The Slaughterhouse
Laughing Gas
With The Death of Conservatism, Sam Tanenhaus establishes himself as one of America’s premier comic geniuses in the field of political commentary.
The Death of Conservatism
By Sam Tanenhaus
(Random House, 118 pages, $17)
With The Death of Conservatism, Sam Tanenhaus establishes himself as one of America’s premier comic geniuses in the field of political commentary. There’s a guffaw waiting for you on almost every page. And like a good showman, he saves the very best for the very last.
The Death of Conservatism is in a familiar genre: liberals telling conservatives what conservatism really is, or how to be truly conservative, or, sometimes, how to win elections. It’s what the New York Times and the Washington Post do after Republicans lose an election. It’s difficult to tell whether liberals really don’t understand conservatives and conservatism, or whether they are just gloating after winning an election but pretending to be “responsible.”
Predicting the past is difficult. Predicting the future, in writing, can be folly. But that is the hook for The Death of Conservatism. “We stand on the threshold of a new era that has decisively declared the end of an old one. In the shorthand of the moment this abandoned era is often called the Reagan Revolution.…This moment’s emerging revitalized liberalism has illuminated a truth that should have been apparent a decade ago: movement conservatism is not simply in retreat; it is outmoded.” Conservatives, Tanenhaus writes, offer only nihilism.
In the amber of those lines you can hear the champagne corks popping on election night last year. The One has come; conservatism has gone; all will be well in the world (repeat three times). We know better now, as Obama’s job approval rating sinks in the polls and people already talk of a Republican resurgence in 2010. Even Tanenhaus knows better: “Of course conservatism has fallen on hard times before….” Yet he can’t resist this book.
Liberals often have problems identifying conservatism: it is common for them to conflate conservatives with Republicans, or Wall Street tycoons, or big business as Tanenhaus does. But conservatives have struggled for years—decades—with Republicans (Eisenhower, Rockefeller, Lindsay, Goodell), Wall Street tycoons (Corzine, Bloomberg), and big businesses (pick any three—or three hundred).
Tanenhaus gives good marks to Presidents Eisenhower, Ford, and George H. W. Bush because they “respected the established boundaries of constitutional precedent, even if it meant carrying out actions imposed by hostile congressional majorities and adversarial courts.” Not for them standing athwart history. He even calls Bush and Clinton genuine Burkeans and “the modern era’s two true conservative presidents — and the two best.” Ha ha ha. The Democratic Party’s recent history, he says, is “choosing centrist, explicitly non-ideological presidential candidates” like—are you sitting down?—Barack Obama. Ha ha ha. LOL
You gotta admit: that is funny.
Tanenhaus says the right defines itself by “what it longs to destroy: ‘statist’ social programs; ‘socialized medicine’; ‘big labor’; ‘activist’ Supreme Court justices….” Well, yes. And why? Partly because conservatives don’t accept Tanenhaus’s analysis of Roosevelt’s New Deal, “the boldly regulatory measures Franklin D. Roosevelt took to tame the furies of a ravaged economy through the proliferation of federal agencies and programs….” Ha ha ha ha.
There were two problems with Roosevelt’s actions. In his review in the New York Times Book Review (which Tanenhaus edits) of The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes’s book on Roosevelt and the Depression, David Leonhardt wrote, “[Roosevelt’s] economic meddling failed to accomplish his larger goal of ending the Depression.” (Tanenhaus doesn’t agree: “Rooseveltism worked,” he writes.) FDR’s programs also drastically curtailed people’s freedom (e.g., among other actions, FDR outlawed the ownership of gold).
Much of the Roosevelt program still exists—which is why modern conservatives are still standing athwart history yelling Stop. And now Tanenhaus’s centrist hero, Barack Obama, is hitting the Roosevelt road again, trying to socialize American medicine.
Tanenhaus puts “socialized medicine” in quotes presumably to mock conservatives who call Obama’s proposed health plan “socialism.” Yet he quotes with approval Whittaker Chambers (whom he considers a true conservative for accepting the regulatory economics of the New Deal as the basis for governing in postwar America), who wrote to William F. Buckley: “The machine has made the economy socialist.” If Whittaker Chambers can use the term, why can’t conservatives? The answer is, Obama’s plan for 17 percent of the economy is socialism, and Tanenhaus knows Americans don’t want socialism.
But Chambers was a pessimist: he thought by leaving Communism he was leaving the winning side. In that he was wrong. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War, as he set out to do, and not, as Tanenhaus writes, by mere negotiation and compromise, but by outspending the Soviets on military hardware.
For Tanenhaus, conservatism is a mix of his understanding of Burke (maintaining equilibrium between conservation and correction) and Disraeli (advocating “policies the public demanded even though they might contradict the conservative leader’s own ideological certitudes”).
But what is the American public demanding now? Health care? Tanenhaus writes, “Obama’s plan to extend health coverage to the nearly fifty million Americans who lack it is pure Disraeli.” Ha ha ha ha. It is? Polls don’t indicate Americans are demanding Obama’s health plan—which is why, in desperation, the Democrats changed its name to KennedyCare. When that doesn’t work, what’ll they try next: JesusCare?
Letter to the Editor View all comments (41) | Leave a comment
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Robert Rosencrans| 10.1.09 @ 7:29AM
One things for sure. They'll never call it Quality Care.
Alan Brooks| 10.1.09 @ 8:55AM
but Clinton conserved more than Dubya did.
Conservatism is more than just being anti-Marxist
and anti-socialist.
A. Brooks| 10.4.09 @ 5:34PM
but social conservatism has a much better future than anyone thinks. Tech will allow more freedom for everyone, including the very worst people; so social conservativism will become MORE important than ever, not less-- as gold becomes more valuable as its supply decreases.
davelnaf| 10.1.09 @ 9:26AM
Yes, liberals do love to say over and over that the conservative movement is dead. But as most people are well aware--and liberals, curiosly, are not, the mind goes back time and again to those things it most fears. That probably also explains why the Chosen O has only been vaguely interested in what the mullahs in Iran are up to.
Klabautermann| 10.1.09 @ 10:05AM
Daniel Oliver misunderstood Whittaker Chambers, stating that, "Chambers was a pessimist: he thought by leaving Communism he was leaving the winning side. In that he was wrong." Tanenhaus has the typical "progressive" outlook. I'm sure, that like Alam Colmes, he believes people like Van Jones are mainstream liberals. These people have successfully redefined the term "American." It is an America where a supposedly respectable charity like the United Way will fund organizations like ACORN but will not fund the Boy Scouts. They will win if winning is defined as "transforming" America. If winning is defined as establishing their Utopia they are doomed to failure. The edifice that these people have erected will be dismantled. It will be dismantled because it is based on a delusion. When they are finished looting the U.S. economy they will not be able to fund their glorious schemes.
cloakedone| 10.3.09 @ 9:43PM
You, sir (klabautermann),
You are the wisest one in here. What happened to the American Spectator? It seems they cloak themselves in deceit now and are part of the "new" well, I'm not sure what it is. Pur insanity, I suppose.
Anthony| 10.1.09 @ 10:35AM
Ah, run that one past me again, did Cannabis Sam say "conservatives only offer nihilism"? So much for the limited use of medicinal marijuana.
What a wonderful juxtaposition, TAS & Mr.Mehan offering an article on the same day that quotes the magnificant Gertrude Himmelfarb, and the culture of death that liberals are so enamoured with.
So let's see, Sam sees those of us who fight for human life and dignity, at both ends of the spectrum as offering up nothing but nihilism. Those of us who believe in the rule of law, limited government, and the rights of the individual, as promotors of a culture of death. Whoa, I guess marijuana is indeed a gateway drug afterall.
And what was that about certain tame and toothless Republicans (my words) who lived within the "boundaries of Constitutional precedent". This type of dangerous speech has me thinking we might need a 1st Amendment Tzar afterall. That would be Obama Tzar # 22, or 23, can't keep count.
Tanenhaus, like his fellow leftist travelers, lives in a parallel universe that resembles his favorite TV show, Star Trek, or was it Jackass? Maybe Sam is after Olbermann's gig.
progressivismsucksdoesn'tit?| 10.3.09 @ 9:40PM
I always thought this magazine was a conservative one? I think they've sold out.
Seek| 10.1.09 @ 11:37AM
Tanenhaus' book needs a critique, not a taunt. Oliver didn't address the book's flaws, but chose instead to treat the work as some unintended joke.
Ha, ha ha. Clever, aren't I? Just like Dan.
Son Of Sam | 10.1.09 @ 1:05PM
Oh puhleeeaze: this book needs to be composted, not reviewed
stand strong until freedom dawns
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Yosemeti Sam| 10.3.09 @ 11:18AM
" Laughing Gas ...."
From which end?
Long Ben| 10.3.09 @ 2:37PM
Obamba used the centrist sounding cant " no new
taxes on any family making less than $200,000," to gull the gullible in the purple purple states. While the MsnNbcs of the world were so enamored of Obama's negritude they could not be bothered to vet his truly radical associations, thereby getting to the true radical essence of Obama himself.
Obama a centrist ? ha ha ha
With the money supply being increased X15 times we'll soon see if inflation is or is not a tax on the "great middle class " to whom fake centrist Pols pander, yet whom the radical left secretly hate as the prime enemies of the Revolution.
Ditto also to increased electric bills if Cap and Tax should pass.
Pingback| 10.6.09 @ 1:56PM
Steynian 387 « Free Canuckistan! links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Alan Brooks| 10.7.09 @ 11:43PM
Social conservatism has a much better future than anyone thinks. Tech will allow more freedom for everyone, including the very worst people; so social conservatism will become MORE important than ever, not less--
as gold becomes more valuable as its supply decreases.
Ronny Diaz| 1.7.10 @ 2:09PM
Wow, this was a really quality post. In theory I'd like to write like this too - taking time and real effort to make a good article... but what can I say... I procrastinate a lot and never seem to get something done.
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