Republicans are greeting President Barack Obama's summer push on the economy with derision. To House Speaker John Boehner and others, the president seems like an aging rock star whose recycled hits became stale years ago. Yet he still tours, playing to smaller and smaller arenas.
While the president is unlikely to be celebrated in history for his economic record, his presidency marks the end of Republican orthodoxy on economic matters dating to the late 1970s. The Republican frame for 40 years has been that Democrats are the party of tax, spend and regulation, while Republicans are the party of tax cuts, austerity and deregulation. It's hard to let go of this message; for many years, it worked. But then we had the presidency of George W. Bush and the campaign of Mitt Romney.
Bush won because he was a compassionate conservative, the supposed antidote to the callousness of Newt Gingrich. But with the exception of the prescription-drug benefit, he governed as an orthodox Republican, pursuing tax cuts for the wealthy and loose regulations. The deficit exploded and the economy collapsed. While these policies cannot be blamed exclusively for these economic outcomes, the rosy and ridiculous Republican assumption that cutting taxes on the wealthy and reducing regulation lead to prosperity was finally and brutally exposed. The trickle in trickle-down economics dried up, and Republican policies were blamed.