Young Counter-Revolution
by William Haun
Issue 120 - November 19, 2008

Well, that only took nearly two years. To say the least, it is a relief to have the 2008 presidential election finally come to a close. Nevertheless, I am left disappointed that after the longest, most expensive presidential campaign in the history of the world, America settled for an empty promise of change over an equally absurd promise to put "country first."

The disease that has so incapacitated our national discourse has several causes, and several symptoms, all of which were on display throughout the presidential campaign. And while much could be said of Obama's political victory and its path, my focus will be on where my heart lies: with the Conservative Movement, and its way forward after the George W. Bush years and the John McCain campaign.

First and foremost, Sen. McCain's loss is due to him running a poor campaign, which lacked a message, and was based on horrible premises about the Republican Party and the Conservative movement that he has acted under for some time.

By earning his reputation as a Republican who irritated fellow Republicans, not by being more Conservative, but by being more self-righteous, McCain made it hard for himself to get the support of fellow Republicans. This is not surprising, and no Republican should apologize for any reservations they had about John McCain. It is a common rule of human interaction, when people seem not to like you, you will find it hard to like them. McCain's attempts to woo Conservatives by flipping on the Bush tax cuts, downplaying his support for amnesty and cap-and-trade, flipping on off-shore drilling while being quiet on ANWR, and reforming his position on the overturn of Roe while silencing his support for embryonic stem cell research all meant that what had made him such a media darling was going to alienate him from his former "base" (what McCain called the media in 2000).

This, of course, is all conventional wisdom. But I would argue that McCain's problems, and his detrimental effect on the national conversation, runs a bit deeper than that. McCain's chief problem throughout his campaign was that, for as much as he attempted to run away from the legacy of President Bush, he could never avoid the fact that he was, out of all the candidates, the most logical successor to where Bush has left the GOP and Conservatism.

Like Bush, he is completely disinterested in Conservative principles, preferring instead to see political issues through his own personal prism through which he tried to brand the party (honor, integrity, trusting government etc). Like Bush, he has continued the populist trend of "Conservative identity politics" whereby we judge candidates not by their understanding of their issues or qualifications but by how much they celebrate mediocrity (Joe Sixpack), if their accent sounds folksy, if they talk the pro-life talk, and if they own a gun. It is embarrassing because for so long Conservatives chastised the Left for the same thinking. Like Bush, he puts superficial notions of "bipartisanship" and "comprehensive solutions" over convincing the opposition by establishing Conservative principles and taking on the merits of their argument in the way our system provides. Like Bush, he fails to articulate anything Conservatives believe reasonably well, relying instead on a personal narrative to persuade.

Instead of charting an actually Conservative course, which would not have only contrasted him clearly from Barack Obama, but also appropriately from President Bush, McCain continued to pursue the celebration of grand empty gestures and conservative identity politics so endemic in the Bush years. Two of the key moments in this campaign epitomize this, and not coincidentally, they were the two moments that sealed McCain's political fate. The first is McCain's reaction to the financial bailout bill. The second is his nomination and pick of Sarah Palin.

The issue over how the government should respond to the financial crisis was by far the biggest test of leadership either candidate received. McCain, in what was quickly and correctly labeled political calculation, suspended his campaign only to come back to Washington to make no meaningful contribution to the legislation outside of his vote. He looked like someone aiming to take credit for a compromise, and in its place, voted for legislation that eliminates any credibility he had on the need for spending cuts and responsible use of the tax payer's money. You don't get to call yourself a "fiscal Conservative" when you vote to nationalize the U.S. financial sector while wasting 100 billion dollars in tax payer money on giveaways to make said nationalization a "bi-partisan effort". Instead of siding with the fiscally responsible alternatives to the bailout, McCain, in spite of all of Obama's political ties to those who caused this crisis, became seen as complicit in a supposedly Bush-caused financial meltdown.

The second indication that McCain was willing to follow the conventional wisdom of the Bush years was the picking of Sarah Palin and the corresponding reaction to Conservative disappointment. Initially, I liked Sarah Palin. She has been, by all counts, a great governor and takes positions I agree with (like any other person that matters to me in candidates). What I came to notice however, is that for as much as I liked the concept of Sarah Palin on the ticket, I came to see her as a representation of the current and growing chasam between the intellectual establishment of Conservatives who are desperately needed to chart new ideas for 21st century problems, and the Conservative grassroots, who are needed to bring those ideas into political office.

Conservatives today, have mistaken the anti-elitism inherent to Conservatism to mean anti-intellectualism. I don't need a presidential or vice presidential candidate to hold a PhD., but I would like them to be able to actually answer "what other Supreme Court cases do you disagree with besides Roe?" I would like them to be able to describe what they mean when they call themselves a "Federalist." And, as a resident from the supposed "elitist northeast" I would like the party that has won 49 states not once, but twice, in the modern era to not write-off the support of an entire region of the country because they do not fit the conception of the thus far elusive "Joe Sixpack." In a time when Americans face the single greatest collection of challenges to its prosperity since the Great Depression, finding voters based upon their penchant for beer and football is an indication of how unserious the Republican Party has become.

The most successful Conservatives in American national politics have been unapologetically that, Conservative. Whether you wish to point to Calvin Coolidge, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, or any other, the Conservatives that successfully rallied the American people to the Conservative cause are the true believers in it. William F. Buckley, founder of the modern Conservative movement, did not inspire people to Conservative ideals by talking about how bi-partisan Republicans should be. He was sick of Republicans who were all the Democrat with none of the label. He wanted Americans to "stand athwart history and yell 'Stop!'," not figure out ways where we could all work out our differences. "Appealing to moderates" and "Reaching across the aisle" do not build a movement, nor do they represent a principle to fight for. They are tactics, sometimes preferable, sometimes necessary, sometimes futile, often superficial, and hardly transformational.

John McCain, like President Bush, utterly failed in actually being Conservative, and this failure was, I believe, central to his loss of the presidency. Like it or not, elections, and politics in general, are about choices: you are for this, they are for that. For as much as individuals may like the idea of the mushy, cushy middle, where everyone is right, and we can all live happily ever after, that is not how politics works. The first person to define themselves, their opponent, and the turf on which the election is fought is the one who wins. Obama's mastery at making the words "hope" and "change," which in a political context mean absolutely nothing, stand out as a serious political message defined the election. And whenever McCain attempted to play on that turf by trying to "out-Change" Obama, he lost. After all, why would anyone vote for a not-as-authentic version of something when they have a choice between authenticity and a wannabe? Simple. There is no good reason. The political middle may get you over the finish line, but only when they are convinced your side is correct. McCain, for partly strategic, and partly personal reasons, never felt comfortable running a campaign based on being a Conservative. Instead, he ran a campaign based on slogans that never distinguished him.

It would be foolish to say then, that this election is somehow a rejection of Conservatism. It would be correct to say this election was a rejection of the Republican Party. If anything, this election was a vindication for Conservatism within the Republican Party. What was rejected in this election was the largest expansion of the federal government since the Great Society. What was rejected in this election was the pathetic, despicable, mismanagement of foreign wars and the basing of foreign policy upon progressive "nation building" instead of maximizing strategic interests. What was rejected in this election was the arrogance of political power once synonymous with the decades-long congressional Democratic majority, and the celebration of American mediocrity through identity politics in lieu of intelligent principles designed to persuade and lead. Conservatism in no way endorses these kinds of blunders. If anything, it is a philosophy designed to prevent them from happening by limiting government power, emphasizing careful, not expansive international prowess, and politicians that do not see themselves as master social engineers, capable of legislating utopia, but rather as restrained public servants, who ensure the people possess their due authority.

It is on this distinction that I believe Conservatives can build from the failures of the Bush years and the McCain campaign. To begin this dialogue, I think we need to establish a few facts:

1. The American People are still, by and large, fundamentally Conservative:
No polls about the size of government show any kind of massive shift to a preference of larger government, if anything, most demonstrate that views on the issue have been the same since the 1980's. Conservative grassroots groups, like Americans for Prosperity for example, are propping up all over the country. The success of various ballot measures in this election in particular have vindicated the massive support of Conservative causes.

2. Even in the Minority, Conservatives are not powerless:
Polls have showed strong support for the alternative bailout proposals that so many of the "party first" Republicans shunned. Conservatives were able to organize mass oppositions that killed the amnesty bill not once, but twice. Conservatives were able to kill the first bailout proposal and lobbied for the inclusion of some Conservative proposals in the final legislation in spite of being in the minority and having no national spokesperson (imagine if we did).

3. There is a large Conservative intellectual and grassroots structure entirely independent of the impotent GOP leadership. And this independent infrastructure has inspired Republican Party chairman across the country to take back the GOP from the death grip that recent failures have placed on it. The race for RNC chair should bring many of these issues to light, igniting the debate our party should have had years ago.

The surest defense for Conservative principles, and the surest way to re-build a Conservative majority will be in creating a modern Conservative "fusion": the "fusion" of the increasing number of college educated Americans and working class voters. It is troubling to me that these two groups have grown equally disparate within the Right as of late. For as disappointed as I am in the "Joe Sixpack"-type of identity politics preferred by the Sarah Palin's and George W. Bush's of the GOP, I am equally disappointed in the not-so-thinly-veiled disdain for the rank-in-file Conservative in some of the columns of David Brooks and David Frum. A successful, new Conservative majority will be based on the premise that all of these individuals have a role in achieving a governing coalition. The growing number of college educated Americans, and the dwindling numbers of registered Republicans amongst them, emphasizes the importance for a refreshing look at Conservative first principles, an effort that will likely be lead by the "intellectuals" within the movement. But such a revisiting is meaningless if the current suspicion between the intellectuals and the grassroots remains. The new ideas and approaches to Conservative principles need to be dispersed to the grassroots, and debated constructively. Both sides will need to recognize the need to work together to apply Conservative principles to new policy challenges, and ultimately, make them successful at the ballot box.

As Edmund Burke famously said, "example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other." If we really believe that the American people will suffer at the hands of higher taxes, socialized medicine, defeatism abroad, and an entitlement culture at home, and if we really believe the American people will be sensible enough not to vote for policies once they are proven to be harmful, then what do we have to be afraid of? Truly, there is something inherently un-Conservative in thinking that whoever runs Washington runs our lives. It's time to get back to principles, to the states, the grassroots; here our understanding of Conservatism can expand, inform new policies and inspire new leaders. Conservatism is, at its best, a counter-revolution revolution. Let's begin one today for a new generation of Americans.

William J. Haun is a student at the American University School of Public Affairs, Class of 2009