Do you think the 2012 election will make such an impact on America's future and
the world's as a consequence?
Election a stark choice on America's future
By David Gergen, CNN Senior Analyst, and Michael Zuckerman, Special to CNN
updated 10:48 AM EDT, Fri August 24, 2012
The stage inside of the Tampa Bay Times Forum ahead of the Republican National
Convention. Thousands will decend on Tampa for the four day convention ,August
27-30.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
David Gergen, Michael Zuckerman: GOP convention jump-starts general election
They say it's a "choice" election, presenting radically different visions about
government's role
Writers: Election breaks tradition, not pivoting to center for general, but
staying with base
Writers: Vote may force voters reckoning with stark question: Big government or
small?
Editor's note: David Gergen is a senior political analyst for CNN and has been
an adviser to four presidents. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he is a
professor of public service and director of the Center for Public Leadership at
Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Follow him on Twitter.
Michael Zuckerman, his research assistant, is a Harvard College graduate who
will be entering Harvard Law School.
(CNN) -- Buckle up! The political conventions in Tampa and Charlotte over the
next two weeks will throw the 2012 election campaigns into high gear, and send
it careering down a mean, rocky road toward one of the most important choices
Americans have made in half a century.
Only twice before in the lives of most voters have we seen an election offering
such radically different visions about the role of government in national life.
The first was 1964, when Lyndon Baines Johnson was holding up the Democratic
standard, calling for government to create a Great Society with a cornucopia of
new federal programs. On the other side, Barry Goldwater had seized the
Republican banner from previously-dominant moderates and crusaded on the most
conservative agenda in six decades, seeking to push back not only the Great
Society, but much of the New Deal.
David Gergen
Michael Zuckerman
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and ... moderation in the
pursuit of justice is no virtue!" Goldwater declared to thunderous applause at
the GOP convention. It was a bare-knuckles fight, but LBJ was campaigning in
John F. Kennedy's cloak and Goldwater's proposals were seen as scary and
radical. LBJ swept to a crushing victory. Score one for bigger government.
The second "choice" election came in 1980, when, after a decade of failed
leadership, a man came galloping out of the West who seemed the most improbable
of figures to get the country going again. And he was carrying with him many of
Goldwater's ideas. But Ronald Regan turned out to be a strong leader with a
million-dollar smile; Jimmy Carter, a man better suited to be a saint than a
politician, went down decisively. Score one for smaller government.
This year's election is shaping up to be a rubber match with major implications
for the country's future. Gov. Mitt Romney's choice of Paul Ryan as his running
mate has dialed up the ideological contrast between the two tickets, while both
sides have been throwing sharp elbows at each other (even by the low standards
of American politics).
The harshening words and diverging visions speak to an election that breaks
somewhat with tradition. Time was, as Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post and
others have pointed out, the playbook was simple: run to the base in the
primary and pivot back to the middle in the general election, winning over as
many of the voters in the middle as you can. (In economics, this effect is
called Hotelling's Game and is otherwise normally used to explain why gas
stations all seem to be on the same corner.)
Abortion, Medicare hot topics before RNC
Challenging the GOP platform from within
Stewart: Romney knows what voters need
But this election features a small number of genuinely undecided voters --and
high negatives for both party candidates, as Karl Rove notes in Thursday's Wall
Street Journal. So, (although Rove would disagree) the dominant strategy has
become playing to the base.
That explains Romney's picking Paul Ryan, but it also explains why partisans of
both sides rejoiced when Ryan was picked: His strong conservative beliefs fire
up the Democratic base as well as the Republican one.
If anything, this year's choice is starker than in 1980: Reagan had a pragmatic
streak, so he was willing to compromise to get a deal done and keep moving
forward (Tip O'Neill used to say that the Gipper would win more than half a
loaf and come back for the rest later). Romney and Ryan, however, reinforced by
the tea party, show no inclination to compromise. On the Democratic side, aides
to President Obama are spreading the word that, if he wins, he has had enough
of trying to accommodate the Republicans and will also be more confrontational.
Whether the two sides will seize upon their conventions to set forth more
complete, detailed plans for the next four years remains to be seen. So far,
they have refused to go beyond vagaries and harsh, trivial attacks on each
other. Most voters are yearning for more courage and less bile.
But there should be no doubt that the two tickets stand behind radically
different visions of the role of government and individuals. Under President
Obama, federal spending is now 24% of GDP, far higher than in recent decades.
While Obama talks of trimming, his most thoughtful advisers think the
government is likely to grow in coming years no matter who wins (see Larry
Summers's provocative column in the Financial Times this week).
In contrast, Romney has vowed to get federal spending down to 20%. That
difference may not sound like much, but it roughly equates to over half a
trillion dollars each year. At a time when 10,000 Baby Boomers are becoming
eligible for Medicare and Social Security each day, going from 24% to 20% of
GDP would mean massive cuts.
Presented with a stark choice between bigger government and smaller government,
where are voters likely to come down? That is a question that has interested
scholars for a long time. Some years ago, political scientists Lloyd Free and
Hadley Cantril observed that Americans were "philosophical conservatives" but
"operational liberals," that is, they would tell pollsters they wanted to keep
government small, taxes down and socialism out. But when asked if they wanted
the government to spend more on programs and benefits, they were all for it.
In the coming election, we may have finally reached a point of reckoning
between these two conflicting impulses. And so, while conventions are generally
the place for sweeping statements, the winning ticket will need to be able to
speak operationally as well as philosophically.
All this makes for a dramatic series of addresses, not just from Mitt Romney
and President Obama, but from their parties' top messengers: people like New
Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro. These
conventions will offer them a chance to make a firm case to the American people
on which kind of government, both operationally and philosophically, they
should choose.
Looming over that choice is the question of whether, at the end of this
campaign, the winner can actually govern. Certainly, the raucous, often vicious
nature of the combat so far has not been encouraging. One of us (David) has
been attending conventions for some 40 years and has witnessed a distinct
change in tone; listening to the hot rhetoric in both conventions in 2004, it
suddenly became comprehensible how the country could have wound up in Civil War
back in 1861 after another election full of ramifications for the nation's
future.
And the chasms between the two parties continue to widen before us. A deeply
illuminating study, released a few days ago by the Washington Post and the
Kaiser Family Foundation, has shown that over the past 14 years, the
percentages of Democrats and Republicans who consider themselves "strong
partisans" has shot up by about 20 points in each case.
So, in pushing voters to make a choice between sharply different visions, it is
also imperative that the candidates look beyond November to the next four
years, figuring out how they will bring the country together again when the
brawl is over. The acceptance speeches are not just a moment to rally the base,
they are also a place to begin laying the foundations of a successful
presidency.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Gergen and
Michael Zuckerman.
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