October 1, 2012
The Opening Statement
By DAVID BROOKS
Ladies and gentlemen,
I’d like to use the opening minutes of this debate a little differently. I’d
like to say that I wish everybody could have known my father, George Romney. He
was a great public servant and I’ve always tried to live up to his example. The
problem is that you get caught up in the competitiveness of a campaign and all
the consultants want to make you something you’re not.
I’ve allowed that to
happen to me. I’m a nonideological guy running in an ideological age, and I’ve
been pretending to be more of an ideologue than I really am. I’m a
sophisticated guy running in a populist moment. I’ve ended up dumbing myself
down.
It hasn’t even worked.
I’m behind. So I’ve decided to run the last month of this campaign as myself.
The next president is
going to face some wicked problems. The first is the “fiscal cliff.” The next
president is going to have to forge a grand compromise on the budget. President
Obama has tried and failed to do this over the past four years. There’s no reason
to think he’d do any better over the next four.
He’s failed, first,
because he’s just not a very good negotiator. You don’t have to believe me.
Read Bob Woodward’s book, “The Price of Politics.” Obama spent the last
campaign promising to be postpartisan and then in his first weeks in office, in
the fullness of his victory, he shut down all cooperation with Republicans and
killed any hope of bipartisan cooperation.
Furthermore, he’s too
insular. As Woodward reports, he’s constantly leaving people in the dark — his
negotiating partners and people in his own party. They’re perpetually being
blindsided and confused by his amorphous positions. There’s no trust. If I were
in business, there’s no way I would do a deal with this guy.
The second reason
there’s been no budget compromise is that Republicans have been too rigid,
refusing to put revenue on the table. I’ve been part of the problem. But,
globally, the nations that successfully trim debt have raised $1 in new revenue
for every $3 in spending cuts. I will bring Republicans around to that
position. There’s no way President Obama can do that.
The second wicked
problem the next president will face is sluggish growth. I assume you know that
everything President Obama and I have been saying on this subject has been
total garbage. Presidents and governors don’t “create jobs.” We don’t have the
ability to “grow the economy.” There’s no magic lever.
Instead, an
administration makes a thousand small decisions, each of which subtly adds to
or detracts from a positive growth environment. The Obama administration, which
is either hostile to or aloof from business, has made a thousand tax,
regulatory and spending decisions that are biased away from growth and biased
toward other priorities. American competitiveness has fallen in each of the
past four years, according to the World Economic Forum. Medical device makers,
for example, are being chased overseas. The economy in 2012 is worse than the
economy in 2011. That’s inexcusable.
My administration will
be a little more biased toward growth. It’ll treat businesses with more
respect. There will be no magic recovery, but gradually the animal spirits will
revive.
The third big problem
is Medicare and rising health care costs, which are bankrupting this country.
Let me tell you the brutal truth. Nobody knows how to reduce health care
inflation. There are two basic approaches, and we probably have to try both
simultaneously.
The first, included in
Obamacare, is to have an Independent Payment Advisory Board find efficiencies
and impose price controls. The problem is that that leaves the painful
cost-cutting decisions in Washington, where Congress rules. Congress wrote
provisions in the health care law that have already gutted the power of the
advisory board. The current law allows Congress to make “cuts” on paper and
then undo them with subsequent legislation. That’s what Congress always does.
The second approach,
favored by me, is to scrap the perverse fee-for-service incentives and use a
more market-based approach. I think there’s ample evidence that this could
work, but, to be honest, some serious health economists disagree.
I’m willing to pursue
any experiment, from any political direction, that lowers costs and saves
Medicare. Democrats are campaigning as the party that will fight to the death
to preserve the Medicare status quo. If they win, the lesson will be: Never
Touch Medicare. No Democrat or Republican will dare reform the system, and we
will go bankrupt.
At last, I’ve tried to
be on the level with you. This president was audacious in 2008, but, as you can
see from his negligible agenda, he’s now exhausted. I’m not an inspiring
conviction politician, but I’ll try anything to help us succeed. You make the
choice.
