 | | January 9, 2013 |  | By Jonathan V. Last | |  |  |  |  | | COLD OPEN |  |  | Last week Erick Erikson of RedState.com published a manifesto for the Republican party going forward. At its core, the idea is that Republicans should be aggressively and openly pursuing policies designed to foster family formation.
This strikes me as a wise idea, both politically and practically. (For reasons I discuss at great length in my book What to Expect When No One's Expecting—pre-order your copy today!) The idea of having a populist platform dedicated to promoting middle-class family life isn't new. It dates (at least) to Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat's call for a "Sam's Club Republicanism," and in the last election cycle Rick Santorum based his candidacy around it. Here's how Santorum summed it up at one of the Republican debates:
The bottom line is we have a problem in this country, and the family is fracturing.
Over 40 percent of children born in America are born out of wedlock. How can a country survive if children are being raised in homes where it's so much harder to succeed economically? It's five times the rate of poverty in single-parent households than it is in two-parent homes. We can have limited government, lower tax—we hear this all the time, cut spending, limit the government, everything will be fine. No, everything's not going to be fine.
There are bigger problems at stake in America.
What's (politically) seductive about this sort of populist pitch is that it should, in theory, have wide, cross-party appeal. So much, in fact, that there's actually no reason why it should be just a Republican idea. In theory, there's no reason why a populist Democrat couldn't take exactly the same approach to the subject as Rick Santorum.
Yet in practice, it's just about impossible to imagine any Democrats talking like that right now, isn't it? The question is, why?
And here, Richey Piiparinen has some thoughts.
Writing at Joel Kotkin's excellent New Geography project, Piiparinen has written a long, thoughtful essay about "urbanism" and what liberalism really means when it talks about "livability." Here's his opener:
"Livability" has been a buzz word in city development for some time, and for good reason, as who doesn't want livability, outside the zombie cohort? Things get hairy, though, when "livability"—as an economic development strategy—gets unpacked, because questions arise: "Livability" for whom? "Livability" at what cost?
You should absolutely read Piiparinen's entire piece, but the nub of what he's getting at is that the goal of the new urbanism has been to replace the idea of "life" with "lifestyle."
Whenever people mention "lifestyle," you can be reasonably sure that what they're talking about is, at the very least, agnostic about family formation—if not openly hostile to it. Look around the field of urbanism over the last 30 years and what you see are pushes toward modes of living—more density, more mass transit, higher costs of living—that make having families of any size, but especially families with more than one or two children, all but impossible for the middle class.
And here's where I'd go a step further than Piiparninen: I'd argue that you could plausibly view "urbanism" as the political-secular mode of modern Democratic-liberal thinking.
Which is why Democratic candidates can't talk like Rick Santorum does about family formation. The barrier isn't political or ideological—it's cultural. |  |  |  | | LOOKING BACK |  |  | "You see there was this fellow, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who died early this year and is on his way to being forgotten but who, unfortunately, isn't quite there yet. Schlesinger spent some of his time being a Harvard historian and all of his time kissing the behinds of rich people, famous people, and people who were powerful in the Democratic party. He accomplished only one thing of note. (If you don't count his unfinished, multivolume history of the FDR administration and his A Thousand Days buncombe about JFK, and you certainly shouldn't.)"
—P.J. O'Rourke, "Dear Diary, I Think I'm in Love," from our December 31, 2007/January 7, 2008, issue.
Remember you get full access to THE WEEKLY STANDARD archive when you subscribe. | | | | |  | | THE READING LIST |  |  | The Century Mark: What happens to basketball players who score over 100 points in a game.
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Social media and the immortalization of death.
* * *
The Great Maple Syrup Heist of 2012. |  | | INSTANT CLASSIC |  |  | "It's one thing if a bank is too big to fail, so the government has to save it if it's in danger of going under. It's another if the bank is too big to be brought to justice, so the government can't even make it obey the laws while it goes about its immortal way."
—Mickey Kaus, January 4, 2013 |  | | LOOKING AHEAD |  |  | | We'll have articles on Harry Reid, Obama's regulatory regime, and affirmative action in upcoming issues of THE WEEKLY STANDARD. |  | | THE LAST WORD |  |  | But let's jump back to that cultural barrier preventing Democrats from embracing economic populism. This blockage represents an enormous opportunity for Republicans.
You don't hear Democrats talk much these days about policies that make it easier for the average person to get married and have children. Oh sure, the Democrats care deeply about making sure that same-sex couples can get married. They care deeply about making sure that women can abort their unborn babies. And in a very real sense, the overriding importance of these priorities for Democrats makes it nearly impossible for them to champion traditional family formation.
The truth is, despite what you see on TV, the vast majority of Americans still want traditional families. Even with the institution of marriage under a three-decade assault, over 90 percent of Americans get married at some point in their lives. And these people want reasonably big families. Data from both Gallup and the General Social Survey show that our "ideal fertility rate"—that is, the number of children men and women wish they could have in a perfect world—is 2.5. This number has been basically constant for 40 years.
The fact that our divorce rate is so high and our actual fertility rate has lagged behind our ideal fertility rate for more than a generation is evidence that, at the most basic level, Americans haven't been able to achieve the kind of families they wish they had. Which suggests that there should be an underserved political market for policies and rhetoric that champion the family.
Call it populism; call it pro-natalism; call it whatever you like. The details may differ, but in the broad outlines this politics will look very much like what Erikson sketched out a few days ago. And while this politics is theoretically available to both Democrats and Republicans, it's a safe bet that the Democratic party won't choose to pursue it any time soon, even though it would benefit most of the party's constituents.
Republicans should not make the same mistake.
Before I check out, a big thanks to Michael Warren for filling in on the Newsletter last week. Like Greg Maddux, his stuff is always great. I'll make sure we feature more of him in 2013.
As always, keep calm and carry on. And remember, you can always follow me on Twitter @JVLast or email me with tips, thoughts, etc., at editor@weeklystandard.com.
Best,
Jonathan V. Last
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