You Still Can't Have It All

George Bush accuses Bill Clinton of wanting to sacrifice jobs for the sake of the environment. Bush says he himself would never do that, although he cares passionately about the environment. Bill Clinton indignantly denies the charge. He says better environmental protection will create, not destroy, jobs.

Both sides in this argument are kidding. The obvious truth is that of course there's a trade-off between jobs and environmental standards. What's more, it's a trade-off both candidates are willing to make. George Bush, for example, signed the Clean Air Act. He brags about it. For the sake of cleaner air, that law imposes on factories pollution standards that will raise expenses and reduce output -- and, inevitably, cost jobs.

The proper question for politics is where to make the trade-off between jobs and the environment. True, as Clinton and Al Gore like to say, environmental technology will create new businesses and new jobs. But overall, a cleaner environment is a good that must be paid for like any other good, and the cost must be borne, one way or another, by the rest of the economy. We are a rich country and can afford to buy ourselves a cleaner environment. How much environmental protection are we willing to buy and at what cost? That is the right debate. But that debate is impossible as long as both sides insist that a trade-off between the environment and other good things (jobs, economic growth) is unnecessary and unthinkable.

In fact, it's even worse than that. Each side accuses the other of believing there's a trade-off -- a charge the other side indignantly denies. Dan Quayle: "Bill Clinton will say, 'Well, you know, you can't create jobs and preserve the environment at the same time. You have to have one or the other.' " This, Quayle adds, is "nonsense." Al Gore: "When Bush and Quayle say you have to choose between jobs and the environment, they're wrong." Actually, if Bush and Quayle did say something like that, they would be right. But they don't say it at all. Heaven forfend.

The environmental debate is just one example of what may be the central problem of American politics. That is the inability of the electorate to deal with the hard reality we all had to learn as small children: that more of something usually means less of something else. The politicians, like overindulgent parents, are doing us no favor by refusing to teach this lesson.

No doubt it was ever thus. But the problem does seem to be getting worse. The great symbol and measure of our inability to make trade-offs is the national debt, which has quadrupled in 12 years. We refuse to decide whether we want lower taxes or higher government benefits, so we demand both. The result is the annual deficit, cumulatively the national debt. Both candidates mouth pieties about "tough choices" but don't actually ask us to make any.

Gaze across the policy landscape, and observe a similar dynamic at work on other issues. Take health care. The state of Oregon recently attempted to rank all medical procedures based on their value to the patient and society. The intention was to change the Medicaid rules so that more poor people could be covered, but not for the less worthwhile procedures. Some of the calculations were cold-blooded: no transplants for alcoholics with cirrhosis of the liver; reduced treatment for patients deemed near the end of their life.