A number of commentaries and blogs label pieces with the moniker, MUST READ. This piece in the New Yorker is certainly in that category. It’s a thoughtful history of the Conservative Movement with lots of details about how the "movement" rose to prominance, the characters involved, and where things are headed [down]:
The era of American politics that has been dying before our eyes was born in 1966. That January, a twenty-seven-year-old editorial writer for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat named Patrick Buchanan went to work for Richard Nixon, who was just beginning the most improbable political comeback in American history…
There are so many themes in the article, it’s hard to abstract. It’s filled with dichotomies e.g. the post-Goldwater Conservatives run against government, against taxes, but actually expand government. Rather than try to summarize it, I’ll comment on my reaction. And there are plenty of other comments about the article to choose from:
The thing I liked about the article were several ideas that hadn’t occurred to me. The fall of 60’s Liberalism was due in part to a very active strategy [Buchanan/Nixon] aided by the failure of Liberals to meet their challenge. The decline of Conservatism has to do with their success at politics being unmatched by any sensible governance. They’re good electioneers but terrible public servants. But there was something about the article that left me a bit cold. When I thought about it, it seemed to me that the author was caught up in the problem. He talked about the rise and fall of Liberalism and the rise and fall of Conservativism as if those are the only choices and we are doomed to go back and forth for all times.
Packer does point out that neither Obama nor McCain fit these old molds [actually Clinton doesn’t fit exactly either]. I think that the whole Liberal/Conservative metaphor is falling. Liberalism is appropriate when there are social ills to be resolved. Conservativism is appropriate when collectivism gets out of hand. Neither ideology, offers at its center, a guide to pragmatic problem solving – the kind of approach needed for things like population control, energy sources, global warming, the health care crisis, etc. In many ways, Europe/Asia is ahead of us to my way of thinking. They actually fought out the Communism versus Fascism conflict on bloody battlefields, and tried on these governments of ideology first hand. With the formation of the European Union, they appear to be on the road to a new pragmatism that replaces both poles of the spectrum.
To me, the Liberal/Conservative, Communism/Fascism ideological polarities are anachronistic. I’d like to see less attention paid to the Fall of Liberalism or the Fall of Conservativism, and an increasing focus on the Rise of Something-Else-ism. Liberalism was against something – symbolized by Fascism. It fell. Good job. Time to retire. Conservativism, in the end, was against something – symbolized by Communism. They were right about that. It failed. Good job. Time to retire. Government is about problem solving, not ideology…
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