RSS Feed MenuOver the past few days, this site has gained many new visitors. Thank you! – and apologies for the technical difficulties, we weren’t quite prepared for all of you.
It occurred to me it would be helpful to reintroduce ourselves to some of the new arrivals. First up: to those who want to know about how I came from where I was to where I am, a short history of my politics, from the archives for March 2009.
These days, the question I hear most from political comrades is: “What the hell happened to you?”
Okay, okay, my old friend Andrew Coyne put it a little more politely than that in a recent magazine column. Here’s what he actually wrote: “Things have come to a pretty pass in the Republican Party when David Frum is the mushy moderate of the piece.”
I feel exactly the same way! So if it’s not too personal, let me request a few minutes of your time to explain how I ended up being bashed by Rush Limbaugh on the airwaves — and taking a few shots of my own in the pages of Newsweek.
Like so many in my age cohort, I became a conservative in the crisis years of the late 1970s. Inflation was raging, economic growth had stalled, social order seemed to be breaking down, and the democratic West seemed to have lost its nerve and confidence in the struggle against its enemies.
Conservatives had answers to these problems: cut taxes, reduce government, repeal price controls, print less money, jail criminals, trust individuals, rebuild armed forces, strike back against terrorists and hostage-takers.
These ideas were tested, and they worked. Many conservatives were frustrated that we did not succeed more completely. I know: I was one. My first book, published in 1994, lamented that Reaganism had reached its political limits. I predicted that Republicans would continue to win elections, but warned that these election victories were ceasing to produce political results.
Both those predictions proved accurate. Republicans won smashing political victories in 1993 and 1994: capturing the mayoralties of New York and Los Angeles in 1993, winning control of both houses of Congress in 1994. They implemented new anti-crime policies and enacted welfare reform. The number of murders dropped by more than one-third nationwide, by more than two-thirds in New York City — launching an American urban renaissance.
I moved to Washington, D.C., in 1996. And there I began to notice something disturbing. While the congressional victory of 1994 had ceased to produce much in the way of important conservative legislation, it sure was producing a lot of wealth for individual conservatives. They were moving from the staff offices of Congress to lobbying firms and professional associations. Washington (to quote something I’d write later) began to feel like a giant Tupperware party, where people you had thought of as friends suddenly seemed always to be trying to sell you something. Acquaintances of mine began accepting all-expense-paid trips to the South Pacific from Jack Abramoff.
Whenever things get tough for the Republican party, conservatives will draw a separation between (good, pure) philosophical conservatism and (compromised, tainted) Republican politics. But the people who began making a lot of money out of politics in the 1990s did so precisely as conservatives. “Here’s why conservatives should support Microsoft, not Netscape,” they would explain. “AT&T is right from a conservative point of view, and Verizon is wrong,” another would chime. “Conservatives cherish federalism — and that’s why we must insist that electrical utilities continue to be regulated by the state power commissions!”
George Bush narrowly won the presidency in 2000, and I was recruited to join the administration as a speech-writer. My initial brief was domestic policy and economics, and it soon become impossible to avoid noticing that the administration’s economic policies were not working very well.
Even as it fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the administration dramatically increased domestic spending (including the first permanent new entitlement program since 1974, the hugely costly prescription drug benefit for senior citizens). Taxes were cut in 2001 and 2003. Big deficits ballooned and a great consumption boom exploded. The stock market and the housing market soared — but median wages stagnated.
There were many reasons for this stagnation. Some 10-million people migrated to the United States between 2000 and 2006, at least half of them illegally, exerting terrible downward pressure on wages for the less skilled. Health care costs surged over the Bush years. A policy to cover a family of four doubled in price in just six years, to over $13,000. After employers paid that high price, they had little if anything left over for wage increases.
Conservative economic policies, which had saved the United States and the other advanced democracies from stagnation in the 1980s, suddenly seemed bereft of answers for the economic challenges of the 21st century.
This worried me. What worried me even more was how little it seemed to worry so many of my friends and colleagues from the conservative world and the Bush administration. A quarter century before, Ronald Reagan’s budget director David Stockman had famously said that it was the job of conservatives to attack weak claims, not weak claimants. We would creatively use the power of freedom to improve conditions for everyone. What had happened to that idealistic drive?
So much of our energy was being absorbed instead by cultural battles left behind from the unfinished business of the 1960s and 1970s. Here, too often, we were on the wrong side of history: Back in the 1960s and 1970s, we’d been fighting to protect the common-sense instincts of ordinary people from elite interference. Now, in the Terri Schiavo euthanasia case, with stem cell research, on gay rights issues, it was we who had become the interfering elite, against a society that was reaching its own new equilibrium.
Of course, that’s not how conservatives saw it. We saw a country divided in two, red states and blue, NASCAR vs. NPR, real America against the phonies in the cities. A movement that had begun as an intellectual one now scornfully pooh-poohed the need for people in government to know anything much at all. But expertise does matter, and the neglect of expertise leads to mismanagement and failure — as we saw in Iraq, in Katrina and in the disregard of warning signals from the financial market. It was under a supposedly pro-market administration that the United States suffered the worst market failure of the post-war era, and that should have sobered us. Instead, we rallied to Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber.
Disregarding evidence and expertise, we shrugged off warnings of environmental problems. One consequence: In 1988, the elder George Bush beat Michael Dukakis among voters with four-year degrees by 25 points. In 2008, Barack Obama won the BA and BSc vote, the first Democrat to do so since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
Conservatives stopped taking governance seriously — and so Americans ceased to trust conservatives in government.
So that’s the answer to the question in the first paragraph. I don’t think I’ve changed my mind about fundamental principles. I still champion liberty and individuality, still advocate markets and entrepreneurship, still insist on free trade and open markets. My social preferences remain conservative, and I believe fervently in strong American international leadership.
But on environmental issues, we have to follow the evidence where it leads — and on social issues we have to take our society as it is. If the world changes, we have to change with it. The refusal of so many of my fellow conservatives in the United States to adapt their thinking to facts and realities does not demonstrate their adherence to principle. It demonstrates a frivolous indifference to the responsibilities of political leadership.
The argument in which I’ve been engaged, and which prompted Andrew’s funny quip, is an argument (as I see it) over what conservatism should be: Is it a philosophy of government? Or is it an expression of cultural alienation? Is it politics or is it protest?
With horrible irony, I see my fellow conservatives in the United States opting out of politics at exactly the moment when they are most needed. The Obama administration is careening toward a more expensive and interventionist government, toward reckless spending and destructive taxation. This is where I came into politics 30 years ago, and I will stand again on the same side I stood then. But now as then, my side will only be successful to the extent it is knowledgeable, to the extent it is public-spirited, to the extent that it is based on evidence and research, to the extent that it advocates the greater good rather than the narrow interests and values of one class or one geographic section.
I don’t think of myself as having gone squishy. I think of myself as having grown sober. And my conservative critics? On them, I think the most apt verdict was delivered by Niccolo Macchiavelli, 500 years ago: “This is the tragedy of man. Circumstances change, and he does not.”
kiranna // Mar 28, 2010 at 4:42 pm
David,
I am a socially liberal, Kos-reading, TPM-surfing Obamabot but I love your points in Waterloo and on this post and your general viewpoint on where this country is right now. Generally I long for a time when Republicans and Democrats can actually legislate. I hope you are successful in starting a movement whereby Republicans find themselves and their voice again, even at the risk of putting more of them in power in Congress and/or the White House…our country has too many problems. But I feel the genie is out of the bottle and I do not see any leader of the Republican party emerging who is strong enough to bring back civility, intelligence, reason and at the same time put the talking heads back in their place. It is only getting worse. Furthermore, I see a media that has no value to its citizenry any more, having lost the ability to educate, inform or otherwise raise our level of intimacy with the issues before us.
In 2008, I saw Obama successfully peel away level headed independents (many of whom are friends of mine so I have seen this up-close). If those independents start to drift from Obama (some of whom are doing so as they have more of a fiscally conservative bent), but then look at the Republican party, they become scared with the rhetoric and clear lack of respect for competence, and either become apathetic or stick with the devil they know, even against their own views. In 2008 the moderate Republicans lost out big-time, partly because of this trend, leaving a very right-wing core of remaining Republicans.
I fear therefore, that should there be any Republican victories in the Mid-term elections, they will be of the extreme right-wing Tea Party variety, from states where majorities vote Republican. This will force an already strongly right-wing Republican House further out, resulting in more intransigence, dogma and hyperbole and less governance.
So what can be done?
pieteronvashon // Mar 29, 2010 at 12:35 am
David – I have been a fan of yours since sometime in the early 2000s when you would talk about the Iraq war. I always considered you one of the smarter and more honest sounding people on TV. You seemed to genuinely believe and have thought out your opinions.
As a sort of long-time fan, I am sure I am not the first to declare that your newfound popularity is both NEEDED and a LONG TIME COMING.
Way to say “Yes” to your life, to your truth.
Runtime // Mar 29, 2010 at 8:18 am
Just wanna say thanks.
I’m a fairly young Republican – and the problems with the current Republican party that you stated are the reasons I’ve found myself dazed and confused in regards to the current state of our nation. I’m thoroughly scared for the future – my future, my children’s future – not only due to the recent Healthcare debacle and the current administration, but also due to the direction the Republican party is heading, and the extremism of the Tea Party. Yes, I understand that now is the time for action – before we are lead too far astray. Yet the hate being spewed from both sides of the fence – the unwillingness to compromise – is leading me to believe that the “One nation, under god, indivisible” may fall apart in my life time.
I’m very happy to see someone with not only the back bone, but also the knowledge and common sense, come to the forefront and stand as the voice of reason for the party.
sinz54 // Mar 29, 2010 at 10:24 am
kiranna: So what can be done?
The root cause of today’s polarization is the long-term gerrymandering of so-called “safe” House districts, in which a district is created that is so homogeneous in attitude that one party has an unfair advantage there and wins far too frequently. If the district is gerrymandered to be, say, staunchly Dem, then any Dem candidate is free to take extreme left-wing positions, knowing that he’s likely to win there anyway. (Likewise for gerrymandered GOP districts.)
Whereas in “swing” districts which can vote either Dem or Repub, any candidate from either of those parties has to have a much broader appeal.
Most Americans seem unaware of this problem. If they knew about it, they would petition their own state governments not to do this anymore.
ktward // Mar 29, 2010 at 2:18 pm
longtimewatcher:
what do you think about the idea of eliminating primary elections, and having all candidates run in an instant run-off general election? Would this not be more inclined to get us the centrists needed to govern?
Hugely problematic. For one, without primaries we’d end up with say, 10 GE candidates, and the candidate with 11% of the vote could theoretically be elected. So many reasons why this would not better serve the electorate. Primaries serve a critical purpose.
Nevertheless, we do not have a viable Third Party option. Sad but true. A la Nader & Perot, today’s Third Parties in effect act only as GE spoilers by siphoning votes from one party or the other. Some pol analysts suspect Tea Party candidates could prove problematic for Republican candidates. The most practical recourse, short term anyway, is to effect change within the already firmly entrenched system.
It used to be said that politics is the art of compromise. We don’t see that so much anymore. Isn’t it ironic that in this age of instant global interconnectedness we are all becoming more isolated and entrenched in our ideas?
International politics, perhaps, and generally tackled by appointed statesmen. Intra-nationally, politics is theater and the US isn’t alone in that regard. Though I suppose theater is considered art. Your point is well taken though; legislators require serious talents and skill sets to effectively negotiate to a collectively productive end. Arguably, many of our own congress critters on both sides of the aisle are controversially deficient in this respect. Entirely too much reliance on partisan campaign theater.
But we elected ‘em. Sinz offers a reasonable point of examination (districting), but over-simplifies–the ‘root cause’?–and is, to my mind, a penny problem in a bank vault of $100 bill issues.
Glenn_in_Sydney_Australia // Apr 6, 2010 at 9:02 pm
It’s interesting that this has evolved into a discussion on electoral system reform. The comments made on that subject are interesting from a non-American point of view, for what goes unmentioned as much as for the reforms suggested. I trust you will not object to an outsider offering some comments.
As an Australian friend of mine has commented, the US constitution was state-of-the-art in 1788 (or even 50 years later) and it has certainly served America well for most of the time since then, but even with some constitutional amendment and electoral reform and the growth of the primary system, there are aspects of the US constitution and electoral system which have become out-dated.
Electoral College – The system of voting for the presidency by states is anachronistic and introduces distortions into the democratic system. Abolishing the Electoral College would take a lot of the focus of the swing states and reduce the importance of the Red State/Blue State divide.
Presidential Primary System – It is one of the continuing mysteries of the world that Iowa and New Hampshire (neither of which is particularly representative of the nation as a whole) occupy such an important place in the system. I can see that there may be merit in having a series of regional primaries (rather than a single primary covering the whole country), but what about a rotating system in which different regions take turns going first?
Redistricting – Americans seem to think it is completely normal and unobjectionable for redistricting to be a wholly political process. To non-Americans, this is bizarre. Shouldn’t district boundaries be drawn and revised by an independent (that is, not partisan political) national commission of experts charged with applying set rules?
US Senate – It is a cherished institution, but except for the unelected and largely powerless UK House of Lords and Canadian Senate, the US Senate has got to be the most undemocratic legislative body to be found among the world’s major democracies. In addition to Rhode Island having the same representation as California (an issue which becomes more significant as the US becomes less homogeneous), I find it difficult to accept the idea that 41 Senators should be able to block the will of the majority.
Alternatives to plurality voting – It was suggested above that primaries be eliminated completely with multiple candidates from each party standing in the general election. A comment made in response to this was that you could get situations in which the winner got only a small percentage of the vote (11% was suggested as a possibility).
The fundamental issue with the elimination of primaries is that it would dramatically weaken the US party system, which is already loose by international standards; you could well end up with all members of Congress effectively being independents. This may, or may not, be a good thing.
But the assumption that the plurality voting system (where the candidate with the highest vote wins, even it this is less than 50%) is the only possible way of doing things is interesting. There are alternatives, though I’ve never heard Americans even acknowledging the possibility of this.
In Australia we have a system of preferential voting (sometimes called the single transferable vote), in which you indicate on the ballot paper your first, second, third, etc preferences among the candidates. When the first preference votes have been counted, the person with the lowest number of first preference votes is eliminated and their votes are redistributed to the remaining candidates on the basis of the second and later preferences on the relevant ballot papers. This process is then repeated until one candidate has 50% of the total. It’s a little bit complex (and could well be difficult to implement in the US with its voting machines and elections for large numbers of positions being held simultaneously), but it eliminates the need for the “strategic voting” commonly seen in the UK and leaves more room in which third parties and independents can compete.
In France and countries influenced by it there is a system in which the top two candidates from a first round of voting go through to a run-off election.
In my opinion, either of these systems would be preferable to, and more democratic than, the current US system in which strong third party/independent candidates (like George Wallace, Ross Perot or Ralph Nader) can throw up anomalous results.
You can’t get there from here? – Are these ideas too far from American experience to be contemplated? Or is the issue that some of these are foreign ideas, and Americans are fundamentally not interested in anything from outside the 50 states? Anyway, my main point is that discussions in the US on electoral and constitutional reform often appear to be blind to significant issues and ignore a range of options, which may not ultimately be practical or appropriate, but should at least be considered.