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Virtually unnoticed in the press is that Steve Mnuchin, the recently confirmed Secretary of the Treasury, does not propose entitlement reform. In other words, he and President Donald Trump have decided to keep Social Security and Medicare as they are and have rejected the libertarian Paul Ryan's attempts to eviscerate these programs.
This is not a small matter given that President George W. Bush tried an end-run on Social Security in 2006. It also indicates that Trump is prepared to deactivate from conservative orthodoxy. He would not be the first Republican president to have taken such a position. Dwight Eisenhower, when confronted with hard-anti New Deal Republicans, stated that a party "that would get rid of Social Security would not be a party for long." It helped to assure the middle class that they would not pay the price for the GOP's victory in 1952.
The civil rights and libertarian wings of the Democratic and Republican parties are out of touch with voters that want stronger government activism in their economic life. GOP voters and, I suspect, a number of Democrats want a tax cut that helps the middle class. No doubt some wish for a comprehensive public improvement program involving roads and high speed rail. This approach is stimulative in nature and redistributes benefits to the middle class.
Neither the libertarians or rights liberals seemed to understand that many of their concerns are not as significant as government maintaining a safety net or engaging in internal improvements. For Trump, it is an opportunity to emphasize that the well-being of a nation is primarily economic in nature. The power of the state to facilitate growth using tariffs on public monies has the potential to restructure the present party system.
Such issues as bathroom controversies, marijuana legalization and other such concerns are not paramount with the American voter. Their concerns revolve around the proposition of greatest benefit for the greatest number. All the libertarian concerns, coupled with the rights debate appear to be exotic in nature. Trump himself should be careful not to emphasize immigration too much, as it is a side dish, not a main course. Moreover, in the reflection of time these issues do not determine the greatness of a nation.
What does is the welfare and the protection of the nation. Returning to an older liberal tradition would be preferable to the terribly eclectic "new left." It was so all over the road it seemed utopian in aim and impossible to achieve. Moreover, it contained so much in the way of individualism that it resembled a kinder, gentler version of Ayn Rand. Too contradictory in its ideology and non-hierarchical in approach. As the New Deal and the Great Society proved, it started out to diffuse but ended up a top-down approach.
Conservatives have long yearned to finish off all entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare. Trump's Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin is wise enough not to pursue such a course. For Democrats it is perhaps a sign that although it might not pursue new age goals it might fulfill Great Society ends.