Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktFrom the Obama campaign: Life of Julia
I’ll be honest. This makes my stomach churn. Every one of life’s moments, made possible by the benevolence of President Obama.
Poor Julia. Obama wants her dependent on him her entire life.
Update: Apparently this has taken off. Here’s the WSJ and The Atlantic
Filed under: 2012, big government |
All Things in Moderation 
I shed a tear for my poor sons, dependent on a federal program from the age of 2. Of course, in that case, it was an early intervention program designed to, if anything, prevent dependence to the extent possible for special needs kids. Must have helped as they’re doing quite fine in kindergarten with minimal accommodation.
Your comment reminds me of Santorum’s “What a snob!” crack. It seemed completely reflexive. If there’s a government program, it must be to make people dependent on the government. I didn’t bother to look through the all the bits, but the first one was Head Start. That was the kind of program that conservatives could support. Heck, it even avoided the Reagan budget axe. Something about benefits outweighing costs.
If even the first item of Julia’s life contradicts your point, it’s hard to take it too seriously. Really, your stomach churns at the thought that federally funded social services affect people throughout their lives? That’s gotta be some serious acid reflux by now.
BB
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FB:
It seemed completely reflexive.
How ironic, given your very first sentence, and the fact that you then went on to extensively edit your comment after the initial, er, reflexive posting.
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Not to mention that you’ve even admitted to not having actually gone through the whole presentation.
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“Something about benefits outweighing costs.”
Ideology apparently trumps cost-benefit analysis.
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Agree with Brian and BB.
My criticism of the presentation is not that BHO makes us dependent but that BHO had little to do with anything but defending existing programs, for the most part. He takes too much credit. It is a decent way to draw a legitimate distinction. I am not a fan of every program ballyhooed, but I do love Head Start. Again, I am with Perot on that. And I also have extensive personal experience with the program.
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bsimon:
Ideology apparently trumps cost-benefit analysis.
Do you have a link to this cost-benefit analysis?
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Actually, the Federal governememt itself is struggling to find the value in Head Start.
Click to access head-start-paper.pdf
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Ah, Scott, always with the personal shot. Ironically, that is reflexive by now as well.
I decided to take time to write something a bit more detailed, but the original point remained. Using a federal program does not make one dependent *by definition.*
You do have a funny way with language, though. I didn’t “admit” to not having gone through the entire presentation. The first item was Head Start, something that didn’t used to make *conservatives’ stomachs churn.
*Edits are noted for Scott’s benefit.
BB
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FB:
Ah, Scott, always with the personal shot.
You are making things up. There was no “personal shot”. You accused nova of being completely reflexive. I simply observed that the characterization equally applied to your comment. The only thing personal was your introduction of your personal situation.
I didn’t “admit” to not having gone through the entire presentation.
You said “I didn’t bother to look through the all the bits,”. That seems like an admission to me, but maybe “proudly proclaimed” would have been more to your liking?
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A few studies are summarized here: http://www.princeton.edu/~jcurrie/publications/Early_childhood_intervention.pdf
BB
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I think FB makes a fair point that I was glib in the original post. I’ll try to do better next time.
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But it’s the concept that the ad gets to is troubling to me.
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Mark
And I also have extensive personal experience with the program.
I think for most people support for programs such as the ones highlighted in the presentation are largely dependent on our familiarity with them and appreciation of them. While I scrolled through it I saw opportunity not dependence. It’s just another piece of campaign material in what’s going to be a long and I think close race. I did warn everyone that the candidates would be fighting for the women’s vote. Obama wins this round.
I did think the graphics sucked though.
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See http://www.docstoc.com/docs/40875465/Chartsppt—Austin-Head-Start
We need the kids for two years to make a lasting educational impact. Austin and Chicago have the strongest programs, but there are really failed programs out there. Houston is a real mixed bag, George.
As Brian says, longitudinal studies show much better High School graduation rates for Head Start kids than their peers. This may be as much from selectivity and socialization as anything else.
The selectivity trick is that Head Start can only serve about 1/3 of the eligible population. By strictly enforcing parental involvement and kicking out kids whose parents don’t give a damn, we socialize a whole family to value education when in fact they were predisposed to do so. I think if Head Start served more than 1/2 of the income eligible kids it would not have such good longitudinal results.
If we are giving a hand up instead of a handout, we need to qualify the parents as willing to pull their load.
Austin Head Start offers family health checks and also mandatory parenting classes, a GWB Admin favorite. It also runs pre-K in the public school system.
full disclosure: I have represented Travis County’s Head Start since 1972.
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lms:
I did think the graphics sucked though.
Agreed. In fact, the whole thing seems very amateurish to me. I was reminded of those old filmstrips we used to see in grade school. Not just in style but also in content, it felt like it was aimed at a target audience of about 11 years old.
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Perhaps Head Start should be evaluated on long-term impacts rather than short term. The Heritage paper cites impact to first graders; yet studies of Head Start’s impact over participants’ lifetimes show remarkable returns to taxpayers.
http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2011/jun/29/tim-ryan/rep-tim-ryan-says-head-start-programs-are-cost-ben/
“While interviewing Ryan on Fox News, Greta Van Sustern criticized Head Start because of the academic performance of 8th graders in the Washington, D.C., school system.
Ryan defended the program, claiming that “for every dollar we invest in Head Start, we get $5 to $7 back into our economy.”
That kind of return got our attention, so we decided to follow the statistical threads to see if Ryan’s claim is backed by whole cloth or solid evidence.
We started with Ryan’s staff. They cited a paper from 2007 by scholars Jens Ludwig of the University of Chicago and Deborah A. Phillips of Georgetown University, which also alludes to other studies.
The researchers conducted a cost-benefit analysis of the program and concluded that that Head Start’s return to taxpayers is greater than their investment in the program. They based their conclusion on studies that compared the performance over decades of siblings who enrolled in Head Start, and siblings that did not, for example.”
…
“A letter sent to Congress in March 2011, signed by more than 300 researchers from around the country, also supported the notion that Head Start is cost effective. It cited a $7 to $9 return for every dollar invested in the programs based on the findings of 12 different studies and reports.
They estimated that the program’s required medical screenings, vaccinations and emphasis reduced annual Medicaid expenses by $232 per family.
And commentary about the scholarly tract by Ludwig and Phillips in a 2007 edition of Social Policy Report suggests that Head Start might have low-balled its own effectiveness.
Commentary by W. Steven Barnett of Rutgers University on the Ludwig-Phillips paper cites studies of three different programs similar to Head Start, one of which found a 2.5 to 1 return ($2.50 for each $1), one that estimated a 10.1 to 1 return, and one that noted a 16.1 to 1 return.
Each study examined a different public early care and education program and based its findings on myriad categories including earnings by people who went through the programs in early childhood.”
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bsimon (from the article):
Ryan defended the program, claiming that “for every dollar we invest in Head Start, we get $5 to $7 back into our economy.
How is this determined? The authors of FB’s link say that “We are not aware of any published study that follows Head Start participants into adulthood.” I admit that I haven’t scoured the entire internet, but if it is true that no such studies exist, how could it be known how much we “get back”?
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“But it’s the concept that the ad gets to is troubling to me.”
Perhaps there is some gray area between no government and lifelong dependence on government.
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“We need the kids for two years to make a lasting educational impact.”
That may be another lesson from the HHS study referenced by the heritage paper, which focused on 4 yr olds in the program for the year before kindergarden.
Click to access executive_summary_final.pdf
Art Rolnick, formerly of the Mpls Fed Reserve, reached a similar conclusion when studying the cost-benefit of early childhood intervention – that earlier intervention increased outcomes dramatically. His 2003 paper focused on ROI for such programs vs. subsidizing sports stadiums & can be found here:
http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=3832
“Early childhood development programs are rarely portrayed as economic development initiatives, and we think that is a mistake. Such programs, if they appear at all, are at the bottom of the economic development lists for state and local governments. They should be at the top. Most of the numerous projects and initiatives that state and local governments fund in the name of creating new private businesses and new jobs result in few public benefits. In contrast, studies find that well-focused investments in early childhood development yield high public as well as private returns.”
and, speaking of long term vs short term impacts:
“The results of the research were significant despite the fact that, as in several other studies, program participants lost their advantage in IQ scores over nonparticipants within a few years after completing the program. Therefore a significant contribution to the program’s success likely derived from growth in noncognitive areas involving social-emotional functioning. During elementary and secondary school, Perry School participants were less likely to be placed in a special education program and had a significantly higher average achievement score at age 14 than nonparticipants. Over 65 percent of program participants graduated from regular high school compared with 45 percent of nonparticipants. At age 27, four times as many program participants as nonparticipants earned $2,000 or more per month. And only one-fifth as many program participants as nonparticipants were arrested five or more times by age 27.8”
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bsimon (from your link):
During elementary and secondary school, Perry School participants…
If I read FB’s link correctly, the Perry School initiative was not a Head Start program.
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“involving social-emotional functioning” — what does that mean? Empathy?
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Mark,
Of those that are enrolled in HeadStart that succeed,
because of their parents involvement, I have to think they’d have succeeded anyway, regardless of the program because of the parents.
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George, that is a great point. All the parents in the program are willing, but many, especially among the single teenage moms in white and black families, have no support structure and actually benefit from both being able to work while their kids are cared for and learning parenting skills in the program at night. In other words, I think the outcomes are better because they are given opportunities that do not exist elsewhere. I excluded texican families because they generally have a support structure, at least in Austin.
Additionally – the kids from these single teenage moms come in at 3 more than a year behind in development! This is because their moms never spoke to them continually the way we speak to our kids. Fortunately, much of that can be overcome, if the mom learns how to interact with her kid while we are teaching pre-reading and pre-math. We used to be able to take in 2 YOs and that would be even better, but budget cuts crimped Early Head Start. I used to call those moms STTAMs [single stupid teenage moms] but that is not fashionable and turns out to be a bit unfair. Many of them do qualify as moderately depressed.
Scott, in Austin we have compared longitudinal results since 1972 and we think we get payback by raising taxpayers instead of EITC recipients. Or prisoners, as Perot put it.
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Mark:
Scott, in Austin we have compared longitudinal results since 1972 and we think we get payback by raising taxpayers instead of EITC recipients.
Has anyone ever done a study of what Head Start participants actually do pay in taxes (and collect in welfare), once they become adults, relative to similarly situated cohorts who did not participate? That would seem to me to be an obvious and easy analysis of hard numbers to determine first order benefits vs costs.
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Scott
it felt like it was aimed at a target audience of about 11 years old.
It reminded me of the old sex ed stuff we watched in fifth and sixth grade.
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lms:
It reminded me of the old sex ed stuff we watched in fifth and sixth grade.
When I was in fifth grade, I remember there was one day when all the girls disappeared somewhere to watch a movie and all the boys were taken to the gym to play kickball. When we all finally went back to class, the girls all had sly, knowing looks on their faces, and we were all still clueless. Things were never the same again. It was a long time before I understood what happened that day.
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Question:
If we are going to look at Head Start (and other such programs) as an economic “investment” on a strictly cost-benefit basis, and if it is true that programs such as Head Start do indeed provide long term economic benefits, shouldn’t the most immediate and direct beneficiaries of those benefits (ie the kids who actually went through the program) be required to pay back to the “investor” (ie the government) some percentage of the benefit they receive as a return on this “investment”?
That is to say, if Head Start participants would have made X amount of income on average without Head Start, but are now making Y amount because of participation in Head Start, why shouldn’t the government require them to pay some percentage of Y-X back to “us”?
I think a 60-40 split would be reasonable. They get 60% of the benefit and “we” get 40% of the benefit.
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Scott
It was a long time before I understood what happened that day.
Are you really sure you understand it even now? I remember that also as well as all the little samples and literature we received………………..so funny today. What was even funnier though was my mother trying to give me the sex talk when I was 16 or so. She called the two main body parts members, his and hers.
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lms:
Are you really sure you understand it even now?
Good point. Girls have been an enduring mystery pretty much since that day.
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“Are you really sure you understand it even now?”
corked.
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Does anyone know why comments here are showing up in my email (in the last 10 minutes) and how I can make it stop?
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There’s a setting that must have been activated. See this for details on how to turn it off
http://en.support.wordpress.com/comment-notification-email/
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Thanks nova, the box wasn’t checked but I unchecked all of them for email notifications and saved, so we’ll see if that does the trick.
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Oh my. I tend to agree with the Atlantic, it’s a presentation made-to-order for the mocking of critics.
I think, as does Mark, that Obama takes too much credit. I also think that there is an assumption that Romney would follow through on his campaign promises, and then successfully execute them, which is questionable.
As with all such things, there is an inherent presumption that there would be no alternative. For example, if there was a 20% reduction in the Headstart budget, there would be an identical 20% reduction in received benefits, and no other alternatives for current beneficiaries. I’m not sure that’s necessarily the case. It’s also entirely possible that 100% of the return to tax payers of a given program may come from 80% or 70% or 50% of the programs current expenditures.
Going through the Life of Julia now. What, Obama cares about Julia when she’s 3 but not between ages 4 through 16? What kind of Cradle to Grave service is this? 😉
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Scott: I think a 60-40 split would be reasonable. They get 60% of the benefit and “we” get 40% of the benefit.
Philosophically sound and practically and culturally impossible. 😉
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Troll:
I have to think they’d have succeeded anyway, regardless of the program because of the parents.
Good teachers can make a big difference. Many would succeed anyway, because the parents would make sure the kids got what they needed, but sometimes a few great teachers do a lot to make up for disengaged parents. Of course, the best possible outcome is to have both engaged parents and great teachers.
We took my youngest daughter, who was 5 at the time and could not read, to a reading class over the summer. A good class, with a good teacher, who assigned good homework that was easy for parents to follow . . . and now, 10 months later, she is a voracious reader. Class was not cheap, so I suspect there is a benefit to making such things available, in some way, to parents who would find it difficult to afford adjunct classes.
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“Class was not cheap, so I suspect there is a benefit to making such things available, in some way, to parents who would find it difficult to afford adjunct classes.”
I’m going to sound like a heartless bastard, but did it cost more that a years worth of cable/Satellite television? Or years worth of cell phone bills ? Point is, for a lot of people, things are unaffordable up until they become a priority.
Mark, that seems like a good idea in regards to what you describe, but doesn’t it make it “easier” then for someone to be a single teenage parent, and thereby creating more of that type of dysfunctional family dynamic? In all honesty, I don’t know. Also, what If the tax burden to support this program actually causes fewer of these teenage mothers to marry? How does that help then since that would result in, in all likelihood, more single teenage mothers, not less. I think there is a good reason why unwed motherhood has been frowned on, socially, since, well, forever. It’s not an optimal dynamic for the children. A child of a single mother is 14 times more likely to abuse drugs and 10 times more likely to commit a rape. I hate to go all Santorum on this but I don’t see how “helping” single teenage mothers really helps society in the long run.
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I don’t see how “helping” single teenage mothers really helps society in the long run.
Perhaps if you think of it as helping the child rather than the mother. . . since that’s the real aim.
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Mich:
…since that is the real aim.
Is it? I thought the aim was to provide an economic benefit to society. Hence all the talk about a cost-benefit analysis. If the real aim is to help the child regardless of the benefit “we” might reap, maybe bsimon was right about ideology trumping cost-benefit. Just not in the way he meant.
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The object is, as ‘goose says, to help the child, but if we find a parent eager to help who doesn’t have a clue, teaching her [90% of the time] or him [10% of the time] how to parent does turn the parent’s life around, too. The economic benefit is twofold: the parent gets to hold down a job without having to run off to rescue the kid, and the kid gets to become socialized to middle class values and in Austin, to performing on grade level. The kid grows up to be self-supporting.
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Well, given the statistics, maybe it would more helpful to take the child from the single, teenage mother and place them in a two parent household. Maybe even a group home.
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Well, given the statistics, maybe it would more helpful to take the child from the single, teenage mother and place them in a two parent household. Maybe even a group home.
Almost unquestionably true, yet as likely to happen as having them raised by unicorns. 😉
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I’m going to sound like a heartless bastard, but did it cost more that a years worth of cable/Satellite television? Or years worth of cell phone bills ? Point is, for a lot of people, things are unaffordable up until they become a priority.
A point so true, it’s evergreen. Yes, there is that. I will not debate that parental priorities are also an issue.
Though, frankly, Headstart classes might be of more societal benefit if they were mandatory. Children of parents with warped priorities would be some of the better beneficiaries of such early education. Yet is it society’s or the government’s job to do such a thing? Always the conundrum.
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FWIW, it probably cost ten times as much as cable TV. Kev, I went to school on a farm and the teachers were free with corporal punishment. The principal, Mr. Wendtlandt, put Eddie Wooley in the vault for 30 min as a punishment in 1954. As far as I know, exactly two of us in my class were successful in later life. Seriously. All except the two of us were reading out of the “Dick and Jane” series through 6th grade.
Actually, a third guy became a union organizer and some of the women married men with steady incomes.
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The kid grows up to be self-supporting.
Is there a possibility that traditional compulsory schooling used to do this pretty well? When primary school focus was on reading, writhing and ‘rithmetic, and discipline was, perhaps, a bit more draconian?
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Scott, I don’t know if that has been done anywhere. No individual Head Start could keep track of the people it did not serve. So if such a study exists, I would bet it was done by the Bush Center at Yale U. I don’t have time to run it down, but that is where I would look first.
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The next step with this type of pandering is to link it with Obama’s old social media web site from the 2008 campaign (mybarackobama.com) so that you can see exactly the dollar value of the benefits that Barack Obama will provide to you personally when he’s reelected.
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lms touched on this briefly yesterday, but we haven’t really talked about the very point of The Life of Julia, which was essentially to pander to women voters. The presentation ends with the proclamation that:
But in fact of the 12 slides in the presentation, only 3 pertain specifically to women. All of the other “help” ostensibly provided by Obama to Julia could just as easily have been provided to a man. So why portray it as “standing up for women”?
Romney does something similar when he talks about helping women by fixing the economy or lowering unemployment. Well, sure, that is good for women, but only because it is good for everyone. Gender is actually irrelevant.
I think transparent appeals to such a blatantly sexist mindset, in which all action is filtered through the prism of gender, are condescending to women and dismissive of men. How low must their opinion be of the intelligence of their target audience to think this stuff actually works?
On a different note, James Taranto points out that Obama’s support for Julia seems to disappear between the ages of 42 and 65.
Rather than Life of Julia perhaps it should have been titled “Obama’s Free Lunch Program”.
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Yuval Levin’s take on The Life of Julia:
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On a different note, James Taranto points out that Obama’s support for Julia seems to disappear between the ages of 42 and 65.
Also, this same argument could be made in reverse. Once Julia starts working and collecting a paycheck or, even more telling, starts a small business, other policies not advocated by the Democrats might be even more beneficial to Julia than those that the Obama administration cherry-picks.
What is Julia becomes a hedge fund manager? What’s Obama doing for her then?
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Rather than Life of Julia perhaps it should have been titled “Obama’s Free Lunch Program”.
I dunno that it’s a free lunch, I think it’s presented from a mindset that says the government is the only way in which any of these benefits can be achieved.
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Kevin:
I think it’s presented from a mindset that says the government is the only way in which any of these benefits can be achieved.
Sure, but it is also a mindset that pretends these benefits do not have to be paid for, in many instances by Julia herself. hence the implied free lunch.
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But it doesn’t even pretend to show that these programs must be paid for, perhaps at the expense of someone else’s dream. It literally portrays a free lunch
The target audience is single, non-college women.
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McWing:
Corked me
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But it doesn’t even pretend to show that these programs must be paid for, perhaps at the expense of someone else’s dream. It literally portrays a free lunch
Bah. It’s paid for by old fat rich white men who aren’t paying their fair share, anyway. Just ask Jon Lovitz.
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Scott, that’s a first for me!
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http://reason.com/blog/2012/05/04/the-times-when-you-have-only-seen-one-se
I can’t seem to hyperlink properly. Perhaps there’s some sort of training program.
If you do click through, note the alt-text on the picture.
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Brian, sometimes it is not a cost/benefit thing but a principle thing. I tend to agree with the principle of the program (promotes school readiness by enhancing the social and cognitive development of children through the provision of educational, health, nutritional, social and other services). Those principles apply to all kids however and while HS appears to be a fairly well run program, it is certainly not the only way or the only program to try to do these things. The gov can provide fairly well for nutrition, for education and such things but it has more trouble with integrating the familiies and teaching them to place an emphasis on education and good parenting. That is true whether you are rich or poor. Nor do I think that is the govs role. It is key, however, in providing children with a platform for success. Point is, stats that can tell you how successful HS may be are difficult at best and impossible at worst to get. There are numerous programs, groups, situations, events that impact a families emphasis on the importance of education, good parenting and especially integrating families into the school community. Trying to indentify those and take them into account when looking at the HS program is probably impossible. Without doing that, saying the HS provides the success (rather that participation by the parents in the PTA, other parenting programs, Cub scouts, other community groups or an invitation to the block party or birthday party) is not really accurate.
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No, Scott. It was a personal shot. You could have taken an argument up on any point I’d raised. Instead, the fact that I edited my comment (to address the issues) seems to be your major point of objection. Well, that and i didn’t do homework that wasn’t assigned.
NoVa – Glib points are welcomed. My original response was glib, but I thought more was merited. That may have earned me the wrath of ScottC, but I think you provided a useful starting point for a discussion.
BB
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“Troll McWingnut or George, whichever, on May 3, 2012 at 5:43 pm said: Edit Comment
“Well, given the statistics, maybe it would more helpful to take the child from the single, teenage mother and place them in a two parent household. Maybe even a group home.”
There is so much wrong with this statement, I don’t know where to begin. But the guys here apparently thought it was great. Heh. What a surprise.
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FB:
You could have taken an argument up on any point I’d raised.
I did. Your original didn’t make any points, other than to glibly (your word!) turn the issue into a personal one and to tell nova to, in essence, f-off. After having written a response to that suggesting that appeals to emotion are not exactly legitimate arguments, I refreshed the page prior to posting it only to find your original replaced with an entirely different post, which included dismissing NoVA’s comment as a reflexive response. That struck me as rather ironic given your original effort. So that was the point I addressed.
Again, it was not a personal shot, it was an observation. As I said before, it was you who tried to turn it into a personal thing by injecting your kids into the conversation.
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You keep trying to put words in my mouth, Scott. If I wanted to tell NoVa to fuck off (adult words are allowed here, so you can skip the euphemism), I would tell him that. The original spark was glib as was my comment. I decided, as they say in DC, revise and extend my remarks.
You never did address the substance of the comment, which is that early childhood intervention programs are not designed to foster dependency. Yes, I chose a personal example as it is one in which a federal program has had a profound impact on my family’s life and in a way that fosters independence. The same is true of Head Start. Hence, from the first slide of Julia’s life, NoVa’s point was contradicted.
Mostly, it’s a pattern of trying to get under my skin. Blade made a comment, so take a shot. Repeat as necessary.
BB
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FB:
You keep trying to put words in my mouth, Scott.
Not at all. Your original closed with a simple “Keep churning, NoVA.” I took that as, essentially, an f-you. Notably, you removed it from your revised comments.
If I wanted to tell NoVa to fuck off (adult words are allowed here, so you can skip the euphemism), I would tell him that.
Unlilkey. You are rarely so direct, and are far more apt to deliver a sideways remark or an indirect insinuation.
You never did address the substance of the comment…
As I said, I was remarking on your first, unrevised comment, which pretty much had no substance, other than as a blatant appeal to emotion.
The same is true of Head Start. Hence, from the first slide of Julia’s life, NoVa’s point was contradicted.
You’ve obviously missed nova’s point, which was not that any individual program, much less Head Start in particular, was “designed” to foster government dependency, but rather that Obama’s selling the sum total of all the programs as a package that is crucial to success and happiness in life, is so designed. Focus on a single slide could not possibly contradict this point.
You probably should have “bother[ed] to look through the all the bits” rather than reflexively react to the first slide.
Mostly, it’s a pattern of trying to get under my skin.
I’m not trying at all. I can only imagine how you might respond if I actually did try.
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You could at least pretend to be honest, Scott.
BB
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FB:
You could at least pretend to be honest, Scott.
About what am I not even pretending to be honest?
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Ross Douthat on this:
“The Party of Julia
By ROSS DOUTHAT
Published: May 5, 2012 ”
…
“But if the slide show is easy to mock (and conservatives quickly obliged, tweeting Julia jokes across the Internet), there’s also a fascinating ideological purity to its attitudes and arguments. Indeed, both in its policy vision and its philosophical premises, the slide show represents a monument to certain trends in contemporary liberalism.
On the one hand, its public policy agenda is essentially a defense of existing arrangements no matter their effectiveness or sustainability, apparently premised on the assumption that American women can’t make cost-benefit calculations or indeed do basic math. In addition to ignoring the taxes that will be required of its businesswoman heroine across her working life, “The Life of Julia” hails a program (Head Start) that may not work at all, touts education spending that hasn’t done much for high school test scores or cut college costs, and never mentions that on the Obama administration’s own budget trajectory, neither Medicare nor Social Security will be able to make good on its promises once today’s 20-something Julias retire.
At the same time, the slide show’s vision of the individual’s relationship to the state seems designed to vindicate every conservative critique of the Obama-era Democratic Party. The liberalism of “the Life of Julia” doesn’t envision government spending the way an older liberalism did — as a backstop for otherwise self-sufficient working families, providing insurance against job loss, decrepitude and catastrophic illness. It offers a more sweeping vision of government’s place in society, in which the individual depends on the state at every stage of life, and no decision — personal, educational, entrepreneurial, sexual — can be contemplated without the promise that it will be somehow subsidized by Washington.
The condescension inherent in this vision is apparent in every step of Julia’s pilgrimage toward a community-gardening retirement. But in an increasingly atomized society, where communities and families are weaker than ever before, such a vision may have more appeal — to both genders — than many of the conservatives mocking the slide show might like to believe.
Apparently someone in the White House thinks so, which makes the life of Julia the most interesting general-election foray by either campaign to date. Interesting, and clarifying: in a race that’s likely to be dominated by purely negative campaigning on both sides, her story is the clearest statement we’re likely to get of what Obama-era liberalism would take us “forward” toward. ”
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