Editorial: Deficit of ambition

There could be no better confirmation of the indignities of the office of vice president of the United States than those endured by Lyndon B Johnson. His tireless biographer, Robert Caro, in another instalment of his immense project, records his humiliations as John F Kennedy’s understudy: to be ignored in discussions of subjects on which he was expert; forced to lean forward to catch the president’s attention like “a schoolboy trying to win a teacher’s favour”; and to plead for a place at White House banquets (see Sam Tanenhaus, p44).

Yet after Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson, as president, forged the shape of modern America. His Great Society programmes were, as Caro puts it, “the legislative embodiment of the liberal spirit in all its nobility,” the last time a president tried with revolutionary ambition to extend “government’s hand to help people caught in the ‘tentacles of circumstance.’”

It is worth remembering that the Great Society attracted fire from left as well as right (even before the firestorms of racial conflict and Vietnam consumed Johnson’s presidency). But it laid the ground over which the battles of modern politics are still fought: on what scale should government attempt to solve the problems of its citizens, and how much should it still do so in an age of debt?

Few leaders can claim to have good answers. Clearly, a response is easier if a country is growing fast, as Poland (“Europe’s Star?” p36) and emerging markets (p63) show. But some leaders have been far better in describing the relation with their citizens in terms other than the national budget. Rowan Williams (p26) throws down a challenge to them all: that the way we have approached money, value and trade in the last 30 years is anomalous, as well as destructive.

In Britain’s case, Pier Carlo Padoan, chief economist of the OECD (p14) praises the government for moving fast to cut the deficit, but warns of the damage done by inequality and unemployment. Philip Collins (p32) neatly identifies the coalition’s current discomfort in asking about the purpose of this government, beyond cutting the deficit. It needs to give power to local groups, he argues, and to bring in new ways of paying for public services as it reforms them; that might mean reviving its notion of the “Big Society” (always a pitiful echo of LBJ), which Collins kindly describes as “dormant.”

Credit is due on the deficit, but there are signs of real confusion about a wider purpose; the government’s misjudgement about tax relief for charitable giving, for one, suggests that cuts are slicing away at its sense of mission. But nor is Labour much clearer. Ed Miliband (p22) risks annoying the left of his party with his remark that redistribution is not the only route to social justice, but leaves unclear the degree to which he may want to accommodate the centre.

LBJ, a giant of controversy in his time, hardly offers a modern answer. But he put words of more ambition—and clarity—to the hopes and expectations that citizens might have of their government than current leaders have so far managed.