, making a profit for the shareholders. In this effort, the American worker has been nothing short of amazing. It has been remarked over and over, but is still little noticed, that the increase in productivity per worker over the last twenty years has been unprecedented in the annals of history.

But the American worker can only do so much, because the loss of business efficiency due to ever more nit-picking regulations is compounded by the loss of business opportunities as more and more of the economy is sequestered from economic activity. Energy is the prime example. Our richest and cheapest resource, coal, is under constant assault of environmental regulations and agencies from the Federal level down to the local zoning codes. Our fields of oil and natural gas lie fallow off our coasts, in Alaska, and in shale oil deposits in the once entreprenurial West. Nuclear energy, the cheapest, cleanest, safest technology the world has ever seen, has been tied up in litigation and regulation induced constipation since the 1970's. While France – yes, France! – becomes the world leader in the peaceful uses of nuclear technology.

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Since cheap available energy is fundamental to jobs and opportunity, the effects of government regulatory growth in this area are incalculable. But the same holds true in other areas of the economy. Development of new life-saving drugs; improvements in agriculture and distribution networks; residential and commercial construction methods and techniques, all of these and more are tied up in ever-more stifling regulations, all of these and more are restricted, modified, distorted, and often prohibited by ever-more intrusive public policy initiatives imposed and enforced by the Regulatory State.

Let me make it clear that, to paraphrase a famous carpenter, we will always have the Regulatory State with us. The Regulatory State is like kudzu, ultimately ineradicable. But every good gardener knows that cutting back weeds will never suffice forever. Tomorrow, next season, next year, there will always be more weeds to pull. But the gardener who is constant in his craft does not despair but rather takes pleasure in clearing his garden, again and again, because that is what a gardener does who loves his garden.

Those who care about an America strangled by the Regulatory State should be constant gardeners as well. The task will not be easy. Republicans have too long neglected this task, and a gardener who finally turns his attention to cleaning up a neglected garden always faces hard, tough work. And worst of all, Republican inaction these many years has produced weeds that have mutated into a more feral variety: a generation of madly reproducing bureaucrats who consider their power, position and future growth to be an entitlement. The bureaucrats today are more numerous and stronger than those in the past, and they will fight, tooth and nail, to protect themselves, and they will have many allies in Congress and the Media.

But rooting out the Regulatory State from the common ground of American culture is work worth doing, and it is a fight worth winning. And there is no better time to begin this hard work than now, when the winds of economic woe blow hard against the very foundations of the Washington bureaucracy.

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The Constant Gardener*

Rahm Emanuel, the White House Chief of Staff, said last November, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." Truer words were never spoken, although the cynicism behind the words was palpable. That is because his point was that a crisis can be used to enact radical politicial reforms, even if those reforms would have little or nothing to do with either the causes of the crisis or the resolution thereof. This is crisis in the generic sense, as simply that which can be used to hype the necessity of a pre-existing agenda. "Please note," says the empresario, "there is nothing up my sleeve. Now, pick a crisis, any crisis. Don't show it to me. And ... voila! It's time for change."

But a crisis does not have to be used cynically. A crisis can be used in it's best sense: as a time when deep issues that are normally overlooked reveal themselves. Historical examples abound. The bombing of Pearl Harbor focused the American people on the dangers of isolationism, and galvanized a nation to a necessary war. Nearer to home, the horrors of 9/11 awoke the nation to its false sense of security, and to the necessity of taking affirmative action abroad. And the devastating economic effects of 9/11 enabled President Bush to highlight the long running Republican argument that taxes were a burden on the economy, and to therefore enact the most significant tax cuts since the 1980's.

But my real point is about something that has been too long overlooked. It is not remembered that Ronald Reagan came into office with three major problems to fix: world-wide Soviet aggression, third-world style inflation brought on by high-taxation and loose monetary policies, and economic stagnation and loss of liberty engendered by the growing bloat of government bureaucracy. Reagan, however, had an almost mystical ability to choose the fights he could win. And early on in his administration he recognized that reining in the entrenched regulatory bureaucracy of Washington was not a winnable war.

He feinted here and there with new rules restricting the bureaucracies, downsizing, and various reforms, but by and large he only paid lip-service to true regulatory reform. Ultimately he left the Washington bureaucracy problem for another day, another administration, another political moment. And the Department of Education, among others, still stands to this day, larger and more intrusive than ever.

But let's take a moment to praise Reagan, not bury him. Two out of three ain't bad, and we owe him a huge debt of gratitude. It is to the current generation's shame that Reagan left a task worth doing, and Republicans have instead taken the easy road of riding the political benefits of an end to the Cold War and seemingly unstoppable economic growth.

It's wake up time. The economic crisis we are now in presents a golden political moment for those of us who care about our country.

To be continued ...

*Kudos to John Le Carre for the inspiration of the phrase.

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