The Elephant in the Room

By Laurie Spivak, AlterNet. Posted June 24, 2004.

Americans have been ignoring the elephant in the room. It's that huge thing that's in front of everyone, but that no one mentions by name. Most people can't see it, while others intentionally disregard it, but many people just have a hard time articulating what it is.

Even its opponents direct little attention to the elephant itself; at best they tend to describe its various parts. Its ears are deregulation, its trunk trickle-down economics, its mouth media consolidation, its tail a pre-emptive war in Iraq, its legs record deficits, and its feet cutbacks in education, social security, America's safety net, even veterans' benefits.

Yet, by only describing its individual parts, Americans fail to grasp the massive weight and dimension of the elephant. The big picture is obscured. We can't see that what's in front of us is all part of the same beast: failed conservative policies.

Search on Lexis-Nexis for the phrase "failed conservative policies," and you'll turn up a grand total of three articles: two in British newspapers and one magazine article, all referring to the conservative Tories in England.

Now try the same search but replace the word "conservative" with "liberal." You'll find that the phrase "failed liberal policies" has been echoed by a slew of conservative commentators and politicians including Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Dan Quayle, George Pataki, Rudy Guiliani, Ralph Reed, and Tom DeLay. For more than a decade, "failed liberal policies" has been the conservative revolution's official unofficial mantra.

In 1988 at a rally for George H.W. Bush and Dan Quayle, Ronald Reagan asked his audience, "Do we want to risk going back to the old, failed liberal policies of the past?" to which the crowd in unison responded, "No!" Throughout the rest of the Bush campaign, the phrase made regular appearances on the stump. Then, in the final days before the 1988 election, Bush delivered the wholesale indictment and definitive declaration, "If I win this election, it will be a rejection of the failed liberal policies of the past."

George H.W. Bush did win, but just four years later, after only one term, voters elected to reject Mr. Bush and arguably his failed conservative policies as well. Today, little more than a decade later, voters are being asked to weigh in on the performance of Mr. Bush's son, who according to George Will is the most conservative president in living memory next to Ronald Reagan, "and not second by much." Yet critics of the 43rd President, the second most conservative president in living memory, rarely, if ever, criticize failed conservative policies.

With Republicans in control of the White House and both houses of Congress for the first time since 1952, more than ever, this election is a referendum on not only George W. Bush but on conservative policies. Without any meddling from pesky Democrats, Americans have finally gotten an opportunity to really take conservative policies for a test drive. No sharing of the spotlight, no diffusion of responsibility; at last, conservatives can finally take credit where credit is due.

So how have Americans been faring under conservative policies these last couple of years?

Let's start with the basics. Conservatives turned a $127 billion budget surplus into record-shattering deficits with reckless tax cuts; in 2004 alone, the deficit is expected to reach $500 billion. Poverty is on the rise with more than 34 million Americans living below the poverty line, including 12 million children. As for the first job-loss recovery since the Great Depression, it's an "upside down recovery" according to the Center for American Progress, meaning that corporate profits have risen at the expense of wages and employment. At the same time the costs of housing, gas, and medical care have all surged by double digits, not to mention that 20 million working Americans have no health insurance. Conservatives' answer? Not surprisingly, Washington's one-trick ponies call for more tax cuts for the rich. More of the same failed conservative policies.

The WMD-less war in Iraq has become a seemingly inextricable quagmire with taxpayers spending about three dollars on Iraq to every one dollar spent on our own homeland security. Now over a year out from the start of the war, the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project finds that America's image has plummeted across the world. But the icing on the cake? Former General Anthony Zinni recently said that the war in Iraq has not only undermined the war on terror, it has actually made us "far less safe." Despite these concerns, a White House memo leaked to the Washington Post last month reveals plans for $1 billion in cutbacks to Homeland Security in 2006 – cuts needed to pay for those tax cuts. Sure enough, more of the same failed conservative policies.

Laurie Spivak is a fellow with the Commonweal Institute.

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