We see this played out on a larger scale in debates about the federal budget. Both political parties agree that the deficit needs to be brought under control, and though Republicans and Democrats differ in their views on the role of revenue collection (a.k.a. taxes), both parties assert a need for significant across-the-board federal budget cuts...for everything except defense spending, that is.
President Obama proposes slowing the rate of growth of defense spending, essentially by keeping future spending on the base defense budget at current levels, with increases to keep pace with inflation. Mitt Romney considers maintaining current levels of defense spending tantamount to stripping troops of their weapons and body armor, and proposes pegging the base defense budget at a floor of 4 percent of GDP -- essentially tossing another $ 2 trillion at DoD over the next decade.
Given that U.S. defense spending is already higher, in real dollars, than it has been at any time since World War II, it's a little odd that no one -- at least, no one hoping to win an election -- appears willing to contemplate the possibility of genuine cuts to the base defense budget. At least not publicly.
Contrast the Defense Department's future budget prospects with those of many other federal programs. President Obama's proposed budget includes sizeable cuts in many non-defense discretionary programs: the budget for toxic waste clean-up and safe drinking water programs would be slashed, for instance, along with initiatives to help low-income people keep the heat on during the winter and NASA's Mars exploration efforts. And those are nothing compared to the cuts proposed by Mitt Romney's running mate Paul Ryan: Ryan, as Daniel Altman has written, would slash the percentage of GDP that goes into domestic programs to the level prevailing in Equatorial Guinea.
Here's what it adds up to: if you want to get something funded in the United States today, you need to find a way to shoehorn it into the Defense budget. Ever wonder why the military is doing more and more not-so-militaryish things, like operating health clinics in Africa and funding economic development projects in the Philippines? In part, it's because no one else has the money to do it. Funding for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development has drastically fallen over the last two decades. Congress seems increasingly disinclined to fund civilian diplomacy and development initiatives -- but call something a military program, and presto, money falls from the heavens.
I exaggerate -- but not by much. As larger and larger swathes of the federal budget fall victim to Jack the Ripper-style cuts, it's the military that increasingly provides the vital services once provided by other parts of the federal government. Diplomacy and development? Check. Free or low-cost health care? The military provides it to active duty personnel, reservists, retirees, and their dependents -- but just try convincing Congress to fund similar programs outside the military. Military subsidies for higher education have become a route to college for hundreds of thousands of young people, even as federally subsidized grant and loan aid has shrunk in the civilian world. Subsidized childcare? Universal for the dependents of active duty military personnel, but practically extinct for most civilians.
Little wonder, then, that service members have become a must-have accessory for political candidates and issue advocates. Our cynical political culture devalues social welfare programs and snickers at communitarian impulses, and most of us trust neither our neighbors nor the public institutions that are meant to serve us. The distrust is not unmerited, but it's a vicious circle: the more we devalue public programs, the less we fund them and the less they can offer us, so the less we trust them, and so on. The military is all that's left: the last institution standing; the last part of the federal government that works.
No question, there's an element of self-serving jingoism in the efforts of politicians and interest groups to snuggle up with the military -- a desire to benefit from a little heroism-by-association, combined with a shameless appeal to the public's most bellicose and mindless "us versus them" instincts. But perhaps it's more than that. Perhaps we're simply desperate to be reassured that there is an "us" in the first place -- that the United States is something more than simply 300 million people who don't much like or trust one other (and who definitely don't trust their government).
Perhaps we try to associate every issue and platform with the military not because we're self-serving cynics, but because we secretly yearn for a domain that's free of cynicism. The military has come to symbolize those lost American virtues of public-spiritedness, generosity, sacrifice, self-discipline, and service to something larger than the self. It also represents that most elusive of American dreams: a government institution that actually works.
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