Obama Needs the Right

America has become the first country in the world to release a nearly $3 trillion dollar stimulus plan. After U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced the $2 trillion stabilization plan, Congress voted to pass the $838 billion government stimulus plan.

President Obama is new to office and struggling to promote a series of economic recovery plans. Tim Daschle, his nominee for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, had to step down due to a tax-evasion scandal, leaving Obama with no choice but to admit his mistake. However, for a president, these are small setbacks – the big trouble is still to come. In my opinion, for Obama to ultimately be successful, a fundamental prerequisite will be the Right.

For the past ten years or so, American politics has been poisoned by partisan politics. Polls repeatedly show that the majority of voters take centrist positions and are very suspicious of the radical lines taken by the Left and the Right. This silent majority has not been represented amidst the partnership of recent years and Bush is mainly responsible for this. He narrowly beat Gore in 2000, thanks in large part to his so-called “compassionate conservatism,” which represented a warm and conservative stance that won acceptance among the country’s center-right. But, after taking office, he adopted a strategy I described at the time as “from God, not from the People.” Conservatives had several advantages over liberals: a sharp rightward turn and a base in the extreme right-wing, leaving the center unsure where to turn between liberal and conservative extremes and ensuring the Democrats were overwhelmed by twelve percentage points. This strategy was certainly effective in the short-term, allowing Bush to be re-elected, but it divided the country, narrowed the Republican Party’s base, and damaged the Republicans’ long-term interests.

The reason Obama won this last election so smoothly is because the Republican Party did not seek change: it did not diversify its base or its ideology, adopt a “50-state” strategy, or overcome internal party disputes. In the 2006 midterm election, the Democrats retook Congress in one fell swoop, relying not on its own base and ideology, but on a group of Republican voters. The Obama campaign also promised to rise above partisan politics, even adopting Ronald Reagan as a model, with the result being a landslide victory with wins in a number of Republican states. Nowadays Americans are turning to the left, but it is by no means a leftist country and is more likely to remain a centrist or center-right nation. The greatest objective of Obama’s New Deal is to go beyond a single liberal ideology and form a cross-party coalition. Keeping Defense Secretary Gates in office and selecting a Republican for Commerce Secretary also reflects this goal.

But, when he does things this way, Obama needs to resist pressure from the left. This pressure is increasing, along with the start of Obama’s New Deal. For example, in a column called “Stuck in the Middle,” left-wing New York Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman attacked Obama’s inauguration speech for being too centrist and not liberal enough. Despite Krugman’s past research and recent Nobel Prize, his articles often do not teach the lessons of economics. He vigorously supported increased government investment throughout the crisis and admittedly such a position can be defended from an economic standpoint. But, when some economists suggested that increased government spending would crowd out private spending, he did not address this issue. In this column, he attacked Obama’s speech on “collective responsibility,” saying that since only a handful of Wall Street businessmen were responsible, how can the crisis be the public’s fault?

This fully demonstrates the ideological divide between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives emphasize individual responsibility, while liberals emphasize the rights of the individual, even going beyond rights to protect the individual. The sub-prime mortgage problem, for example, is one factor that set off the financial crisis. Of course Wall Street bears some responsibility in this matter, but you cannot hear the sound of one hand clapping. The reason why sub-prime loans have had such harmful effects is that many ordinary people were given the right to purchase housing far in excess of their incomes – a person making $40,000 a year, with $5,000 in savings could qualify to buy a $500,000 house. If the value of the house dropped below $400,000, the owner would still owe more than $400,000. In such cases, homeowners simply default: they don’t want the house and don’t pay back the mortgage either. The banks that lent to these people, of course, created their own problems. However, don’t these mindlessly consuming defaulters not bear some responsibility? Most people blame the economic crisis on “minorities”, which is as absurd as Americans blaming their own over-consumption on excessive Chinese savings.

Obama has stressed collective responsibility and has said that he recognizes the merits of the Republican political philosophy. This shows progress. If he can implement this kind of rationality in his policies, then he has the possibility of great success. To do this, however, he must first resist asinine minds on the left such as Paul Krugman. Today, with the Republican Party routed, it is difficult for it to form effective checks and balances against the Democrats. The Obama administration seems destined for high morale and at the moment its greatest temptation – and the easiest mistake – would be to make a sharp turn to the left.