NY Times
Going for Bolingbroke
By _ROSS DOUTHAT_
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/rossdouthat/index.html)
Published: July 27, 2013
BEFORE political movements can be understood by others, they need to
understand themselves: what they want to be, what they actually are and how
they
might bridge the gap between aspiration and reality.
Today, the post-George W. Bush, post-Mitt Romney conservative movement is
one-third of the way there. Among younger activists and rising politicians,
the American right has a plausible theory of what its role in our politics
ought to be, and how it might advance the common good. What it lacks, for
now, is the self-awareness to see how it falls short of its own ideal, and
the creativity necessary to transform its self-conception into victory,
governance, results.
The theory goes something like this: American politics is no longer best
understood in the left-right terms that defined 20th-century debates.
Rather, our landscape looks more like a much earlier phase in democracy’s
development, when the division that mattered was between outsiders and
insiders,
the “country party” and the “court party.”
These terms emerged in 18th-century Britain, during the rule of Sir Robert
Walpole, the island kingdom’s first true prime minister. They were coined
by his opponents, a circle led by Henry St. John, Viscount _Bolingbroke_
(http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/bolingbroke-the-captain-of-the-r
eactionary-radicals/) , who were both conservative and populist at once:
they regarded Walpole’s centralization of power as a kind of organized
conspiracy, in which the realm’s political, business and military interests
were
colluding against the common good.
Bolingbroke is largely forgotten today, but his skepticism about the ways
that money and power intertwine went on to influence the American
Revolution and practically every populist movement in our nation’s history.
And it’
s his civic republican ideas, repurposed for a new era, that you hear in
the rhetoric of new-guard Republican politicians like Rand Paul and Mike Lee,
in right-wing critiques of ou_r incestuous “ruling class,” _
(http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print)
and from_
pundits_
(http://washingtonexaminer.com/libertarian-populism-is-viable-and-necessary/article/2533326)
_touting_
(http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/06/05/the_libertarian_populist_agenda_118694.html)
a “
libertarian populism” instead.
Theirs is not just the usual conservative critique of big government,
though that’s obviously part of it. It’s a more thoroughgoing attack on the
way Americans are ruled today, encompassing Wall Street and corporate
America, the media and the national-security state.
As theories go, it’s well suited to the times. The story of the last
decade in American life is, indeed, a story of consolidation and self-dealing
at
the top. There really is a kind of “court party” in American politics,
whose shared interests and assumptions — interventionist, corporatist,
globalist — have stamped the last two presidencies and shaped just about every
major piece of Obama-era legislation. There really is a _disconnect_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/opinion/sunday/douthat-the-great-disconnect.html)
between this elite’s priorities and those of the country as a whole. There
really is a sense in which the ruling class — in _Washington_
(http://web.nytimes.com/xpedio/groups/public/@news/@nav/documents/document/navigator.hcst
) , especially — has grown fat at the expense of the nation it governs.
The problem for conservatives isn’t their critique of this court party and
its works. Rather, it’s their failure to understand why many Americans can
agree with this critique but still reject the Republican alternative.
They reject it for two reasons. First, while Republicans claim to oppose
the ruling class on behalf of the country as a whole, they often seem to be
representing an equally narrow set of interest groups — mostly elderly,
rural (the G.O.P. is a “country party” in a far too literal sense) and
well-off. A party that cuts food stamps while voting for farm subsidies or
fixates on upper-bracket tax cuts while wages are stagnating isn’t actually
offering a libertarian populist alternative to the court party’s corrupt
bargains. It’s just offering a different, more Republican-friendly set of
buy-offs.
Second, as much as Americans may distrust a cronyist liberalism, they
prefer it to a conservatism that doesn’t seem interested in governing at all.
This explains why Republicans could win the battle for public opinion on
President Obama’s first-term agenda without persuading the public to actually
vote him out of office. The sense that _Obama was at least trying_
(http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/06/04/young-voters-give-obama-a-for-effort/)
to solve problems, whereas the right offered only opposition, was
powerful enough to overcome disappointment with the actual results.
Both of these problems dog the right’s populists today. There might indeed
be a “libertarian populist” agenda that could help Republicans woo the
middle class — but not if, as in _Rand Paul’s budget proposals_
(http://www.paul.senate.gov/files/documents/MASTERBUDGET.pdf) , its centerpiece
is just
another sweeping tax cut for the rich.
There might be a way to turn Obamacare’s unpopularity against Democrats in
2014 — but not if Republican populists shut down the government in a
futile attempt to _defund_
(http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-26/drop-the-disastrous-plan-to-defund-obamacare.html)
it.
To overthrow a flawed ruling class, it isn’t enough to know what’s gone
wrong at the top. You need more self-knowledge, substance and strategic
thinking than conservatives have displayed to date.
Here the historical record is instructive. The original “country party”
critique of Robert Walpole’s government was powerful, resonant and
intellectually influential.
But it still wasn’t politically successful. Instead, the era as a whole
belonged to Walpole and his court — as this one, to date, belongs to Barack
Obama.
--
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