Ross Douthat Is Still Wrong

I'd have more respect for Ross Douthat if he wouldn't disprove his own theories within his own column. To whit:

Do downturns create Democrats? The Great Depression certainly did: The generation that came of age in the 1930s has cleaved to the Democratic Party like no population before or since. And it makes intuitive sense that experiencing a recession at a formative age could inspire lifelong sympathy for the party of the welfare state and lifelong suspicion toward the party of free markets.

OK, makes sense so far.

In a recent paper, “Growing Up In a Recession,” Paola Giuliano, an assistant professor of economics at U.C.L.A., and Antonio Spilimbergo, an economist at the International Monetary Fund, offer statistics to back this intuition up. Looking at over 40 years of survey data, the authors report that Americans who experienced “macroeconomic shocks” between the ages of 18 and 25 were more worried about poverty and inequality across their voting lives, and more skeptical about the wisdom of the market.

These findings track with the results of the 2008 election, when a cratering economy helped Barack Obama win an extraordinary landslide among young and first-time voters. And they provide grist for the liberal hope that the rising generation will prove as enduringly Democratic as that of their Depression-era grandparents, with George W. Bush playing Herbert Hoover to Obama’s F.D.R.

Right, and I sense a "but" coming.

But the study shouldn’t make liberals too cocky. The authors find that growing up in a recession can encourage conservative instincts as well. Downturns make young voters distrustful of unfettered capitalism, yes. But they also make them less confident in the federal government.

This finding may explain why recent recessions have actually ended up pushing America rightward. The stagflation of the 1970s, for instance, and the hapless liberal response, helped usher in Ronald Reagan’s revolution. (The cohort that grew up with Reagan is the most staunchly Republican in modern history.) The slump of the early 1990s bolstered Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign — but it also gave a boost to the fiscally conservative populism of Ross Perot, and then to the Republican wave of 1994.

Note that phrase, "hapless liberal response."  This is the real cause of the Republican waves of 1980 and 1994.  When liberals show that the Federal government can do some things better than the free market, you get people who trust the government.  When liberals foul up that response, as they did in 1979 and 1992-1993, you get a Republican backlash.  The Republican response to recessions hasn't changed since the days of Herbert Hoover:  cut spending in a recession.  1982 was rather ugly economically, and 1994's Clintonian triangulation led to the dot-com bust of 2000, leading to the Bush economy, leading to where we are now.

When the economy messes up, we're told by Democrats that more regulation is needed, and that the government needs to play a role.  Republicans say we need to double down on less regulation and let companies keep on making profit.  A good 15 years of the latter since 1994 hasn't exactly worked, folks.