I think Obama is truly a conservative. Not conservative in the pejorative, Republican, class-warfare sense. Conservative in the sense of thinking that making changes slowly and methodically is a virtue. Conservative in the sense of thinking that respectfully acknowledging and listening to all sides in a debate, and trying to strike a balance, is a good thing. Conservative in the sense of avoiding rancor and heated argument.
Those are all important values, and in many scenarios I tend to agree that following those values is the right thing to do.
But in the present case, that style of conservatism doesn't apply.
On one side, the economic crisis we face is so frightening that, as Krugman has argued,
In the comment thread, I responded with a combination of basic agreement, qualified by some more minor disagreement. But I think the point of agreement is far more fundamental. For one thing, it relates to an argument I first advanced right after the 2006 mid-terms, which I republished in a diary here last May, A Golden Oldie From 2006: Liberalism is the "True Conservatism". The basic upshot of combining MadScientist's comment with my earlier diary is that I don't see Obama's conservatism as necessarily problematic. But I do see recognizing his conservatism as key to understanding what is problematic: the specifics of how his conservatism fails to comport with the moment, just as MadScientist claimed.
This diary should also serve as a counterpoint to another diary one I'm working on, a response to an article at The Democratic Strategist, "Obama the Sociologist".
Background from my earlier diary kicks off on the flip.
In my earlier diary, I wrote, near the bewginning, concerning the conservative desiderata of social stability:
Throughout this period [the last 500 years]--and one can go back even further, to the Italian Renaissance--conservatives have attacked liberals for undermining the established social order. Liberals, of course, have not seen things that way--with rare, but important exceptions, such as overthrowing the established social order of British colonial rule over the American colonies, or overthrowing the established social order of slavery.
Generally, however, liberals have cared less about the social order, and more about people themselves; and for this reason they have not generally engaged in directly countering the conservative critique. This is quite understandable, really. For conservatives, the social order is much more real than individual people are. For liberals, the reverse is true. And both sides naturally express themselves in terms of what is most real to them.
Yet, in doing so, liberals have made a significant mistake, for the liberal philosophy is actually far superior to conservative alternatives when it comes to a number of key conservative ideals. For example, liberalism is superior in preserving social order and harmony in a dynamically changing, and diverse world--a world in which traditional structures commonly fail, causing widespread chaos and strife. Liberalism is not the cause of such change--as conservatives commonly allege--but rather its facilitator, providing means of managing change so intense that it would otherwise tear societies apart. A prime example is the idea of a modern secular state has proven fundamentally important in putting an end to religious wars, which otherwise threaten perpetual strife.
And a good deal farther down, I concluded:
If the conservative answers have repeatedly been wrong for America, the conservative questions have not--at least some of them. The question of how to preserve social order is a valid and important one, even if the question of how you keep blacks, women, immigrants, gays, Jews, etc. in their place is not. And it is in this sense--where conservatives have been most correct--that liberalism has shown itself to be far superior in answering the questions:
You preserve social order by including the so-called "undesirables." You grant them the dignity they deserve, simply by being human, and they proceed to act with dignity. It's as simple as that. (You think gays are hedonistic narcissists utterly destructive to social order? Then recognize their right to marry. And stop treating them like second-class citizens.)
You preserve religion's place as a polestar in people's lives, precisely by keeping it separate from the vagaries of politics, in which change is the only constant, and compromise a guiding principle. You render unto God that which is God, and unto Cesaer that which is Cesaer's.
You preserve the integrity of local communities and their institutions by engaging the power of state and national government to deal with problems that are too large for them to handle, that would twist and distort--if not utterly break them, if they were left to stand alone.
You maintain historical continuity, and respect for the nation's traditions by rethinking both in the light of new experience, and the experience of new Americans. Self-reinvention is our most hallowed tradition.
You command respect for authority by exercising authority with respect for the people, who are the only legitimate source of authority.
You preserve the highest levels of personal morality first by granting people the freedom to discover its logic for themselves, and embrace it as their own freely chosen commitment, and second by insisting on the public morality of a just and equitable social order.
In short, you deliver the most legitimate desiderata of conservatism by embracing the practices, policies and ideals of liberalism.
Liberals are the true conservatives. And this fact--fully and consciously assimilated by liberals themselves--is perhaps the surest foundation on which a new and lasting governing liberal majority can be built in America today.
From all the above, it should be obvious that I don't see anything inherently wrong with conservatism in this one key sense. And thus, to the extent that this describes Obama, I don't object to it on principle at all. But now let's turn to how I responded to MadScientist's commnet:
I Mostly Agree, But...
I've made similar arguments in the past about conservatism as gradual change.
Movement conservatives will have none of this, as they're reactionaries in the style of de Maistre, rather than conservatives in the style of Burke. But it is much more in line with traditional Anglo-American conservatism than what flies under the "conservative" banner today.
However, this:
Conservative in the sense of thinking that respectfully acknowledging and listening to all sides in a debate, and trying to strike a balance, is a good thing.
Was never really part of the Burkean conservative package. All sides do not get a hearing. Only the respectable sides (i.e. those with real institutional muscle) do. And this reflects Obama's modus operandi rather well, I think.
Conservative in the sense of avoiding rancor and heated argument.
Precisely. As I argued back in 2006, less Martin Luther King, more Rodney King.
If somebody insists that the reason for increased leukemia rates is the schools rather than the persistent leaks from the nearby chemical plant, compromising by reducing the output from the chemical plant and closing half the schools will only add extra problems.
Except that the "bipartisan" approach is more aptly described as closing half the schools and relocating them inside the chemical plant.
In short, there are times in which conflict is inevitable, and if you deny conflict, you deny change--change which is going to happen any way, one way or another, and perhaps much more disastrously than if you agreed to embrace conflict in a mediated arena--as per the example of Martin Luther King's strategy of creative non-violence (as explained so powerfully in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail". My problem, thus, is not with what Obama wants to do, but with his misreading of the historical moment, and what it necessarily calls for.
I believe that the message of Mike's book is highly relevant here: we have a moment in which major change is not just needed, but possible. However, it cannot be gained without embracing conflict, and encouraging those very "disruptive forces" that are the very engines of change. The sort of conflict that Martin Luther King described and advanced was very different than the conflict generated by movement conservatives over the past 40 years, so what I am arguing for is not the continuation of business as usual. It is, rather, a different path of change than the one that Obama is seeking to take. The reason, quite simply, is that the path Obama is seeking to take has already been tried--most notably by Clinton in 1993-1994--and utterly thwarted by the Republicans. It's a very appealing path, but it's a path that, in present circumstances, leads nowhere but to disillusion and defeat.
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