In responding to
Ross Douthat's "Whither Conservatism?" thumbsucker Tuesday,
I
offered a concise analysis:
[T]he simple lesson of the past two [election] cycles is
something that anyone who has been paying attention since Ross
was in middle school would tell you: Lie down with Bushes,
wake up with Democrats.
Having been criticized previously for daring to criticize Douthat
(apparently the Great Right Hope of some Young Turks), I
will let that suffice for now, and turn my attention to
Jonathan Chait:
The broader symbolism here is that it’s another sign that Barack
Obama’s first two years may not look like Bill Clinton’s. In
1993-94, Clinton’s approval ratings sagged, his party lost
special elections everywhere, and conservative Democrats were
switching to the GOP. Obama’s approval ratings are high and
holding steady, Democrats remain far more popular than
Republicans, Democrats held the first special election, and now
they’ve picked up a party switch. It’s still early, but Obama is
starting to build a self-sustaining psychology of success.
As a philosophy-major friend of mine likes to say, "All things
are alike, except insofar as they are different, and all things
are different, except insofar as they are alike." When attempting
to analyze contemporary politics by reference to historical
analogies, ample caveats are required. There are important
differences between 1993 and 2009 that must be taken
into account:
- In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected with a mere 43% plurality,
with populist independent fiscal conservative Ross
Perot siphoning away a double-digit share of the popular
vote.
- The end of the Cold War (from the fall of the Berlin
Wall in 1989 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991) had destabilized the political calculus, rendering
foreign policy a secondary concern.
- The Reagan coalition had successively defeated Jimmy Carter
(1980), Walter Mondale (1984) and Mike Dukakis (1988) at the
presidential level, although Democrats maintained a firm majority
in the House of Representatives and had only lost their Senate
majority for six years (1981-87).
- The recession of 1991-92 was brief and mild (despite Democrat
claims that it was The Worst Since The Great Depression), and
recovery was already evident by the summer of 1992, absent any
impact of Clintonian policy.
Team Clinton and the Democratic Congress clearly underestimated
the potential for a mid-term backlash, and the simple key
for Republicans in 1994 was crafting a message that
would attract Perot voters to GOP congressional
candidates. Voila, "The Contract With America."
The current situation is much different. Republicans controlled
both houses of Congress 1995-2007, with the
exception of the brief and narrow Democratic
Senate majority (2001-03) caused by the defection of Jim
Jeffords. Both the Cold War and the GOP glory of the Reagan years
are distant memories for those under 40, and the woes of the
Republican Party since 2004 cannot be blamed on any third-party
spoiler. Finally, the current economic crisis is far
more serious, and is likely to last much longer, than the mild
recession of 1991-92.
The relevant questions now are (a) what are the prospects
for a Republican resurgence in the 2010 mid-terms? and (b) what
political strategies might best accomplish such a resurgence or,
if you're a Democrat, prevent it? Douthat and Chait appear to be
in agreement that the GOP is unlikely to regain power without a
drastic overhaul, both in policy and politics.
However, the problem is that both of them are rather young
(Douthat 29, Chait 37) and both are Beltway pundits, not hands-on
political operatives. In the hurry-up breathlessness of the
Information Age (there were no Web sites, let alone blogs or
Twitter, in 1993), they're rushing to be the first to prophesy
the electoral landscape in November 2010 based on polls
and other auguries on the eve of Barack Obama's first 100
days in office.
A Republican resurgence in 2010, if there is to be one, will in
large measure be a function of candidate recruitment and
fundraising that are only now getting underway in the aftermath
of the last election. Douthat and Chait -- ideologues naturally
concerned about the ideological content of politics --
lack the inclination and expertise to evaluate the kind of
nuts-and-bolts electoral mechanics that take place at
the state, district and county level.
Douthat and Chait each tell a different narrative of where we
have been, where we are now, and where we're likely to go in the
future. But if you've lived long enough -- and I remind the
reader that I
am an ex-Democrat who proudly voted for Bill Clinton in 1992,
when I was 33 -- you know how suddenly the political
landscape can shift. I became a conservative about the time
Jonathan Chait graduated college, and while Ross Douthat was
still in ninth grade.
One thing that has been consistent in recent American
political history: There have always been many men like
Douthat and Chait who sit around Washington observing
and commenting on trends, and then there have been those rare men
who make trends happen.
"I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter
what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do
nothing."
--
Ronald Reagan, 1981
Whether or not a conservative resurgence is likely, it can only
be accomplished by those who begin with the assumption that
it is possible, and then work tirelessly to turn possibility
into reality.
