Small Government or Smallish-Sort-of-Mediumish-Nicer-Better Government

Add caption

Sunday, 19 August 2012 12:06 By James Kwak, The Baseline Scenario | Op-Ed 

James Kwak, The Baseline Scenario: "It couldn't hurt for the Democrats to have a decent response to the small-government attack line, and that starts with having some kind of understanding of what the federal government actually is and does."

The conventional wisdom about Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate is that it sets the stage for a debate about the role of government in society, between Romney and Ryan as champions of small government and Obama and Biden as supporters of big government. Indeed, that’s the thrust of the lead story in the Wall Street Journal [last week]. And it’s pretty clear why Mitt Romney wants to have this debate.

First, the politics: The choice of Ryan should be slightly encouraging to Democrats for one reason—it confirms what the polls and Nate Silver have been saying for months: President Obama is winning, though not by much. One of Romney’s options was to simply run against the incumbent, pointing to the bad economy and making a bland case for himself as some kind of business guru. Apparently that wasn’t working, so he decided to double down on the Tea Party and the idea of radically reforming government—something that he’s been distinctly bad at throughout the election so far.

In the longer term, Democrats should be worried, because Romney and Ryan have the better debating position. Their position is simple and superficially compelling: Government is bad.  READ MORE