Victor Davis Hanson: Freedom or Fairness in 2012?

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author most recently of The End of Sparta. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com. © 2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

This should prove to be an ideological election about the economy. Not all campaigns are so clear-cut. Sometimes moderate Republicans raise taxes (as George H. W. Bush did); at other times, pragmatic Democrats cut spending (as Bill Clinton did).

But this year, Mitt Romney, the likely Republican nominee, will run an ideological campaign, calling for smaller government and lower taxes, against an equally ideological President Obama, who wants more government and higher taxes. In this divided red-state/blue-state era, the supporters of each candidate demand no less and will have a clear choice.

This year’s campaign sloganeering will remind us of all the classic American arguments: Was it New Deal big government or World War II–inspired entrepreneurialism that truly ended the Great Depression? Were we better off under Ronald Reagan’s or Bill Clinton’s economic policies? Was it unfettered Wall Street greed or Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae government corruption that caused the 2008 financial meltdown? And which model has better served its people: America’s or the European Union’s?...