US - UK: contrasting political cynicisms

I find it very odd that the mainstream media simply have not commented on the fact that the outgoing administrations in the USA (out in January 2009) and the UK (out in May 2010) deliberately poisoned the well for their successors by pushing spending to totally unsustainable levels. Both had their reasons, and we shall see which bunch of cynical bastards calculated better.

In the USA, President Bush's inner circle contained some of the most experienced Washington operators ever concentrated in one place. Presumably calculating that the pendulum must swing in 2008-9, they appear to have decided, quite early on, to shackle their tax-and-spend Democrat successors by spending and not taxing. Seen in this light, the financial crisis was a bonus, giving them an excuse to run the deficit into the stratosphere. They may have calculated that the incoming administration would be inhibited from taxing by the odium it would incur, and from spending by the parlous fiscal situation they inherited. But whatever happened, the Bushites pursued an après nous le déluge strategy, and it seems to have worked. The Democrats sailed in with their traditional banners nailed to the mast, and appear set to be punished in elections a mere two years after coming to power.

In the UK, Gordon Brown vastly expanded and packed the public administration with over-paid party clients and ran up the deficit, knowing that if he won the election he could reach an accommodation to slow the pace of spending with the state sector he had bribed so heavily. If he lost, the attempts by the incoming administration to bring spending under control would be painted by Labour party media allies as "savage cuts", while the Labour faithful in the state sector would do everything possible to discredit and sabotage any initiative by what Brown must have presumed would be a Conservative government. What he did not anticipate was a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, which made it difficult to paint the new government as "right-wing" with any semblance of good faith.* The Conservatives did not sail in with any banners nailed to their mast, and seem to have been successful in letting popular opinion catch up with the reality of the fiscal situation they inherited. The coalition partners have five years until they have to face the electorate again.

I think the crucial similarity between the two experiences is that the outgoing administrations did not, in any way, let the question of what might be best for the country impinge on their partisan calculations. Together, they constitute a compelling argument for statutory limits on spending over an electoral cycle.  

* Not that such a consideration has ever inhibited the Labour party, in opposition or in power.