The 30th anniversary of optimism
Patrick Deneen points out, in his latest post, David Brooks’ remarks about how Ronald Reagan transformed conservatism from a pessimistic creed about decline and loss into an Emersonian vision of unlimited optimism. In fact, one can pinpoint exactly when the transition finally took place, July 15, 1979 during Jimmy Carter’s “Crisis of Confidence’” speech. It was a speech that gave Reagan the chance to frame the “new conservatism” in optimistic terms because the other side have given up on optimism and talked about the long, grim struggle ahead.
It was Deneen who saw that the text of Carter’s address, contrary to the rhetoric against it, was actually a conservative document if you believed that conservatism meant self-sufficiency, prudence and saving for the future. That was not the conservatism that Ronald Reagan stood for, not by 1980. Even Reagan himself was a changed man. The Reagan of 1964, reflecting the dark Goldwaterian view that the U.S. was just a sliver away from totalitarianism, became the Reagan who believed the U.S could be John Winthrop’s ”shining city on a hill” if under new management. Perhaps it was inevitable this would happened since Reagan (an ex-Democrat) styled himself more after Franklin Roosevelt (whom he voted for four times) than Robert Taft and because of his battles with the anti-American New Left at Berkeley. And for the “conservative movement” to take power it had to capture a broad coalition of voters, some of them libertarians who didn’t like Jimmy Carter telling them to drive speed limit; most of them New Deal Democrats who weren’t conservative intellectuals but who did want a President who would fix the economy, restore American defenses and combat permissiveness. And he in turn promised to do all these things and fashioned a new ideological synthesis around it.
Of course, as we eventually discovered, optimism as an ideology is really nothing more than nationalist posturing, a justification for American exceptionalism. This is much of what passes for conservative discourse is shallow and superficial as I wrote in this Etherzone.com article ”The Politics of Rush Limbaugh: The Happy People vs. Gloomy People.” Who knows? If Left patriotism continues to flourish in the face of Right pessimism, Limbaugh may very well change his mind and hope President Obama succeeds.
Speaking of the New Left, is it any wonder why Carl Ogelsby, former SDS National Chairman, sought out old Right thinkers according to Bill Kauffman, because they had largely the same critique of American society as the SDS did? Unfortunately the Vietnam War and Civil Rights struggle changed the SDS from this, the Port Huron Statement in 1962:
“We would replace power rooted in possession, privilege or circumstance by power and uniquness rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason and creativity…to encourage the independence in men and provide the media for their common participation.”
To this, the screaming announcement by Jeff Jones of the Chicago collective of the Revolutionary Youth Movement or RYM, better known as the Weathermen, the radical, terrorist faction of the SDS to an SDS chapter meeting at University of Wisconsin-Madison in the fall of 1969 after the Weathermen had taken over the meeting (excerpt taken from the book Rads )
“You don’t see any m—- f—- college students going to the m—- f—- university up here do you? No, what you see are stone communist revolutionaries.”
Thus did the SDS went from advocating “participatory democracy” to espousing a revolution that would establish a communist dictatorship in the space of seven years. The end result of the New Left ideology was either prison, death, complete repudiation (as it was for people like David Stockman, Dr. Thomas Fleming and P.J. O’Rourke) or slowly slip back into the mainstream to become conventional yuppie Democrats. (Ouch!) Although one can argue the Bill Ayers of the world have succeeded in their attempt to deconstruct America through becoming tenured radicals at colleges and universities instead of trying to blow them up. But writer Julius Lester in 1970 summed up the New Left truly when he said: “American radicals are perhaps the first radicals anywhere who have sought to make a revolution in a country which they hate.”
Luckily the traditional Right does not have to worry about losing the people over some perceived anti-Americanism because there is none. The traditional right has battled the New Left to preserve the legacy of men like Robert E. Lee or Thomas Jefferson and prevent the interpretation of U.S. history from becoming a Marxist passion play. However there is the issue of anger at America, one that is not easily dealt with. Barry Goldwater found this out in 1964 and so did George McGovern in 1972 as detailed in the book The Liberals’ Moment::
“George McGovern was in a phone booth in the (Senate) cloakroom and he overheard several Democratic colleagues, unaware of his presence, talking about him. “Somebody,” McGovern recalls, said that “if we just had these tapes, McGovern would have won that election. Senator Herman Talmadge of Georgia disagreed and the reason he gave shook McGovern. “You know,” said Talmadge, “what was wrong with George in that campaign was that he gave the impression that he was mad at the country. He was condemning her policy in Vietnam and just seemed like everything he said indicated that he was as mad as hell about this country. People aren’t going to support a candidate like that. This is a great country. It makes mistakes, but by God if you get up there and preach day and night against America, you’re not going to be elected.”
Indeed, and Ron Paul may very well have had the same problem in 2008. Voters perceiving his critique of U.S. foreign policy as one of anger and indignation against the U.S. may have turned off some voters that might have been interested in him. This will be the challenge the traditional Right of the future, to prevent such critiques from becoming jeremiads. As right as the prophets of were about Israel’s impending doom, it’s only human nature to avoid listening to unpleasant truths. Appealing to people’s love of place and their folkways, picking up the currently unclaimed mantle of economic populism, and appealing towards decentralism and freedom as the central-state and globalist institutions grasp for more power, finding things to be for rather than being always against something will keep the traditional Right free from becoming another New Left.
I remember the speech quite well but re-read it anyway. Two things stand out.
1. The speech was meandering and not in itself confidence building. Carter talked about getting confidence back. But confidence is instilled by men who exude confidence, not men who ask every Dick and Jane in the country to contribute their thoughts.
2. The speech conflated two points that sapped its impact. The first point, that Americans were becoming materialistic, and weak was and is true. But it was bootless to bring this up in the context of a material, policy challenge. The problem was to solve the oil price dilemma. Reagan did solve that dilemma using market mechanisms. Carter’s alternative was a regime of massive Government involvement in our economy, windfall profits taxes and asking people to turn their thermostats down I don’t see it as Conservative in any way.
I think the philosophical point people are trying to make is that consumerism and self indulgence are not conservative traits. This is perfectly true. But Carter’s brand of mealy mouthed collectivist Kant isn’t conservative either. Americans saw at the time was that they were being scolded by an ineffectual man for a problem beyond their control.
The larger point here is that you seem to have adopted a model of Conservative thought that comes dangerously close to rejecting politics. Conservative politicians must deal with the historical cards that they are dealt. Reagan was elected to do a job, not be the Pontifex Maximus to the Republic. If wealth and a luxury are turning Americans into sheep, and they are, don’t expect to get elected telling them so. And if you aren’t elected you are useless.
Reagan’s optimism was more than a pose. It’s a fundamental American trait. Americans are optimists. The role of a Conservative political leader is to keep the natural tendency of Americans to jump on bandwagons from propelling them down the road to perdition. The fact that Reagan is now the patron saint of all the Neo-con’s and journeyman GOP hacks in the nation should not drive us to attack his person or legacy. It’s particularly galling to hear references to Reagan’s deficits. Congress appropriates money. Reagan never had a Republican Congress.
We may need to adopt the role of Cato, trying to make our fellow Americans live up to their patrimony, but we don’t stand a chance in doing so with out a bit of optimism thrown in.
“Reagan never had a Republican Congress.”
First of all that’s not entirely true. The Republicans controlled the U.S. Senate from 1981-1986 and had a ideological majority in the House from 1981-1983. They had a chance to enact their broader agenda and they chose not to do so to keep their coaltion in tact. This is why David Stockman left as budget director, because politics did get in the way.
Secondly you’re right that optimism sells a lot better politically than pessimissm. But optimism cannot be an ideology in of itself. This was brought on the war in Iraq because optimism drove out intelligence and good old fashioned common sense, certainly a conservative value, no?
Sean, Reagan’s first budget was rather famously declared “dead on arrival” by Ted Kennedy and Reagan got the message. He never tried to present a close to balanced budget again. Of course Bob Dole and the other establishment R’s weren’t going to the wall to help. The House ideological majority agreed on deregulation and fighting the USSR, not on the budget. Presidents cannot appropriate money. They can make matters worse by asking for more than the gluttons in Congress want, but they can’t spend a dime not appropriated by Congress. You can argue that Reagan’s military spending requests drove the budget up but we did get victory in the Cold War for our money. Reagan did work to deregulate the economy and this did create an economic boom.
Of course optimism is not a philosophy, it’s a frame of mind that is part of the American character. My point is that there can be no political accomplishment by a political movement that flies in the face of the culture in which it operates. Let’s take it as a given that Americans feel that they can do whatever they set out to do. It seems to me that the role of a conservative leader is to reject idiotic or evil projects for optimistic Americans to die over. I leave it to educators and spiritual advisers to temper the “Can do” attitude of my fellow countrymen.
The Iraq was a fiasco not just because some Americans thought we could do the impossible, but because a proud fool in the White House listened to devious non-conservatives. We’ll probably never know whether the neo-cons were overly optimistic about their adventure in Iraq or if they just didn’t care.
Probably because they all thought the U.S. “can do” when it came to Iraq.
Right, but that’s not optimism but carelessness, or perhaps criminal disregard for reality.
Sorry to interrupt, but can’t you not be optimistic and prudent at the same time? If you haven’t heard it yet, the Ron Paul “Strategy Room” clip posted on the Campaign for Liberty site ends with a humorous combination of the two. He says something to the effect of “the good thing about this is that the whole empire will come crumbling down”. Not every panelist was warmed by his good cheer, but he is certainly expressing an optimistic, make-lemonade perspective while being honest about the bad news at hand. Is it not prudent to find a silver lining? Does your own practical experience not show that an honest appraisal of the challenge is best met with optimism about your ability to meet the challenge? Without optimism, who will fight the good fight?
Jack, for my part, thanks for interrupting. You make my point better than I did. We must be cognizant of the grim reality but optimistic that we can effect events. The neocons did play the pied piper role in leading optimistic Americans into folly. We Americans can learn from this but if we lose our characteristic optimism we face the danger of falling into despair.
One of the nice things about being a pessimist is that you can be pleasantly surprised.
I think what we’re looking (or at least I am) for is equalibrium in between the Panglossian mentality of many right-wing social democrats and, of course, total despair.
Perhaps we all seek is a “prudent” optimism.
Amen.