Britain and United States Go in Different Directions

One reason is that American voters are wary of the prospects of vast deficit spending. Britain faces an even bigger budget deficit, about 14 percent of gross domestic product. The Blair and Brown governments in good macroeconomic times slowly raised government's share of gross domestic product from 37 percent to 47 percent by enlarging the public payroll with teachers, nurses, diversity counselors and the like (similarly, much of the Obama stimulus money spent so far has been devoted to keeping state and local government employee ranks from thinning). Yet Britain's financial sector suffered a collapse worse than ours, and in a country where it is a significantly larger part of the total economy.

Up to this year, Cameron and his team have pledged not to cut public spending significantly, while opposing tax increases. The current fiscal situation makes those pledges inoperative -- Cameron has even accepted Labor's 50 percent tax on the rich. So while Democrats struggle to make American government larger, Conservatives are pondering whether they can make British government smaller.

The voter has some say in this, on Election Day and in the polls. A recent Quinnipiac poll showing declining Obama ratings in Ohio may have jangled Democrats' nerves as much as the ghastly June job numbers. But it seems to me that on both sides of the Atlantic politicians -- American Democrats and British Conservatives -- are facing the same big fundamental issue: How large should government be?

They face as well the question of whether the economic distress following the financial crisis has produced an increased demand for bigger government. The evidence from the 1930s is mixed: While Americans were voting for the New Deal, Britons were rejecting Labor socialism.

The polling evidence today in both countries is equivocal but not as cheering to advocates of larger government as they expected. Turning around the giant ship of state is hard, even when you have a change of government.