What The Conservative Movement Needs to Learn to Govern Effectively

Conservatism is a movement that has come of age, and yet seems to be having a hard time acting its age. The modern conservative movement, which began as a reactionary insurgency within the Republican Party, firmly established itself with the Reagan presidency as a power to be reckoned with both within the party and the nation. Today, the conservative movement dominates the agenda of the Republican Party, the government, and much of the airwaves. As a result, it controls the debate over the national agenda. In so doing, conservatives have enjoyed a major political triumph, redefining how US citizens view themselves, their society, and the role of their government. Conservatives have succeeded in shifting the median voter toward much more conservative positions, effectively securing a firm grip on power from which they can continue to draw strength for the next decade. With several new appointments expected in the Supreme Court within the next four years, conservatives are poised to re-define the landscape of American social and economic policy for generations.

Nevertheless, despite their near takeover of all three branches of government, conservative pundits and activists still act if they are an oppressed minority fighting an insurgency against entrenched liberal interests. This is problematic for the American citizenry. With power comes responsibility, and when leaders born of insurgencies fail to learn this lesson, it is to the detriment of the people they govern.

Leaders who have understood this lesson, such as South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, have facilitated important changes that move their country forward. Those slower to learn, such as the PLO’s Yassir Arafat, generally hold hostage any progress for their people in their continuing bid for greater power. The defining point in the transition lies in the ability or inability of these new leaders to adjust their thinking to see political compromise among those with conflicting interests as a necessary outcome to advance the welfare of the people at large, rather than concessions to one’s own political constituency. To succeed, in other words, the objectives of insurgent leaders must shift from zero-sum politics to utilitarian policy, from one-upmanship to statesmanship, from fighting over the size of one’s own slice of the pie to working together to enlarge the pie tin. This is a process that requires three steps.

First, insurgent leaders must shift their values from simply improving the fortunes of their followers to improving the fortunes of all citizens. While, many feared that the empowerment of Mandela and the African National Congress in a post-Apartheid era would result in retaliation against white Afrikaners, Mandela chose to use his new power to chart a course to a sustainable, peaceful and profitable future and by promoting reconciliation over revenge. In so doing, he increased his own standing and political capital. Arafat, by contrast, failed to broaden his value system, continuing to prioritize the narrow interests of militant insurgents over the long-run welfare and security of the Palestinian people.

Rather than emulating Mandela by governing from the center, conservatives currently seem to be following the Arafat model – presenting policy as a series of binary (“good” or “bad”) choices, attacking those who disagree with their views as “hateful liberals,” and viewing any sort of compromise as a defeat. In so doing they have polarized the country at a time of war, empowering those on the extreme right and left while marginalizing those Republicans and Democrats in the center who have traditionally been critical to reaching bipartisan compromise. This has led to an increasing perception of distance and alienation between the moderate majority of the American population and their relatively more extremist representatives in government. It has also polarized government policy experts who feel diminished by the anti-intellectualism in the current Administration’s approach to using their research not to inform their policies, but to justify their beliefs.

Second, leaders must shift from rhetoric to reality. Politics is advertising, and the sad truth is that exaggeration, scandal-mongering, and partisan attacks have proven more successful in winning elections than sober, logical debates over the facts. Once office has been won and candidates become leaders, however, the standards of rhetoric must necessarily change. While all Presidential Administrations “spin” their policy proposals to help sell them to Congress, they are expected to be meticulously careful about staying within the bounds of the truth. Both the use of factual distortions and misrepresentations by the current Administration (including claims made about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities or the effect of changes in environmental policies) and the payment of journalists to disseminate government propaganda represent a fundamental shift away from the long-held standards of Presidential leadership.

The reason that the Bush Administrations rhetoric about Iraq has disturbed so many – Democrats and Republicans alike – is that refusing to admit unpleasant truths leads to great uncertainty as to what our leaders really believe. Politicizing information makes not only that information, but all information less credible. Consider this: what you want to hear as a passenger from the pilot of an aircraft that has lost two of its four engines is a logical argument that the two remaining will be enough to land – not that the pilot does not accept the premise that the plane is really missing two engines.

It is in their own interest for conservatives to recognize that rhetoric alone, without evidence or the support of non-partisan analyses, has long-run costs that may exceed the short-run benefits.

The third step of the transformation is to constrain your own power. This is perhaps the most difficult step, as it goes against the natural instincts of insurgencies that have for years sought to expand their power. Nevertheless, stability in a democracy requires that majority powers respect the rights of minority interests. One often hears politicians public complaints that “gridlock” has “blocked progress” as a rhetorical tool to put pressure on their opponents, however, the US system of checks and balances and voters’ apparent preference for electing divided governments are both rooted in the idea that “too little” progress is always preferable to “too much” when it is driven by narrow interests. Citizens are usually their own best guardian of the rights guaranteed them under the constitution but often, during times of war or other insecurity for instance, citizens will often divest themselves of those rights, transferring greater power to a central authority.

It can be crucial to the long-run welfare of a nation, therefore, to limit one’s own power in the short-run. George Washington – another leader born of military insurgency – was instrumental in solidifying our nation’s move from a monarchy to a republic by stepping down from the Presidency after two terms, despite overwhelming public support for a third term. George H.B. Bush and Bill Clinton, by raising taxes and reducing spending to slow the nation’s spiraling public debt, each put the long-term fiscal health of the country above their own short-term political interests. This level of statesmanship is critical to true progress.

Political pendulums inevitably swing from left to right and back again, and if power becomes too centralized in these moments, a great deal of harmful volatility can result. In a perfect world, an optimum level of government services would be decided democratically and a tax rate set to finance it. Cyclical volatility in expenditures (e.g. from wars) and in revenues (e.g. from booms and recessions) would exist, but businesses and households would have a little uncertainty in their long-run forecasts regarding the level of taxes and services. When political parties strive to make strategic increases in services or cuts in taxes to constrain their opponents’ options, however, political cycles can add additional volatility and lead to a more uncertain economic environment.

The bitter and yet intellectually engaged rivalry of Adams and Jefferson, many of whose views on the nation mirror debates among liberals and conservatives today, should serve as the model for current debate. Rule #1: enjoy the courage of your convictions, but be willing to be wrong. Follow facts and sound arguments to their logical conclusion, even if it is not where you expect them to lead. Rule #2: respect your opponents’ beliefs, even when you disagree with them. Rule #3: check the power of the majority and protect the voice of the minority. Those that abuse their power as the majority may find themselves in the minority sooner than they think.