Senator Ted Kennedy is a symbol of an idea that once seemed old-hat, that America’s government can and should be a force for good in all our lives.<\/p>\n
From the earliest days of the New Deal, conservatives have recoiled from this philosophy. <\/p>\n
Efforts to dismantle social security, health care for the elderly and unemployment insurance began almost before the ink had dried on those programs. <\/p>\n
While those efforts failed, Republicans scored some big ideological victories. Ronald Reagan famously declared that government wasn’t the problem but the solution.<\/p>\n
When Bill Clinton conceded that the era of big government was over, it seemed like the era of Roosevelt and Kennedy era was over.<\/p>\n
It turns out not so much. <\/p>\n
Republicans and Democrats quietly kept the big government bandwagon rolling, expanding social programs, exploding the size of military and intelligence programs.<\/p>\n
The truth is that Americans talk a good game about our libertarian bootstrap ideals.<\/p>\n
But we still want the government to help us get a job, care for our parents when they’re aging, keep our streets safe, and on and on.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Katrina and 9\/11 and the market’s failure to insure tens of millions of Americans further discredited many of those laissez-faire ideas in the minds of voters.<\/p>\n
The townhall meetings — crowded with people who think the Federal government is a conspiratorial cabal formed to devour individual freedoms — are a distraction.<\/p>\n
The truth is that the vast majority of Americans want a strong and capable and activist government.<\/p>\n
The real danger is this: Somewhere in the fugue between our small government rhetoric and our big government greed, we apparently forgot how to actually govern well.<\/p>\n
We blow tons of money on programs, on big-business subsidies, on cash for farmers — while our economy and our quality of life continue to contract.<\/p>\n
Worse yet, we’ve continued down this path long after we had the bankroll to pay for it. We’re a welfare nation, lining up for our monthly checks from China and the Middle East. <\/p>\n
Which brings us to the current debate over health care. Of course it matters that the Democrats find a way to improve and expand insurance coverage for millions of Americans.<\/p>\n
But far more important — to the nation and to the legacy of men like Ted Kennedy — is that they prove America can still do this kind of big-government well, with innovation and creativity.<\/p>\n
I’ll be honest. So far, I haven’t heard a single stunning new idea. <\/p>\n
The Brain Trust that roared into Washington last January hasn’t produced a single game-changing model or approach. <\/p>\n
Is there anyone who voted for Barack Obama who didn’t expect more and better than this?<\/p>\n
Part of the problem seems to be that the Obama Administration is still trying to wink at the notion that big government is a bad thing. <\/p>\n
That’s nonsense. For better or worse, this Democratic Party is rooted in the ideology of Roosevelt and Johnson and Kennedy.<\/p>\n
They’re not socialists. They’re certainly not communists.<\/p>\n
But they believe that a modern, industrial and urbanized society like ours needs a strong, well-run central bureaucracy, capable of providing a safety net and smoothing the rough edges of capitalism.<\/p>\n
This is the real test Democrats face in the fall. Not whether they can be bipartisan or moderate or centrist.<\/p>\n
The measuring stick now is whether their ideals and their activism can achieve practical and sustainable results — or not. <\/p>\n
If the health care reform we see at the end of the day is a colossal and overpriced mess — or if it fails outright — Mr. Obama will have lost more than a fight over one issue.<\/p>\n
He will have discredited the ideas at the heart of his own movement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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