In a recent column, the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, Jr. unwittingly exposed the vast ideological gap between Republicans and Democrats.

Dionne chose to praise Maryland’s new Democratic governor Martin O’Malley for a massive tax increase designed to close the state’s $1.7 billion budget deficit. Hailing O’Malley’s decision as “government for grownups” the columnist noted that the liberal Democrat “led the Maryland legislature to approve $1.4 billion in taxes and $550 million in spending cuts. It has been a long time since we’ve seen that kind of balance from the federal government.”

Say what?

Does Dionne honestly believe that spending cuts of $550 million actually balance tax increases that are nearly three times as large? Is a revenue-raising plan that’s 72% tax hikes, and 28% spending trims, in any real sense “balanced”?

Dionne goes on to note that O’Malley raised the income tax rate for top wage earners from 4.75 percent to 5.5 percent – a hefty increase of some 16%. To him, this represents “a modest step in the right direction.”

E.J. Dionne clearly wishes that Governor O’Malley had gone even further than he did in boosting taxes, and not relied on placing 15,000 new slot machines around the state to produce additional revenue, but he still clearly celebrates the liberal leader’s initiative: “The sound you are hearing not only in Maryland but in state capitals across the nation,” he writes, “is the crashing and crumbling of ideology, specifically a right-wing ideology that demonizes taxes and government….”

Actually, conservatives don’t “demonize” taxes and government, but honestly acknowledge that whatever worthy goals tax hikes might fund, they mean less money in the hands of the people who earned it.

Republicans believe that individual earners can make better decisions about spending their own money than bureaucrats who seize it. Democrats like Dionne maintain an unshakable faith in the superior wisdom of government officials and the political class to spend the people’s hard-earned gains.

This remains the permanent, fundamental difference between the two parties – an undeniable distinction that means more than all other arguments about social issues, the cost of health care, immigration, or time-tables for Iraq withdrawal.

Those who believe that it shows admirable “balance” to close a yawning deficit by raising tax rates, or who consider a 16% rise in top rates a “modest step in the right direction,” or who believe that the desire for reduced tax burdens and less intrusive government amount to unjustified “demonization,” will no doubt vote Democratic in the next election.

Those, on the other hand, who reject these assumptions and find Dionne’s column unintentionally revealing, must stick with the GOP and its consistently tax-averse candidates – regardless of their innumerable foibles and shortcomings on a host of other issues. If we hope to avoid a repeat of the Maryland model on the national stage, conservatives must rally behind Republican candidates who can win – for the House, the Senate and, above all, the White House.

Naturally and appropriately, most of our attention on the misshapen national holiday the government fashioned out of the wreckage of Lincoln’s Birthday (February 12^th) and Washington’s Birthday (which actually falls on Thursday), focuses on the greatest of all chief executives. Inevitably, we think of the Rushmore Quartet (Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt) with a few other heroes (FDR, Jackson, Reagan) thrown in for good measure

The holiday also provides an opportunity, however, to consider the contenders for the title of most underrated President in our history. The most obvious name in that regard is James K. Polk, who kept his promise to serve only one term (and then died weeks after leaving the White House) but still managed to preside over the most successful and beneficial war in our history (which enabled California, Arizona and New Mexico to become part of the United States) and to keep all of the four major promises he made in his 1844 campaign. Polk so obviously deserves recognition as one of the greats that he’s been steadily rising in historical esteem: the handy-dandy Presidential rating polls now regularly list him as “near great.” There goes his claim to “under-rated” or “under-appreciated” status, obviously!

Another great (or at least near-great) chief executive still languishes, however, without nearly the recognition he deserves: Calvin Coolidge. When President Reagan moved into the White House in 1981, he took down Thomas Jefferson’s portrait (the third president after all had his very own memorial a few blocks away) and installed in its place a handsome painting of Silent Cal.  As Professor David Greenberg of Rutgers points out in a brisk, readable 2006 biography: “Coolidge, with his trickle-down economics and commonsense piety, inspired today’s conservatism. Employing the new arts of publicity, radio, and movies, he promoted the values of thrift and hard work that many feared were in eclipse. Embodying old-fashioned principles, he reassured Americans that their plunge into modernity didn’t have to lead to decadence.”

Meanwhile, in the other recent (and far more detailed) Coolidge biography (by Professor Robert Sobel of Hofstra University, published in ’98) you can see that the wildly popular chief cut taxes four different times (dropping the rates more sharply than anyone else save Reagan) while boasting a budget surplus every year in office and cutting the national debt by a full one-third! Long before anyone coined the phrase “Supply Side Economics,” Coolidge proved that it worked. And as Sobel reports: “Though his list of accomplishments is impressive, Calvin Coolidge was perhaps best known and most respected by his contemporaries for his character…. He was the last president who wrote his own speeches, who spent hours each day greeting White House visitors, who had only one secretary, and who didn’t even keep a telephone on his desk… His programs in the 1920’s presaged the recent movement toward smaller government and returned taxes… in a period of unprecedented economic growth.” 

He also delighted the nation with his elegant, artistic wife (surely the most glamorous First Lady next to Jackie Kennedy) his wry, celebrated wit, and his uplifting, freely expressed religious faith.

It’s therefore a shame that his one best known quote –“The chief business of America is business” – is regularly misunderstood and generally quoted out of context. In an illuminating letter to the Boston Globe, John Karol (who’s produced a magnificent, thrilling and altogether inspiring Coolidge documentary that is just a small foundation grant away from completion) clarifies Silent Cal’s celebrated platitude.

“This misquote comes from an address President Coolidge gave before the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1925. Speaking on the topic “The Press Under a Free Government,” the President made the point that newspapers serve a dual purpose – providing crucial information for the electorate, at the same time they stimulate business growth through their advertising departments. He emphasized the idea that these two functions complemented rather than contradicting one another.

“After all,” he declared, “the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.”

But the President went on to note that at the same time that we rightly concentrated on business and productivity, “The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation of idealists. That is the only motive to which they ever give any strong and lasting reaction…I could not truly criticize the vast importance of the counting room, but my ultimate faith I would place in the idealism of the editorial room of the American newspaper.”

In other words, Coolidge neither said nor suggested that business success of economic progress represented the only appropriate concern for the nation. He specifically emphasized the need to balance the economic engine of society with the enduring ideals of the people.

No wonder that after assuming the Presidency upon Harding’s death in 1923, he won a crushing landslide victory in 1923—beating his Democratic opponent (the colorless John W. Davis) by nearly 2 to 1 in the popular vote  (15.7 million votes to 8.4 million votes) and nearly 3 to 1 in the electoral college (382 votes to 136 votes, with 13 electoral votes for Third Party candidate “Fighting Bob” LaFollette).

When, four years later, Coolidge announced “I do not choose to run,” he contributed his other famous quotation to the history books. Without doubt, the enormously popular President  (who left the White House at age 56) easily could have cruised to victory in 1928 (and perhaps thereafter), helping the nation avoid the ravages of the Great Depression, with the big government interventionism of booth Hoover and FDR that made a bad situation much worse.

Yes, it’s too bad that the marvelous Coolidge chose not to run in 1928. Actually, it’s even worse that we don’t have Silent Cal (or some other obvious contender in his courageous, common-sensical, morally rigorous, small government image) to lead a Republican revival in 2008.

Like many other conservatives, I spent a few minutes on the radio today deriding Presidential candidate John Edwards over his insanely lavish new home—what a local North Carolina newspaper alliteratively anointed, his “Decadent Digs.”  The yet-to-be-completed mansion, sited on a 102 acre plot (from which the former Senator clear-cut a dense forest), features 29,000 square feet of floor space, including indoor basketball court, racquet ball court, and pool. Valued officially at six million dollars, it is by far the largest and most expensive residential property in the county.

Edwards apologists say that those of us who’ve been mocking “Uncle John’s Cabin” demonstrate the rankest hypocrisy.

Don’t conservatives celebrate the accumulation and indulgence of wealth? Edwards, who began life in humble circumstances, has lived “the American dream,” according to his admirers. Republicans regularly denounce class warfare and the politics of envy. Why encourage such attitudes now when it comes to a mill-worker’s son who made good, but tries in his politics to keep faith with his own disadvantaged past?

In response to these challenges, four points seem pertinent:

1)      Edwards made his money as a trial lawyer, not as an industrialist or entrepreneur who built jobs and enriched the economy. Ambulance chasers like Edwards don’t create wealth; they seize wealth from its creators in the name of “suffering victims.” There are also serious questions about his misuse of his own S-type corporation to dodge taxes, and the shady sale of his previous mansion in Georgetown in a sweetheart deal with a supporter who’s currently under government investigation. No, free market enthusiastics don’t confer equal respect on all accumulations of wealth: a rich pornographer like Larry Flynt, for instance, deserves less admiration than an innovator and job builder like Bill Gates or even a real estate tycoon like Donald Trump. The often idiotic lawsuits on which Edwards built his career damaged the economy and fueled the destructive culture of victimhood, while building nothing at all and benefiting only the lawyer and his clients. On what basis can Democrats argue that government should cap or actively discourage big salaries for successful corporate heads, but never consider such a limitation for a court-room conniver like Edwards?

2)      Edwards has built both his Presidential campaigns on the “Two Americas” theme – claiming that there’s profound danger in the emerging gap between a handful of super-rich, absurdly privileged people and the rest of the populace. It’s revealing that his choice of a domicile for his family places him so emphatically in the master class America of the “stinking” rich. I hope the media will press Senator Edwards (who four years ago reported his net worth as between $19 million and $69 million) on the nature of his mortgage on his six million dollar home. Does he hold a four million dollar mortgage? Does he write-off the interest on this huge amount as a tax deduction, and how much does that write-off cost the government? Does he think it’s fair to get a huge tax break because he chooses to live in a huge home? (I don’t, by the way – and one of the appealing aspects of a Fair Tax – that is, a simple consumption tax – is that it gets rid of special breaks for the more fortunate, like the home mortgage deduction).

3)      Has Edwards spoken to his pal Al Gore about his lavish, energy soaking plantation? Anyone calculated the “carbon footprint” of a 29,000 square foot home? Can you imagine how much natural gas or electricity or nuclear power (only kidding) it takes to heat that puppy? Consider the huge contribution to Global Warming (identified by Edwards and all other Democrats as a dire threat to civilization) by chopping down a hundred acres of forest and installing this monstrously excessive residence.

4)      As for Edwards exemplifying “The American Dream,” do we really want to identify that timeless vision with conspicuous consumption of the tackiest and most irresponsible sort? Aaron Spelling got criticized for his Edwards-like mansion because it seemed like such a selfish, narcissistic, tasteless display. Does Edwards really want to suggest that the ultimate goal for every striving American should be a house that’s ten times the size of a normal, spacious mansion (twenty times the size of the average family residence). Here in the Northwest, the Seattle community recently celebrated a retired history teacher at a public high school (Ballard High), who invested his money well, lived far below his means in a tiny house, and just donated more than a million dollars to benefit the history department as his Alma Mater, the University of Washington. I thought liberals cherished the idea that the ultimate goal in life should involve something more than materialistic display. Of course, for Edwards there is something more: the single-minded and ruthless pursuit of power.

The worst part of the story involves the total, absolute disconnect between the way Edwards talks and the way he lives. He says he identifies with “the little guy,” but he chooses to raise his family in vastly more lavish circumstances than the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, or even the Bushes (no, the family homes in Crawford and Kennebunkport don’t come close to the grandeur or sheer size of the Edwards palace.)

He’s proud of the fact that he got rich, but at the same time the candidate wants to make it vastly harder for other Americans to follow his example. The taxation and redistribution policies he advocates would fall most heavily on precisely those upper-middle class creators and producers and strivers who might dream of someday moving from a comfortable suburban home (2,000 square feet? 4,000?) into a baronial manor house in the Edwards style.

Yes, it amounts to shabby double talk for the luxury-loving-lawyer to suggest that once he’s made his pile and built his plaintiff’s-bar-palace, government should raise the drawbridge and block the way from anyone else coming across the moat and into the castle.