Republican Platform Economics

July 5, 1948

The typical party platform is thrown together in a few hours by people who have little to do with carrying it out. It must compromise conflicting views within the party. It must lose nobody’s vote. It must find verbal formulas that can mean all things to all men.

From this standpoint the 1948 Republican platform is a triumph of draftsmanship. It promises “elimination of waste” and of “unnecessary bureaus.” It pledges “healthy” Federal finances, “stimulation of production,” and a “sound” currency. Such planks can be opposed only by those who believe in waste, who want bureaus they admit to be unnecessary, who are eager to discourage production, and who favor unhealthy Federal finances and an unsound currency.

The platform endorses irreconcilable economic policies. It favors our “competitive system.” But far from wishing to leave farm prices to this competitive system, it thinks they should be “supported on a just basis.” The platform favors “progressive reduction of the cost of government.” But it demands an increase of social security and veterans’ benefits “to a more realistic level.”

The platform promises to “assist other peace-loving nations to restore their economic independence”; but “only within the prudent limits of our own economic welfare.”

Everyone must decide for himself just how many billions this means. The platform promises to “support the system of reciprocal trade and encourage international commerce,” while, however, “at all times safeguarding our own industry and agriculture.” Everyone must decide for himself whether this means lower tariffs or higher tariffs. The platform thinks “housing can best be supplied and financed by private enterprise; but government can and should encourage the building of better homes at less cost.” Everyone must decide for himself whether the Republican Party is for or against large-scale government-subsidized housing.

We should not be too surprised to find in one of the major party platforms four years from now some such plank as this: “We favor a sound and prudent Communism, consistent with our free-enterprise system and traditional American liberties, and imposing only such reasonable and democratic controls as are necessary to make a wise and conservative Communist dictatorship fully effective.”

The platform favors “equal pay for equal work, regardless of sex.” Why not also regardless of race, color, religion, age, looks, or geographical location? Who is to decide whether or not the work of any two or more persons is in fact “equal”? A law to carry out this plank would in practice be merely one more abridgement of management’s right to manage.

One could discourse at length about the things that are not in the platform. It pledges “an attack upon the basic causes of inflation,” but does not clearly point out that the basic cause is the increase in the volume of money and bank credit. It says nothing whatever about the government’s cheap-money policy or about legal reserve ratios. It pledges “a sound currency,” but is silent about what constitutes soundness. It does not mention a return to a real gold standard. It is silent about the coercions and distortions of exchange control.

It says nothing about the European price fixing, planning, and Socialism that create the world shortages which the American taxpayer is called upon to make up. It does not even say clearly that it is against a return to price fixing here, or that it believes in free markets and free enterprise.

But there are worse things than silence or ambiguity. Platforms are seldom anything but an embarrassment anyway, particularly when they get specific. They force the candidate into either an insincere lip service to every plank or an open repudiation.

It is hard to say which is worse—to make the right pledge and break it, or to make the wrong pledge and keep it—to violate outright, say, the 1932 Democratic platform pledges of “a saving of not less than 25 percent in the cost of Federal government” and “a Federal budget annually balanced,” or, as with the Labor Party in England today, to drive grimly ahead with more nationalization, in spite of demonstrated damage to the country, in the name of a party promise.