During the administration of George W. Bush, the Federal government is likely to borrow approximately $642 billion (net, counting the surplus in 2001). That’s $2,287 for every man, woman, and child in the nation, or almost $6,000 per average household–money that we and our children will have to repay with interest. Meanwhile, the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll shows the president on course for reelection. He has a nice strategy: borrow the equivalent of about $6,000 per household, spend the money on tax cuts, domestic programs, and a quick war against a tinpot dictator. Buy 8 percent GDP growth and a military victory in the year before you’re up for reelection, and coast to another four years. Worry about the debt later.

There are conservatives who believe that deficits are good, because they prevent the government from expanding social programs. They should be careful what they wish for. First of all, my simple analysis of current government spending shows that almost 75% of it goes to currently “untouchable” programs: Social Security, Medicare, the military, veterans benefits, mandatory retirement benefits for other federal employees, and interest. Social Security and interest payments are guaranteed to rise. When the fiscal crunch comes, it’s unlikely that presidents will respond by deeply cutting the remaining portion of the federal budget, the domestic discretionary programs that conservatives detest. A lot of this spending is popular, since it includes education, scientific research, aid to states, and law enforcement. Instead of cutting, future administrations will have to increase taxes or borrow still more money.

Second, if Bush wins reelection with this strategy, it’s hard to imagine the next Democratic president doing what Bill Clinton did, and painfully paying down the deficit he inherits. Instead, I suspect that fiscal discipline will be forgotten for a long time to come. Presidents of both parties will remember Bush’s successful use of a borrow-and-spend reelection strategy: great for incumbents and potentially disatrous for the country.

Today was a day for thinking about youth civic engagement from various angles. It started with a long conference call to go over the results of a new national youth poll that some partners and CIRCLE will release in January. Then some University of Maryland colleagues and I went to a high school in Hyattsville, MD to talk to the principal about three classes that we’re organizing for his kids. They’re all civics courses, in the broad sense. One will concern youth relations with the police. A second will continue oral history research that we have done in the past–the topic being the desegregation of the county schools. (This is the history website that our kids built last year.) And the third will involve mapping the food and exercise assets of the community. After almost two hours with the principal, I went to my office and worked on a meeting that we’ll hold in January to discuss the latest research on how to mobilize young voters. And then I spent some time on the phone discussing the organization of the “Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools,” as we’re now calling a coalition effort to implement the recommendations of the Civic Mission of Schools report. All this talk leaves me with no energy for a blog on any other topic, but it was a rewarding day.

Thanks to an excellent speech by Dan Fallon (a former colleague of mine, now at Carnegie Corporation), I understand education policy much better. Dan shows that in the 1960s, experts and policymakers were much influenced by James Coleman’s massive studies, which were later confimed by Chrisopher Jencks. Using the data they had, these scholars found that you could predict academic success very accurately by looking only at the home and the neighborhood from which a kid came. In other words, schools didn’t matter; society did. Coleman in particular expressed caveats about this finding, but it was the simple summary of his work.

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Almost a month ago, I was at Wingspread, the retreat center near Racine, WI, to attend a meeting on national and community service programs. This was my second visit to Wingspread. The first was in 1988. Then I was one of two token college students at a meeting otherwise filled with foundation executives and college administrators, including the great Father Ted Hesburgh, President of Notre Dame. The subject was … community and national service programs. The discussions of those days led more or less directly to George Bush’s Points of Light Foundation and then Americorps under Bill Clinton. (I contributed nothing to that history, but I observed a piece of it.)

Two meetings on the same subject, 15 years apart. Since that first memorable experience at a non-partisan, non-profit, professional conference, I have attended similar gatherings on campaign-finance reform, public journalism, civic renewal, digital media policy, Internet research, civic education, service-learning, philanthropy and civil society, economic development and civil society, deliberative democracy, engaged universities, youth digital media work, values in higher education, social capital in Latin America, and many other subjects. There’s a whole culture of these events: shared taxi rides from the airport; tables arranged around hollow squares; introductory sessions where you go around the room and everyone says where they’re from; “break-out sessions” with “flip charts” and “reporting back” to the full group. The conversations tend to drift, especially once there’s a long list of people waiting to speak. Speakers refer politely to previous comments (“Building on what John said, …”). There are complaints, often highly justified, about the people not represented “in the room”–usually racial minorities, but also youth and (in the circles I travel) conservatives. Participants quickly begin to speak as “we” and to imply a hostile outside world, even though they are often not clear about what goals and values they share. There’s always a point when everyone starts talking about “message” (i.e., the need to communicate some simple idea to the broad public).

In short, there are many frustrations. Yet I can’t think of any better models, and civil society would be much weaker without these events. Thus I fully expect to be back at Wingspread in 2018, talking about … community and national service.

Justice Scalia’s dissent in the recent landmark campaign finance case is written with characteristic brio and affords an opportunity to consider the deepest issues. Some of Scalia’s points are rebuttals to arguments made during Congressional debate that I would not myself defend. For example, Members of Congress had claimed that there was too much overall spending on politics, and that “attack ads” were too negative. I agree with Scalia that the total quantity of spending is not too high, and that attacks on incumbents are desirable. But there is still a very good reason for campaign-finance reform: namely, to curb the disproportionate influence of organized interests. Against this position, Scalia makes five main points:

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