Rep. Eric Cantor at Charter Day
In a few weeks, on February 4, Rep. Eric Cantor, the new Majority Leader of the U.S. House, will be the main speaker and receive an honorary degree at Charter Day, the annual ceremony where the W&M community celebrates the anniversary of the royal charter that created the College back in 1693.
Cantor is a great choice for Charter Day speaker. For one, he is a 1988 graduate of the W&M law school and since 2000 has represented Virginia’s 7th district in the House. The 7th district includes much of Richmond and Henrico County and is home to many of our graduates and current students.
But local ties aside, Eric Cantor is also widely recognized on both sides of the partisan aisle as one of our smartest and most capable members of Congress. Shortly after his first election, Tom DeLay, then the House Republican Whip, recognized Cantor’s talents and made him part of the party whip system in the chamber as a freshman member. Cantor quickly rose to Chief Deputy Whip in 2003, and was unanimously elected House Republican Whip in 2009.
Within Congress, the whips help formulate their party’s legislative program, provide colleagues with information about bills and the floor schedule, and take the lead in lobbying wavering members to stay with the party position on major roll call votes, among other tasks. Their role in the coalition building process is absolutely crucial.
By all accounts, Rep. Cantor performed brilliantly as a whip. When the Republicans assumed majority status in 2011, his colleagues selected him to be Majority Leader. Only 47 years old, he looks like a good bet to one day be Speaker of the House, the third ranking constitutional office in American national government.
The current policy agenda in Washington is rife with controversy, as our elected representatives attempt to grapple with the competing demands from their constituents to reduce the federal budget deficit while still maintaining funding for highly popular programs like Social Security, Medicare, defense, and so on. The numbers simply do not add up and the challenges this creates for the Congress are truly daunting. Moreover, the country must deal with these enormously difficult policy and political tradeoffs during a time of economic recession and high unemployment.
As House Majority Leader, Cantor will be at the very center of these efforts for the next two years and probably much longer. We’re fortunate to be able to count him as one of our graduates and his appearance at Charter Day is yet another indicator of the historic ties that exist between the College and the very highest levels of American government.
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Eric Cantor does not deserve the high praise you have so adamantly laid out for him. As he has risen to a high rank, that does not indicate he has been a particularly useful or productive member of the House or that any of his policies or votes have made substantial progress to our nation.
In the political game, position rarely equals merit, and as a government professor I am shocked that you can’t draw the ample connections of countless senators and representatives in our country’s history who have assumed roles of prominence while simultaneously advocating bad policy or holding lack of experience.
Here’s one that used to be a Southerner’s favorite: Strom Thurmond. Heck, he managed to get on the ticket for presidency, and remained a 3 decade senator despite his transparent views on civil rights, and he held close relation to the Nixon administration.
While I am not connecting Cantor to racism or Thurmond, I am disputing your belief that Cantor is worthy of praise. Politics in America has always been more about marketability and inner-circles, not about the quality of a representative’s ideas. If you need any empirical evidence, look no further than the Tea Party.
You have praised Cantor for his ability to keep Republicans in ‘coalition’ with each other on major votes, as his position as a ‘whip’ demands, but anyone who actually pays attention to politics will have noticed Republicans use this ploy as a corrosive strategy.
Neither good or bad policies will emerge out of the current congress, because frankly, Republicans wish to sink Obama presidency. They have done so for the past few years, and will continue until the White House falls into their laps. Many of the top ranking officials in the party have gone on record saying so, and their self-serving strategy is crippling our governance more-so than any supposed deficit problem.
Some of the reasoning/policy suggestions behind the Republican party, including Cantor, is absurd. Deficit hawks calling for austerity by purely riding off the ill-informed decisions made in Europe recently. Cantor likely does not understand the complex situation in Europe, and America does not face the same fate as any of the PIGS countries, nor do we need to worry about inflation if the deficit spending continues for awhile.
I have read no economist who actually thinks that inflation as a direct cause from the deficit will occur because there are no warning signs as of yet in 2011. And this spoken from an economics major.
But I pose a basic economics question for you: if we see massive cuts in industry, infrastructure, research, and education, where & when will we have this miraculous recovery? How will we out innovate China, Brazil, or India, who are already investing more in their own countries as a % of GDP and gaining dominance in nascent fields like sustainable energy and producing 100,000s more scientists and engineers annually?
Austerity, whether in Europe or at home, will only lead to more severity and depravity.
However, imagine a short-term investment in the economy to get America to excel for the 21st century. Over the long term, we will reduce the deficit simply by making large returns on our initial investments. Our economy will grow at enviable rates, the unemployment rate will fall back down close to the natural rate, and the government might even end up with a surplus.
Our answer during a still very fragile period of recession cannot be to make conditions even more harsh for people and the macro-economy. Our country needs to buck the recession in full, and only then will we have the conditions necessary for deficit reduction. Deficits shrink during times of prosperity, and likewise balloon during times of stress.
Cantor merely advocates for deficit reduction without making convincing arguments for the extremity of cost-cutting ‘solutions.’ In Europe, these severe reductions mean revolts of the youth who realize their country has no jobs open for them despite their attainment of higher education. Yet Cantor has a penchant for terming every issue into one for the future generation. Ironic indeed.
The macro-economy does, and will never, work the same way as our businesses and pockets do in the micro-economy, and this idea still seems to be the greatest in-congruency in modern American decision making.
Let’s get real, Cantor is a spokesperson for the republican party because he bucks the trend of the typical old, stodgy southern. He is young, has some charisma, and remains well spoken. William and Mary invited him because he is a famous alumni and will make money for the school in some form or another by his brief visit. Plus, he’ll just look fantastic on the next edition of the alumni magazine.
Since when did an honorary degree equate to position in society? In a bygone era, or maybe just at more reasonable schools, an honorary degree rewarded a lifetime achievement, reserved for people of stature like Mohammed Yunus or Nobel Laureates. The professor from William and Mary will rightfully receive their honorary degrees on Charter Day, rewarding them of a life-time achievement of excellence.
But Cantor, he just is a buzzword in American politics at the moment. William and Mary now awards prominence, however so obtained, much in the same way People Magazine goes about its headlines. Truly a sad day has reckoned when America’s higher education has lost its values and spine.
As a government professor, if you truly want to express your undivided support for Cantor, which crosses the border from a neutral position into blatant partisanship, create your own blog independent of the one featured on our school website. I have read enough from you, and am glad I have chosen to skip over your department during my time here.