What’s wrong with our political parties?

This post is the latest in a recurring Beacon feature, Counterpoint, a dialogue between liberal Rick Dollinger and conservative Geoff Rosenberger.

GEOFF: Fr. Bill O’Malley SJ, who taught both of us at McQuaid Jesuit High School back in the 1960s and 1970s, used to say: “The less you know, the more certain you may be.” As teenagers, we didn’t really understand what that meant. But now, a half a century’s life experiences later, we’ve come to appreciate the wisdom in those words. Or, as Bob Dylan wrote (and the Byrds sang) in “My Back Pages”: “Good and bad I define these terms. Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.” That used to be us.

With age, we now see a lot more gray and a lot less black and white in the world. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for either of our respective political parties.

So, we’re going to do something different. Instead of taking partisan shots at each other’s political party of record (Rick’s a liberal Democrat, Geoff a conservative Republican), we’re going to do the opposite. We’re each going to critique our own respective party of registration. Not as partisans, but rather as two old guys who are tired of slogans masquerading as solutions. The time for truth telling has arrived.

RICK: My thoughts about the Democratic Party are simple: we lost our contact with our base. The Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy was a worker-based party. Our commitment to civil rights and equal rights for all were based on the notion that government should work for everyone, not just the wealthy and the privileged.

But those commitments stretched over time into the notion that some groups needed extra attention under the system of American justice. Our hearts and souls drove our politics. For example, immigrants, even those who were admitted without legal authority, were, for humanitarian reasons, the beneficiaries of Democratic support. Other smaller constituencies, often shunned or mistreated by our culture and society, were elevated into the political discourse, especially in Democratic primaries.

The primaries—and the exorbitant amounts spent in primaries—further drove Democratic politics away from the party’s base.

As a consequence, the longstanding objective of the party—equal opportunity for all—got lost in an identity-based politics that fractured the Democratic coalition and gave our opponents an opening to claim that Democrats were more concerned about small group politics than helping everyone to share the American Dream. The central successes of the Democratic Party—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law—which improved the lives of everyone got lost in debates over social and cultural issues.

GEOFF: Rick, my party has lost its way too. Republicans used to stand for fiscal responsibility, a strong defense, the rule of law and personal freedom that was firmly coupled to personal responsibility. That’s the Republican Party that I registered with back in my mid-20s. It’s a party that I scarcely recognize today.

We run $2 trillion deficits without batting an eye while pretending that income tax rates can be cut for anyone and everyone without fiscal harm. Sure, we had DOGE. But the things DOGE went after were mostly pocket change. Virtually every Republican member of Congress understands that entitlement spending is the crux of the problem, as illustrated by the graph below. But no one—in either party—has the courage to be honest with the American public about the sacrifices that need to be made.

President Trump has promised a 66% increase in defense spending, to $1.5 trillion, in his fiscal 2027 budget proposal. But even that huge increase will only get defense expenditures back to around 4.5% of GDP. Will there be proportionate spending cuts elsewhere to pay for the increased defense expenditures? I doubt it. China, on the other hand, has grown its defense spending by over 7% annually for the last five years, according to Nikkei Asia and will spend approximately $280 billion on defense next year. That’s less than the U.S. spends, but Chinese costs are also dramatically lower than those here in the USA. The Navy’s fleet size is a shadow of what it once was. Where has the Republican Party been for the last three decades while all of this was happening? It was AWOL. Yes, the American military is dominating Iran at the moment. But Iran isn’t China.

As for the rule of law, Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution is crystal clear. Only Congress has the power to declare war. Yet we’re fighting a shooting war right now against Iran without explicit congressional authorization. To call it anything other than “war” would be akin to Vladimir Putin’s “Special Military Operation” descriptor for the war in Ukraine. Calling the grass blue and the sky green doesn’t make it so. But there hasn’t been a peep of complaint about the lack of congressional authorization from anyone on the Republican side of the aisle. You can’t claim to be a proponent of the rule of law while simultaneously ignoring the Constitution itself. That’s called hypocrisy. The Constitution is supposed to matter!

Yeah, I know. Congress leaks. So what? It’s not as if the American carrier group movements into the Middle East were a state secret. Every major news network in the nation, if not the world, reported about that for days, if not weeks, prior to the first bombing sortie. Obtaining congressional approval, in accordance with the Constitution, wouldn’t have jeopardized anything. And we would have followed the rule of law. Which is something we Republicans are supposed to care about.

Republicans used to be champions of free trade. And we believed in free trade because we have centuries of data and experience documenting that free trade yields better economic outcomes than does protectionism. China was a poverty-stricken economic backwater until Deng Xiaoping opened up the country in the late 1970s. Look at them now. Does China cheat? Do they put up trade barriers? Yes, they do. But trade is what built that country. And we’ve lost sight of that. Today, the refrain coming from my party is “America is the greatest country in the world. But we need tariffs because our economy can’t compete with lower-wage competitors.” Well, which one is it? Are we the greatest country in the world or are we a 90-pound weakling that requires protectionism?

Happily, personal freedom and personal responsibility represent two traditional core Republican values that can still be found in Republican-sponsored legislative initiatives. And for that I’m grateful. But we’ve lost our way on so many other foundational principles that I fear it may be difficult to find our way back. The demise of the Tories in Great Britain provides a stark lesson in what happens to political parties that abandon their foundational principles. I hope my party is paying attention to what happened across the pond.

It’s probably too late for the Tories. I don’t think it is too late for the Republican Party. But we need to get our act together and do it soon. We need to start being honest with the American people about the challenges we face as a nation. We need to stop spewing platitudes about how “our best days are ahead of us” and instead start talking about the hard choices that are ahead of us. We have an aging population. Our K-12 educational outcomes are abysmal and getting worse. Government spending is out of control. Entitlements are out of control. The math is the math. The Republican Party, my party, needs to stop pretending otherwise.

RICK: Geoff, come on: Republicans have lost their way?

Democrats lost their way when the party concluded over the last 75 years that it could finance an extensive social welfare net and military security without raising the revenue to pay for it. In essence, Democrats became a “credit card” party, financing ongoing expenses with borrowed money.

It started with the New Deal, but it will end someday—perhaps even soon.

I have been a fan forever of Paul Kennedy’s book, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.” It details how the great empires of the past failed to sustain economic growth and wasted resources on military overreach, while their competitors engaged in new technologies and took economic risks. The examples across the globe over the last two millennia are countless but, from my point of view, my party has contributed to the false notion that continued national greatness can be achieved without personal sacrifice.

In that regard, the emergence of the “rights culture” in the Democratic Party has fostered that sense. We tend to shout “you have a right to health care” or “you have a right to housing.” Neither of those “rights” are enshrined in our national Constitution.

Yet, the Democrats have transformed those aspirations—for example, health care and housing—into institutional and governmental obligations, under the theory that a “great and prosperous nation” should be able to make them available to everyone.

In raising those aspirations, Democrats have too often glossed over the consequences of those aspirations to the public fisc and the risk to the country’s continued financial viability. Too often, the Democrats’ only response is “have the rich pay,” an increasingly empty slogan that seldom materializes in binding votes or enacted laws.

The notion of shared sacrifice—and the implied concept of individual responsibility and accountability that motivates the sharing of sacrifice—needs to be revived in the Democratic Party. There are no free lunches. There are no free services. Aspiring to pay middle class wages to public servants—teachers, police, firefighters, air traffic controllers, district attorneys and others—while maintaining a social safety net requires higher levels of tax receipts across the board and/or significant reductions in Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

No Democrat can chant “happy days are here again” in the future. Tough days and tough choices are staring us in the face. The sacrifices required to avoid having America be the final chapter of Kennedy’s book—the most recent power to decline—will need to be shared by all and no Democrat should be suggesting otherwise.

GEOFF: Rick, have you shared those thoughts with Mayor Mamdani? I wish you would!

You know, I keep on coming back to Fr. O’Malley and his “the less you know, the more certain you may be” admonition. Because doubt is something the zealots in our respective parties of record aren’t lacking. They think they know everything they need to know about policy. They don’t.

They don’t know how the other side thinks or why they think that way. And the reason they don’t know is because they don’t listen to anyone who doesn’t agree with them. They may talk at each other, but they don’t listen. Political zealots watch or, if they are elected officials, cater to the cable news shows that reinforce their ingrained beliefs. Fox News viewers don’t watch MS NOW and MS NOW viewers don’t watch Fox. In fact, I’ll bet that most Fox News viewers have no idea that MSNBC has been rebranded as MS NOW. So those networks mold their narratives to their core audiences, which just exacerbates the problem. As a result, ignorance gets molded into certainty—at least the ignorance as to why the other side feels the way they do.

Of course, the ignorance isn’t always just about how the other side thinks. I’ll occasionally get into a conversation with a fellow Republican that scares me to death because their understanding of the underlying facts is so disconnected from reality. A while back there was an email that went viral demanding, among other absurdities, that congressional tenure be abolished! Tenure? What congressional tenure? I lost count of how many times people sent me that one. It was a lot. From educated people. Mostly rational, intelligent people. Who wanted to outlaw congressional tenure. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that what they really meant was a desire for term limits. But I can’t be sure.

We have to stop viewing our political opponents as our enemies. They’re not. They’re our fellow Americans. Yes, we’re competitors in the marketplace of ideas and policies. And that’s a good thing. I hope that never stops because competition brings out the best in us. But let’s compete around the ideas, not around who qualifies as a true patriot and who doesn’t.

Athletes shake hands at the end of the game. Maybe we should try doing that in the political arena.

RICK: Geoff, on that we agree. You and I have been friends for decades. We hold different views—in some cases, sharply different views—but we have always debated and argued about substance and ideas. It has never been personal. I have lots of friends that I disagree with—even my own siblings and children. I have never questioned their patriotism or yours. A strong debate among friends with different views is what our political discourse should be about.

Now, we each need to get our political parties to think that way. Look forward to further debates, my friend.

BEACON: Both of you are describing political parties whose voters bear little resemblance to their constituents of yesteryear. In some respects, you’ve swapped voting blocs. Aren’t you two just wallowing in nostalgia, hoping that your parties will come back to their roots? Can that happen or are you both political orphans? Finally, one subject on which you both agree is fiscal responsibility. Is there room for a new party for people who paid attention in 3rd grade arithmetic?

GEOFF:  Wallowing in nostalgia? Maybe. But I sure hope not. A while back Thomas Sowell opined that “much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.” He’s right.

Are members of the party opposite “the enemy” or our fellow citizens? Are balanced budgets truly passe? Is the rule of law obsolete? Does might now make right? Can personal “rights” be decoupled from personal responsibility? Does the world owe each of us a living simply for our having graced it with our presence? Do property rights no longer matter? Have the laws of economics been repealed?  Does “America First” really translate to “America Only”? Do the ends now justify the means? If a majority of Americans now shout “yes” to those questions, then yeah, both Rick and I are probably politically homeless. But I doubt that’s the case. Facts are troublesome things. They always win in the end. And whatever the current zeitgeist, my reading of history says that “no” is the correct answer to all those questions.

Good times can cause us to forget the hard lessons of history. Challenging times reteach those lessons. Life is cyclical and challenging times inevitably return. Perhaps sooner than we’d like. When they do, the Republican Party will rediscover the core beliefs it once held and upon which prosperity depends

RICK: A third party is a mirage. Golisano could not make it work in NY. Schwarzenegger could not make it work in California. Ventura could not make it work in Minnesota. Sanders made it work in Vermont—small town government writ large. The Greens have been ineffective. Independents Jill Stein and Ralph Nader just elected Republicans—Bush and Trump—with disastrous results for the Dems and Perot with the same result for the GOP. 

Rick Dollinger is a retired Court of Claims judge and a former state senator who lives in Brighton. Geoff Rosenberger is retired co-founder of Clover Capital Management Inc.

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