DFP Guest commentary: I didn't leave the Republican Party -- it left me

Guest commentary: I didn't leave the Republican Party -- it left me
August 13, 2012
By Marina v.N. Whitman
Detroit Free Press guest writer


The recent death of my good friend and mentor Paul McCracken reminded me that I used to be a Republican. Though I wouldn't have dreamed of voting a straight party ticket, I stamped myself indelibly with an "R" when I joined Richard Nixon's administration as the first woman appointed to the President's Council of Economic Advisers. McCracken, the Council's chairman, gave me the strong support and wise counsel that I, a political novice, sorely needed.

What has happened over the intervening 40 years to the party with which I once identified? No one can ignore the dramatic shift to the right; as Bob Dole observed in a 2007 television retrospective on the Nixon presidency: "I doubt that Nixon could be nominated today by the Republican Party. He'd be perceived as too liberal, too moderate." In fact, many of Nixon's actions in the early 1970's would be supported by the Democrats and repudiated by the Republicans of 2012.

One innovation in domestic policy that he put forward with McCracken's strong support, the Family Assistance Program, guaranteeing a minimum income to every American family, failed to pass the Congress but became a template for later, more successful efforts. Other measures Nixon introduced became landmark pieces of legislation. These included the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Today, Republicans in Congress are proposing to restrict the independence of all such agencies or abolish them outright.

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Campaigns are partisan by their nature, of course, but there was a time when bipartisan efforts behind the scenes to solve urgent problems avoided the total gridlock that immobilizes our government today. Many of our most critical economic problems are in principle soluble -- indeed, many of my economist colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats, have sensible proposals for alleviating them -- but there isn't a ghost of a chance that any of those ideas will be implemented before we are right on the edge of, and very possibly over, the fiscal cliff that bids fair to throw the nation, and with it much of the world, back into recession. But there is an even greater danger, that prolonged gridlock will produce an impatience with democracy, a yearning for an authoritarian leader who can "get things done."

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http://www.freep.com/article/20120813/OPINION05/308130001/Guest-commentary-?odyssey=nav|head

Marina v.N. Whitman is a professor of business administration and public policy at the University of Michigan.