If you do Vote...Vote for Gridlock


That's why, in the context of November's election, a victory for Kerry, who will finally officially become the Democrats' standard-bearer in Boston this Thursday - even though he's a big-government man all the way - could paradoxically be the most likely hope for curbing excessive government growth in the next four years. Why? The party stereotypes don't always hold up, and a Democratic president and a Congress led by Republicans creates a kind of institutional impasse that actually slows the momentum of government.

It seems counterintuitive, though, to expect limited government from a Democratic president. Ever since the Goldwater vs. LBJ contest of 1964, the two major parties have staked out rough philosophical positions along these lines: the Republicans are, at least rhetorically, for a lean and limited government; the Democrats are unreconstructed advocates of state power, state spending and state solutions to every problem.

But the facts - the performance of the parties when they have the power - have never borne that out. We got such regulatory state measures as the Clean Air Act and wage and price controls under Nixon, and the Americans with Disabilities Act under the first George Bush. And it was under Democrat Bill Clinton that we got meaningful welfare reform that has knocked nearly 3 million families off the federal dole so far, even as child poverty rates shrink.

But the most vivid example that Republicans can't be relied on as consistent defenders of smaller government is our current Republican president. Bush has increased domestic discretionary spending 25 percent in less than four years, compared to an increase under Clinton over his entire two terms of only 10 percent.