An adult has entered the room now that Terry McAuliffe is talking and thinking seriously about what it would take for Democrats to defeat President Trump.
Writing in the Washington Post, the former Virginia governor lays out his plan for winning back the White House. “Americans are asking us to focus on improving their lives,” McAuliffe concludes, “not to make unrealistic ideological promises.”
While it is disappointing (but not surprising) that McAuliffe sees the state as the benevolent patron of the people, he could still bring a moderating influence to 2020. If Joe Biden doesn’t run, McAuliffe might play the role of the responsible stepfather telling the rest of the partisan family that no, everything is not possible — or even worthwhile.
Consider free college, the latest giveaway promised by everyone from recent alumnae such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., to progressive dons such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Every Democrat likes free stuff. McAuliffe is less easygoing.
“A promise of universal free college has an appealing ring, but it’s not a progressive prioritization of the educational needs of struggling families,” he writes. “We need to provide access to higher education, job training and student debt relief to families who need it.”
“Spending limited taxpayer money on a free college education for the children of rich parents badly misses the mark for most families,” he concludes.
Here McAuliffe isn’t wrong. We spend billions to prop up a regressive higher education system that inordinately benefits the privileged.
While spending is up, results are middling. As Oren Cass of the Manhattan Institute notes, federal data demonstrates that fewer than one in every five students move smoothly from high school to college. And yet few of those will even walk across the graduation stage four years later. Again Cass notes that the share of 25-year-olds with a bachelor’s degree didn’t increase from 1995 to 2015.
Pumping more cash into more college campuses isn’t the solution.
Consider two students. Student A has a nuclear family, involved parents, and the material resources necessary to fill or overcome any gaps in his schooling. Student B has no such advantages. They both make it from high school to college where at least two things have changed. First, the academics are harder. Second, student A still enjoys all the advantages that student B lacks.
Making college cheaper or even free doesn’t completely solve the problems of either test case. It just increases enrollment without doing anything to prepare incoming freshmen. The rich students with all the resources in high school will still be better off. So why spend more money on a system already awash in cash to help students who are already privileged? It doesn’t make sense.
McAuliffe doesn’t make this exact argument. He asserts instead that the moment for imagineering isn’t in the middle of electioneering. “When the stakes are another four years of Trump degrading our country,” he asks, “do we really want to use the 2020 campaign as a first-time experiment on idealistic but unrealistic policies?”
You don’t have to like McAuliffe or even accept his policy prescriptions. As of now though, he is one of the few possible candidates out there tempering the excesses of the rest of the party. His voice will be a valuable one when two dozen or more presidential hopefuls start outbidding one another in the free-stuff auction.
