A dissent from last week's instant contrarianism

Comrade Bukharin Receives New Assignment: More good news from the American Prospect, where everything's fine, just fine, these days. ... The talented Josh Green left. The talented Scott Stossel left. The talented Nick Confessore left. And now Executive Editor Harold Meyerson, formerly the magazine's great new (and expensive) hope, who only recently was engaged in a power struggle with tediously dogmatic TAP editor Robert Kuttner, has received a glorious promotion to Editor-at-Large, where he will "provide more in-depth political coverage" and be able to spend more time with his family! ...For TAP's Pravda-like bull---- announcement, click here. ....P.S.: In an e-mail to his colleagues, Meyerson says TAP is looking to hire a new executive editor to replace him. If you're a talented exec who missed out on Enron and can't land that new WorldCom job, this is a fallback you should consider. ...  9:00 P.M. 

Vouchers and the Dems: Slate's Will Saletan and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter wrote essentially the same article last week--debunking the idea that the Supreme Court's ruling on school vouchers would "turn the political tide in favor of vouchers and Republican candidates who support them" (Saletan's words). Rather, the decision was "probably a win for liberals," said Alter.

Why? Both writers claim the voucher issue is like the abortion issue. On both issues, the traditional Democratic position (pro-choice, anti-voucher) has been more popular with the voters. But when the Supreme Court took the abortion issue off the political table, in Roe v. Wade, that energized the Republican pro-life movement (while the pro-choicers sat back and relied on the courts). When the Court made abortion part of the political debate again -- by permitting some restrictions on abortions in its 1989 Webster decision - that forced the liberal, pro-choice majority to mobilize and carry the day. Similarly, the argument goes, by making vouchers into a political, not constitutional, issue last week, the Court will force voucher opponents to mobilize and put the hurt on any Republican who dares promote such a scheme.

One problem with these instant-contrarian pieces is that they're attacking a conventional wisdom that doesn't exist. Did you hear many people saying last week that the voucher ruling would help Republicans politically ( in the fall campaign for example)? I didn't. Neither Alter nor Saletan  provide even the required solitary straw man expert making this political argument, so we can safely assume he wasn't to be found. What commentators did say was that the voucher decision was a boost for vouchers, which seems undeniably true. (Even if vouchers don't spread very rapidly, it has to help that they are now a constitutional possibility.Roe may have hurt liberals, but it's hard to argue it didn't increase abortions.)

And it's easy to think of at least three reasons why -- even on the crassly political "who benefits" question -- the voucher issue isn't like the abortion issue:

1) Vouchers split the Democratic base: Both Alter and Saletan note that vouchers are popular with inner city blacks, whose children otherwise have to attend failed public schools. This is a potentially big deal, since Republicans have been unable to crack the black Democratic voting bloc in decades of trying. Was there a comparably pivotal Democratic constituency that opposed abortion? [Working-class Catholics--kf reader. By Webster in '89 weren't those that were going to leave the party already gone, for a host of reasons? In contrast, blacks have been amazingly loyal Democrats, and vouchers may be the only potential wedge Republicans have found with which to pry some away.]

2) Dems are locked in on vouchers: School choice (including voucher plans, but also independent, public "charter" schools) is a potentially good issue for Republicans not because it's now wildly popular with a majority of voters. It's a good issue because, should the pro-voucher side gain a majority, the Democrats will be unable to move to accommodate the shift. The teachers' unions, which are inalterably opposed to vouchers (and more subtly opposed to charter schools) won't let them. Abortion, on the other hand, is a question of ideology and morality, not the concrete material interest of an identifiable, well-organized group -- so the Democrats have much more flexibility. If the pro-life position becomes more popular, the power of the pro-choice lobby in the party will decline, and the Democrats can simply shift to a less-pro-choice position.

3) The problem vouchers are designed to solve isn't getting any better: Do you see urban school systems across America revitalizing themselves in the absence of competition from school choice? I don't. Meanwhile, education becomes more and more important for economic success. In contrast, the abortion issue is more of a static moral dispute. Either it's murder or it's not. The pro-life side can't argue that it's more murder now than it was in 1970.

None of this means Republicans are going to make great electoral hay out of vouchers in 2002 (again, nobody argues this position). It does mean that vouchers are potentially a Reaganesque cause, in that they might start out as an unpopular position (as were many of Reagan's hawkish and antigovernment views in the 1960s) but become a majority position -- in which case the Democrats are in political trouble.

P.S.: Alter gets in a good shot at the hack liberal New York Times editorial declaration  that "[w]hat is holding the public schools back, however, is not lack of competitive drive but the resources to succeed" (i.e. money). Says Alter, "This is an example of exactly the kind of ivory tower thinking that is poison for liberals." Contrast the NYT's weary cant with WaPo's shockingly open-to-vouchers editorial  and you have a good illustration of the different paths being taken by these two great Democratic papers. 3:10 A.M.