Bradley in DC
11-29-2007, 09:10 AM
http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110010922
A Man on a Mission
What's wrong with Michael Gerson's "heroic conservatism."
BY JOHN C. HULSMAN
Thursday, November 29, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
Michael Gerson, long praised (some would say over-praised) as President Bush's genius speechwriter, is also, it turns out, a would-be moral philosopher and political strategist. In "Heroic Conservatism," he calls for the Republican Party to redefine itself and brighten its future by casting aside its suspicion of big government and pursuing lofty projects of statist do-goodery. Let us hope that Republicans ignore him.
Mr. Gerson's ideas are not exactly new. There was a boomlet in the late 1990s, among certain right-of-center pundits at least, for something called "National Greatness" conservatism--an outlook that favored soul-stirring rhetoric, big budgets and a muscular confidence in the power of government to make America, if not the world, a better place (if only we all tried hard enough). In many respects, Mr. Gerson is working from the "National Greatness" playbook, although he adds an explicitly religious dimension, believing that the greatness we are bound to pursue as a nation is divinely ordained and biblically required.
What about the longtime conservative belief that limited, accountable government works best--that it is the form of government least likely to squander resources, thwart private initiative, impinge on freedom and avoid harmful, unintended consequences? Unheroic, says Mr. Gerson. What about the quaint notion that government should live within its means? Short-sighted when people are suffering, says Mr. Gerson. Little wonder that Mr. Gerson's co-workers in the White House (from which he retired earlier this year) called him, only half-jokingly, "the Christian Socialist." As it happens, Christian socialism--going back to R.H. Tawney and Tolstoy--has an honorable intellectual tradition. But its tenets are an awkward fit for America in general and for the Republican Party in particular.
Mr. Gerson calls traditional conservatives "anti-state conservatives," coyly implying that anyone who objects to sweeping, messianic programs--Mr. Gerson loves the idea of the U.S. government spending billions of dollars on AIDS in Africa--is flirting with anarchism. He scoffs at the "unheroic" conservative belief that domestic problems should be solved either by private means or by narrowly gauged government efforts at the local level--that is, at the level closest to the people. He warns: "If Republicans run in future elections with a simplistic anti-government message, ignoring the poor, the addicted, and children at risk, they will lose, and they will deserve to lose."
The "deserve to lose" part of his message is especially galling. The U.S. government has been pouring billions and billions of dollars into the welfare state since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, with results so wayward that, for decades now, a cottage industry has grown up among policy intellectuals to document all the disappointing results and ill effects. The welfare reform of Bill Clinton's first term grew out of such a critique. Still, Mr. Gerson equates "caring" with government spending, as though, self-evidently, yet more "visionary" programs are the best way of dealing with poverty, addiction and children at risk.
To the traditional conservative, it is more heroic--that is, more honest and realistic--to acknowledge that such problems are too deeply ingrained to be solved by a far-away Washington bureaucracy. Traditional conservatives since Edmund Burke have put their faith in the organic forces of society--family, community, civic institutions. In America, such faith has made common cause with commercial dynamism and the opportunities it creates for upward mobility.
Mr. Gerson will have none of it. Siding with FDR and Woodrow Wilson, his acknowledged heroes, he assumes that traditional conservatives do not care about American society's problems. He never stops to ponder whether traditional conservatives disagree with his statist prescriptions precisely because they do care.
For all its Christian urgency, there is not much humility on view in "Heroic Conservatism." The book has a hectoring tone, blithely claiming the moral high ground and ignoring a great deal of chastening experience. Such self-satisfied thinking runs counter to the Burkean temperament, which is painfully aware of the limits, and potential flaws, of even well-intentioned men. For traditional conservatives, societies evolve in an almost geological way--formed by the immense weight of history and culture over vast stretches of time. Grand schemes, even grand religiously driven schemes, do not suddenly "direct" history or solve long-festering problems or, for that matter, remake the world.
And make no mistake, remaking the world is part of the "heroic" program. Mr. Gerson is an equal opportunity social engineer. He defends the Iraq war, for instance, on sermonic moral grounds without acknowledging its huge, unplanned costs, its worrisome overstretch of America's military forces and its disastrous unintended consequences (the war has made Iran the dominant power in the Persian Gulf). But facts on the ground don't seem to matter, since Mr. Gerson's faith in the efficacy of high ideals remains unshakable: "Sometimes, even in a tired time, even when the arguments against idealism have piled up in mountains, a thunderbolt can fall from the clear heights of heaven." With such rhetoric, Mr. Gerson is deliberately echoing G.K. Chesterton. But Chesterton was inspired to write his own resonant phrases by contemplating Abraham Lincoln and his turbulent times. It is hard to see a likeness to George W. Bush and ours.
Mr. Hulsman is a scholar in residence at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin and the author, with Anatol Lieven, of "Ethical Realism: A Vision for America's Role in the World," just published by Vintage Press. You can buy "Heroic Conservatism" from the OpinionJournal bookstore.
A Man on a Mission
What's wrong with Michael Gerson's "heroic conservatism."
BY JOHN C. HULSMAN
Thursday, November 29, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
Michael Gerson, long praised (some would say over-praised) as President Bush's genius speechwriter, is also, it turns out, a would-be moral philosopher and political strategist. In "Heroic Conservatism," he calls for the Republican Party to redefine itself and brighten its future by casting aside its suspicion of big government and pursuing lofty projects of statist do-goodery. Let us hope that Republicans ignore him.
Mr. Gerson's ideas are not exactly new. There was a boomlet in the late 1990s, among certain right-of-center pundits at least, for something called "National Greatness" conservatism--an outlook that favored soul-stirring rhetoric, big budgets and a muscular confidence in the power of government to make America, if not the world, a better place (if only we all tried hard enough). In many respects, Mr. Gerson is working from the "National Greatness" playbook, although he adds an explicitly religious dimension, believing that the greatness we are bound to pursue as a nation is divinely ordained and biblically required.
What about the longtime conservative belief that limited, accountable government works best--that it is the form of government least likely to squander resources, thwart private initiative, impinge on freedom and avoid harmful, unintended consequences? Unheroic, says Mr. Gerson. What about the quaint notion that government should live within its means? Short-sighted when people are suffering, says Mr. Gerson. Little wonder that Mr. Gerson's co-workers in the White House (from which he retired earlier this year) called him, only half-jokingly, "the Christian Socialist." As it happens, Christian socialism--going back to R.H. Tawney and Tolstoy--has an honorable intellectual tradition. But its tenets are an awkward fit for America in general and for the Republican Party in particular.
Mr. Gerson calls traditional conservatives "anti-state conservatives," coyly implying that anyone who objects to sweeping, messianic programs--Mr. Gerson loves the idea of the U.S. government spending billions of dollars on AIDS in Africa--is flirting with anarchism. He scoffs at the "unheroic" conservative belief that domestic problems should be solved either by private means or by narrowly gauged government efforts at the local level--that is, at the level closest to the people. He warns: "If Republicans run in future elections with a simplistic anti-government message, ignoring the poor, the addicted, and children at risk, they will lose, and they will deserve to lose."
The "deserve to lose" part of his message is especially galling. The U.S. government has been pouring billions and billions of dollars into the welfare state since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, with results so wayward that, for decades now, a cottage industry has grown up among policy intellectuals to document all the disappointing results and ill effects. The welfare reform of Bill Clinton's first term grew out of such a critique. Still, Mr. Gerson equates "caring" with government spending, as though, self-evidently, yet more "visionary" programs are the best way of dealing with poverty, addiction and children at risk.
To the traditional conservative, it is more heroic--that is, more honest and realistic--to acknowledge that such problems are too deeply ingrained to be solved by a far-away Washington bureaucracy. Traditional conservatives since Edmund Burke have put their faith in the organic forces of society--family, community, civic institutions. In America, such faith has made common cause with commercial dynamism and the opportunities it creates for upward mobility.
Mr. Gerson will have none of it. Siding with FDR and Woodrow Wilson, his acknowledged heroes, he assumes that traditional conservatives do not care about American society's problems. He never stops to ponder whether traditional conservatives disagree with his statist prescriptions precisely because they do care.
For all its Christian urgency, there is not much humility on view in "Heroic Conservatism." The book has a hectoring tone, blithely claiming the moral high ground and ignoring a great deal of chastening experience. Such self-satisfied thinking runs counter to the Burkean temperament, which is painfully aware of the limits, and potential flaws, of even well-intentioned men. For traditional conservatives, societies evolve in an almost geological way--formed by the immense weight of history and culture over vast stretches of time. Grand schemes, even grand religiously driven schemes, do not suddenly "direct" history or solve long-festering problems or, for that matter, remake the world.
And make no mistake, remaking the world is part of the "heroic" program. Mr. Gerson is an equal opportunity social engineer. He defends the Iraq war, for instance, on sermonic moral grounds without acknowledging its huge, unplanned costs, its worrisome overstretch of America's military forces and its disastrous unintended consequences (the war has made Iran the dominant power in the Persian Gulf). But facts on the ground don't seem to matter, since Mr. Gerson's faith in the efficacy of high ideals remains unshakable: "Sometimes, even in a tired time, even when the arguments against idealism have piled up in mountains, a thunderbolt can fall from the clear heights of heaven." With such rhetoric, Mr. Gerson is deliberately echoing G.K. Chesterton. But Chesterton was inspired to write his own resonant phrases by contemplating Abraham Lincoln and his turbulent times. It is hard to see a likeness to George W. Bush and ours.
Mr. Hulsman is a scholar in residence at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin and the author, with Anatol Lieven, of "Ethical Realism: A Vision for America's Role in the World," just published by Vintage Press. You can buy "Heroic Conservatism" from the OpinionJournal bookstore.