It’s not the economy

Few among elections’ rituals are more tiresome than the one most central, that of what kids today might call political poseurs metaphorically galloping on ivory-white steeds to pluck the rest of us from the economic hellfires. They peddle a fallacy, if not an outright lie. The economy cares nothing for politicians’ boasts.
Consider, for example, the history of economic slowdowns. Beginning at the halfway point of the last century, recessions mostly have been handed from one party’s president to the other’s, four times from Democrats to Republicans and three times from Republicans to Democrats. Almost invariably, recessions are followed by economic expansions, as under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Statistics can be twisted like taffy, but partisan patterns are difficult to discern even by means of contrivance. The economy ebbs, it flows and presidents pass through.

So it is with politicians in lower spheres. Some declare that they’ll be jobs governors. Others disparage opponents for failing to halt in their narrow realm the economic calamity that has pervaded all of the nation’s other corners. These are the equivalent of cheap pick-up lines. As a matter of fact, we do come here often, shortly before the first Tuesday of every November. So take a hike.

What then is the point of it all? Try this: Government’s role in the American sense is not to determine the fate of the economy. Those looking for government to do this should check out Cuba or China. Here, government’s place is to whittle to the greatest extent feasible the shackles on the market, not based on the concept that government is evil and the markets good, but on the thinking that a free market is essential to a free people. Laws and regulations ought to be aimed at safeguarding that freedom rather than restricting it, setting boundaries to ensure that one individual does not unjustly encroach on the liberties of another.

The design of this is not to produce a seamless flow of prosperity so that the economy and the people who depend on it are spared from all constrictions large or slight. It is rather to ensure that America remains a place where the son of an automobile upholsterer from a Pittsburgh suburb can rise from disco dance instructor to billionaire software entrepreneur and NBA franchise owner, the way Mark Cuban did.

A belief underlies this, that when industrious, inventive souls are given leave to push themselves from obscurity to fabulous wealth, the country rises with them, and so it has for almost 250 years in history’s greatest socioeconomic success story.

America is sufficiently stocked with politicians relying on blow-dried looks and a car salesman’s slick unction to capture votes. What America needs are true believers who will labor to ensure that the visionary light of her founding still burns. We seek such figures as Nov. 3 approaches and so far see not many. Here’s hoping they soon emerge.