In search of the sensible party
One of my favorite Monty Python sketches was a send-up of British television coverage of Parliamentary elections. The sketch’s imaginary election pitted candidates from the Sensible Party against candidates from the Silly Party. In one district, both the Sensible and Silly candidates were challenged by a candidate from the Very Silly Party.
It was hilarious, and having visited Britain during an election, I can tell you that the parody was spot on. But sometimes I think about that sketch and wonder: whatever happened to that Sensible Party?
Is there an American version? If so, where do I sign up?
When I was growing up, the Republican Party was the sensible party. Democrats were derided as “bleeding heart liberals,” as in, “Your heart may be in the right place, but you have to think with your head.” When a Democrat would make a proposal, Republicans would ask how we were going to pay for it, the assumption being that, of course we’re going to balance the budget, so any new programs would require a tax increase or a cut somewhere else in the budget.
Then certain Republicans came up with the idea that we could cut taxes without worrying about the budget, because the resulting growth would cause the budget to balance itself. George H. W. Bush, the last of the sensible Republican Presidents, labeled it “voodoo economics.” He said that while running against Ronald Reagan in the 1980 Republican primary; when he lost and was later asked to be Reagan’s running mate, he decided to go with the flow. But as Reagan’s successor, H. was left to clean up the mess when, in fact, the budget didn’t balance itself, and the deficit was at a level considered huge at the time.
During a moment of silliness at the 1988 Republican convention, Bush made his famous “No new taxes” pledge, but as president he came to his senses and agreed to tax increases to bring down the deficit. He was rewarded by being booted out of office, but fortunately, Bill Clinton continued his predecessor’s fiscal policy and left office with a budget surplus.
Then George W. Bush, who didn’t inherit the sensible gene from his father, promptly unbalanced the budget with a tax cut that he kept it in place even after starting the war in Iraq. (A war that former Sensible Republican President Gerald Ford had tried to talk him out of.)
Next came the Tea Party, further disconnecting the Republicans from reality. They complained about high taxes at a time when President Obama was actually lowering them to counteract the Great Recession, and complained about his deficit spending at a time when balancing the budget would have made the recession a lot worse.
Now, under Donald Trump, the Republicans have vaulted over Silly and landed in Very Silly territory. The economy growing? Approaching full employment? Government deficits still huge? The perfect time for a tax cut!
Economy crashing due to pandemic? Unemployment at an all-time high? I know — let’s cut payroll taxes for the few people who still have jobs!
The Democrats now have the chance to be the Sensible Party, the Republicans having ceded that ground. For a while early this year, it looked like the 2020 election would be a match-up of Silly vs. Very Silly. You could argue over which was which, but I think that is a pretty fair assessment of the choice between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. It was a match-up only a late-night comedian could love.
Now the Democratic candidate is Joe Biden, and while Biden is capable of a great deal of silliness when he goes off-script, it would be an eminently sensible thing, after nearly four years of Donald Trump, for us to elect a man who spent eight years working alongside the last president who knew what the hell he was doing.
So far, Biden has stuck to a fairly sensible script. Trump is trying to pin him with silly slogans like “Defund the police,” but Biden is having none of it. Stay the course, Joe.
I get why sensible politics, never really popular at any time, are particularly unpopular in today’s climate. Sensible isn’t “click-bait”; it doesn’t “fire up the base,” and it doesn’t add to the number of your subscribers. But it’s something we desperately need right now.
