Red Tories at the Grassroots?

Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson raises a point I’ve pondered time and again: So much of what is associated with the Reagan “Revolution” is illusion, and those who scream the loudest for a return to the old style limited government and fiscal probity associated with the Reagan era are invoking a myth.

As Gerson observes:

During the Reagan years, big government got bigger, with federal spending reaching 23.5 percent of GDP (compared with just over 20 percent under the current president). But the Reagan reality is more admirable than the myth. He wisely chose what was historically necessary—large defense increases and tax reductions—over what was politically unachievable: a massive rollback of government.

Political expediency by any other name.

Aside from that, Dubya, despite the persistent stereotyping, is no bleeding heart compared with Reagan — really more of a stereotypical Republican grinch if you look at where many of his budget increases have been targeted:

Well over half of President Bush’s spending increases have gone to a range of unexpected security necessities, including military imminent-danger pay, unmanned aerial vehicles and biological-weapons vaccines. Other types of discretionary spending have increased at 3.9 percent a year on average—far below President Clinton’s double-digit growth in his final year. Why don’t anti-government conservatives mention spending increases on defense and homeland security when they make their critique? Because a minimalist state cannot fight a global war—so it is easier for critics to ignore the global war.

Gerson also explores a prevailing distinction within GOP ranks that should not be lost on those of use who harbor strong red tory sympathies: the widely divergent, largely mutually incompatible views of Republican libertarians and conservatives.

The combination of disdain for government, a reflexive preference for markets and an unbalanced emphasis on individual choice is usually called libertarianism. The old conservatives had some concerns about that creed, which Russell Kirk called “an ideology of universal selfishness.”

Conservatives are wary of government, not hostile to it. Within some contexts, they are even willing to stomach a surprisingly ample amount of it so long as it contributes to the common good (e.g., strengthening families, neighborhoods, schools, congregations). And while Republican libertarians — “purists,” as Gerson prefers to call them — still command the rhetorical high ground of debate within the party, many Republican governors, particularly Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, are busy translating authentic conservative principles into practical reality at the grassroots.

But there is another Republican Party—what might be called the party of the governors. It is the party of Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, who has improved the educational performance of minority students and responded effectively to natural disasters. It is the party of Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who mandated basic health insurance while giving subsidies to low-income people. Neither of these men embrace big government; both show convincing outrage at wasteful spending. But they have also succeeded in making government work in essential government roles—not a small thing in a post-Katrina world.

Dangerous Nation?

Neoconservative Robert Kagan has penned a new book on American imperialism that was reviewed today in the New York Times by Geoffrey Wheatcroft.

The thesis of Kagan’s book, titled Dangerous Nation, holds that early America’s regard for power politics as “alien and repulsive” is groundless.

Wheatcroft takes exception to this premise and so do I.

Granted, America took its Manifest Destiny very seriously, and arguably pursued it as fanatically and ruthlessly against the Indians as the Germans did their own version against the Slavic East. But there is a significant difference, I think, between continental and global expansionism. As Wheatcroft argues — convincingly, I think — Americans, with a few noteworthy exceptions, ”really did withdraw from the temptations and perils of the world.”

There were exceptions, like the astonishing story of the campaign against the Barbary pirates of North Africa (the Islamofascists of 1804?), when the whole American fleet sailed 4,000 miles to the Mediterranean and the Marines landed on the shores of Tripoli. For all that, by the time this book ends, and for nearly two decades more, no American infantry battalion ever set foot in Europe, and the only great war the American people had ever fought was against each other.

And let’s not forget that from the 1860s to the 1880s, Chile had a larger navy than the United States — a fact even Kagan concedes — hardly evidence of a nation that has harbored imperial ambitions from its very beginning.

The GOP’s Socialist Legacy

I was rather amused that an op-ed by Richard Allen published in today’s New York Times did not once invoke the n-word — neoconservative —  in describing the life and work of the recently deceased Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, despite the fact that she was in many respects the very embodiment of neoconservative influence within the Republican party. 

Like most other neocons, she could point to a very exotic pedigree, at least by traditional GOP standards, and often did.

The very precocious granddaughter of a populist and socialist who organized several left-wing movements in Oklahoma, Jeanne Jordan, as she was then known, formed a Young People’s Socialist League, the youth arm of the Socialist Party of America, on the unlikely campus of Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, where she was a student. She recalled in 2002 May Day symposium:

It wasn’t easy to find the YPSL in Columbia, Missouri. But I had read about it and I wanted to be one. We had a very limited number of activities in Columbia, Missouri. We had an anti-Franco rally, which was a worthy cause. You could raise a question about how relevant it was likely to be in Columbia, Missouri, but it was in any case a worthy cause. We also planned a socialist picnic, which we spent quite a lot of time organizing. Eventually, I regret to say, the YPSL chapter, after much discussion, many debates and some downright quarrels, broke up over the socialist picnic. I thought that was rather discouraging.”

A Humphrey Democrat in the late 1960s, Kirkpatrick, along with other intellectuals and trade unionists with strong anti-communist convictions, were aligned with the Social Democrats, USA, which formed the successor organization of the Socialist Party of America. She eventually grew disillusioned with the Democrats and conventional left-wing views on communist containment as the McGovernite wing tightened its grasp within Democratic ranks in the 1970s. But even as this disilluisionment with the Democrats intensified, she still expressed trepidations about aligning herself too closely with the GOP.  (Incidentally, click here for a perversely interesting socialist perspective on the neoconservatives.)

“Listen, Dick, I am an A.F.L.-C.I.O. Democrat and I am quite concerned that my meeting Ronald Reagan on any basis will be misunderstood,” Allen recalls her saying shortly before her first get-acquainted meeting with presidential candidate Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Of course, the rest is history. Kirkpatrick apparently managed to repress her strong unionist sentiments to join forces with the Reagan administration, serving as ambassador to the United Nations and bringing many socialist intellectuals into her staff — the so-called “State Department socialists” who soon gained prominence and influence in the Reagan administration and the Republican party.

After denouncing the Democratic party as the “Blame America First party” at the 1984 GOP Convention, she formally became a Republican in 1985 and, for a time, even toyed with seeking the party’s nomination for president, fearing that George H.W. Bush, the presumed successor to Reagan’s legacy, would waver in his opposition to communism.

I have to concede a grudging degree of admiration for Mrs. Kirkpatrick. Nevertheless, reflecting back on the last quarter century of significant neoconservative presence within the GOP policymaking circles, I can’t help but wonder what my party would look like today without them.

Frankly, judging from our track record within the last few years, I’m not so sure it would look that bad.