A sure sign of desperation in a politician is when they trot out The Children.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi does it so regularly that it seems to be some kind of public-relations tic, for example.  “The Children” are politically unassailable, an abstract group of innocents without an inconvenient political voice of their own that can be conveniently offered up as victims of The Other Side and then just as conveniently whisked away while the Adults push their own agenda.

Now critics who lament the “Americanization” of British politics have another example to cite.  Labour leader Gordon Brown, struggling against twin assaults from resurgent Tories and a Liberal Democrat explosion reminiscent of the 1992 Reform Party groundswell in the U.S., has invoked The Children.

Brown is using The Children in exactly the same way as American politicians often do — to deny the reality of what must be done to reign in out of control government spending.  Making any spending cuts, the appeal goes, will mean cutting off aid to The Children, meaning they will be left to writhe in gutters as they starve.  Brown is borrowing a card that American Democrats have worn nearly blank since the 1980s.

But perhaps British voters (and American voters as well, for the argument about spending cuts is upon us on this side of the Atlantic as well) should take a look at The Children card one more time.  Because if maintaining support for education and a safety net to protect The Children is really the goal, it is at best unclear how this will be accomplished once the Chinese stop buying up our endless debt and choose, perhaps, to start investing more in their own children.  Moreover, what will happen to The Children when the bills we are already running up come due?

Seems that Brown and Pelosi don’t really want to talk about that “inconvenient truth”, eh, wot?