Failure of Liberal Governance

There's a great editorial in the Wall Street Journal this morning about the failure of liberal policies.

The central contradiction in modern liberal politics is that Otto von Bismarck's entitlement state for cradle to grave financial security is no longer affordable. The model has reached the limit of its ability to tax private income and still allow enough economic growth to finance its transfer payments.

You can see this in bankrupt Greece, where government spends 52% of GDP; or in California and New York, where the government-employee unions have pushed tax rates to punishing levels and the states still can't pay their bills. Americans can see that this is where Mr. Obama's agenda is also taking Washington, and this is why they are rejecting it.

The instigation for the piece was the retirement of Evan Bayh, but that's not the focus. Instead, it addresses the fact that "for the fourth time since the 1960s, American voters in 2008 gave Democrats overwhelming control of both Congress and the White House...Yet once again, Democratic leaders have tried to govern the country from the left, only to find that their policies have hit a wall of practical and popular resistance." It's an excellent piece - read it all...

"Our guess is that it will take one more repudiation in November before Democrats relearn that you can't govern America successfully from the political left."