\jeff{krimmel}

Why Conservatism Fails as a Philosophy of Government

Bobby forward me the link to an article yesterday titled Why Conservatives Can’t Govern by Alan Wolfe. It is a damning indictment of conservatism as a philosophy of government. The basic premise is how can a party that predicates its existence on a disdain for government effectively lead said government when given the opportunity?

Here’s the opening paragraph:

Search hard enough and you might find a pundit who believes what George W. Bush believes, which is that history will redeem his administration. But from just about everyone else, on the right as vehemently as on the left, the verdict has been rolling in: This administration, if not the worst in American history, will soon find itself in the final four. Even those who appeal to history’s ultimate judgment halfheartedly acknowledge as much. One seeks tomorrow’s vindication only in the context of today’s dismal performance.

Below is a nice excerpt that could have served as the abstract for this piece:

The collapse of the Bush presidency, in other words, is not just due to Bush’s incompetence (although his administration has been incompetent beyond belief). Nor is it a response to the president’s principled lack of intellectual curiosity and pitbull refusal to admit mistakes (although those character flaws are certainly real enough). And the orgy of bribery and special-interest dispensation in Congress is not the result of Tom DeLay’s ruthlessness, as impressive a bully as he was. This conservative presidency and Congress imploded, not despite their conservatism, but because of it.

Now we come to one of the most interesting historical anecdotes of the Bush presidency:

With the election of George W. Bush in 2000, anti-government conservatism won control of both elected branches. This was something new.

Conservatives hadn’t held both Congress and the White House for a full term since 1932, before the creation of big government as we know it. For the first time in U.S history, conservatives had total control of the agencies of superpower government.

These past five and a half years, and the coming two and a half more, are giving us our first view of how government operates when conservatives run both elected branches of government. It doesn’t look pretty, does it?

Here’s another damning single paragraph:

If government is necessary, bad government, at least for conservatives, is inevitable, and conservatives have been exceptionally good at showing just how bad it can be. Hence the truth revealed by the Bush years: Bad government — indeed, bloated, inefficient, corrupt, and unfair government — is the only kind of conservative government there is. Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well.

What a well crafted analogy. Mr. Wolfe goes on to give three examples demonstrating why “bad government, at least for conservatives, is inevitable”: FEMA, Medicare, and Iraq. Read the article for his arguments in each case. I do want to reproduce one paragraph from the Medicare portion:

Caught between the market and the state, Republicans picked the worst features of each. No single human being could have designed a program as unwieldy as this one. It took the combined efforts of every faction in today’s conservative movement to produce a public policy so removed from common sense.

I have already written about the Medicare fiasco here on my blog. Mr. Wolfe goes on to explain one of the many key differences between liberals in power and conservatives in power:

Political parties expend the time and grueling energy to control government for different reasons. Liberals, while enjoying the perquisites of office, also want to be in a position to use government to solve problems. But conservatives have different motives for wanting power. One is to prevent liberals from doing so; if government cannot be made to disappear, at least it can be prevented from doing any good. The other is to build a political machine in which business and the Republican Party can exchange mutual favors; business will lavish cash on politicians (called campaign contributions) while politicians will throw the money back at business (called public policy). Conservatism will always attract its share of young idealists. And young idealists will always be disillusioned by the sheer amount of corruption that people like Gingrich and DeLay generate. If yesterday’s conservative was a liberal mugged by reality, today’s is a free-marketer fattened by pork.

One of the most interesting portions of Mr. Wolfe’s article is his description of how conservatives play politics. It definitely helps to explain why political discourse in this country has become so rude, so barbaric, so insensitive since President Bush, Karl Rove, and their conservative allies have controlled all aspects of government:

Conservatives, from the days of Machiavelli to such twentieth-century figures as Germany’s Carl Schmitt, have, by contrast, viewed politics as an extension of war, complete with no-holds-barred treatment of the enemy, iron-clad discipline in the ranks, cries of treason against those who do not support the effort with full-throated vigor, and total control over any spoils won. From a conservative point of view, separation of powers is divisive, tolerance a luxury, fairness another word for weakness, and cooperation unnecessary. If conservatives will not use government to tame Hobbes’ state of nature, they will use it to strengthen Hobbes’ state of nature. Victory is the only thing that matters, and any tactic more likely to produce victory is justified.

Finally, here’s the part me, as a young man, and my children and grandchildren need to be worried about:

But today’s conservatives have no problem passing on the costs of their present madness to future generations. Governing well would require them to use the bully-pulpit of office to educate and uplift their base. But since contemporary conservatives get their political energy from angry voices of rage and revenge, they will always blame others for the failures built into their ideology. That is why conservatism so rarely makes for a good governance party. As far as conservatives are concerned, it is always someone else’s government, one reason they can be so indifferent to their own mismanagement.

President Bush’s complete disregard for federal finances is a perfect example of the costs which will be passed to future generations. Other costs include a significant increase in the ill will directed toward the United States from the rest of the world and the catastrophic damage done to our environment. These costs are becoming too great to bear, and we need to use the November elections to begin to remedy this situation.