The Peculiarity of American Conservatives

Gordon Brown's recent "interaction" with Gillian Duffy got me thinking about how different American democracy is from others around the world. (Not that Americans wouldn't let their inflammatory comments get accidentally caught by a live mic: See Jesse Jackson's desire to neuter Barack Obama and Joe Biden calling health care reform a "big fucking deal.") A sitting head of state is talking one-on-one with a regular Jill for a few minutes straight. Now maybe this sort of thing only gets press when the candidate shoots themselves in the foot right afterward, but when I think of a presidential campaign in the U.S., I picture giant rallies, not candidates taking time for individual voters.

A further difference, as Joseph Romm points out, is that all three major British parties--Labour, Conservative, and Lib Dem--favor taking action on climate change, while Republicans in the U.S. remain defiantly anti-science. Even the military cannot sway right-wing minds on global warming. The opposition (on this and other issues) is so extreme that commentators are wondering if Republicans have insulated themselves from constructive criticism.

Julian Sanchez argues that this right-wing insularity comes from some combination of:

1. reactions to progressive viewpoints invading traditionally conservative areas via the Internet, and
2. conservative institutions (like Fox News) striving to counter a perceived liberal bias in institutions (like the New York Times) that are really striving for objectivity.

While this may be true, it begs the question, "Why isn't conservative opposition in Great Britain so insulated and belligerent?" Part of it may be that there are established conservative institutions in Britain that also strive for objectivity. Part of it may also be that British conservatives are insulated and belligerent by British standards.

But I contend that there is another reason for American peculiarity, and it stems from our differences in democracy. The United States is almost unique among OECD countries in having a presidential republic. (Mexico and South Korea are the only others, excluding the so-called "semi-presidential" republics like France and Russia, where both a president and prime minister wield executive power.) The GOP can accomplish their political goals by gumming up the Senate and ensuring that Democrats achieve as little as possible before the Republicans retake Congress. Almost every European nation has a parliamentary system, where consensus- and coalition-building is integral. There it doesn't make sense, for instance, for the Tories to make the Lib Dems their bitter enemies when the Lib Dems will likely decide who Britain's next prime minister will be.

Whither the Pendulum

I've argued before that we're in the middle of a paradigm shift, that the pendulum is swinging leftward, or whatever historiographical cliché you prefer. But ever since Jon Meachem wrote that the U.S. was inherently a center-right nation, I've been wondering if it were really true.

Don't get me wrong. Liberal/progressive bloggers immediately pushed back against this notion. And the Meachem article is hardly convincing:

The two Arthur Schlesingers, father and son, believed American history was
cyclical, with periods, as they saw it, of liberal action followed by
conservative reaction. There is much to commend this construct, though history
and politics, like so much else in life, do not lend themselves to easy
categorization.

History and politics do not lend themselves to easy categorization, you say? And yet you're perfectly comfortable categorizing the U.S. as just right of center?

Nonetheless, it got me thinking: Is the U.S. really entering a liberal era?

The Basic Argument

Main Idea: Conservatives screwed up: The economy is in shambles due to Republican-led deregulation and we're involved in two wars thanks to gung-ho neoconservatives. The Republican coalition is fracturing, while leftists are adopting a more united front.

The Demographic Argument

Main Idea: The McGovern coalition--students; minorities; and upper-middle-class, college-educated professionals (doctors and lawyers, as opposed to mid-level managers)--failed to elect a Democrat in 1972. But this section of the American populace has grown since '72, and this coalition can now be a winning one. Furthermore, elements of the coalition are now even more likely to vote Democratic due to the decreased salience of issues that favored Republicans, e.g. crime and high taxes.

Pause

Main Idea: But then Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss is re-elected in a runoff in Georgia, and a recent poll shows that "a plurality of voters (49 to 42 percent) are more concerned that the Democratic Congress will be too much of a rubber stamp than they are that Congress will prevent Obama from enacting the changes he thinks are needed." Said poll also concludes that "a large portion of the public is waiting to decide whether Obama is doing a good job." And how likely is it that Obama will save the economy, restore the Big Three to profitability, withdraw from a stable Iraq, secure Afghanistan, end global warming, and so on?

So?

The Schlesinger view is the correct one. Liberals are put in power due to the public's disgust with conservative excesses, liberals go too far, then the public puts conservatives in power, conservatives go too far, etc. Meachem may be right that the U.S. is more conservative than Europe, but it's also more liberal than Saudi Arabia. But who cares? That's not the point we're arguing. 'Liberal' and 'conservative' are relative terms; the context in which they are used is always relevant. And what we're discussing is not how the U.S. of today compares to the Europe of today but how the U.S. of today compares to the U.S. of years past.

The answer to that question is a difficult one. The U.S. could be entering a new liberal era, but I think that depends on the success of Obama's first term. If Obama makes significant headway against today's problems, or if he's able to paint failures as the fault of Republicans, it is probable that 2008 will be remembered as the liberals' 1980. The bottom line is that the (in-)significance of 2008 will probably not be known until at least 2012.

Delusional

I couldn't help but snicker reading this editorial in the Michigan Daily. In it, Alex Prasad laments the opportunities Palin missed at the vice-presidential debate:

For example, Biden, speaking of Vice President Dick Cheney, said, “The idea
(Cheney) doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of
the vice president of the United States, that's the executive branch.”

Palin easily could have retorted, “Actually Joe, Article I of the
Constitution discussed legislative power. Ya know, it’s disappointing that a
sitting senator doesn’t even know the Constitution he’s sworn to protect. The
American people need somebody who is intimately familiar with the
Constitution.”

Seriously? Do you really think Sarah Palin is "intimately familiar with the Constitution"? Do you think someone who can't even remember what publications she reads knows which article of the constitution refers to what? Does it seem like Palin would say anything in that above statement besides "Actually Joe" and "Ya know"? Prasad continues:

The moderator, Gwen Ifill, asked Biden if Americans have the stomach for all
the intervention he has proposed over the years, citing his calls for
intervention in Bosnia, Iraq, Pakistan and Sudan. Biden responded, “I think the
American public has the stomach for success. My recommendations on Bosnia …
saved tens of thousands of lives … (and) the end result was it worked.”

[....Palin] should have answered as follows: “Ya know, let’s talk about
success senator. Certainly, I can’t match your long record in the realm of
foreign policy. But, I don’t think the American people — those Main Streeters —
just want experience. They want good Main Street judgment. You cite Bosnia as a success, yet 13 years after the initial conflict, we still have 10,000 troops
there. You were one of the few opposed the first Gulf War, saying thousands of
U.S. soldiers would die. In fact, only 293 did in an overwhelming victory. Your
maverick opposition was irresponsible.

In addition to the fact that Palin again probably does not know these things, I fail to see how these points will help her win the debate. How can you criticize Biden for supporting something that resulted in 10,000 troops staying in Bosnia for 13 years when McCain wants troops to stay in Iraq for 100 years?* If our victory in the first Gulf War was so overwhelming, why was it necessary to go to war with Iraq again just 12 years later? And you're really going to criticize someone who is not John McCain for being an irresponsible maverick? Yeah, that's a good idea.

Despite the hopes of the Obama campaign and many liberals, electoral defeat
may just be the thing that reignites the conservative base. Democrats better
hope that Republicans don’t find the second coming of Ronald Reagan by 2012, or
conservatives will again unite behind a presidential candidate.

Wow. Are conservatives really that relentlessly optimistic/out of touch with reality? Maybe I'm wrong here, maybe I'm the one being overly optimistic, but it seems to me that we're in the middle of a paradigm shift. The pendulum is swinging leftward. Americans are tired of the excesses of conservatism and the Bush administration: deregulation, wars without provocation, living without a safety net, ignoring our civil liberties, corruption, etc. This is not to say that liberals cannot be guilty of their own excesses; indeed, Americans upset with Great Society, Vietnam, the Chicago protests, race riots, and the Iranian hostage crisis deserted Johnson, Humphrey, and Carter and turned to Nixon and then Reagan. We've been living in a conservative age ever since. Until now.

*NOTE: McCain does not want to see American troops fighting in Iraq for a century like the Obama campaign might want you to think. McCain wants the U.S. to establish a peacetime presence there as in Germany or South Korea or Bosnia. Permanent bases in Iraq are still a bad idea, though.

Indecision 2008 Liberal and Conservative Agendas

So with the election getting pretty intense, I think we could all use a little break from thinking about the candidates.

So, as courtesy of The Daily Show and Colbert Report, I have provided the Indecision 2008 Liberal and Conservative agendas. Enjoy.

Headlines: 20 May 2008 (and Older)

• 'W,' Oliver Stone's Bush Biopic
  

  A little crass.
  

• Klein on Obama:
  

  A general-election campaign between John McCain and Barack Obama doesn't need any hype. It won't be boring. The question is whether we, politicians and press alike, will grant this election — and electorate — the respect that it deserves.
  

• Make wearing a flag pin the 28th Amendment
  

  And the award for Best Use of Sarcasm goes to...
  

• The Fall of Conservatism
  

  The pendulum swings left? Long, but interesting.
  

• Obama and
  Ahma-gonna-kill-myself-if-the-primary-season-doesn't-end-soon-ijad
  

  Obama said that he would meet with the leadership of Iran, but he never said he'd meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. So why does McCain and everyone on the Right say he did? And when is that McCain-Obama foreign policy debate going to be?
  

• Underplayed Story of the Day
  

  Remember when the EPA denied the state of California to legislate its own fuel-efficiency standards? Well, it turns out that, like everything else in the Bush Administration, the decision was based on sound science, and not politics.
  

• Obama Is Expected to Hit a Milestone in Today's Votes
  

  After primaries in Kentucky & Oregon, Obama will have the majority of pledged delegates, which will hopefully trigger a superdelegate-slide in his direction.

Conservatism vs. Liberalism

Sorry there hasn't been much blogging lately. My dog ate my posts.

There has been something of an ongoing feud between Joe Klein, of Time magazine, and conservative pundits that started with this article, where Klein said:

This is a chronic disease among Democrats, who tend to talk more about what's wrong with America than what's right. When Ronald Reagan touted "Morning in America" in the 1980s, Dick Gephardt famously countered that it was near midnight "and getting darker all the time." This is ironic and weirdly self-defeating, since the liberal message of national improvement is profoundly more optimistic, and patriotic, than the innate conservative pessimism about the perfectibility of human nature. Obama's hopemongering is about as American as a message can get — although, in the end, it is mostly about our ability to transcend our imperfections rather than the effortless brilliance of our diversity, informality and freedom-propelled creativity.

Gasp! Part two:

Conservative skepticism has its place; it can be a valuable corrective when government goes flabby and corrupt or engages in wild neo-colonialist fantasies abroad[...]But, historically, those who believed in the perfectability of our nation[...]have been right far more often than they've been wrong. Those who have stood in the path of progress have been wrong far more often than they've been right. And those who spent the past seven years as propagandists for the one of the worst, and needlessly blood-soaked, presidencies in American history, have such a fabulous record of self-righteous wrong-headedness that they needn't be taken seriously at all.

You have to admire the phrase 'self-righteous wrong-headedness,' even if you disagree with its implication here. Part Three:

In our lives, we have seen conservatives use racism as a political tool, war as a witless quest for domination, patriotism as a scourge, government as an instrument of greed, religion and "morality" as camouflage for spreading fear, ignorance and bigotry.

The latest installment:

It is, as I said, very sad that the Clinton campaign would have anything to do with spreading this sort of innuendo [Yes, some Clinton supporters are still trying to make an issue out of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, even though Barack Obama addressed it in the best speech a politician has given in my lifetime.]...and entirely predictable that the Republican Party would. When I talked about "spreading the poison" that's what I meant: a purposeful distraction from what should be real issues in this campaign--two wars, serious economic problems, the need to shift to alternative energy sources for national security and environmental reasons. On his radio show last week, Hugh Hewitt disagreed with me that those were the real issues. He made his agenda clear: Obama's positions on Jeremiah Wright, gun control and homosexuality were what mattered to "real" Americans. Now that's cynicism, of the rankest sort. Let's hope it's not the election we get.

So the problem is two-fold:

1. Republicans have abandoned the decent purpose of conservatism--to counter the liberal tendency to fix everything through government intervention--as George W. Bush has presided over the largest expansion of government, especially executive, power since the Nixon administration.
2. Conservative pundits are hopelessly out of touch with mainstream America. I may be ensconced in the liberal, ivory tower of academia, but homosexuality and a few comments a candidate's pastor made this one time are more important than war, national security, and energy independence? Give me a break.