Culture11

At Culture11, I've written a piece on how Republicans and Democrats can and should work together.  A little.  While they still can.

Rather than giving advice to President Obama on the policies he should offer, I would advise Congressional Republicans to take Obama up on some of his offers … and quickly, lest the opportunity slip away. ...

For a very brief period after President Obama takes office, there will be an alignment of political interests.

• Republicans philosophically support federal transparency and responsible budgeting — at least, they are supposed to; theory and practice have diverged in recent years.

• Democrats have marketed themselves as supporters of transparency and responsible budgeting — at least, they claim to; theory and practice will diverge in coming years.

But remember, Democrats aren't cleaning up the problems.  They're just putting new pigs in the mud. The time for idealism and cooperation is short.

However, there will only be a very brief window to do that. Whatever Senator Obama has claimed, President Obama will have very different interests. The new Democratic administration and Congress will act according to their own incentives, just as Republicans did in the past.

The election of Obama did not empower people. It empowered politicians. [...]

Hope and Change got people on board the Democratic bus. Political convenience will throw them under it.

There's a lot more to it.  Read the rest at Culture11.

This is the first of a two-day discussion between TheNextRight.com (Soren Dayton and Jon Henke) and Culture11.com (James Poulos and Conor Friedersdorf) about the Best Case and Worst Case scenario for the Right in 2008.  Conor Friedersdorf's contribution is here.  James Poulos contribution is here.  Jon Henke continues.

I had assumed that, in this exchange, I would be the cranky misanthrope who took the "better off fighting with Democrats than disappointed in Republicans (again)" approach; however, it seems Conor, James and I share some similar sentiments: the likelihood that we face an Obama presidency, the primary importance of rejuvenation.

The electoral outcome is, in some ways, almost irrelevant to the prospects for the Right. Sure, there are some very important things at stake in the next four years, but the best case scenario for the Right is not about tactical victory in the immediate fights, but about the long-term construction of a Movement.

You might object, “The Right already has a movement! Why do we need to build another one?” We need a major movement construction project because – as I wrote a few months ago – the Right’s movement is broken.

The Right made the “limited government” arguments, but never had the politically viable game plan for doing something about it; once elected, they were captive to the systemic incentives to distribute rewards to the rent-seeking interest groups.

It is not the ideology that has failed. Indeed, while the politicians themselves have failed, that is not even the root of the problem. What has really failed is the movement itself. A political movement’s support system is its destiny. The Right has a support system that ultimately supports the Republican Party, not the ideology. Rather than creating an infrastructure that develops and implements politically viable ideas for effectively limiting government, the Right has built an infrastructure for a political party that can appeal to the public’s range of “conservative” interests, but cannot implement them. The Right’s infrastructure is sustaining only half of the equation – the maintenance of power, without the implementation of the vision.

A half-vast right wing conspiracy is not enough.

The best case scenario for the Right is a fundamental reorientation of the movement toward (a) politically viable policy innovation that addresses the underlying political incentive problems, and (b) movement infrastructure that supports the ideology and agenda, rather than merely enabling the Party. In short, the Right will only win if the Right emerges with a better vision and a better support system to pursue that vision.

It’s not clear how the outcome of the 2008 election impacts this.  In fact, either an Obama or McCain victory could prove beneficial or detrimental and I don't think we can guess how the variables involved will play out.

• If Obama wins, the Right has nothing left to fall back upon; Republicans will be forced to change. What’s more, Democratic consolidation of power – an Obama Presidency and Democratic control of the House and Senate – will give Republicans the unifying grievances they need to begin turning the political pendulum back to the Right. Of course, those “unifying grievances” are “Democratic victories”, so this isn’t exactly a painless scenario.
• If McCain wins, Republicans get an opportunity to mitigate the short-term damage while reorienting the movement. But will the Republican Party make the fundamental changes it needs to make while still hanging onto power – however intangible, unsuccessful and unproductive that power is? That’s a less painful short term outcome, but the longer-term change is less certain.

Fighting against Democratic schemes to grow government and engineer society is what Republicans do best. Republicans are good as a minority party. Unfortunately, the Right has never figured out how to translate that limited government tendency into a governing agenda.

So, whatever the result of the 2008 election, the best result for the Right is to return to fighting Democrats and stop apologizing for Republicans.

This is the first of a two-day discussion between TheNextRight.com (Soren Dayton and Jon Henke) and Culture11.com (James Poulos and Conor Friedersdorf) about the Best Case and Worst Case scenario for the Right in 2008.  Conor Friedersdorf's contribution is here.  James Poulos continues.

The best-case scenario for conservatives this election season is a Presidential blowout and a gridlocked Congress. If McCain wins in a landslide (if! I said if!), the political and philosophical reappraisal of conservatism and the GOP that's already underway will continue under conditions of relative calm. Even a major McCain win will not fool anyone that Bush's main political legacy is anything beside sweeping and profound disappointment among Americans generally and conservatives in particular. A huge vote for McCain wouldn't be a mandate for either him or the party; it would be an awkward plea for a national pause. For conservatives, the inevitable internecine conflict that will put a McCain presidency on pause will at least avoid the special kind of petty panic and bitterness that accompanies a narrow loss. And a big win would let McCain spring a one-term pledge on the country without looking like a guy without the support to attempt another four years.

As for Congress, conservatives would benefit most under a McCain blowout from something approaching a legislative freeze. The House and the Senate are reeling drunk from the bailout, and, based on McCain's track record of legislation, in most cases we're all better off without his input today. A gridlocked Congress unable to do much except kick current laws down the field would give America a breather and conservatives a much-needed opportunity to reorganize a coherent agenda without more of the panic that accompanies the likelihood of a liberal legislative juggernaut. Because let's face it: no matter what happens, conservatives in Congress won't be running the show come November.

But this picture seems fanciful today. Conservatives will really want to know how an Obama blowout and a seized-up Congress could also make for a best-case scenario. Simple: a narrow McCain win or loss will keep Republicans locked in a death struggle over the true meaning of conservatism and the identity of the party. So long as Congress doesn't flip completely and utterly into Democratic hands, a landslide for Obama will do conservatives much more good than harm. Without an all-powerful Democratic House and Senate behind him—or, more likely, in front of him, pulling him along — a President Obama (even with an apparent mandate) would be high on inspiration and togetherness but low on power and ambition.

Hemmed in by the realities of an overstretched and strained economy, intense yet delicate military commitments abroad, and the broad but vague longing among the American people for a simple change in political tone, Obama would function largely as a figurehead — something conservatives wary of executive Bridezillas could appreciate. Liberals would get all the catharsis they wanted without really being able to effect much substantive change. The left would get the healing, the right would keep the hope. And as the Obama administration became consumed in the patient, laborious, and incremental task of leading a nation unified mostly in exasperation and exhaustion, conservatives would be able to clear their minds and clean their house — their most important task of all.

James Poulos is the political editor of Culture11.

This is the first contribution in a two-day discussion between TheNextRight.com (Soren Dayton and Jon Henke) and Culture11.com (James Poulos and Conor Friedersdorf) about the Best Case and Worst Case scenario for the Right in 2008.  Conor Friedersdorf opens the discussion.

Election 2008 pits a schizophrenic Republican who revels in being a maverick against a temperamentally cautious Democrat keen on rallying the country behind center-left policies. A conservative isn't going to be elected this November, as there aren't any running.

On foreign policy, the best outcome for conservatives is an administration that avoids unnecessarily embroiling America in foreign wars, winds up Iraq and Afghanistan without endangering our security, reverses the proliferation of nuclear weapons, improves our alliances, increases our soft power, manages the rise of China and India, and pursues terrorists aggressively enough to avoid another major terrorist attack. Were there a metric that gave the proper weight to each of these tasks, I've no certain way of knowing whether a McCain Administration or an Obama Administration would come out ahead. After 8 years of George W. Bush using the War on Terror as a political bludgeon, however, only an Obama Administration would have a chance to depoliticize the effort to make America safer, so all else being equal he wins.

On domestic policy, the best case for conservatives is a solution to the financial crisis that doesn't take the country too far toward centralized economic planning, entitlement reform that increases our long term fiscal solvency, market oriented health care reform and immigration reform that predicates an amnesty for non-criminal illegal immigrants on the prior construction of a big border wall and demonstrated workplace enforcement. Neither candidate is going to do even half of these things. Perhaps John McCain would govern as a moderate conservative; but I find it more likely that Obama would unify rather than divide conservative opposition and set the stage for a GOP resurgence in Congress circa 2010. Call this one a tie.

On judges, conservatives are better off under a John McCain presidency by a long shot, so long as his appointees don't undermine civil liberties in service to the War on Terror, which they won't in the best case.

Overall I'd say the best case for conservatives is an Obama Presidency whose overambitious agenda provokes a GOP backlash in the 2010 midterms, causing a chastened Obama Administration to focus on bipartisan entitlement reforms that only a Democratic president could pass. As I think about it, what I'm saying is the best we can hope for is another Clinton Administration sans the affairs while the right regroups, casts aside the corrupt yes men who enabled the Bush Administration to do so many un-conservative things, and develops a coherent, appealing domestic agenda. My assumption is that such a process could not proceed with John McCain and Sarah Palin in the White House.

Conor Friedersdorf is the features editor of Culture11.