That's one thing people ask when a Texas think tank goes to New York for a tax conference, as the George W. Bush Institute will this week. The...
That's one thing people ask when a Texas think tank goes to New York for a tax conference, as the George W. Bush Institute will this week. The answer has to do with federalism. All places that are not Washington provide an alternate model, a reality check, and pressure upon Washington to…well…grow less. Here, Texas and New York are on the same side. We want the U.S. to grow faster, and we know an important share of that growth has to come from outside Washington. The thought for us to go to the New-York Historical Society came when we remembered presidents who have spoken in New York City before and the venues they chose. In 2008 President Bush spoke at the Federal Hall National Memorial on Wall Street about financial regulation. That was hosted by the Manhattan Institute. My own thoughts go back to Calvin Coolidge, who spoke in New York in 1925. Coolidge laid out the healthful tension of federalism. Coolidge said: “New York is an imperial city, but it is not a seat of government. The empire over which it rules is not political, but commercial. The great cities of the ancient world were the seats of both government and industrial power. The Middle Ages furnished a few exceptions. The great capitals of former times were not only seats of government but they actually governed. In the modern world government is inclined to be merely a tenant of the city. Political life and industrial life flow on side by side, but practically separated from each other. When we contemplate the enormous power, autocractic and uncontrolled, which would have been created by joining the authority of government with the influence of business, we can better appreciate the wisdom of the fathers in their wise dispensation which made Washington the political center of the country and left New York to develop into its business center. They wrought mightily for freedom.” This post was written by Amity Shlaes, Director of the 4% Growth Project at the George W. Bush Institute. Find her on Twitter @AmityShlaes.
