Is a new conservatism possible?

The right is in serious trouble -- and not just because of Bush's disastrous presidency. But will it be able to change its reactionary ways?

By Gary Kamiya

Read more: George W. Bush, Gary Kamiya, Opinion, Iraq War

Oct. 30, 2007 | Last week, I argued that George W. Bush's presidency represents a radical departure from the principles of American conservatism. By covertly manipulating the country into a disastrous war of choice, vastly expanding the power of the executive branch, and approving of torture and warrantless wiretapping, among other things, Bush has trashed the tradition of Jefferson and Burke.

What I was trying to do was identify certain core conservative principles -- primarily a belief in personal agency, a respect for tradition, and a wish to preserve organic community -- that even liberals would not find objectionable and to point out that Bush has betrayed these conservative principles to an unprecedented degree. This raises the issue of why anyone who considers him- or herself a conservative would support Bush or his party.

In response, a number of readers argued that since no conservative president has ever lived up to those conservative principles, they're basically irrelevant. These readers maintained that in the real world, as opposed to my vaporous and too-charitable musings, conservatism is about nothing but power (or tribalism, or selfishness, or resentment, or xenophobia). The Bush presidency thus does not represent a perversion of American conservatism but its logical culmination.

I think these readers are right about American conservatism in practice. Bush is indeed the natural heir of the ideology that runs through Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan. But I think they're wrong that the conservative movement is foreordained to remain in its current debased form.

The real question concerns the nature of the conservative principles -- or, more precisely, the relationship of those principles to conservative practice. Conservative ideals are laudable: Who is against freedom, tradition or the preservation of community? The problem is that while they're beautiful in the abstract, it is difficult to base a coherent governmental policy on ideals alone. Once these principles enter the real world of politics, governance and society, a world that requires compromise and the curtailment of individual freedom for the common good, they are useless as guideposts. If they are taken as moral absolutes, they cancel each other out: The apotheosis of the individual leads to the destruction of community and tradition.

American conservatism is at once absolutist and utopian, and reactive and aggrieved. Which state came first is a chicken-and-egg question, but they reinforce each other. Psychologically, conservatives want contradictory things -- both pure freedom and an unchanging Golden Age. Pragmatically, they want things that are mutually exclusive -- no social contract and an organic, connected community, untrammeled individual rights and a rigid moral code. The inevitable disappointment results in resentment. The reason that the American right always behaves as if it is an angry outsider, even when it controls all three branches of government, is that it is at war not with "liberalism" but with social reality.

Therefore, it is not sufficient to argue, as I implicitly did in my earlier piece, that all that conservatives need to do is return to their principles. Rather, they need to acknowledge that purity is impossible. They need to come to terms with the fact that unlimited freedom results in the tragedy of the commons, in which the unchecked actions of individuals destroy the common good. Real politics consists of negotiations between two goods, the good of freedom and the good of society.

A conservatism that accepted the need for compromise would still be conservative. There will always be substantive issues on which conservatives and liberals will have good-faith differences. It would simply be a more mature conservatism.

The history of American conservatism does not inspire much confidence, however. In spite of its moderate roots, it has succeeded mainly via absolutist, reactionary politics. This approach has enormous emotional appeal for Americans for whom the modern world is a source of confusion, anger and fear, or who simply disdain the social contract . And the Republican Party is now entirely in thrall to it. The current crop of GOP candidates hold uniformly hard-right positions, with the exception of the libertarian, no-chance Ron Paul. The leading GOP contender, Rudy Giuliani, is even more of a maniacal hawk than Bush on the Middle East and national security. These are hardly signs that the right is moving to the center.

But sooner or later, conservatives will have to change course or see their movement wither away.

The issues that have been winners for conservatives are fading. White resentment of federal civil rights laws is the ur-conservative issue, the engine that drove the right's rise. Barry Goldwater, by reluctantly voting against the Civil Rights Act, permanently realigned the South and paved the way for Nixon's "Southern strategy." More recently, right-wing strategists successfully mobilized resentment over "values" issues like the "three Gs" -- gays, God and guns. These issues still mobilize some conservative voters, but they aren't nearly as effective as they used to be. Studies show that the electorate, especially younger voters, are moving left on these issues.

Support among voters for conservatism's powerful no-more-taxes wing is dwindling as well. As Bush found out recently, Americans will do anything to save the nation's two largest entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare, including paying higher taxes.

The fall of communism was another heavy blow to the conservative movement. It was fear of communism, added to white backlash, that handed conservatives control of the country in the Reagan years. Although Bush won reelection in 2004 by convincing enough frightened Americans that a nonexistent entity called "Islamofascism" was the second coming of the Evil Empire, that fear-mongering comparison will not work anymore. The Iraq debacle, and Bush's misguided "war on terror," have made it only too clear that moralistic militarism and disdain for diplomacy only makes the problem worse.

Bush's disastrous presidency has revealed many other shortcomings in conservatism. The Katrina debacle reminded Americans that government's first duty is to be competent, not ideological. The endless crony-capitalism scandals of the Bush years, from Enron to Halliburton to Blackwater, showed that Bush's version of the "free market" is a rigged game. And his hectoring, mean-spirited presidential style has divided America and made our civic life remarkably ugly.

Next page: A new conservatism would abandon its facile government bashing and appeals to raw emotion