Supply-Side Over Substance

President Obama spoke to a convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors yesterday, calling the budget plan advocated by Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin a regressive budget plan that would punish the poor and middle class with deep spending cuts in programs like Medicare while rewarding the wealthy with tax breaks. He called this revised version of supply -side economics "thinly veiled social Darwinism" and a "Trojan horse" ("It was really a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate" - Reagan budget director David Stockman on supply-side economics, 1981) that made the Contract With America look like the New Deal, and he even added that some of the domestic policies of George Walker Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon would seem too liberal to the current crop of Republicans in Washington.

In response, Ryan attacked Obama for failing to lead on the debt and deficit issue, insisted that eliminating loopholes would ensure tax fairness, and accused the President of trying to make him and other Republicans look like Saturday morning cartoon villains.

Sorry, progressives, Ryan won that debate.

How, you may ask? Because Obama dealt with specifics and with references to history, while Ryan resorted to name calling, empty mantras, and pop-culture references. Style over substance.

I couldn't help but notice how reporters from National Public Radio and the Associated Press had to explain in their respective dispatches from the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention just exactly what the New Deal and the Contract With America were. They obviously didn't think their audiences were smart enough to already know. Okay, the New Deal was nearly eighty years ago, but come on, certainly there are plenty of Americans who still ought to remember the conservative 1994 Contract With America brought forward by then-House Republican Whip Newt Gingrich in the midterm elections that year. Unlike Franklin Roosevelt, Newt's still alive, even if he's politically toast. Also, terms like "Trojan horse" and "social Darwinism" are well beyond the comprehension of the average American.

And invoking Nixon won't work for Obama. Older voters who may have voted for Nixon pretend not to have supported him, and young people, especially young Republicans like Ryan - who was two years old at the time of the Watergate break-in - don't remember the 37th U.S. President so well (if at all). Which is why Ryan's pithy Saturday morning cartoon villain reference - Saturday morning cartoons were a big deal to Ryan, myself, and most Americans who had a childhood in the seventies - is more effective. Younger people who generally don't give a twit about Medicare are less likely to recall Dick Nixon and more likely to recall Dick Dastardly.

Of course, there's always the chance that, once young people start looking at the Ryan plan, they'll realize that the Republicans are a lot like those same Saturday morning cartoon villains - clownish, dangerous, and eager to take over the world.