Gingrich - a more important conservative than Reagan

Think back to all the presidents since Jimmy Carter. Which of these presidents is considered an icon by political conservatives? There's no doubt that Ronald Reagan would top the list. As for the president most loathed by conservatives, there's no doubt that Bill Clinton would be nominated - though Carter does come a close second.

But what do political conservatives want? If we ignore the "fluff", the basic desire of political conservatives is to reduce the size of the Federal government and to ensure that government spending is responsible.

Yet when we look at the raw statistics (Historical Tables of the FY 2009 Budget, PDF, 2.4 Mib), a rather strange thing occurs. Here is a table (based upon table 1.2 from the document) which averages out the levels of government spending and government debt over the terms of each president since Jimmy Carter:

Well whaddya know? Ronald Reagan presided over the largest Federal Government and the highest level of government debt. By contrast, Clinton presided over the smallest Federal Government (for all intents and purposes) and the smallest increase in government debt. You'd think from evidence like this that Reagan was the spendthrift while Clinton was the conservative darling - yet in the Bizarro world of conservative politics, the opposite is the case.

The problem is that conservative politics since Reagan seems to have focused solely upon taxation - and thus government revenue. Reagan did, of course, make some big tax cuts but there was no commensurate reduction in spending that accompanied such cuts. The result ended up being a Federal government that actually increased its spending as a proportion of GDP while simultaneously increasing government debt as a result. Moreover, those levels of debt were huge.

Of course we need to remember that government spending is also the responsibility of Congress. Thus if we were to criticise or praise certain presidents over their fiscal performances, we need to do the same with congresses and the party that controlled them.

During Reagan's term as president, the 97th, 98th and 99th Congresses had Republican Senates and Democrat Houses. Both houses of the 100th Congress were Democrat, and the average Federal outlay for those two years (1988-1989) was 21.45% of GDP, while debt averaged -3.15% of GDP - both lower than Reagan's 8 year average.

Of course, Democrats were hardly blameless during George HW Bush's term in office with both the 101st and 102nd Congresses being controlled by Democrats and overseeing, with Bush, no reduction in the size of government and no reduction in debt.

But if Ronald Reagan was the Republican Party's number one hero of the past 30 years, the number two would have to be Newt Gingrich and the 104th Congress. Whatever faults conservatives have today with Gingrich and the 1994 "Republican Revolution", there is much to praise them for as well.

On the surface, Gingrich's Republican Congress and the Democrat Clinton in the White House were at odds from day one. Beginning with the 1995 Federal Government shutdown and ending with the impeachment of Clinton, it is unlikely that any period during the 20th century saw such animosity and divisiveness between the executive and legislative branches of government.

Nevertheless, the stats do tell a striking story. Clinton and the Gingrich Republicans actively reduced the size of government while simultaneously cutting back on debt.

Yet this did not continue. Between 2001 and 2006, the Republicans controlled both houses of congress as well as the White House itself. While spending remained relatively tight over the course of Bush's presidency (spending which would've been smaller had not war intervened), the tax cuts he sponsored, that were approved by the Republican congress, ended up putting the government back into debt once more. By the time the Democrats retook congress in 2006, economic conditions had deteriorated and debt levels began to soar again.

Now as a political progressive who has no problems at all in increasing the size of government, I obviously do not align myself either with the Republicans of today, or those in the 1990s, or even those in the 1980s. What I do respect, though, is the ability to maintain one's political stance through practice.

The Republicans of the 1980s and 2000s are, to my mind, not really conservatives. 80s Republicans preached government restraint while overseeing a huge increase in the size of government and in government debt. 2000s Republicans oversaw a smaller sized government but didn't reduce it, while also adding to the levels of debt.

Increasingly, the 1990s will be seen as a golden period for political conservatives - despite the fact that Clinton inhabited the White House. Apart from the glory of the 1994 mid term elections, the shenanigans that followed it and the popularity of the Republican party over the next decade, there is no doubt that conservatives actually did achieve what they set out to do. The budgetary statistics prove that beyond doubt. And for that I grudgingly (and through gritted teeth) respect them.

In short, who should Republicans look back to as an icon? Not Reagan and not Bush (either of them), but to Gingrich.