Fuzzy Signals

The big idea process in US conservative politics

A friend of mine, a political science professor, forwarded a great editorial by the NYT's David Brooks, A House Divided, and Strong, as a follow up to our offline conversations about my earlier post on Investing in Intellectual Infrastructure.

As we've already established here, the thing is not to emulate the conservative pyramid structure, but to learn from it. Yet many, it appears, have learned the wrong things. To be fair, the metaphor of pyramid is a bit misleading. It's not a lock-step monolithic structure designed with the single-minded purpose of servicing the White House's messaging needs. Rather it's more organic and messy than that, with the bottom layers being relatively self-directed and independent -- and often feuding as Brooks points out. The success factor has not been in their cosy consensus, but in the vibrancy of their debates which have been going on for years: "...neocons arguing with theocons, the old right with the new right, internationalists versus isolationists, supply siders versus fiscal conservatives. The major conservative magazines - The Weekly Standard, National Review, Reason, The American Conservative, The National Interest, Commentary - agree on almost nothing."

The process is thus more like a group of similar species competing and cooperating for keystone dominance in a particular territory. Turns out this is a fruitful environment to develop, gestate and hone big and compelling ideas that stick. It doesn't matter that they are inconsistent at this lower level; that's the job of political operators like Rove to filter, select and frame as these varying ideas and agendas present themselves.

Being out of government, which they were for a long time, also had a galvanizing and freeing impact on the big idea creation process for the conservatives. It forced them to return to their intellectual forebears for direction and reexamine core assumptions about their public philosophy:

That turned out to be important: nobody joins a movement because of admiration for its entitlement reform plan. People join up because they think that movement's views about human nature and society are true.

Liberals have not had a comparable public philosophy debate. A year ago I called the head of a prominent liberal think tank to ask him who his favorite philosopher was. If I'd asked about health care, he could have given me four hours of brilliant conversation, but on this subject he stumbled and said he'd call me back. He never did.

Liberals are less conscious of public philosophy because modern liberalism was formed in government, not away from it. In addition, liberal theorists are more influenced by post-modernism, multiculturalism, relativism, value pluralism and all the other influences that dissuade one from relying heavily on dead white guys. As a result, liberals are good at talking about rights, but not as good at talking about a universal order.

If I were a liberal, which I used to be, I wouldn't want message discipline. I'd take this opportunity to have a big debate about the things Thomas Paine, Herbert Croly, Isaiah Berlin, R. H. Tawney and John Dewey were writing about. I'd argue about human nature and the American character. In disunity there is strength.

My friend believes that the Democrats need to spend more time in the wilderness before they can successfully regain power. In the meantime, what I want to know is what other thinkers would you include in that list?