Viagra Politics

Hmmmm. This one will really make you think about the BIG picture. The Democrats will have to radically shift their focus, and they should. They really have to. No ifs, ands or butts. We can't continue with the tired politics of the past, we have to focus on things that really matter today, tomorrow, and the future.



June 1, 2005
Beyond Viagra Politics
By MATT MILLER

In recent days, governors of both parties have swung into action to deny state-subsidized Viagra to known sexual offenders. Who says our leaders aren't taking on the tough issues and speaking truth to power?

Still, it does get you thinking. What if leaders in each party actually did tell their supporters some truths they needed to hear - and thereby exposed the charades each side relies on to wangle the support of half of the half of Americans who bother to vote? Take a dose of truth serum and fantasize with me.

Our Republican truth-teller would start by admitting what President Bush was still denying in his press conference yesterday: that the G.O.P.'s perennial attack on "big government" is a con. Republicans know that just seven programs make up 75 percent of federal spending: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, military pensions, civil service pensions, defense and interest on the debt. That's "big government." Republicans aren't cutting a dime of it. In fact, under Bush, they've called for big increases. Interest on the debt alone will double under Bush's plan (and on Social Security, recall, he's trying only to slow its growth).

And this is before you toss in everything from NASA to the national parks to the National Institutes of Health, not to mention student loans, farm subsidies and homeland security. These things take up a good chunk of the quarter of the federal dollar that's left, and Republicans vote for them every day.

The "big government" hoax would become even clearer if Republicans admitted a related truth: today's epic budget deficits are caused mostly by Bush's tax cuts, not, as the president insisted again yesterday, by some spending binge. Here's how we know. Federal spending under Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush averaged 22 percent of G.D.P. Under Bill Clinton it averaged 20 percent. Bush's plan (despite his spending increases) would keep spending around 20 percent in the years ahead.

As you may have noticed, 20 is less than 22. Bush is operating government at a smaller level than did previous Republican presidents. Today's historic red ink is due to the fact that revenues have dropped from over 20 percent of G.D.P. when Bush took office to under 17 percent today.

Wouldn't it be nice if elected Republicans would say out loud what one told me privately: that it's lunacy to think we can keep revenue this low as we start to double the number of seniors on Social Security and Medicare in a few years? Truth-serum Republicans would explain that talk of endless tax cuts in this context amounts to a shocking case of collective denial.

Truth-telling Democrats would come clean on their own charades. Imagine a Democrat declaring that the party must stop pretending that mandates on business (for health coverage, say) are "free" ways to get social results Democrats like - when such mandates impose costs ultimately borne by workers or consumers.

And imagine if Democrats said it was time to stop scaring seniors about the G.O.P.'s nefarious plans for Medicare. Truly "new" Democrats would instead teach party activists something different: that the enemy of liberal causes a decade from now will not be the evil heirs of Newt Gingrich, but Medicare itself. That's because every dollar spent on soaring Medicare bills that isn't needed for quality care (in our wasteful health system) is a dollar that liberals won't be able to spend on a poor child.

Imagine a Democrat who explained that this is what the trade-offs will sound like before long - by way of urging Democrats to take the lead on slowing the growth of these programs, rather than condemning Republican efforts to do so.

There's more, of course, but this gives you a feel for how different our politics would sound if we moved beyond Viagra politics and got serious about our problems. All it would take is enough of us rebelling against a perverse culture in which "political courage" is oddly defined as "telling the truth." After all, if we don't make the world safe for our leaders to do the right thing, who will?

"I like a look of agony, because I know it's true," wrote Emily Dickinson. It may not be agony citizens are looking for, but common sense tells them that the ratio of fact to flimflam has reached depressing lows. It may take a jolt to the system more powerful than the one Viagra delivers to rouse us from the torpor of charades-as-usual. Then again, now that Deep Throat has been unveiled, maybe anything is possible.

E-mail: mattmiller@nytimes.com; Matt Miller is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Maureen Dowd is on book leave.