If you click on over to Google, and look up
"Conservative", it'll mention things like "Resistant to change" and "Cautious: avoiding excess". In even simpler terms, a Conservative will find things a certain way, and leave them pretty much the same way. Not rock the boat, or try for ambitious changes. President Clinton tried to fix health care, (certainly a Liberal endeavor) and that effort failed. However, for the rest of his presidency, he saw that things were working pretty well, and let things run smoothly. The good news was the unprecedented peace and prosperity of the 90's. Good times, indeed. The bad news, for him, was that when things ran smoothly, and he had a little extra time on his hands, well, his idle hands got him into trouble. But that's not the point today. The point is his presidency was not one that tried to rock the boat. Things that worked well were allowed to work, and things that didn't work well were vastly overshadowed by the things that worked well. That sounds like a Conservative to me. The result of his stodgy, conservative, hands-off approach? Years of high income, low unemployment, and a budget surplus. Yay, Conservatives!
If you click back over to Google and look up
"Liberal", it'll mention, among other things, "Having political views favoring change and progress". Hmm... "change and progress." President George W. Bush came in, saw that things were running well, indeed, was handed a budget
surplus of $127 billion. Rather than be a Conservative, and keep things going smoothly, tweaking where necessary, President Bush instead pushed through monstrous tax cuts totaling nearly $2 trillion! And he increased government spending by over 20% during his first four years in office. And let's not forget those military exercises we've been conducting in the Middle East for 7 years and counting. More spending... fiscal irresponsibility... sounds like a liberal to me. The result of his liberal, change-for-change's-sake policies? His term ended as the nation slid into the worst economic downturn in a generation. Unemployment, savings wiped out, record foreclosures, over $480 billion deficit handed to the next guy to clean up. In a word: Disaster. Boo, Liberals!
What about the current President? I hope that at his heart, he
is a Liberal. Because we certainly need someone who is "tolerant of change; not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or tradition". We need new answers to problems that we as a people have never faced before. Problems like an aging population, a truly interconnected economic world, and the rise of not one, but several super-powers at the same time. You can't use 1950's arithmetic to solve 2010 global socioeconomic problems. But I also hope that at his heart, he's a Conservative. Because we will certainly need someone who's "cautious: avoiding excess". The stakes are too high to simply shoot from the hip. To allow oneself to be swayed by impassioned cry or loud, emphatic, enraged, yet totally baseless claims to relevance. To quote the fictional President Andy Shepherd from the 1995 movie
"The American President", "We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them." For us thinking, reasonable folks on
both sides, let's try to keep this in mind as the din wears on.
If you click on over to Google, and look up "Conservative", it'll mention things like "Resistant to change" and "Cautious: avoiding excess". In even simpler terms, a Conservative will find things a certain way, and leave them pretty much the same way. Not rock the boat, or try for ambitious changes. President Clinton tried to fix health care, (certainly a Liberal endeavor) and that effort failed. However, for the rest of his presidency, he saw that things were working pretty well, and let things run smoothly. The good news was the unprecedented peace and prosperity of the 90's. Good times, indeed. The bad news, for him, was that when things ran smoothly, and he had a little extra time on his hands, well, his idle hands got him into trouble. But that's not the point today. The point is his presidency was not one that tried to rock the boat. Things that worked well were allowed to work, and things that didn't work well were vastly overshadowed by the things that worked well. That sounds like a Conservative to me. The result of his stodgy, conservative, hands-off approach? Years of high income, low unemployment, and a budget surplus. Yay, Conservatives!
If you click back over to Google and look up "Liberal", it'll mention, among other things, "Having political views favoring change and progress". Hmm... "change and progress." President George W. Bush came in, saw that things were running well, indeed, was handed a budget surplus of $127 billion. Rather than be a Conservative, and keep things going smoothly, tweaking where necessary, President Bush instead pushed through monstrous tax cuts totaling nearly $2 trillion! And he increased government spending by over 20% during his first four years in office. And let's not forget those military exercises we've been conducting in the Middle East for 7 years and counting. More spending... fiscal irresponsibility... sounds like a liberal to me. The result of his liberal, change-for-change's-sake policies? His term ended as the nation slid into the worst economic downturn in a generation. Unemployment, savings wiped out, record foreclosures, over $480 billion deficit handed to the next guy to clean up. In a word: Disaster. Boo, Liberals!
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