AMERICA:The Democrats and Republicans differ in attitudes to giving. This looks set to put pressure on nascent healthcare reform, writes LARA MARLOWE
I WAS nine or 10 years old when I asked my Aunt Lee what was the difference between Democrats and Republicans.
“Republicans believe that people should keep what they earn,” Aunt Lee said. “Democrats think they should help others.”
President Barack Obama said as much on the campaign trail, paraphrasing Genesis 4:9: "I ammy brother's keeper, I ammy sister's keeper". Obama told a rally in Virginia on October 29th, "That's the America we love. That's the America we believe in. That's the choice in this election."
This mid-term season I met some generous Republicans who contribute to charity and do volunteer work: the George W Bush model of social justice. But for the most part they were rooted – especially the Tea Partiers – in that other strain of American identity: every-man-for-himself individualism. What’s mine is mine, Republicans told me, and no one is going to take it away from me, not immigrants, liberals or the government.
Remember, the founding act of the US was a tax revolt in Boston harbour. It’s not by chance that the Tea Party took their name from that evening in December 1773. Revolt against government power, especially the power of taxation, is in Americans’ political genes.
I met Gary Aven, the chairman of the South Bay Tea Party, in a public park in Manhattan Beach, California. Aven told me how, in January 2009, “I was sitting on the couch screaming at the TV, at the mainstream media, and my wife said, ‘Go do something’.” Aven called the protests he’s organised since “rage therapy”.
The founding act of the 21st century Tea Party, Aven reminded me, was a tirade by a right-wing television commentator, Rick Santelli, on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on February 19th, 2009, in response to Obama’s plan to help millions of victims of the subprime crisis.
“The government is promoting bad behaviour . . . How many of you people want to pay for your neighbour’s mortgage?” Santelli asked. Cuba wrecked its economy by moving “from the individual to the collective”. The founding fathers were “rolling over in their graves”. Santelli proposed a “Chicago Tea Party” to dump derivative securities into Lake Michigan.
For Democrats and Republicans alike, the American Dream is a staple of campaign speeches. “I’ve spent my whole life chasing the American Dream,” John Boehner, the new Speaker of the House, said, choking with sobs, on election night. “I started out mopping floors, waiting tables, and tending bar at my dad’s tavern. I put myself through school working odd jobs and nightshifts. I poured my heart and soul into a small business . . .” Boehner’s tears received rave reviews from commentators, who contrasted his “humanity” with Obama’s perceived coldness.
Republican campaign paeans to American exceptionalism sat uneasily with another recurring theme – American decline. The US economy had been “a rocket with tremendous momentum that roared to its apogee, exhausted its fuel and headed downward”, said a securities lawyer I met at a rally for the failed Republican senatorial candidate Carly Fiorina. American genius gave the world the transistor, the integrated circuit, microprocessor, web browser, search engine and social networks on the internet, the lawyer continued. “That is the rocket that burned out. Now the bright people go back to Asia . . .”
Democrats gave the impression of fighting a rearguard battle to slow the race to the bottom, while Republicans seemed almost happy to gut salaries, benefits, regulation, taxation and environmental standards on the altar of global competition. The lives of middle-class Americans are decimated, but hey, the rich get richer.
There’s a growing suspicion that Republicans’ obsession with reversing healthcare reform – a question that divides voters almost evenly – is a diversion from the fact that they don’t have the answers to America’s economic woes either.
Their chief grievance with the healthcare Bill is that it will require businesses with more than 50 employees to provide insurance for them.
Jim Trakas, a businessman and part-time Republican politician in Cleveland, was one of the few people I met who seemed to be asking the hard questions. He told me what happened to the $40 million plastics company where he’d been an executive.
“Rubbermaid was our main client. They told us one day, ‘You’re part of the ‘value chain’ with Walmart now. We want a 100 per cent cost reduction in four years. You should get rid of all your American suppliers.’ So we went to Taiwan and Korea. We made the inferior products they wanted, but we were still too expensive, and we went out of business.”
Several US states have invested great hopes in renewable energy. But when pressed, Republicans tell you they don’t really believe in it. Somewhere in America a scientist is working on long-term fuel cell batteries that could put the petroleum industry out of business. In the meantime, says Trakas, “I’ve seen no one from either party who knows how to fix the economy”.
