Short writing assignment #1

It's About Balance, Selectivity
According to Geoffrey Nunberg in "Thinking about the government," the roots of anti-big-government sentiment can be traced back to 1940, when republicans had recently acquired a reputation as the party of big business. Of course all powerful parties wish to remain powerful, and so the republicans picked a scapegoat to attract the attention of mainstream America. That scapegoat was “big government.”
People understandably and instinctively fear a big, meddling government; it’s big, it’s powerful, and it can control your life. What people differ on is what constitutes meddling. The republicans realized that all shades of gray here could be concentrated into a rhetoric that vilified big government, thus sending out that sympathetic signal to the freedom-loving masses, while merely washing over the specifics. Of course the republicans supported things like healthcare, public schools, roads, and the military, however the “big-government hater” exists in the vast majority of people at least to some degree. When people hear someone bashing big government, they can immediately latch on to it in their own way. This rhetoric allowed republicans mass appeal despite rhetorical and policy discrepancies.
While it was long ago when Wendell Wilkie first made a campaign platform out of belittling big government, Nunberg suggests that it was Ronald Reagan who finally perfected the role as “First Misarchist.” Reagan broadened the attack on big government, saying things like, “Government is not the solution to the problem, it is the problem,” perhaps starting a trend of the ideological slant on rhetoric.
Democrats responded by essentially adopting the same rhetoric, and fighting over the specifics of which government programs to cut behind the scenes with the republicans. According to Nunberg, democrats have adopted a “defensively anti-government approach,” one they can never truly own, or make it seem like they own. Now democrats defend their decisions in terms of marketplace terminology. People like E.J. Dionne believe this to be a mistake.
Nunberg suggests in this article that President Bush and the republicans have actually not wanted to shrink the government in the broad sense, but rather that Bush wants to reduce its role as a protector of the common people against corporations. Republicans have used language designed so that people will misinterpret Bush’s intentions and merely think he dislikes big government.
E.J. Dionne believes that instead of playing the big versus small government game with the republicans, democrats should raise the question, “Whose side is government on.” Of course Dionne realizes that this is just as much a play on words as the republicans’ game. However, this strategy brings back an understanding that our government was designed to be by, of, and for the people. As long as democrats can adhere to and articulate that message properly, they may find themselves on equal political footing with the republicans.

Jonah Goldberg, in “The Government Point,” suggests that citizens take a “more nuanced” stance on this debate over big versus small government. In other words, she opposes the concretion of all the previously mentioned shades of gray into one mass of people who hate big government. While Goldberg herself is apparently republican, she seems to be advocating here that people should not be looking at the whole picture: either big or small government, but rather that people need to look at the individual programs or policies that would combine to make either a big or small government. In other words, practicality should determine the necessary form of the government, as opposed to a specific ideological form of government limiting or necessitating practicalities.
She then argues that liberals want not only a large government, but the largest government possible, “the whole package.” Of course in doing so she is attributing frugality and common sense to the republicans, and ignorant ideology to the democrats. According to Goldberg, republicans want a government that is “big enough to fight a war and save people from drowning in downtown New Orleans...flexible, competent, innovative...nimble enough to do the things it’s supposed to do and sharp enough to recognize what it should not do.”
However, she here clarifies that this isn't the main issue. She understands that everyone wants such a government, the point she makes is that people should argue over specifics, not the broad ideologies.