The full time, never-ending, exhausting search for work has meant that I haven't been nearly as productive this summer as I would have hoped. A few research projects have fallen through the cracks. And I haven't been paying attention to politics. I was hoping to read a few books on presidential politics in order to get a better grasp on what goes on during campaign season: the strategies, compromises, and complexities that go on underneath what frustratingly appears as no more than rhetorical demagoguery, purposeful obfuscation, and misinformation for the sake of one-upmanship rather than the public good.
Here are some of the books I ordered from the library but haven't looked at yet: The Strategic President: Persuasion and Opportunity in Presidential Leadership, Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American Century, When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences, Presidential Leadership in Political Time, and The Presidency and the Political System.
While looking these books up, I discovered the Hauenstein Center, which has some great YouTube videos of lectures on the presidency. In the videos posted below, Dr. Gleaves Whitney gives a half hour talk on why so many conservatives broke from Bush before the recession and before the war. Whitney reminds us that
that in American history, opinion leaders who
originally support a president often break with him. He traces this phenomenon back to the first presidency, with
Jefferson famously splitting from George Washington. During the second presidency, Hamilton led
federalists in splitting from Adams, who was judged to not be federalist enough. As we have so often seen in
American history, this fracturing led to the election of the opposition party: Hamilton unwittingly helped his arch-nemesis, Jefferson, take office. The most famous split
in the 20th century was of liberals splitting from Johnson over his
Vietnam War policies; once again, this was a major factor in the success of the
Republican nominee, Richard Nixon.
Whitney
points to four main reasons for these splits, one of which is that
supporters are almost always let down by the necessity of compromise,
which must occur not only between democrats and republicans, but between
the left and right wings of both parties. One of my sorest areas of
ignorance is in understanding the nature of Obama's own compromises,
which of course have shattered the Left's faith in him and de-energized his administration and campaign. However,
Whitney's talk, being about Bush and the conservatives who lost faith in him, reminded me of the many sides of
conservatism in this country that we just don't hear enough about.
It's common knowledge that fiscal
conservatives split when Bush increased federal spending on education
for No Child Left Behind and expanded Medicare. But terribly under-discussed is the fact that a large demographic of foreign policy
conservatives, represented by William Buckley and Andrew
Bacevich, split with Bush, even before the invasion of Iraq. They believed that neocon imperialist visions of "democratizing" complex societies were ungrounded, reckless, utopian
pipedreams. Similarly under-discussed are the cultural conservatives who split, including many intellectuals like Jeffrey Hart. While cultural conservatism in the United States is often associated with the religious right, Hart represents a significant demographic of cultural conservatives that felt totally alienated by Bush: conservatives who considered evangelicals to be unreasonable people with emotionally driven politics. Such conservatives often thought that Evangelical campaigns, such as the "right to life," were laudable but unwinnable battles and thus a waste of energy.
All of these groups that split considered themselves realists, and accused the administration of being driven by emotional utopianism. Speaking of the shift of conservative power to the South in the 1960's, Hart has harsh, even prejudicial words that highlight this split and his sense of alienation: "The consequences of that profound shift [for the conservative identity] are evident, especially with
respect to prudence, education, intellect and high culture." The conservative guardians of realism and of high culture - those who favor students continuing to study the canon from Plato to Shakespeare, and value an intellectual approach to the Bible, for example - continue to feel left out in the cold. An extraordinarily large number of them voted for Obama.
The following videos, in three parts, are titled "Conservatives vs. Bush". The speaker is scholar Gleaves Whitney.
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