E.J. Dionne
writes up two books by heterodox conservatives -- David Frum's
Comeback and Grand New Party by Ross Douthat and
Reihan Salam -- in his latest column. (I reviewed Frum's book on the main site; I
included the Douthat-Salam book in a recent discussion of similar
books in the print edition of TAS.) I'm sympathetic to the
project of making conservative domestic policy more relevant to the
problems that actually concern that electorate today. I even agree
with some of the policy prescriptions laid out by these three
authors. But Dionne's column illustrates the peril of getting too
close to big government conservatism, as I fear Frum, Douthat, and
Salam often do.
"On policy," Dionne writes, "the books are less persuasive,
partly because conservatism, almost by definition, has trouble
achieving the level of intervention in the economy that the current
inequities may require." Once you accept certain liberal premises
about government and economics, and once you cease to view limiting
government as a central conservative task in itself, and once you
deemphasize the various ways government causes economic anxieties,
you enter into a bidding war with liberals you cannot possibly win.
Liberals can always promise a more expensive and more activist
government than anything a conservative can offer. And liberals are
only going to give you so much credit for trying to meet them
halfway.
That isn't to say that we should oppose government intervention
regardless of the merits. But neither should conservatives labor
under the illusion that we can simply throw a few big government
bones to the electorate and solve our political problems.
topics:
Economics, Books, Conservatism
