As the new Democratic majority pre-
pares to take power, Republicans have
become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a
party of whiners.
»Some of the whining almost defies be-
lief. Did Alberto Gonzales, the former
attorney general, really say, “I consider
myself a casualty, one of the many casu-
alties of the war on terror”? Did Rush
Limbaugh really suggest that the finan-
cial crisis was the result of a conspiracy,
masterminded by that evil genius
Chuck Schumer?
But most of the whining takes the
form of claims that the Bush adminis-
tration’s failure was simply a matter of
bad luck — either the bad luck of Presi-
dent Bush himself, who just happened
to have disasters happen on his watch,
or the bad luck of the G.O.P., which just
happened to send the wrong man to the
White House.
The fault, however, lies not in Repub-
licans’ stars but in themselves. Forty
years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect,
to make itself the party of racial back-
lash. And everything that has happened
in recent years, from the choice of Mr.
Bush as the party’s champion, to the
Bush administration’s pervasive incom-
petence, to the party’s shrinking base,
is a consequence of that decision.
If the Bush administration became a
byword for policy bungles, for gover-
nment by the unqualified, well, it was just
following the advice of leading con-
servative think tanks: after the 2000
election the Heritage Foundation specif-
ically urged the new team to “make ap-
pointments based on loyalty first and
__________
The roots of
presidential failure
go deep.
__________
expertise second.”
Contempt for expertise, in turn, rest-
ed on contempt for government in gen-
eral. “Government is not the solution to
our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan.
“Government is the problem.” So why
worry about governing well?
Where did this hostility to govern-
ment come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater,
the famed Republican political consul-
tant, explained the evolution of the
G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which
originally focused on opposition to the
Voting Rights Act but eventually took a
more coded form: “You’re getting so ab-
stract now you’re talking about cutting
taxes, and all these things you’re talk-
ing about are totally economic things
and a byproduct of them is blacks get
hurt worse than whites.” In other
words, government is the problem be-
cause it takes your money and gives it
to Those People.
Oh, and the racial element isn’t all
that abstract, even now: Chip Saltsman,
currently a candidate for the chairm-
anship of the Republican National Com-
mittee, sent committee members a CD
including a song titled “Barack the
Magic Negro” — and according to some
reports, the controversy over his action
has actually helped his chances.
So the reign of George W. Bush, the
first true Southern Republican presi-
dent since Reconstruction, was the cul-
mination of a long process. And despite
the claims of some on the right that Mr.
Bush betrayed conservatism, the truth
is that he faithfully carried out both his
party’s divisive tactics — long before
Sarah Palin, Mr. Bush declared that he
visited his ranch to “stay in touch with
real Americans” — and its governing
philosophy.
That’s why the soon-to-be-gone ad-
ministration’s failure is bigger than Mr.
Bush himself: it represents the end of
the line for a political strategy that dom-
inated the scene for more than a gener-
ation.
The reality of this strategy’s collapse
has not, I believe, fully sunk in with
some observers. Thus, some commenta-
tors warning President-elect Barack
Obama against bold action have held up
Bill Clinton’s political failures in his first
two years as a cautionary tale.
But America in 1993 was a very differ-
ent country — not just a country that
had yet to see what happens when con-
servatives control all three branches of
government, but also a country in which
Democratic control of Congress depend-
ed on the votes of Southern conserva-
tives. Today, Republicans have taken
away almost all those Southern votes —
and lost the rest of the country. It was a
grand ride for a while, but in the end the
Southern strategy led the G.O.P. into a
cul-de-sac.
Mr. Obama therefore has room to be
bold. If Republicans try a 1993-style
strategy of attacking him for promoting
big government, they’ll learn two
things: not only has the financial crisis
discredited their economic theories, the
racial subtext of anti-government rheto-
ric doesn’t play the way it used to.
Will the Republicans eventually stage
a comeback? Yes, of course. But barring
some huge missteps by Mr. Obama, that
will not happen until they stop whining
and look at what really went wrong.
And when they do, they will discover
that they need to get in touch with the
real “real America,” a country that is
more diverse, more tolerant, and more
demanding of effective government
than is dreamt of in their political phi-
losophy.
|