But summer ‘11 is different. Unlike most Julys, this is not the Silly Season. The fresh crop of Republicans has that most dire of all political virtues: sincerity. It is not that these freshmen are insane or are terrorists, as flame-throwers on the poetic left suggest. Rather they share a perspective on government that, even if it is not always explicitly or candidly presented, is certainly a legitimate view of how a quasi-libertarian state should be organized. As boisterous tea party rebels, they are children of Ron Paul and, with less intellectual gravitas, of Milton Friedman. It is the task of Speaker John Boehner to hide their deep desires – currently unlikely to be enacted – from the public. These politicians wish broad principled cuts. Call them “radical” if you reject them, but, after all, this rhetoric mirrors the self-enhancing distinction: I am firm, but she is stubborn. As the Speaker’s plans evolve, it is increasingly unclear when and where these billions of cuts will derive. One can’t but imagine that this is a shell game with the American public as the marks. Boehner is the adult in the room, but like so many parents, he tries to misdirect his offspring’s attention hoping against hope that the promises will be forgotten.

Still, there is no doubt that whoever wins this financial drama (and it may prove to be a lose/lose opportunity, benefiting only gold bugs), the libertarian right has won the rhetorical debate. The President and Harry Reid are playing on the Tea Party turf, even if they are attempting to con without being caught. There are a lot of things that might describe the whole debate, and mendacity is surely high among them. Majority Leader Harry Reid’s ploy to count planned defense reductions as new cuts was too clever by half, unpersuasive to all and revealing just how much he scorns the Tea Party rubes.

But ultimately it all comes down to the President. Despite his intelligence, Obama has revealed himself to be, unlike Carter or Clinton, a man who prefers to out-source economic policy to those with partisan interests. This was the tragedy of the Stimulus Package (Porkulus, as christened on talk radio). Rather than use the stimulus for a grand civic purpose, such as rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, the money was sprinkled about, landing on the desks of tenured faculty to support their research assistants, as well as for other cheery, but not quite essential, purposes. Perhaps it prevented a Depression, but in contrast to FDR’s alphabet agencies, the country looks no different now that the money is spent.

And this brings us to our grave week. It is fair to speak of balance, but what does this mean? We have a clearer sense of how Obama would increase revenues, raising tax rates on those millionaires and billionaires earning over $200,000. “Today this planless plan seems burdened as public policy by its absence of detail.” But we know less where and when, specifically, he would cut. Might 2017 be a good place to start? Is this more smoke and mirrors, more peas and shells. For this reason Congressional Republicans argue, sensibly from where they sit, that the cuts must occur now, there must be spending caps in place, and a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget be sent to the states. Once burned, twice shy. Ten times burned, we don’t shy from financial calamity.

Today the adults in the room are all wearing capes, waving wands, and pulling rabbits from hats. But the kids have seen it all before. What they hope for, but are unlikely to receive, is reality television. The Tea Party movement was sparked by Rick Santelli’s rant on CNBC, and perhaps it will be on that same financial channel where we will all end. Promises are no longer enough for those who have been plied with – and played as – suckers. Now is the time for the adults to tell what will be cut and how will we verify. Today it is the adults who are playing games.

Alexis de Tocqueville thought, as I observed in an earlier post, that after the grand principled politics of the earliest years of the Republic, American parties and politics would be about minor issues.  About dividing up the spoils, not about the definition of what democracy is and how it should be enacted.  His important insight was to distinguish between two different forms of political contestation. He correctly noted that American politics would be mostly about dividing the spoils, resting upon a general consensus about fundamental principles.  But what he missed is that fundamental conflicts have a way, episodically, of reappearing, sometimes quite unexpectedly, and even with a slight of hand.  Such is our present situation.

This became clear to me as I was surfing the web this morning and came across a post by Jonah Goldberg at the National Review online.  He openly made the move from petit to grand politics in Tocqueville’s sense.

“The protesting public-school teachers with fake doctor’s notes swarming the capitol building in Madison, Wis., insist that Gov. Scott Walker is hell-bent on “union busting.” Walker denies that his effort to reform public-sector unions in Wisconsin is anything more than an honest attempt at balancing the state’s books.

I hope the protesters are right. Public unions have been a 50-year mistake.”

Goldberg argues against the very idea of public employee unions, going a step further than the aggressive Governor of Wisconsin. For Goldberg it is all about the principle, as he supports a politician who must get on with practical political concerns.  As Max Weber would put it, Walker uses an apparent ethic of responsibility, fiscal balance, to hide his ultimate ends; attacking the public employees’ unions.   Walker governs responsibly, moving toward the principled goal.

But there is more than meets the eye in Goldberg’s essay, which is framed around the idea that unions in the private sector fought a valiant and historic struggle against capitalist exploitation, while public unions  just stand for stealing from the public coffers. On the page where his post appears, there is a standard right wing advertisement, that takes the issue one step further from fiscal responsibility to opposition to public employee unions by calling for an anti-union petition.

The libertarian call for anti-union ‘right to work’ laws has been standard fare at the National Review dating back to its founding in the fifties.  Back then, it was a voice in the liberal wilderness, i.e. from its editors’ point of view. Back then there existed a social contract in the nation, supported by a broad spectrum of Democrats and Republicans alike, that prevented sustained attacks on workers’ rights.  Goldberg presents an argument that purports to adhere to that position.  But the anti-Obama, libertarian ad makes clear not all are interested in a social truce. It is not about the spoils but about a principled choice between individual liberty and the primacy of the right to property on the one side, and worker collective action and the struggle for social justice, on the other.

I suspect that Goldberg didn’t object to the ad’s placement, it communicates the logical conclusion of his and Governor Walker’s positions.  It revealed to this reader what is at stake in the Wisconsin events.