Ramblings 

Allan C. Brownfeld  

Allan C. Brownfeld covers Washington, D.C.  

Has Washington Really Planned Properly for a Post-Saddam Iraq?

        Those who support “regime change” in Iraq envision a post-Saddam society in which life rapidly improves for the Iraqi people. There is, however, little evidence that policymakers in Washington have properly planned for the future.

        Army Capt. Jason Cummins, who teaches economics at West Point, notes that,  

. . . if an American-led coalition goes to war with Iraq, the post-combat actions and economic policies enacted will determine long-term regime success, and, more importantly, the possibility for continued political stability and potential democratic expansion in the region. The State Department has announced that the U.S. will lead the rebuilding of Iraq, but they have not outlined a plan. . . . Regime change in Iraq poses a difficult conundrum, complete with overlapping political, social and economic elements. However, one thing is certain. The U.S. must establish the fundamental policies, according to country-specific circumstances, that strive to promote democracy and the free market system. Only then can Iraq ever hope to reach its full potential, initiating a pattern of growth and overall improvement in the standard of living of its citizens. We must not only win the war, we must also be prepared to win the peace.  

In mid-February, senior Bush administration officials sketched an ambition to lead the rebuilding of Iraq’s battered economy and the reshaping of society, a project they told Congress would cost untold billions and take years to complete.

        Simply discovering and destroying Iraq’s stockpiles of biological, chemical and nuclear materials—the primary goal of a prospective invasion, according to President Bush—would be a “huge undertaking,” Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

        “We cannot now even venture a sensible guess as to the amount of time,” he said. To the frustration of several senators, Feith and Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman declined to discuss cost estimates for a prospective war or its aftermath, asserting that too much remains unknown.

        The officials said that it would take more than two years for the U.S. military to transfer control of Iraq’s government to Iraqi leaders. Seeking to demonstrate to skeptical senators that the administration’s planning was advanced, they outlined steps for administering and democratizing Iraq after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

        Those would include finding and destroying weapons of mass destruction, eliminating terrorist cells, starting economic reconstruction, purging Baathist leaders from the bureaucracy, protecting oil fields and securing the country’s borders—particularly with Iran.

        The U.S. would also play a leading role in rebuilding Iraq’s oil industry. This could cost as much as $10 billion if Saddam Hussein follows through on this threats to destroy oil wells, pipelines and refineries, as he did in Kuwait during the Persian Gulf war of 1991, officials said. If Hussein “utterly destroys” Iraq’s oil industry, “it will make for a horrific reconstruction project,” said Feith.

        Although the U.S. Central Command, under the leadership of General Tommy Franks, would oversee Iraq during the military occupation, the officials said they were not looking at the postwar occupation of Japan under General Douglas MacArthur—which lasted seven years—as a model. “The U.S. would have a commitment to leave as soon as possible,” Feith said.

        Mr. Feith’s words were tempered by his colleague, Marc Grossman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, who told the senators that even under good circumstances, it would probably take two years or more for the military to transfer control of many ministries to Iraqi officials.  

        Senators of both parties were skeptical and questioned whether the administration had done enough to prepare for the aftermath of war. On several occasions, Mr. Feith said the cost of rebuilding Iraq was “unknowable,” because it was impossible to predict the severity of war-related damage. “We have a right to know,” said Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE), the ranking Democrat. Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) said the administration must “forthrightly” deliver budget numbers. In Senator Biden’s view, “Americans have no notion about what they’re about to undertake.”

        Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) called Grossman’s assertion that the U.S. could transfer control of the government to the Iraqi people in two years “naïve.” He declared: “I think it’s better to be upfront with the American people. It’s going to be very expensive and take a long, long time, particularly if we’re doing it ourselves.”

        Senators from both parties said that the cost and magnitude of rebuilding Iraq would require coalition assistance and they questioned whether tensions with France and Germany had complicated post war cooperation. “Aren’t we wiser to bring our coalition partners along?”  asked Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE).

        Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) asked: “Why aren’t we hearing some more about a worst case? Do you have some kind of plan if this turns into a debacle?” Feith said the administration did, but did not elaborate.

        UN staff members inside Iraq believe that in the case of war, 2 million people may leave their homes, in addition to about 1.1 million Iraqis already displaced, according to a confidential January 16 draft of the UN’s Integrated Plan. Ruud Lubbers, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, estimates that 600,000 Iraqis could push across the country’s borders if war breaks out—a number that could grow if the conflict dragged on or if Hussein used chemical or biological weapons.

        The Bush administration plans to initiate relief efforts in some parts of the country within days of any invasion. In an often-discussed scenario, Iraqi army units in the north and far south of the country would collapse or retreat, allowing U.S.-led forces to move on Baghdad, where Hussein’s elite units are concentrated. This would open space for early relief work at the local level.

        Yet, a number of U.S. organizations have complained that the Pentagon planners have not provided enough information or established realistic expectations. Refugee International Vice President Joel Charney recently called international planning for a humanitarian calamity “woefully inadequate.” “Is the U.S. military really prepared to feed more than 14 million people that the UN says are dependent on international aid?” asked Sandra Mitchell, of the International Rescue Committee. “And is the U.S. military prepared to protect the lives of more than 23 million Iraqis if they invade?”

        U.S. plans for the reconstruction of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq are far behind the military buildup to oust the Iraqi dictator, senior lawmakers say.

        “Whatever is happening on planning for after the military action is way, way behind the curve,” said Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-IN).

        Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) said the difficulties the Bush administration has encountered in lining up allies for the Iraq campaign are tied to the lack of clarity about what comes after Saddam. “How can we expect our allies to join us when we don’t have the answers to these questions?” he asked. “We’re trying to make this up as we go along.”

        “There should be no illusions that the reconstruction of Iraq will be anything but difficult, confusing and dangerous for everyone involved,” says a recent working paper from the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and the James A. Baker Institute at Rice University.

If Washington does not clearly define its goals for Iraq and build support for them domestically and with its allies and partners, the U.S. may lose the peace, even if it wins the war,

the report predicts.

        While the initial goal is to disarm Saddam Hussein, the report notes, “There is significant danger that some in the weapons complex will simply ‘privatize’ technology or systems.” That could make weapons of mass destruction more available, not less, to Osama bin Laden and groups he has helped to inspire.

        In addition, “refugee flows toward Turkey and especially Iran of up to 1.5 million people are likely.” Says the Council’s paper. And

U.S. forces are ill-prepared for the possibility Saddam will employ chemical weapons against Iraqi civilian targets as a way of slowing the American advance on Baghdad and other major objectives.  

        American planners have devised a process for ruling Iraq that begins with an American general in charge and evolves over a period of more than 18 months into an Iraqi government. But no decisions have been made about who exactly would govern Iraq then. Iraq’s numerous tribes could end up battling one another in a power struggle. Kurdish parties could be tempted to push for independence. The country could split between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Or neighboring Iran could interfere.

        Scott Feil, a retired Army colonel and post-conflict specialist, says that the administration has not given Americans a real idea of what lies ahead. “The last time we tried to low-ball it was Vietnam,” says Feil. “We’ll be viewed as in and out. . . . Leaving another basket case in a bad neighborhood, like Afghanistan.”

        In the case of Afghanistan, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is worried that the administration is not devoting enough funds to the rebuilding of the country. He and others are concerned that we have basically turned Afghanistan over to the warlords. “There seemed to be a failure to put adequate resources into that reconstruction effort in the budget submission,” declared Levin.

I do hope our budget, either as it comes into the Congress, or as it leaves the Congress, displays the kind of commitment to staying the course that is absolutely essential if we’re not going to see a repeat of Afghanistan in Iraq and in other places.

        Those who justify an attack upon Iraq draw analogies with the American and Allied occupation that helped democratize West Germany and Japan after World War II. Critics, however, say that other precedents are more recent and more relevant. In a report last fall, the Carnegie Foundation cited Haiti and Afghanistan as such examples. And some point to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to end terrorism and install a pliant government. Israel did not extricate itself for 18 years—and still faces cross-border attacks.

        Has the Bush administration really considered all the possible post war consequences of even a successful effort to remove Saddam Hussein? Many in Washington are not so sure.

To America—The Summing Up of a Distinguished Historian

        The nation suffered a great loss in 2002 with the death of historian Stephen Ambrose, an author of multi volume biographies of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon as well as such bestsellers as, The Wild Blue, Band of Brothers, Citizen Soldiers, and Undaunted Courage.

        In his final book, To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian, written while suffering from cancer, Ambrose reflects on his long career and explains what an historian’s job is all about. He celebrates America’s spirit, confronts its failures and struggles, and brings alive the men and women who have peopled our history and made the United States a model for the world.

        Ambrose recalls that

When I first began teaching American history, my students would come to me before the first day of class and say, “Doc, I hate history. I’m only here because it is required.”  My reply was, “You don’t mean that. You don’t hate history, you hate the way it was taught to you in high school. But History is about people, and there is nothing more fascinating to people than other people, living in a different time, in different circumstances.” At the beginning of the 21st century, our students know that they live in the richest and freest nation that ever was and they want to know how it happened. They realize that God did not decide to make the United States so supremely special. They want to know who those people were who made it so, what they did, with what consequences. One week early in 2002, I noted that four of the top six books on the New York Times Book Review nonfiction best-seller list were about American history.

        There are some, Ambrose notes, who believe many of the Founding Fathers of the country are unworthy of our attention because they owned slaves. While he is critical of many colonial leaders who embraced slavery, he writes that,

They failed to rise above their time and place, though Washington, but not Jefferson, freed his slaves upon death. But history abounds with ironies. These men . . . established a system of government that, after much struggle, and the terrible violence of the Civil War, and the civil rights movement led by black Americans, did lead to legal freedom of all Americans and the movement toward equality.

              Of Jefferson, Ambrose writes that,

He knew slavery was wrong and that he was wrong in profiting from the institution, but apparently could see no way to relinquish it in his lifetime. He thought abolition of slavery might be accomplished by the young men of the next generation. . . . Of all the contradictions in American history, none surpasses its toleration first of slavery and then of segregation. Jefferson hoped and expected that Virginians of Meriwether Lewis’s and William Clark’s generation would abolish slavery, yet he said not a word to them about his dream . . . .

        Ambrose writes that,

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was based on Jefferson’s “Report of a Plan of Government for the Western Territory” written three years earlier. In it, he made certain that when the populations of Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan were large enough, these and other territories would come into the Union as fully equal states. They would have the same number of senators and representatives as the original thirteen. They would elect their own governors, and so on. He was the first who had the thought that colonies should be equal to the original thirteen members of the Union. No one before him had proposed such a thing. Empires were run by the “mother country,” with the king appointing governors. It was Jefferson who decided that we wouldn’t do it that way in the United States.

        In the case of George Washington, Ambrose notes that

He resisted efforts to make him into a king and established the precedent that no one should serve more than two terms as President. He voluntarily yielded power. His enemy, George III, remarked in 1796, as Washington’s second term was coming to an end, “If George Washington goes back to his farm he will be the greatest character of his age.” Napoleon, then in exile, was as stunned as the rest of the world by Washington’s leaving office. He complained that his enemies “wanted me to be another Washington.” As George Will wrote “The final component of Washington’s indispensability was the imperishable example he gave by proclaiming himself dispensable.”

        In New Orleans in the late 1990s, George Washington Elementary School was renamed Charles Richard Drew Elementary School, after the developer of hemoglobin, who was black. Ambrose declares that,

Although I advocate naming schools after Martin Luther King, Jr. or George Washington Carver, and others, I don’t see how we can take down the name of the man whose leadership brought his nation through the Revolutionary war and who turned down a real chance to be the first king of the nation. “But he was a slaveholder,” students sometimes say to me. “Listen, he was our leader in the Revolution, to which he pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor. Those were not idle pledges. What do you think would have happened to him had he been captured by the British Army? I’ll tell you. He would have been brought to London, tried, found guilty of treason, ordered executed and then drawn and quartered. Do you know what that means? He would have had one arm tied to one horse, the other arm to another horse, one leg to yet another, and the other leg to a fourth. Then the four horses would have been simultaneously whipped and started off at a gallop, one going north, another south, another east and the fourth to the west. That is what Washington was risking to establish your freedom and mine.

        When it comes to the treatment of American Indians, Ambrose is critical of many policies but rejects the charges of some that there was an effort of “genocide.” He writes

When I began a study of George Armstrong Custer and Crazy Horse in 1970, I took for granted—and taught—what I had been taught. That America ought to be ashamed of what it did to the Indians of the Great Plains. I did not know then what I do now, that it is totally irresponsible to state—as so many have done—that the United States pursued a policy of genocide toward the Sioux, Cheyenne, and other Indian tribes. Some tribes were wiped out, and many others decimated, not by a policy of genocide but because of the introduction of European diseases, most of all smallpox. In its own inept way the U.S. government did try to find a solution to the Indian problem. The consistent idea was to civilize the Indians, incorporate them into the community, make them part of the melting pot. That it did not work, that it was foolish, conceited, even criminal is true. But it was not a policy of genocide, certainly not genocide as we have come to understand it in the twentieth century.

        In his studies, Ambrose saw not just what the white man did to the Indians, but what Indians did to each other:

. . . the Indians of the Great Plains before Lewis and Clark came . . . the Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Crow, and others tried in the 19th century to convince the U.S. army and government that the lands they lived on were their ancestral lands, but they were not. They had become Plains Indians because they were pushed Westward by tribes moving into Wisconsin. . . . Thus I learned that the Indians lived by the same rules or system as all the human beings that went before or came after them—the right of conquest. The land, or a portion of it, belongs to those who can seize it and hold it. In pushing the Great Plains tribes out of the way and taking their land, the whites were doing to the Sioux and the others what they had done to the tribes that preceded them. At the Fort Laramie conference of 1851, where the Americans attempted to confine the Sioux to lands north of the Platte River, a Sioux spokesman named Black Hawk protested that Sioux held lands south of the Platte by the same right the Americans claimed the lands they took from Mexico: the right of conquest . . .  

        Still, Ambrose believes,

. . . much of what the whites did in their dealings with the Plains tribes was shameful. All Americans need to hang their heads—and this includes African Americans, who made up the 24th and 25th regiments, the so-called Buffalo Soldiers. They along with the white regiments in the horse cavalry, fought, rounded up, put the Indians into camps.

        Ambrose explains the misunderstood presidency and career of Ulysses S. Grant and notes that,

Grant saw his task, as any decent man would have, as being to bring about peace and reconciliation between the North and South and to enforce the rights of citizens for blacks. He soon learned that he could not do both. In effect, by the end of his two terms he had abandoned the African Americans to white supremacy and conceded the political leadership of the South to former Confederates, in return for keeping a Republican in the White House.

        At Appomattox,

Grant knew full well Lincoln’s wish for leniency toward the enemy. Agreeing with it wholeheartedly himself, he was determined not to humiliate Robert E. Lee or the Southern Army. This was partly because he had learned to respect his opponent, even more because he wanted to restore the Union. So he made the surrender terms as generous as possible, indeed the most generous ever given to a defeated army after a long and bloody war. . . . What Grant wanted, above everything else, was to sheathe his sword. There had been enough bloodshed and there was no need for reprisals.

        Over the fifty years since he first sat in on an American history survey course, Ambrose writes,

I’ve always been ready to praise Grant as a general, damn him as a politician. I was especially furious at the way he gave in to, or sold out to, the white supremacists. Today I know that he tried to do more for the African Americans than any president until Lyndon Baines Johnson. I realize now that when Grant threw up his hands, he had a reason.

        This book covers the sweep of American history. Ambrose contemplates the genius of Andrew Jackson’s defeat of vastly superior British forces with a ragtag army in the War of 1812. He describes the grueling journey that Lewis and Clark made to open up the country, and the building of the railroad that joined it. He records the country’s assumption of world power under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt and extols its heroic victory of World War II. He writes about writing history:

The last five letters of the word “history” tell us that it is an account of the past that is about people and what they did, which is what makes it the most fascinating of subjects.

        World War II was of particular interest to Ambrose. He was the historical consultant of Stephen Spielberg’s movie Saving Private Ryan and as a result of his efforts New Orleans now hosts the D-Day Museum:

One of the things I like most about the museum is its ability to reach out to the young and inform them of who went before them, and what they owe them. Museums that commemorate events of a half-century or less ago pull the generations together. The grandest sight for me in the National D-Day Museum comes when a busload of students comes in and the kids spot a group of veterans, often in town for a reunion. The students and the veterans are drawn together in the way a magnet attracts metal. . . . You can see the veterans’ thoughts: “Kid, like me, you are a child of democracy, and I can count on it that if the challenge comes, you too will fight for democracy.

        He gives high marks to Generals Eisenhower and MacArthur for the way in which they fostered democracy in Germany and Japan after World War II.

In less time than the Second World War lasted, MacArthur transformed Japan from a feudal totalitarian state into a modern, progressive democratic country.

In the case of Eisenhower, Ambrose writes that he

. . . represented all that was best about democracy—he was honest, straightforward, able to listen to different points of view before making his own decisions, encouraging, responsible, imaginative, reasonable and trustworthy.

During the occupation, Eisenhower urged Germans—and journalists in particular—to criticize him when he made mistakes, arguing that freedom of speech and freedom of the press were the essential elements of democracy. The test of whether he succeeded, Eisenhower said, would only be found in fifty years—if Germany was then a fully democratic, free society. By 1955, it was—and was united as well.

        “In the Second World War,” Ambrose declares,

. . . if you were going to be conquered and occupied by a foreign army, the last thing you wanted was for it to be the German, Japanese or Red Army. The first thing, around the world, was the hope that it would be the American Army. This was because you would be better fed, receive better medical care, treated like a human being.

        This book is Stephen Ambrose’s departing love letter to America. It deserves as wide an audience as possible.

Republican Shift on Deficits Tells Us Something About Government’s Tendency to Grow Regardless of Which Party Is in Power

        In political campaigns, we are told that the Democrats are the party of big government and deficit spending while the Republicans are the party of small government and balanced budgets. This has hardly been true in the past—government has grown under Republicans as well as Democrats and deficits have increased under both parties, but, somehow, the rhetoric has continued, and is often believed.

        Now, with the Bush administration, even the rhetoric has come to an end. Deficits, suddenly, are seen to be perfectly acceptable.

        It is often forgotten that Newt Gingrich’s revolutionary Contract With America promised first and foremost a balanced budget. At the present time, however, a conservative president has submitted a budget that includes a substantial $304 billion deficit—and does not make any provision for the cost of a potential war with Iraq.

        Incredibly, some conservatives defend the budget as a means to curb government spending, although the deficit itself is the clearest indication that government spending is out of control. Thus, Rep. Sue Myrick (R-North Carolina), who won the “deficit hawk” award of the Concord Coalition, a group dedicated to eradicating red ink in all its federal forms, now defends deficits, saying,

Anything that will help us stop spending money, I’m in favor of. . . . We’ve tried to say, hey, we don’t have to spend so much of it. And if there’s a deficit, that may help us.  

        Many of the 70 members of the Republican Study Committee, the group Rep. Myrick leads, which includes the most fiscally conservative Republicans, have praised President Bush for proposing a budget that deeply cuts a wide variety of taxes and carries a record budget deficit.

        Former Senator Warren Rudman (R-New Hampshire), who engineered a signature deficit reduction act of the 1980s, the Gramm-Rudman Act, said:

I don’t understand it. It reminded me of the movie Trading Places. Everybody’s had a role reversal.

        The U.S. Government is rapidly running out of money to meet its bills. Treasury officials warn that the nation will run up against the legal debt ceiling of $6.4 trillion in the near future. Republicans used to be concerned about such developments. Once in power, however, that concern seems to have evaporated.

        An article in The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, described these developments as a “GOP Counterrevolution.” Editorially, the paper notes that,

A Trend is developing: the GOP is abandoning several positions it held when in opposition and carried into office after seizing congressional control. The “revolution” Republicans promised and then implemented as insurgents who finally stormed the citadel of Capitol Hill, is now being partly undone. This is because the GOP is getting used to power and believes, with apparent justification, that it might be able to retain its majority status for some time to come. It is adjusting itself to the pleasant, if precarious, prospect of long-term control. . . . Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Republican Conference, for example, says bluntly:  “I am no longer a deficit hawk.” He explains that deficits make it easier to reject spending proposals that he and his fellow party bosses regard as profligate. Rep. Jim Nussle (R-Iowa), who chairs the House Budget committee, is even more dismissive of hawkishness, saying: “C’mon—the Soviet Union had balanced budgets.”  

        The House Republicans have also reinstated the so-called “Gephardt Rule,” which they had scrapped back in the 106th Congress. By bringing it back, they have given themselves permission to increase federal debt merely by passing a budget that has that effect, but without legislating explicitly to do so. Scrapping that rule was designed to reinforce fiscal discipline my making members approve a ballooning debt explicitly, if they dared, and take the electoral consequences.

        In his State of the Union address, President Bush said that,

We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents and to other generations.  

The acceptance of huge budget deficits, however, does precisely that—burdening the future with debts we are unprepared to pay in the present. The budget message disclosed that in the next two years alone, the administration will pass on to the next generation an unpaid bill of at least $611 billion in fresh budget deficits. The five-year total, by the White House’s own estimate, will be more than double that record amount. At the same time, the budget omits any provision of financing a possible war with Iraq. Another major future expense not considered is the costs of retirement and health care benefits for the baby-boom generation, which will drain Social Security and Medicare in coming years.

        The Congress, recognizing that deficits have now become acceptable, filled the 2003 spending package with special interest provisions. It provides $750,000 for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, $350,000 for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The appropriators appeared to have improved a $3.1 billion drought relief measure that, in its Senate version, would have given disaster aid to farmers who suffered no losses—but they paid for the relief by taking money away from a conservation program. Even House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. C. W. Bill Young (R-Florida) admitted that, “The process was not the best.”

        In congressional testimony in mid-February, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, a traditional economic conservative, challenged the administration’s contention that big budget deficits pose little danger or that the government can largely offset them through faster economic growth.

We are all too aware that government spending programs and tax preferences can be easy to initiate or expand but extraordinarily difficult to trim or shut down,

Greenspan said.  

Faster economic growth, doubtless, would make deficits easier to contain. But faster economic growth alone is not likely to be the full solution to the currently projected long-term deficits.  

        Greenspan also took issue with the arguments that budget deficits have little effect on interest rates.

Contrary to what some have said, it does affect long-term interest rates and it does have an impact on the economy,  

He said. He declared that, “The deficit must be maintained at minimal levels.”

        That those in power seek to expand power is hardly a novel idea. Even at the beginning of the republic perceptive men such as John Calhoun predicted that government would inevitability grow, that those in power would always advocate a “broad” use of power, and those out of power would always argue for a “narrow” use of power, and that no one would ever turn back governmental authority which has once been assumed.

        Calhoun was all too prophetic when he wrote the following in A Disquisition on Government:

A written constitution certainly has many and considerable advantages, but it is a mistake to suppose that the mere insertion of provisions to restrict and limit the powers of government, without investing those for whose protection they are inserted with the means of enforcing their observance, will be sufficient to prevent the major and dominant party from abusing its powers. Being the party in possession of government, they will . . . be in favor of the powers granted by the Constitution and opposed to the restrictions intended to limit them. As the major and dominant parties, they will have no need of these restrictions for their protection. . . . The minor or weaker party, on the contrary, would take the opposite direction and regard them as essential to their protection against the dominant party. . . . But where there are no means by which they could compel the major party to observe the restrictions, the only resort left them would be a strict construction of the Constitution. . . . To this the major party would oppose a liberal construction . . . one which would give to the words of the grant the broadest meaning of which they were susceptible.  

         Calhoun continued:

It would then be construction against construction—the one to contract and the other to enlarge the powers of the government to the utmost. But of what possible avail could the strict construction of the minor party be, against the liberal interpretation of the major, when the one and the other be deprived of all means of enforcing its construction? In a contest so unequal, the result would not be doubtful. The party in favor of the restrictions would be overpowered. . . . The end of the contest would be the subversion of the Constitution . . . the restrictions would ultimately be annulled and the government be converted into one of unlimited powers.  

        Consider our history. Republicans oppose big government when Democrats are in power and expand it dramatically when they come to positions of authority. The Democrats have done exactly the same thing. Suddenly, today, they find that deficits are, indeed, a bad idea. The growth of government has been a steady process since 1789. Regardless of who was in office, Federalists, Democrat, Republican or Whig, liberal or conservative.

        Those who are genuinely dedicated to limited government, fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets must apply the same standards to both Republicans and Democrats. That, however, is rarely the case.  Ω