Theories of Governance v. Theories of Government

It's going to be all Slate, all the time today, folks. For some reason, the little online newsmagazine has decided to write a lot about government's role and government jobs over the past 48 hours, and if they write it, I'm more than happy to blog it. First up is this piece from Slate editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg, in which he argues that President Obama has a view of how governance should work, but not of what government should do. Weisberg writes:

Where government cannot do something more effectively than the private sector, such as allocate private capital to maximize economic growth, it shouldn't try. But more often, we face a complicated interplay of social ills and imperfect government responses. There are programs that succeed, programs that fail, and lots in between. The same program can work and not work at different times. Social Security flourished for decades, became unsustainably costly in the 1970s, was restored to viability in the 1980s, and has since become problematic again. That the programs that constitute the war on drugs have mostly failed isn't a decisive argument for legalizing heroin and cocaine.

Obama's vagueness about the federal role comes at a moment when clarity is especially needed. Our government is about to become bigger, more powerful, and more expensive to deal with a sprawling economic crisis. Washington will take on responsibilities it hasn't shouldered in 75 years, such as directly alleviating unemployment and perhaps nationalizing banks. Many who would ordinarily reject such interventions on principle can justify them as misery relief, Keynesian stimulus, or emergency management. But some see in the expansion something further-reachingâ€"a redefinition of the government's relationship to markets transcending the current crisis.

I think this is an interesting argument, but I'm not entirely convinced that it means that Obama doesn't have a theory of government's role. I think Weisberg sees government as an entity, and Obama sees government as a tool. In other words, Weisberg thinks you define government's role by where you invest bricks and mortar, where you set up longer-term commitments and programs. Obama seems to think that government is a tool: you don't use a snowblower in summer, because you don't need it. You use it in the winter when you do. In much the same way, I think Obama believes that government is something you intervene with when the market and individual efforts either have failed or were always insufficient, and is something that can be withdrawn when it's no longer needed, or when it's no longer functioning as it should--thus the promise to cut under-performing programs.

I'm not sure which view of government I agree with. Given our present circumstances, large government interventions are both probably necessary and already underway. Will they result in a permanent expansion of government programs akin to Social Security and Medicare? That remains unclear. Obviously, as Americans lose their health insurance along with their jobs, there are going to be calls for substantial health care reform that may create a larger role for the government, but it's by no means clear that such a reform will pass soon or at all. So it may be that Obama's understanding of government's role is actually a match for today's events. But Weisberg may be right that it's not a long-term philosophy.