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The Age of Obama

　　The 'Decade of Greed,' etc., R.I.P.

　　By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

　　OCTOBER 29, 2008

　　Nineteen eighty-two was a lucky time (as your columnist can attest) to be leaving college. Whatever faults various authorities find in the "decade of greed," which was followed by another decade of greed, it marked the start of 25 years of exceptional prosperity and opportunity. Freer trade and the epochal joining of a couple billion Chinese and others into the global division of labor played a role. The ideas of Reagan and Thatcher, bringing the private sector back to a place of honor, played a role.

　　Is the age of Obama the beginning of a less golden age? We cast no aspersion on the man or his program. Mr. Obama, in his short career, has not strongly associated himself with any policy idea. His relation to his own proposals during the campaign has been pleasantly noncommittal, if generally liberal (as voters and the media are only now getting around to noticing).

　　His rise offers little insight either. His Senate primary and general election races were smoothed by the serendipitous bowing out of formidable opponents in each case, in divorce-related "scandals." His presidential hopes have been turned overnight into landslide hopes by a financial crisis that has left the public angry and confused, though not one that plays to any expertise of Mr. Obama's.

　　Yet if he wins next week, it could be with a sweeping mandate to decide, er, what his mandate will be. He's a presidential vehicle perfectly designed, or self-designed, to be driven by history, rather than driving it. And he comes just at the moment when, overnight, crashing down is just about every normal restraint against intrusive, redistributing, regulating government.

　　This is the door the remarkable Mr. Obama is about to waltz through.

　　In a two-party system, both parties need to be capable of governing, of having some long view of the central challenge -- which, arguably, in our case remains the financing challenge of the American welfare state. John McCain may not be much of an economist and hasn't adopted the "ownership society" as his slogan, but his health-care plan falls right in with tradition on the center right -- a spectrum that once included Bill Clinton -- of invoking a new role for individual responsibility and individual choice in making the welfare state work.

　　Democrats, in contrast, never really tell us where they want us to go. That hasn't been the Democratic way and Mr. Obama, in this, is a perfect Democrat -- as opaque on the big question as his party has been. Al Gore let on that he favored a single payer health-care system only two years after he lost the White House. Politics -- simple politics -- instead has been Democrats' governing philosophy, and Mr. Obama is, again, the perfect heir.
　In an interesting piece of work, economist Henning Bohn has forecast the future voting propensities of an aging electorate based on two things: how much in taxes a median voter would expect to pay until retirement, and the present value of his or her expected Social Security and Medicare benefits.

　　His conclusion: It will make financial sense for the median voter to vote for higher taxes on his remaining working years and on younger people in order to secure his benefits.

　　If he's right, Democrats need to say only one thing when running for office -- and that's nothing intelligible about the funding dilemma of the welfare state or the need to address it. Mr. Obama has evidently learned his politics well. This week, he told Time Magazine's Joe Klein that, after the current financial crisis, "a new energy economy . . . That's going to be my No. 1 priority when I get into office."

　　This is a cipher, an air sandwich. Mr. Obama here affords himself a placeholder for a priority to be named later. He knows that such impractical, centrally planned "energy revolutions" have been preached by candidates and op-ed writers for decades, only to be forgotten after inauguration day in favor of less rhetorical agendas.

　　Mr. Obama's knack for eliciting pleasing feelings of self-regard in his followers is certainly a political virtue. (That so many of John McCain's supporters must hold their noses is, in its way, the equal and opposite virtue.) More than that, the vagueness of Mr. Obama's governing philosophy is a natural fit for a party that has long been wedded to the strategy that you get where you're going (a bigger welfare state) by not saying where you're going.

　　安息吧，“貪婪的十年”

　　By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

　　OCTOBER 29, 2008

　　1982年可是個離開大學的幸運時間（您的專欄作家可以證明這一點）。不論有關專家在這“貪婪的十年”里發現什么瑕疵，而且其后另一個貪婪的十年又接踵而來，它開啟了一個25年異常繁榮和充滿機會的時代。更加自由的貿易，幾十億中國人和其他國家的人劃時代地加入全球勞動大軍，發揮了作用。里根和撒切爾讓私有行業重歸榮耀的主張也發揮了作用。

　　奧巴馬時代會是黃金成色開始褪色的時代嗎？我們無意誹謗這個人或他的計劃，然而奧巴馬先生在他短暫的職業生涯里，從未對任何政策主張表現過強烈支持的態度。在選戰期間他對自己的個人主張的表述給人的感覺一直是八面玲瓏、態度曖昧，如果大體上看是主張變革的（正如選民和媒體直到現在才開始注意到）。

　　他的崛起也沒有多少玄機了。由于強大對手的意外放棄和離婚“丑聞”，他的參議院初選和大選角逐可以說是一片坦途。他的總統希望由于一場讓公眾感到憤怒和困惑的金融危機而有望一夜之間獲得壓倒性勝利，盡管這場危機沒有考驗過奧巴馬的任何才能。

　　然而如果他在下周的大選中獲勝，可能就會出臺一系列內容廣泛的政令，這樣就可以知道他的政令將是怎樣的了。他是個完美設計或自我設計的總統機器，由時勢所造，而不是去駕馭它。當突然爆發的經濟崩潰按慣例將要對政府實施干預、重新分配和監管政策形成遏制時，他就橫空出世了。

　　這是神奇的奧巴馬先生正要跳著華爾茲順利通過的大門。

　　在兩黨體系下，兩個黨都需要具備統治力，要能夠對核心挑戰提出長遠觀點，而值得商榷的是，在我們這種情況下，這種核心挑戰僅剩下對美國福利國家地位的金融挑戰。約翰·麥凱恩可能不是個好的經濟學家，也沒有接受“所有權社會”作為自己的口號，但是他的衛生保健計劃正好符合了中右傳統，這一傳統的范圍曾經包括了比爾·克林頓，它主張在保持福利國家正常運轉的過程中為個人責任和個人選擇賦予新的角色。

　　相比之下，民主黨實際上從來沒有告訴我們他們希望我們何去何從。這可不是慣常的民主作風，而奧巴馬先生由于和他的黨一樣對重大問題態度模糊而成了完美的民主黨人。艾爾·戈爾直到在爭奪白宮總統寶座失利兩年后，才透露說他支持一個單一付款人的衛生健康系統。權術，僅僅是權術，取而代之成為民主黨的統治哲學，而奧巴馬又正是其最佳繼承者。

　　在一篇有趣的文章中，經濟學家海寧·波恩基于以下兩點對逐漸老齡化的選民的未來投票傾向進行了預測：中間年齡段的選民預期到退休前將支付的稅款，他或她預期將獲得的社會保險和醫療保險的現值。

　　他的結論是：如果中間年齡段的選民為了確保自己的利益而選擇投票支持對他的剩余工作年限和對更年輕的人征收更高的稅，那從金融方面是講得通的。
如果他是對的，民主黨人在競選公職時只需說一件事情- 這個福利國家的融資困境不是那么容易理解的，無需多言。奧巴馬先生顯然深悟此道。本周他告訴時代雜志的喬·克萊恩，在現在的金融危機結束之后，“一個新的能源經濟…將成為我就職后首先要考慮的事情�！�

　　這等于零，一個空中三明治。在這一點上奧巴馬先生為自己日后才會公布的優先權留了一個預留位置。他知道盡管這樣一個不切實際、自上而下設計的“能源革命”被歷屆總統候選人和時事評論者鼓吹了幾十年了，總統就職日一過它就會被忘掉，取而代之的是不那么華麗浮夸的議事日程。

　　奧巴馬先生激發其追隨者自我關注的滿足感的本事無疑是個政治美德。(讓約翰·麥凱恩的支持者肯定會捂住鼻子的是，這本身就是個南轅北轍自相矛盾的美德。) 不僅如此，奧巴馬先生統治哲學的曖昧含糊天然就適合一個長期以來奉行走一步看一步戰略（比如一個更大的福利國家）的黨，而不告訴你們到底往哪里走。

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