McCain or Obama, New World or Old?

(Denver Post, June 22) Will America become like Europe? Should it? Could it? Has it already? These questions point to an unspoken but momentous issue of the 2008 election. A vote for Obama has the effect of saying yes. A vote for McCain has the effect of saying no. McCain would stand higher with conservatives if his “no” were more emphatic. Although our June trip to Italy, England, and Germany was pure vacation, reflections about similarities and differences across the Atlantic accompanied it like a Beethoven score. Lufthansa’s direct service puts Denver practically next door to places like Frankfurt and Rome. Yet the contrasts are striking and, for this American, vitally worth preserving.

The Old World is just that, old. Coloradans pride themselves on a State Capitol from the century before last. Our nephew in Bristol showed us a cathedral from the millennium before last. He’s a scholar studying the “relatively recent” Latin writings of St. Hildegard, 900 years ago. The Pantheon in Rome was built before Christ was born. Europe’s air is thick with the weight of the past.

With this comes a richness that we in the New World can marvel at, but also a weariness we should beware of. Our mother country and grandmother continent were already tired when pilgrims left for America to start afresh, four centuries ago. The divergence of outlook, expansive over here and constricted over there, has only increased since then. Back to that future is not where we should be headed politically.

Many Democrats don’t see it that way, of course. According to the transnational progressives who want the US and its neighbors to emulate the EU, borderless globalism is anything but burnt out. It’s the next big thing. What’s not to like?

Granted, hopping countries without the hassle of currency exchange or customs is nice. And your heart goes out to the relieved peoples of a continent long wracked by wars, now at last amicably unified under a single umbrella, 27 nations and counting. But when you look past the European Union as a structure and appraise Europe today as a civilization, the picture is less bright.

You learn the friendly locals are having fewer and fewer children. You find their magnificent churches crowded with tourists but empty of worshippers. Secularism officially prevails as Christianity wanes and Islam flourishes. Sluggish economies, heavy taxes, burdensome bureaucracies, and weak defenses are the norm. Books like “Death of the West” by Patrick Buchanan and “America Alone” by Mark Steyn give the details. Beneath the outward bustle and creature comforts, there is no sense of lively hope.

Yet the presidential candidate of hope and change is wildly popular there. Newspapers during our trip headlined a poll showing Obama preferred over McCain by 52-15 in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia.

Charisma is part of it, no doubt. My hunch, though, is that the Democrat’s collectivist, internationalist, government-centered message sounds more likeminded to Europeans than the patriotic individualism of his Republican rival. They sense US-EU convergence if Obama wins, and I fear they’re right.

Fear seldom clouds my sunny disposition, but I tremble at the decision our country faces in this election. Europeans have settled. They’ve got daily life in a tidy package cushioned with quasi-socialism and quasi-pacifism at the price of diminished freedom and responsibility, and never mind the eternal truths. Is that what Americans want?

Let’s hope not. America was born of a grander vision. If we settle too, how tragic. A torn and tired world needs the sword of our vigilance and the flame of our idealism. “Duty Free” is fine in airport stores, but lethal in the life of nations. The November outcome will hinge on how we see our duty.

Dare your graduate to read

(Denver Post, June 1) It was a graduation to remember. Our grandson and his classmates looked great in their blue mortarboard caps with gold tassels. Parents beamed and cameras flashed. The speaker was brief, taking his text from Psalms: “Children are a gift from God.” Ian’s dad caught the whole thing on video. Did I mention that Ian is five, and this was preschool commencement at Hosanna Lutheran? There was hardly a dry eye in the place as the graduates gave a fine choral rendition of “Kindergarten Here We Come.” Our little crown prince won’t recall much about that day as the years pass, but be honest: What do you recall of substance about the graduation days you or your children went through? If you remember who spoke or the advice they gave, you’re a savant. If you can name, let alone still have, the gifts you got, you’re a packrat. It all fades.

What I still have and still treasure from completing junior high, high school, and eventually college, is some books my parents and other adults gave me. I felt honored that they took me seriously enough at this educational milestone to present me with the tools of further learning, formally inscribed and signed.

We of the gray hair, rattled by things like texting and tattoos, grouch that schools are being dumbed down and youth are going to the dogs. Sure, that’s been the complaint of every generation since Plato, but this time (we fret) it’s really happening. Then why not push back and compliment your graduate with a gift that will last, a book?

I don’t mean just any book. Ixnay on the latest from Oprah or Starbucks. Go for something more timeless, serious but short, not heavily political or religious yet edgy enough to reward the reader. If you’ve read it yourself, the personal connection will flatter your young friend. A bridge of ideas between you will span the coming decades.

“The Abolition of Man” by C. S. Lewis is less than 100 pages, delphically silent on the author’s beloved Christian faith, and came out long before Obama was born. Yet its powerful treatment of what truth is, how the world works, and what it means to really think, is as fresh as tomorrow’s headlines. It has changed many lives. I recently sent it to Ben Steiger, graduating from Bentonville High in Arkansas.

Equally sparkling in their brevity are “The Law” by Frederic Bastiat, a French parliamentarian who wrote in 1850, and “Introduction to Citizenship for New Americans” by Thomas Krannawitter of the Claremont Institute. The graduate who’s soon to be a voter will find them thoughtful guides to understanding the free society, without a speck of partisanship.

Bastiat was that rarity, a reflective statesman. A father of the breed was Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor in the 2nd century, who penned his remarkable “Meditations” while on military campaign. “My Early Life” by Winston Churchill is another example, closer to our own time. Either makes a memorable gift at this season.

Character forged in the fire seems to be the theme of my recommendations here. That wasn’t planned; I just grabbed some favorites off the shelf. It’s fitting, though, for the Class of 2008 as they ask themselves, “What now?” Help set their moral compass with books like Elton Trueblood’s “Abraham Lincoln: Theologian of American Anguish” or Robert Bolt’s unforgettable play about Sir Thomas More, “A Man for All Seasons.”

Whatever book you give, inscribe it with three A’s. Jot your affection for the person he or she is, your admiration for the summit reached with this diploma, and your anticipation of higher peaks the graduate will climb. Then sign it, date it, and feel great about it. You’ve given a gift that will last.

Why the Statehouse Matters

“The Presidency is the ultimate prize.” “Congress matters most for the issues I care about.” “The world won’t end if the other side takes over our statehouse for a while.” Listen to the political talk for any length of time, and you will hear those three thoughts expressed. You have probably expressed them yourself. Are they generally true? Yes. But they’re not the whole story. Important as the stakes are in Washington DC for this election year, it also matters a great deal who holds the governor’s chair and who leads the legislative majorities, down at your state capitol. Note: The Claremont Institute, for whom I'm a senior fellow, was asked by a business group to spotlight some of the states where a political power shift has had adverse consequences for citizens and taxpayers. My own state, unfortunately, came to mind first, and four others quickly followed. This is the report I compiled for our clients as they mobilize for election 2008.

Depending whether the party in power tends to want more freedom or more government, your livelihood, your liberties, and your values will either thrive or suffer. Your state will either compete in the national and global economy, or it will lag behind. Those are the stakes and nothing less. Which way it goes is up to your neighbors and you.

Experience in a number of states during this decade illustrates the point. We’ll look at the dramatic gains for labor unions and the green lobby in Colorado; whopping tax increases in Michigan and Wisconsin; and the spending spree in Montana and Arizona. Other examples abound across the country, but these five are representative.

Before reviewing the record, let’s be clear about a phrase used above, “the party in power.” That doesn’t necessarily mean Republicans vs. Democrats. As Montana State Rep. John Sinrud observed, “Sometimes it’s a matter of what kind of Republicans.” Or again, as Arizona taxpayer activist Tom Jenney related, “A Democrat voted with us to stop a tax hike after two from the GOP deserted.”

So our focus here will not be on partisan stereotypes. It will be on philosophies of government. Now for those case studies from the states.

Colorado’s Big Chill

During the 1990s and into this decade, under governors of both parties and with a Republican legislature, Colorado was widely admired for its strong business climate, stable tax and regulatory atmosphere, and innovative policy models. Democratic Gov. Roy Romer helped lead the national movement for education standards. His successor, Republican Bill Owens, was named “America’s Best Governor” by National Review.

Things changed abruptly after Democrats captured first the legislative branch in 2004 and then the executive branch in 2006 through a combination of their dynamism and Republicans’ complacency. The term-limited Owens cast over 100 vetoes of anti-business and anti-family bills, but was forced into unfavorable terms for a tax-and-spend package demanded by Democrats. When Bill Ritter succeeded him in 2007, the floodgates opened.

Less than a month in office, Ritter was presented with a bill to overturn the Colorado Labor Peace Act after more than 60 years of bipartisan support. He rejected it but soon repaid the unions with an executive order mandating collective bargaining for all state employees. Renewable energy mandates, a Carbon Fund, and an adversarial rewrite of the state’s oil and gas regulations signaled his indebtedness to the environmental lobby. Over $1 billion in oil and gas investment fled the state in Ritter’s first year. Undeterred, he is now pushing a ballot issue to raise severance taxes on oil and gas.

Meanwhile, the Democratic legislature is weakening tort reform and worker’s compensation to accommodate the trial lawyers, pushing toward single-payer health care, and stalling on highway programs. Speaker Andrew Romanoff has another ballot issue that would repeal the constitutional restraint on annual growth of state spending.

Certainly all these changes have their enthusiastic proponents. But the cumulative effect is sure to drive down Colorado’s 7th-best national economic ranking (“Rich States, Poor States,” www.alec.org). Colorado business knows now, if it didn’t before, why the statehouse matters.

Michigan: Insult to Injury

Michigan, the onetime industrial powerhouse of the Midwest that has been mired in a one-state recession since 2001, didn’t experience same kind of the political sweep that Colorado did. Only a few seats in its state House of Representatives switched parties in 2006 after a massive spending campaign by liberal activist Jon Stryker.

But the installation of a Democratic House majority to partner with Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm has really changed things in Lansing, and not for the better as far as taxpayers and small business are concerned.

Working with Speaker Andy Dillon, Granholm wooed enough moderates in the narrowly Republican Senate to pass huge tax increases, 12% for the income tax and 22% for the business tax – despite grim trends that have seen personal income declining in the state every year since 2004, companies shutting down or relocating, and many residents moving away (unless trapped by mortgages that exceed their shrinking home equity).

“We have the 5th highest-paid state workforce in the country, yet legislators prefer raising revenues over cutting expenditures,” laments Leon Drolet of the Michigan Taxpayers’ Alliance. “One big employer, Comerica Bank, recently left the state. Who’s next?”

As a cry for help and a warning to “everyone in Lansing,” Drolet’s group has sparked a recall drive against Speaker Dillon, which will be on the August ballot if proponents can weather a swarm of court challenges. But the damage is already done for a Michigan economy that was 50th in job creation and 49th in personal income growth over the past decade (“Rich States, Poor States,” www.alec.org).

Wisconsin’s Near Miss

A bad dream very similar to Michigan’s – one legislative chamber changing hands, quickly followed by open season for the tax hikers – befell neighboring Wisconsin last year. Democrats rode the 2006 congressional tide to gain 8 seats in the state House, where Republicans clung to control, and 4 seats in the state Senate, taking control. It was the moment Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle had been waiting for.

His Senate allies startled the country with a $15 billion universal health care plan, bigger than all the rest of Wisconsin’s budget put together. Along with that came well-supported Senate bills for a hospital tax, a car rental tax, and – bizarrely timed, considering the trend of the economy – higher gas taxes as well as a doubling of the tax paid upon selling a home.

“We beat all of them in the House,” says Deb Jordahl of the Wisconsin Club for Growth. “House Republicans found their backbone,” she adds, with the help of her coalition – business and taxpayer organizations, pro-family groups, and other players outside the two-party orbit.

But Jordahl worries that the GOP’s three-seat edge in the House may not survive a tough election season this fall. If that happens Wisconsin’s economy, already sagging in the bottom half of ALEC’s “Rich States, Poor States” ratings, both its scorecard for the decade past and its outlook for coming years, may take another hit from big government.

Montana Spending Spree

The pattern continued in Montana, on much the same timeline as Colorado. Prior to 2004, Republicans held both the executive and legislative branches, and fiscal discipline was the rule. But that year, Democrats took the governor’s office with Brian Schweitzer, gained control of the state Senate, and wrestled the 100-member House to an exact tie, resulting a power-sharing arrangement for leadership. The economic consequences were not long in coming.

Montana’s budget has increased 50% in just four years under Gov. Schweitzer, according to Rep. John Sinrud, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Sinrud says Republicans’ return to a one-seat edge in the House (50-49 plus a Constitution Party member who votes with the GOP) hasn’t been enough to halt the spending spree, as the governor is often able to pull several moderate Republicans his way.

Hence Sinrud’s cautionary remark, quoted earlier, that “it’s a matter of what kind of Republicans” comprise a legislative majority. Nominal control by those with an R by their name doesn’t always translate to working majorities for limited government and restraint on taxes and spending.

John Sinrud also describes how Schweitzer in Montana, like Bill Ritter in Colorado, consistently does the bidding of the environmental lobby and the labor unions, public employees in particular. The Democratic governor has notably fattened the retirement systems for teachers and the state workforce in gratitude for their political support.

Frustrated with his GOP colleagues and harassed in his architectural firm by Schweitzer’s regulators, Sinrud says he’ll pass up reelection this year in order to form a citizens’ group “to apply pressure from outside.”

Arizona: Bipartisan Bloat

There could be no better example than Arizona of our initial point that it’s the reigning philosophy of government, not the partisan stereotype of R or D, which determines a state’s course.

Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano has consistently faced a Republican-led legislature since taking office in 2003. Yet she’s gotten her way fiscally year after year by making deals with some of the easy-spending Republicans in the House and Senate, exactly as we saw with her counterparts in Montana and Michigan.

The GOP edge in Arizona is two senators and three House members. It only takes a few weak links to break the chain. Leaders have tended to settle too low in budget negotiations ever since their hard line in 2004 was repudiated by a dozen members defecting to the Democratic position, which handed Napolitano a 12% spending increase. That’s the analysis by Tom Jenney, Arizona director of Americans for Prosperity. He says she has won annual increases of that much or more, ever since.

The last couple of years it’s been closer to 15% growth in spending, according to Rep. Russell Pearce, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. “She owns the negotiation when it’s clear our party can’t deliver real majorities in either chamber,” Pearce says.

He and Jenney both observed that the legislative spending culture is now so entrenched, and Napolitano’s hand is so strong, that borrowing and bonding schemes will likely be utilized in lieu of budget cuts to meet the looming deficits of this year and next as the economy softens.

Times have been good in Arizona of late. The state was 2nd nationally over the past decade in both job creation and in-migration (“Rich States, Poor States,” www.alec.org). Politicians obviously felt they could afford the open spigot that has pumped state spending from 5.4% of personal income in 2003 to over 7% today. But there’s a consequence for such government bloat. Arizona’s competitiveness and attractiveness will eventually suffer.

Conclusion: Our Responsibility

The statehouse matters greatly to your business, your family, and your future, whichever of the 50 states you call home. That’s vividly illustrated by the examples we’ve looked from Arizona and Montana, Wisconsin and Michigan. I see sobering evidence of it every day from the Claremont Institute’s office within view of the Colorado state capitol.

Who sits in the White House after January 2009 makes an immense difference for America and the world, to be sure. Likewise, it’s vitally important whether the U. S. Senate and House are committed to limited, constitutional government or to unlimited, progressive government.

Yet we’re still a union of states, and in those less-publicized 2008 races closer to home, the stakes for liberty are high. Our responsibility as citizens isn’t either-or. It’s both-and.

Big government stalks Centennial

(Denver Post, May 18) “The era of big government is over,” Americans were told by Bill Clinton in 1995. If only. Since then we’ve seen his wife run for President in pursuit of a health care takeover, his buddy Al Gore propagandize for massive intervention on global warming, and his successor George Bush balloon the budget deficit. States and localities have continued to fatten as well, multiplying budgets, payrolls, and new government entities at “an astounding rate,” according to Clint Bolick, author of the book “Grassroots Tyranny.” Familiar with Colorado from his years at Mountain States Legal Foundation, Bolick is now with the Goldwater Institute in Arizona. “Big government didn’t disappear,” he says, “it simply moved to the suburbs.” Our state is notorious for its kudzu-like proliferation of special taxing districts. We’re also the place where life imitated art in 2000, when a city called Centennial incorporated itself south of Denver, echoing James Michener’s novel by that name about an imaginary town north of Denver. A struggle over the young municipality’s future is now underway.

Centennial, where I’ve lived since 1974, will hold an election June 10 on its proposed home-rule charter as drafted by a citizens’ commission. Residents are divided. The debate matters to all Coloradans as a case study in government’s inherent tendency to grow, whether driven by real needs or not.

Commission chairman Cathy Noon argues that under home rule, “we the citizens will craft our own governmental structure, one that meets our needs,” resulting in “more self-governance” and “enhanced quality of life.” Sounds good. But Chris Raab, head of the opposition, worries that city hall insiders are “trying to grow the city, and the growth is not paying for itself.” He contends the charter is fatally flawed with “poor checks and balances.”

Sounds bad; so who’s right? Under Colorado’s constitution, a city or town is entirely a creature of the state legislature unless it votes for home rule under a mini-constitution of its own. Such autonomy has superficial appeal, and most of our larger municipalities have opted for it. But you’d best be skeptical if you value individual liberty, small government, and free markets. Political empire-building is just too big a temptation, especially in localities.

Studying my locality’s proposed charter at CentennialColorado.com, I found a number of commendable safeguards against overgovernment. But they’re mixed with troublesome provisions reflecting the weak checks and balances that Raab criticizes. Why eliminate the treasurer and the clerk, two of the only three citywide elected officers? Why empower the mayor and council members to fire each other for undefined “good cause”? I’ll be voting no.

It’s nothing personal. I just want more safeguards than this plan gives. Founding Father James Madison warned that “schemes of oppression” are easier to carry out locally because special interests swing more weight there. City politicians are much less well-known than those in state and federal offices, notes Clint Bolick, adding: “Local governments are like vampires: they operate best under cover of darkness.”

Randy Simmons, who teaches political economy at Utah State and is mayor of his small town, says that a meddlesome populism infects city councils, and the lack of partisan accountability in local government makes it worse. He observes that even Republicans tend to “go socialist” in municipal office, tempted to “do good with other people’s money.”

Simmons says he’s glad Utah’s constitution has no home rule option, so their legislature can prevent grassroots tyranny. But Colorado lacks that protection. “If the charter’s not written right, citizens can lose control of their city to the hired manager,” says Larry Merkel, who as a Wheat Ridge councilman saw it happen there in 1976. Will Centennial make the same mistake? Let’s hope not.

Who's afraid of ideas?

(Denver Post, May 4) To fear an idea, any idea, is unworthy of a free society. To suppress an idea from debate is more cowardly still. How does our country measure up? Americans pride themselves on being free-thinking and open, and we generally are. But five instances to the contrary recently hit the news. The utterance of forbidden words had polite opinion caterwauling like spinsters who saw a mouse. It was a bad show. We can do better. The would-be censors targeted a radio host’s glee, a political party’s advocacy, a wartime nation’s realism, a legislator’s bluntness, and a black man’s heresy. Amid the Washington cherry blossoms, Jefferson’s statue wept. French seismographs detected Voltaire spinning in his grave. It was not a good week for free expression. Start with Rush Limbaugh. The king of talk radio exulted that he was “dreaming of riots in Denver” when radicals try to disrupt the Democratic convention. A chorus of pantywaists led by Sen. Ken Salazar demanded Limbaugh be punished. For what: stating the obvious? Civil disorder fomented by the likes of Glenn Spagnuolo and Al Sharpton can only help Republicans – but nothing Rush says will increase its likelihood. Grow up, people.

Then there was Linda Daves, the North Carolina Republican chairman. Her TV ad in a governor’s race, featuring film of Barack Obama’s pastor calling for America’s damnation, was deemed by John McCain as unfit for airing. That the war hero soon flipped and disqualified himself as “referee” only worsened the embarrassment. Why was he frightened in the first place by the idea of voters knowing this fact about Democrats and the company they keep?

Our epidemic of the vapors then swept the departments of State and Homeland Security, which told Americans to avoid words like “jihad” and “Islam” in describing the radical Muslims at war against us – even though many so label themselves. Mustn’t cause “offense to moderates,” explained the AP story. The bureaucrats prefer sanitized terms like “violent extremist.” Counter-terrorism expert Steven Emerson suspects the Muslim Brotherhood scripted all this.

So what else has arisen lately in the way of ideas to be afraid of? Don’t forget the unschooled rural farm laborers– or in a single pithy phrase, “illiterate peasants.” Liberal legislators and media scolds went nutso when Rep. Douglas Bruce spoke the unspeakable in a debate on guest workers. Censure was threatened. Bruce’s election challenger self-servingly urged him to quit. Memo to lynch mob: bad manners aren’t grounds for muzzling and persecution. It’s still a free country.

No survey of intellectual cowardice would be complete without an update on the campus thought police. Chris Robinson, the Colorado College student hauled into kangaroo court for satirizing feminism, is a tale for another day. Today consider Joseph C. Phillips, the black TV actor and columnist, whose April 4 speaking date for the College Republicans at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania became an ordeal of intimidation for his hosts – at the hands not of fellow students, but of administrators.

Phillips’s talk on – not for or against, just “on” – affirmative action must be paired with an opposing speaker, the hosts were warned, or vandalism against their posters and personal backlash against them were likely. When the GOP students stood firm, according to a report filed by Phillips with Ward Connerly of the American Civil Rights Institute, “they were finally told by the Office of Multicultural Affairs that they should have invited a white speaker instead of me.”

You can be sure that story’s not over. None of these stories are, because America’s journey toward a full realization of freedom and responsibility isn’t over either. The goal is a civic arena where all ideas openly contend and none are fearfully silenced. We’re not there yet.