LITTLE ROCK — Most of us have heard of the observation attributed to Scottish historian Alexander Tytler that democracy can only exist “until the majority discovers it can vote itself largesse out of the public treasury,” after which it “always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits.”
That observation implies a limited shelf life for self-government; with the public becoming so corrupted over time by various inducements (referred to these days as “entitlements”) that fiscal solvency becomes impaired.
Tytler can’t help but come to mind when considering three recent developments-our national debt soaring past our gross domestic product, Barack Obama’s re-election with a majority of the popular vote, and Mitt Romney’s supposed gaffe seeking to explain that electoral outcome.
With respect to the last point, although skittish Republicans quickly distanced themselves from Romney’s claim that certain voters cast their ballots for Obama for the wrong reasons, it is difficult to find any factual or logical flaws in such an assertion.
Of course Obama sought to buy the votes of certain parts of the electorate with precisely targeted gifts (or at least enhance their turnout when there were doubts concerning it). Romney enumerated some of them in that conference call to Republican donors: college-loan forgiveness for young voters, free contraceptives for single women, amnesty for the children of illegal immigrants, and so on. About the only one he skipped was the administration’s attempt to rally the black vote by gutting the “workfare” requirements at the heart of welfare reform.
These Obama ploys do not, of course, entirely explain why he won and Romney lost, and Republicans would be making a potentially fatal error by seeking refuge in such explanations, but to say that they had no impact at all would be to make a mistake in the opposite direction. Clearly Obama’s campaign thought such tactics would be effective, otherwise they would not have resorted to them. They fit neatly in his broader re-election strategy of turning out his base in numbers comparable to 2008. The fact that his presidency was saved by such a turnout could hardly be judged a coincidence.
Citing such factors also leads us to recognize the political struggle that inevitably emerges in the Tytler scenario between those who work hard and pay taxes and those who don’t work much, don’t pay many taxes, and largely subsist off the labor of the first group. Following the logic of Tytler, the balance of power between these groups invariably shifts over time at the ballot box in favor of the latter.
However you twist or turn it, there is no doubting that the groups comprising the Obama base-black citizens, Hispanics, single women and the young-fall, as Romney implied in his probably unwitting updating of Tytler, disproportionately into that second group and that those who tilted Romney’s way tend to belong to the first.
Put in more delicate terms, the groups that Obama sought to mobilize with his targeted pandering are groups that are already significantly more dependent upon government programs (largesse, in Tytler-speak), and thus more receptive to the Democratic Party’s message of constantly expanding entitlements flowing from an ever-larger welfare state.
What economists call “moral hazard” enters the picture because the Obama/Democratic Party approach to public policy encourages all of the wrong behaviors-dependence, free riding, a growing sense of aggrieved entitlement-at the expense of the right ones-hard work, entrepreneurship and self-reliance. Playing by the rules, seeking your own way in life, and working hard for success don’t seem to be tendencies that contemporary liberalism much emphasizes; nor the idea that we are all Americans, regardless of ethnicity, race or gender.
Of course, Atlas “shrugs” at some point, and the possibility emerges that those whose hard work sustains the nation and pays for all the goodies could become increasingly demoralized. The path of least resistance is always to succumb to the blandishments of Obama-style politics and ease into the comfy condition of dependence.
Democrats have an advantage in the pandering sweepstakes not just because they have an ideology more consistent with the entitlement society (with compassion as the primary political virtue) but also because the groups which flock to their banner have over time acquired a fundamentally different understanding of politics and life more broadly.
A coalition built around getting free stuff from government (that others pay for) is inevitably less interested in what Romney emphasized-economic growth, opportunity and jobs-than it is in simply negotiating the best possible deal under conditions of dependency. Their votes are for sale to the most generous bidder.
In general, the spectacle of a president winning re-election (at least in part) by offering new entitlements to already government dependent groups at a time when the national debt is larger than the gross domestic product hardly contradicts Tytler’s thesis.
It was said before the election that the nation was being given one last opportunity to turn back from the precipice. But perhaps, in a psychological sense, and in the manner predicted more than two centuries ago, it was already too late.
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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial, Pages 11 on 11/26/2012