Doubleday, 256 pp. Twenty-three dollars and ninety-five cents
Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam have a strategy to attract working-class Americans to the Republican Party: become Democrats. These two young conservatives and editors of the Atlantic write that the American Dream is increasingly out of reach for the working classes. Since the resurgence of conservatism that began with President Nixon, the educated upper class has benefited greatly from economic prosperity. However, the working class has become less economically secure in the face of globalization and immigration. In their new book, Grand New Party, Douthat and Salam describe the failure of conservatism to address the needs of working-class voters, and outline a series of proposals for a more active government.
Douthat and Salam argue that there is an important role for the government to play in the economic security of working class Americans. They are not the only ones who think so. A Pew Research Center study cited in the book states that some of the most reliable Republican voters support greater government involvement – even with higher taxes – to address economic insecurity. Douthat and Salam embrace New Deal liberalism as a model for improving the status of the working class. The authors maintain that government policies must “deliver essential services while building, rather than degrading, the capacity for self-reliance.”
Douthat and Salam hope to recreate the era of emotional and economic security that followed the New Deal. The New Deal was effective because it used government spending to address the economic crisis of the Great Depression and sought to stabilize family life amidst the unpredictable business cycle. For example, the Works Progress Administration made jobs unavailable to women whose husbands were eligible to work. The “maternalists” who shaped the New Deal believed that the husband should be the head of the family and that women should stay in the home. These types of programs led to a golden age from 1945-1963, characterized by high marriage rates and low divorce rates. The government enabled many families to have “a male breadwinner, a female homemaker, and multiple children” and a confident outlook about their future. The authors argue that it was no coincidence that the postwar era was so prosperous.
This link between government programs and economic prosperity seems somewhat dubious, but this assumption informs Douthat and Salams’ policies bolstering American families. The stable family is at the heart of Douthat and Salam’s vision for the working class. They advocate an expansion of the child tax credit and subsidies to parents who stay at home to raise their children. Further, to improve the health-care system– perhaps the “greatest source of anxiety for working families”–Douthat and Salam introduce the “DeLong Plan.” Under this plan, all individuals and families pay 15 percent of their income into a Health Savings Account that can be used to pay for medical expenses; when the cost of health care exceeds the amount in the account, the federal government pays the additional costs.
The authors also recommend implementing a progressive consumption tax “in which workers would be taxed on the difference between their income and their savings,” instead of a payroll and federal income tax. Douthat and Salam support a much larger role for government than most conservatives of recent memory; in fact, the only feature of these plans that distinguishes the authors from liberals is an emphasis on creating incentives to foster a traditional family structure.
Not surprisingly, in the final chapter of Grand New Party, Douthat and Salam’s policy recommendations more closely resemble the campaign platforms of liberals than those of conservatives. They would expand job creation by hiring thousands of new police officers. Major investment in clean energy technology would create opportunities for working class Americans to fill “green-collar” jobs. Douthat and Salam recommend providing public education to children at age 3. They also endorse the idea of wage subsidies for people with low-paying jobs in an effort to make the working poor more economically secure. While these plans would benefit working-class families, they would be enormously expensive.
The pro-government policies in Grand New Party represent a drastic shift from Republican policy since the Reagan years. Then-Governor George W. Bush’s remark in 1999 that Republicans have “confused the need for limited government with a disdain for government itself” (quoted in Grand New Party) seems to foreshadow a change in the public’s perception of the role of government. The election in November will test whether voters embrace the small government represented by John McCain or the kind of active government advocated by Barack Obama.
The voting tendencies of working-class Americans have been scrutinized heavily throughout the 2008 presidential campaign. The current sense of economic insecurity, even crisis, which is felt strongly by the working class, is constantly discussed on the campaign trail. If the liberal vision of government described in Grand New Party will win the working class vote, it seems that Democratic candidate Barack Obama has the advantage.
