Heroic Conservatism Why Republicans Need to Embrace America's Ideals (And Why They Deserve to Fail If They Don't) by Michael Gerson
HarperOne, 320 pp., $26.95
This well written and engaging memoir from former White House speechwriter Michael Gerson offers a strong defense of administration policies and a you-are-there perspective on some of the most important decisions and utterances made by President Bush in his first six years in office.
Along the way, Gerson also reveals the novel ideological character of Bush's presidency, as well as the limits of his approach to governing. Moreover, his account goes out of its way to confirm the fears of earlier writers who have attacked the president for being an "imposter" conservative. It is an apology for the administration that unapologetically defends the administration's most unconservative aspects.
As Gerson writes, "It is fair to ask: In what sense is this approach of mine conservative?" It is a good question. Gerson calls his approach "idealism," which he contrasts with the "noble pessimism" of "traditional conservatism." And it is worth studying his approach, since its most prominent adherent, according to Gerson, is George W. Bush himself.
Gerson's idealism has two parts. The first, "idealism abroad," concerns the "promotion of liberty and hope" as "alternatives to hatred and bitterness." The second, "idealism at home," involves a "determination to care for the weak and vulnerable" while healing "racial divisions" by the "expansion of opportunity." Idealism is not the "ideology of minimal government," nor is it the "rigid secularization" that endangers "one of the main sources of social justice in American history," religious faith.
Furthermore, idealism itself is endangered. Currently there is a "backlash" against it. Some on the right seek to replace idealism abroad with "realist" policies which are "deeply skeptical" that "other countries can sustain democracy." Others want to "get back" to what they see as the "real business" of conservatism: "cutting government." Gerson does not like these people. He saw their governing vision at work "in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina," when the "administration found men and women who had never had a bank account." Such a problem--"so clearly rooted in governmentally enforced oppression"--requires an "active response by government."
If all this sounds to you remarkably like Democratic talking points circa 2005--that somehow an emphasis on individual responsibility rather than government dependency causes human suffering--you are right. Democrats emerge from Heroic Conservatism relatively unscathed. True, Gerson criticizes their party's abortion policies, its secularism, its view that "ethical relativism is the only answer to moral arrogance," and its lack of serious ideas about how to confront the nightmarish "combination of Islamic radicalism and proliferation." But he saves his real ire for those conservatives, if they exist, who do not hold the "radical belief in the rights of every individual" and a "conviction" that government "must act"--"when appropriate"--to "secure those rights when they are assaulted by oppression, poverty, and disease."
Nor does Gerson hold his fire on those "conservative critics" who enjoy the "severe pleasure of cutting food stamps," who seek "steep reductions in foreign assistance," and who wanted to pay "the costs of Katrina" by "postponing or ending the Medicare prescription-drug benefit." He blames the "weak, uncreative policy" of the now-forgotten 2004 State of the Union address on "budget concerns" caused by the "internal triumph of conventional Republican thinking." He rejects the idea that the Bush administration's budgets were excessively large; he found them "frustratingly restrictive."
Gerson contrasts "traditional conservatism" with his own "heroic conservatism." Yet heroic conservatism, he writes, also has a tradition behind it. This is the legacy of "religiously motivated reform." Gerson's political hero is William Wilberforce, the "witty, eloquent, conservative member of parliament" in the early 19th century whose "Christian faith led to a moral revulsion at slavery so intense and physical" that it "nearly destroyed his health." Wilberforce led a successful crusade to end the British slave trade. Similarly, President Bush, with Gerson at his side, has led crusades to end tyranny, poverty, and disease.
Today's "idealism," Gerson writes, is the 21st-century version of Wilberforce's religiously based moralism. But there is a more recent antecedent to heroic conservatism. The marshaling of government resources to combat social ills is a pretty good description of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, and there is a substantial historical record measuring its results, for better or worse. But Gerson does not examine this record. He says only that President Bush "knew that Americans did not seek or desire to undo the Great Society."
Some may blanch at Gerson's politics, thinking him overly pious and self-righteous. But they would be wrong to do so. For Gerson is not only correct when he points out the long history of spiritually inspired reform movements; he is also right to argue that the politics of such movements are, more often than not, necessary, humane, reasoned, and just contributions to democratic debate in a constitutional republic. And that's not all Gerson's right about: There really are cynics in our public life, folks who argue that only certain states and peoples are "ready" for democracy (often the same folks who sing the virtues of "guided democracy" or "soft authoritarianism"), who belittle the Bush administration's declaration of war on terror as an "overreaction" to the September 11, 2001, attacks, and who disguise cheap partisanship as "reason," "science," or "reality-based" public policy. These people are called liberals.
The problem with Gerson's approach is that he routinely confuses prudential policy questions with matters of personal character. This tendency began early, back in 1999, when Gerson helped Bush define the latter's philosophy of "compassionate conservatism." The necessity of "compassionate conservatism" presupposes that there is a non-compassionate conservatism--and if the words have any meaning, non-compassionate conservatives, rather than simply holding views on public policy with which Gerson and Bush disagree, lack virtue.
In Heroic Conservatism, Gerson specifically targets "libertarian indifference to the poor." But this is a caricature. I know a few libertarians, and none of them are indifferent to poverty. They just think economic growth and self-reliance are more effective than the federal government at lifting families out of destitution. Thinking so does not make them unvirtuous people, and it doesn't strengthen public debate to suggest as much.
This same tendency was present during the debate over immigration reform. White House officials, including the president, occasionally insinuated that opponents of the administration's efforts to extend amnesty to 12 million illegal aliens without doing much to stop the inflow of illegal labor were xenophobes and nativists. No doubt some of those opponents were exactly that. But not the large majority, which was perfectly willing to debate the administration on policy, rather than personal, grounds.
More recently, when presidential candidate Fred Thompson told a questioner (who wanted to know whether he supported the president's African AIDS initiative) that "the government has its role" in fighting disease but we also "need to keep firmly in mind" the "role of us as individuals and Christians," Gerson went ballistic. In a Washington Post column he accused Thompson of picking on the "most vulnerable people on the planet," of "playing to isolationist sentiments," of possessing "shallow" theological knowledge, and of reflecting an "anti-government extremism." Not least, he suggested that Thompson lacked "moral seriousness." Support for the president's African AIDS policy, Gerson wrote, is an "expression of compassion and empathy" evincing a "serious conception of America's role in the world."
End of discussion. Say otherwise, and you'll find your motivations attacked, just like Fred Thompson.
Such an allergy to meaningful debate weakens one's persuasive abilities. It limits the scope of one's arguments. Because every issue is personalized, none can be debated impartially. Because the "idealist" or "compassionate conservative" believes he occupies the moral high ground, all counter-arguments are beneath him. And because the root of all disagreement--and thus the root of all politics--is the other side's character flaws, rhetoric is quickly reduced to name-calling.
Of course, it doesn't have to be this way. There are reasons other than heart-tugging anecdotes and appeals to personal virtue to support parts of Gerson's program. The strongest sections of Heroic Conservatism are his detailed, plainly written, step-by-step explications of the Bush Doctrine and the decision to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein. Elsewhere, Gerson writes handy expositions of Catholic social doctrine--ideas like subsidiarity and solidarity--which give us insight into Bush's domestic policy, and provide a reasonable basis for allowing religion some space in our public life.
One day there will be a defense of a "compassionate" or "strong-government" conservatism that will articulate its public-policy rationale without calling its opponents small-minded, cruel, extremist, indifferent, or shallow. Such a book is probably being written now, in fact. I can't wait to read it. Call me an idealist.
Matthew Continetti, associate editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD , is the author of The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine