Steven Hayward has recently attracted a good deal of attention among liberals and conservatives for his provocatively titled op-ed piece, "Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?" As he himself notes in the essay, titles help. This one sure did.
On one level, it's difficult to understand why my conservative friends on Facebook, for instance, seemed intrigued and impressed. It's predictable. The jarring title leads into a meditation on the glory of times past leads into lamentations of the sinful present leads into predictions of future bliss. It is, in other words, a jeremiad, perhaps the most familiar rhetorical genre in American history. The title may ask the question, but the answer is assumed by the genre itself: Of course not. There may be some bad apples today, but surely conservatism will soon cease to be conservatainment and recover its true character.
Moreover, one has to wonder at some of the "good" examples offered by Hayward. George Gilder? Hugh Hewitt? Jonah Goldberg? Glenn Beck? Really?! Look, I've read my Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, Milton Friedman, and Brent Bozell/Barry Goldwater. Hugh Hewitt is no Richard Weaver. Hayward visibly sweats to come up with signs of hope.
On the other hand, I see the attraction precisely because of the jeremiad. As Sacvan Bercovitch argues, the formulaic structure of the jeremiad--glorious covenant, sinful decline, inevitable redemption--assures true believers that a renewal of past truths--of the covenant--will lead to redemption. The logic of the jeremiad is clear: a failure to maintain the covenant has led to decline. Ever stronger adherence to its traditional values will bring about redemption. They are not wrong nor have they ever been wrong. They are right and they need to be more right; purity saves all. It's no coincidence that Hayward is writing a massive account of the Reagan years. The truths of the past will assure future success.
Equally important, there is nothing systemically wrong with conservatainment by this account. The problem rests not with its policies or belief systems; it rests with the failure of conservatainers to put those truths into action or to believe strongly enough in those truths. Like Tinker Bell, conservatism will live again if we believe. Hayward sets the stage for the ritualistic scapegoating of George W. Bush as a liberal--dissociating Bush/conservatainment from Reagan/conservatism. Redemption then follows as surely as sunrise follows night.
Although the structure of the essay assures conservatives of their eventual triumph, the form struggles mightily--ineffectually--to contain two powerful contradictions. First, Hayward's argument--and he is one of many--implicitly dismisses the Bush years far too easily. Second, he discusses, but cannot fully grasp, the structural challenges facing a conservative intellectual revival.
If there is to be a conservative intellectual revival, it must grapple honestly with the implosion of the conservative agenda in the Bush Administration. Much as Democrats in the 1980s needed to critique and understand the collapse of New Deal liberalism in the Carter Administration, so, too, do conservatives need to face squarely the collapse of Reaganism in the Bush years. Hayward doesn't bring it up. Bruce Bartlett honestly admitted Bush's failures, but attributed them to a betrayal of Reaganism. Judging from the title of his next book, he now seems ready for a more difficult intellectual task.
George W. Bush took the logic of Reaganism to the end of the line--tax cuts, military force, judgmental values. In turn, said policies blew up the budget, created few jobs, heightened income inequality, froze median income, wasted military power, cost American lives, won no wars, lowered American credibility, and confined Republicans primarily to southern states, with a few fundamentalist plains states thrown in for good measure. When Neil Patrick Harris is the most popular television personality out there because he is clearly one of the most interesting people on the planet, then the Republican Party needs to rethink its ideas/prejudices. Reaganism won't cut it, any more than a new New Deal saved Democrats in 1984 or 1988.
In addition, Hayward nicely traces the role of talk radio in contemporary conservatainment, but he can't bring himself to articulate the systemic problem that results. On the one hand, he notices that market incentives matter. On the other hand, he fails to notice that those market incentives cut the wrong way. Talk radio is entertainment; its reason for existence is to draw an audience for advertisers and so Rush, Bill, Sean, Glenn and the rest entertain to draw that audience. Similarly, big conservative organizations traditionally buy up the red meat books in bulk to push them to the top of bestseller lists. The market incentives strongly encourage conservatainment. You can make money that way. And that's what they're in business to do.
I'm not sure how to change that. But those incentives need to be changed. And that change is only likely to come when somebody--Bartlett, perhaps?--seriously engages conservatism's failures. Hayward is not the guy for the job nor does this essay begin that needed task.
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