Author doesn’t just question, he gives his two cents’ worth

The Two Percent Solution

Fixing America’s Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love

Matthew Miller

PublicAffairs: 284 pp., $26

*

In this stimulating and constructive book, syndicated columnist Matthew Miller not only calls our attention to some of the most serious and urgent problems confronting our country, but also accomplishes the even more laudable feat of offering some workable -- and affordable -- solutions.

The problems, as Miller sees them, are these: 42 million Americans without health insurance; 15 million people in families headed by full-time workers who nonetheless live below the poverty line; 10 million poor children attending inadequate schools; and political candidates dependent on moneyed interests to finance their campaigns, leaving the average American feeling powerless to change things.

But for “just two cents on the national dollar,” Miller declares, “we could have a country where everyone had health insurance, every full-time worker earned a living wage, every poor child had a great teacher in a fixed-up school, and politicians spent their time with average Americans because they no longer had to grovel to wealthy donors.”

Yet, instead of proposing solutions, politicians settle for token gestures. And when someone like the first President Bush, or President Clinton, or candidate Bill Bradley, does come up with a plan, it seems to only give political opponents the chance to castigate it:

“In 1992, [when] the first President George Bush proposed a plan to insure 30 million of the then 35 million uninsured,” Miller reminds us, “Democrats slammed it as ‘too little, too late.’ Today the outer limit of the current President Bush’s ‘compassion’ is a plan that would insure 6 million of the now 42 million uninsured. Meanwhile, no Democrat who wants to be president today would endorse Richard Nixon’s plans from the early 1970s for universal health coverage and a minimum family income: Nixon’s package is far too ‘liberal’! Instead, the two parties debate when and how to eliminate the estate tax, the bulk of whose burden falls on the heirs of only three thousand of the nation’s wealthiest families.”

Democrats, Miller concludes, have grown far too timorous, while Republicans have become indifferent to the plight of working people. The current political situation, with neither party enjoying a large enough majority to accomplish its goals, has resulted in a kind of gridlock. Instead of engaging real problems and coming up with effective solutions, they posture, with Democrats routinely up in arms to resist Medicare or Social Security cuts and Republicans routinely carrying on about taxes -- even though taxes in the United States are far lower than those in almost any other large, industrialized country.

Miller believes there is a way past this impasse. His solution involves Republicans realizing that you do need to spend money to solve problems (How else can the working poor afford medical coverage? How else can you attract higher quality teachers to poorer schools? How else can you publicly finance campaigns?) and Democrats recognizing that “market-friendly” solutions (as distinct from big government-run programs) are the way to go.

A “market-friendly” approach is certainly needed if you want to bring Republicans and business interests on board. But Miller is also among those who contend that it is also a more effective approach to problem-solving -- although he offers no real evidence that this is so. Still, even if you could demonstrate that government-run programs would be better than “market-friendly” schemes, Miller has a point that it might be better to go with a plan that could win liberal and conservative support.

Miller’s analysis of the factors producing our current state of political gridlock is particularly astute. In addition to discussing how political parity has bred timidity, closed minds and a reluctance to take political risks, he focuses on the role of the media. Conservatives complain -- not without some justification -- that the press has a “liberal bias.” But “if the media is so liberal,” asks Miller, “why has America’s political center of gravity shifted so dramatically to the right in the last two decades? The answer is that the news coverage of influential national media outlets is shaped more by stenography than by ideology.” Instead of calling our attention to important problems and possible solutions that might work, the most influential media outlets simply report what one side proposes and what the other side says in opposition, even though neither side may be saying anything of real substance.

Miller has a gift for setting forth his ideas in vigorous, direct and irresistibly lively language: Reading this book is the opposite of a tedious chore. He offers colorful accounts of his meetings with people from both sides of the political spectrum who seem to be surprisingly receptive to the ideas he proposes. He is also good at explaining, and exploding, some of the soi-disant “philosophical” assumptions underlying the current misconception, so prevalent among conservatives (particularly libertarians), that in a system of completely unregulated free-market capitalism everyone gets what he or she deserves.

The weaknesses of this book lie chiefly in the details of the programs that Miller proposes, particularly in the area of education. The solutions he offers may be far from perfect. Still, putting some or all of them into practice clearly would be better than doing little or nothing about problems that threaten to unravel the very fabric of our economy and our democracy.