Bill Clinton was a polarizing figure, in spite of his popularity. For both friends and enemies, he was the true torch-bearer of the 60s and the Baby Boomers: idealistic, flabby, occasionally elitist, urban, self-indulgent, draft-dodging, and all the rest. His lifestyle fed into stereotypes held by Reagan Democrats and blue collar Americans about liberal elites, and his gun control measures and perceived hostility to religious people–not least in the Waco Massacre–did much to fuel an anti-government paranoia among conservatives during that time. In its more mainstream manifestation, this included measures like the Contract With America and the attempted alliance of paleoconservatives and certain libertarians in venues like Chronicles magazine and the John Randolph Club. The most extreme variant included the militia movement and the Timothy McVeigh bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. Much of this feeling dissipated after 9/11 and the 2000 election. Many conservatives channeled their feelings of alienation and fear at Islamic terrorists. Bush’s perceived moral clarity was welcome, and a new kind of bellicose populism became prominent in the movement, even if the democracy-spreading stuff was dismissed as necessary window dressing. This turned out not to be so.
Bush, who was frequently called “more conservative than his father” behind closed doors in Republican circles in 2000, turned out to be quite a bit more idealistic and more liberal than his father. His foreign policy was less steeped in realism. His embrace of Hispanics, including illegal immigrants, as the future of the Republican Party did much to alienate social conservatives and Reagan Democrats, who became more concerned about mass immigration in recent years.
I believe Obama has the capacity to have the Clinton effect, uniting conservatives who have now lost the distraction of a non-conservative president leading us into hopeless backwaters like “spreading democracy in the Middle East” or expanding home ownership to bad credit risks. After all, without the albatross of the first President Bush after 1992, conservatives united around a truly conservative set of themes and did much to scuttle Clinton’s dumbest ideas. As with Clinton, Obama’s big spending, dubious heritage, increasingly hackneyed rhetoric, and recent anti-gun noises will likely trigger the anti-government, anti-spending feeling that conservatives always seem to find again as soon as they’re out of power. I may be wrong; the demographics have changed considerably since 1994. Many millions of newcomers have arrived since then. And younger people are less likely to marry and have children–these milestones being major inducements to conservatism among not particularly political folks. We’re still here though. Obama has been fearless about confronting conservative on various hot button issues–criticizing the US in Turkey, mocking Christian beliefs in his stem cell decisions, kowtowing to Mexico on guns–and the intense backlash is brewing, along with that old time conservative anti-government rhetoric. While this message fell on deaf ears during the inflationary boom, there is always a group that views big government spending as profligate and short-sighted during hard economic times. Such views connect directly with those of our Founding Fathers and have even penetrated the once pro-New Deal Reagan Democrats as they have climbed the economic ladder. When combined with the more culturally-based opposition to amnesty, which Obama seems surprisingly poised to advocate, Obama may accomplish what Bush could not: uniting conservatives around a small government, neo-nationalist set of views.
The political disaster would be for some opportunist without a thorough understanding and ability to articulate these views to become the face of conservatism. This is why McCain, Huckabee, and Palin each present different risks to the party. None is a real conservative steeped in the nationalist and small government strains of thinking that have grown so robust under Bush’s pseuedo-conservatism, and each would become a lightning rod for conservatives, while in fact being a populist or militarist imposter.
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For small government conservatives, the best choice is anyone who has a chance to slash the size and power of the federal government, without making the people more vulnerable to hostile forces from within and without.
I don’t see anyone at all like that. Romney is a smart enough manager to slow down the growth of government, but he wouldn’t shrink it. No one can, with all the built-in expansionary measures and entitlements. Not to mention the environmental lobby which sees no limits to its own growth.
I suspect a discontinuity, a black swan, is on its way.
The problem, too, is that you have to be either stupid or an ego-maniac to run for national office. The toll it takes on you personally and on those around you is immense. To wit, any true Conservative in the anti-Obama mold would be torn to shreds by the media from Day 1 – or even before. Whoever that new Reaganite is would have to be clean as a whistle, have a family as strong as can be, and be sharp witted and mentally tough enough to not only weather that storm, but guide through it. That takes one heck of a person and that person is certainly not on the national scene right now. There may be some State-level people like that, but that’s Double-A compared to running for President.
As I understand it, a black swan is supposed to be unanticipated. What I figure is going to happen is an entirely predictable slow decline. Creditors will slowly stop feeding the U.S. trade imbalance, and a higher and higher proportion of the credit they do supply will be eaten up by a growing government. With the ability to consume curtailed but the appetite still there, we’ll continue to see little real investment as we struggle to keep up with past consumption levels, instead of investing in new production.
We’ll end up with western European style growth rates, or worse, and our growth will be primarily driven by overseas growth. We’ll eventually (30 years? 50 years?) become a second rate power, and at some point our attempt to police the world almost single handedly will collapse amid this contradiction.
Somewhere at about that point, in a rapidly changing security environment, a Black Swan event is very likely to occur. That’s not to say one won’t occur in the meantime (a terrorist blows up D.C. for instance), it’s just I don’t see any reason why we should expect one now any more than we should always be open to the possibility of one occurring.
[...] and Obama’s recent road show will not help. I think this is right, though I also agree (and wrote earlier this week) that America may have changed so much that the old Real America may not be numerous enough to slow [...]
Hey, thanks for those charts. i always wondered how much of the bubble was attributed to minority buyers. Now, I know.