Interesting Things I Shoulda Written About When They Were Published, But Didn't: David Frum Pleads for Mercy for the Reformicons...
David Frum: Don't Knock the Reform Conservatives: "Sam Tanenhaus profiled a group of self-described "reform conservatives"...
...in respectful praise. The art director went even further: The magazine photographed 11 of the profiled people in an 18th-century hall, crumpled papers at their feet, an homage to J.L.G. Ferris’s well-known painting of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence...
But... but... but... of the 11 people only six--Levin (mentioned in 19 paragraphs), R. Ponnuru (10), A. Ponnuru (4), Strain (2), Wehner (2), and O'Beirne (1)--are mentioned by Tanenhaus at all in the article. It's not a profile of a group, of an intellectual movement. Frum wishes it were--I wish it were. But it isn't.
Frum continues:
As a group, they do not deviate very far from current Republican orthodoxy. But they urge that the next round of Republican tax cuts favor parents rather more and high-income earners rather less... Earned-Income Tax Credit be replaced by more narrowly targeted wage subsidies... consolidate... social programs into a “universal credit” for needy people. There is no equivalent here of, say, the willingness of the New Democrats of the 1980s to tangle with teachers’ unions...
Over the past five years, the American right has veered toward a reactionary radicalism unlike anything seen in American party politics in modern times.... Many of the 11 people profiled by Tanenhaus have skittered back and forth between radicalism and reform. Many of the reformers are employed by the American Enterprise Institute. In the first Obama term, AEI strongly identified itself with the “makers versus takers” rhetoric of the radicals. AEI’s president published a book on the theme. It was at AEI that Representative Paul Ryan delivered his famous speech warning that the United States was nearing a tipping point at which the “makers” would outnumber the “takers,” condemning the country to an inescapable future of government dependency. (AEI even made a cartoon to explain the concept to 8-year-olds!) Almost every single one of Tanenhaus’s reformers backed Ryan at the time—and even now, reformers seek to assure skeptical party radicals that the reform agenda will deliver more ideology, not less. So there is a basis for skepticism about how much change, really, is swirling through the reformers’ institutional water coolers.
Yet as a veteran myself of some of these internal debates—I was fired from AEI in 2010 for saying things that the reformers are edging toward today—I do see cause for optimism in the reformist turn by elite conservatives. What matters most about the reformers is not the things they say but the things they don’t. They don’t shrug off the economic and social troubles of 80 percent of the nation. What matters most about the reformers is not the things they say but the things they don’t. They don’t abuse the long-term unemployed. They don’t advocate tighter monetary policy in the midst of the worst slump since the 1930s. They don’t urge an immigration policy intended to drive wages even lower than they have already tumbled. They don’t pooh-pooh the risks of a government default on its obligations...
In recent years... conservatives seemed to have less to say to the nation. Stagnant wages, rising personal indebtedness, long commutes, health-care costs, climate change—these new challenges did not elicit new thinking...
If the policy agenda that follows remains cautious, remember: These conservative reformers aren’t trying to change the world. They’re trying to change a political party. You don’t change people’s minds by telling them they are wrong, even—or especially—if they are wrong. You change their minds first by establishing an emotional connection with them. Next you ratify their existing beliefs. When it comes time to introduce a new idea, you emphasize its consistency with things they already believe. This is what the reform conservatives are doing, or have begun to do. If they seem to be moving slowly, well, take it from me: It’s no good being even 10 minutes ahead of the times...
