Lucille
11-30-2008, 04:24 PM
The Millman Chart and the GOP (http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/11/the_millman_chart.php)
http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/millmanchart.JPG
Now the question is whether the GOP can endure as a Wilsonian-Jacksonian coalition, or whether it needs a strong infusion from another quadrant to be viable politically and (especially) capable of effective governance.
One way to think about this is to imagine a variant on the Millman Chart that organizes the four tendencies by their relative hawkishness: In this division, the Wilsonians and Jacksonians would both fall on the hawkish side of the line, while the Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians would be - well, "dovish" is probably the wrong word for Hamiltonians like Dwight Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush and (to a certain extent) Ronald Reagan, but at the very least it's safe to describe the Hamiltonian tendency as much more skeptical about the utility of military force than either the Wilsonians or the Jacksonians. At the moment, then, the Hamiltonian shift toward the Democrats leaves the GOP dominated by two factions that both tend to err on the side of hawkishness in any given foreign-policy controversy - and this strikes me as a profoundly unhealthy development.
In theory, one could imagine this problem being solved by a revival of Ron Paul-style right-wing Jeffersonianism (which aspires, of course, to drive the Wilsonian neocons out of the party, and create a Jacksonian-Jeffersonian GOP). But despite Paul's fundraising numbers and Daniel Larison's prolific blogging, I don't think there's enough life in Right-Jeffersonianism to make it a plausible force in our national politics. (Nor do I think that a Jeffersonian-Jacksonian "coalition of the introverts" could govern the nation responsibly unless the United States actually withdrew from its current quasi-imperial role, which almost certainly isn't going to happen.) There is, however, plenty of life in the Hamiltonian tendency - despite the fact that many of its practitioners, starting with the buffoonish Chuck Hagel, did not exactly distinguish themselves during the debates over the Iraq War - and the exodus of the Scowcroftians to Obamaland notwithstanding, I still think that the congruence between the Jacksonian views of the GOP base and a Hamiltonian take on the world offers fertile ground for a right-realist revival. It probably won't come from the Hagels and Scowcrofts and their peers, but I'm optimistic that you'll see it in the next right-of-center generation - the twentysomething and thirtysomething conservatives for whom the Iraq War was a formative (and chastening) experience.
FWIW, Douthat is the dude who wrote Grand New Party, which is in short, a gameplan to embrace more big-government, more welfare state, less liberty, and lay all the failures of the GOP on the libertarians and small government types. Reason covered his book here (http://www.reason.com/news/show/129267.html).
http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/millmanchart.JPG
Now the question is whether the GOP can endure as a Wilsonian-Jacksonian coalition, or whether it needs a strong infusion from another quadrant to be viable politically and (especially) capable of effective governance.
One way to think about this is to imagine a variant on the Millman Chart that organizes the four tendencies by their relative hawkishness: In this division, the Wilsonians and Jacksonians would both fall on the hawkish side of the line, while the Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians would be - well, "dovish" is probably the wrong word for Hamiltonians like Dwight Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush and (to a certain extent) Ronald Reagan, but at the very least it's safe to describe the Hamiltonian tendency as much more skeptical about the utility of military force than either the Wilsonians or the Jacksonians. At the moment, then, the Hamiltonian shift toward the Democrats leaves the GOP dominated by two factions that both tend to err on the side of hawkishness in any given foreign-policy controversy - and this strikes me as a profoundly unhealthy development.
In theory, one could imagine this problem being solved by a revival of Ron Paul-style right-wing Jeffersonianism (which aspires, of course, to drive the Wilsonian neocons out of the party, and create a Jacksonian-Jeffersonian GOP). But despite Paul's fundraising numbers and Daniel Larison's prolific blogging, I don't think there's enough life in Right-Jeffersonianism to make it a plausible force in our national politics. (Nor do I think that a Jeffersonian-Jacksonian "coalition of the introverts" could govern the nation responsibly unless the United States actually withdrew from its current quasi-imperial role, which almost certainly isn't going to happen.) There is, however, plenty of life in the Hamiltonian tendency - despite the fact that many of its practitioners, starting with the buffoonish Chuck Hagel, did not exactly distinguish themselves during the debates over the Iraq War - and the exodus of the Scowcroftians to Obamaland notwithstanding, I still think that the congruence between the Jacksonian views of the GOP base and a Hamiltonian take on the world offers fertile ground for a right-realist revival. It probably won't come from the Hagels and Scowcrofts and their peers, but I'm optimistic that you'll see it in the next right-of-center generation - the twentysomething and thirtysomething conservatives for whom the Iraq War was a formative (and chastening) experience.
FWIW, Douthat is the dude who wrote Grand New Party, which is in short, a gameplan to embrace more big-government, more welfare state, less liberty, and lay all the failures of the GOP on the libertarians and small government types. Reason covered his book here (http://www.reason.com/news/show/129267.html).