Purity v. Principle

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

One of the burning issues of the first two years of the Carter Administration was the wisdom of the proposed treaty to transfer sovereignty and control of the Panama Canal to Panama. It not only divided the political parties, but it also deeply divided Republicans and prominent conservatives. For instance, John Wayne, a public supporter of the treaty, vehemently and publicly disagreed with his old friend, Ronald Reagan, who was the most vocal opponent of the treaty. Another Reagan friend, William F. Buckley, Jr., strongly supported the treaty and challenged Reagan to a televised debate on a special two-hour edition of Buckley’s show, Firing Line, before the Senate ratification debate.

Anyone who watched that debate on TV, or listened to it on radio, in January, 1978, has a vivid memory of one of the greatest public debates of our lifetime. Not only was Buckley pitted against Reagan in an impressive debate when the oratorical skills of both were at their zenith, but their seconds were impressive, too: including George Will, Pat Buchanan, James Burnham, and Admirals Elmo Zumwalt and John McCain, Jr. (the father of Senator McCain). The moderator was Sam Ervin, who just a few years before had chaired the Senate investigation of the Watergate scandal. (As an aside, it amazed me during the 1980 campaign how many people believed either John Anderson or Jimmy Carter would beat Reagan in a debate, and how many people were shocked when he won both debates—I guess they either hadn’t seen, or had forgotten, his performance against Buckley.)

Though the Firing Line debate arguably ended in a masterful draw, the Senate ratified the treaty, and Reagan seemed to be defeated on the national stage for the second time in two years. As Buckley later wryly noted, however:

Reagan was, as a prophet, simply mistaken. And I, for my part, did not go on to be president.

In the meantime, they both remained the closest of friends—personally and politically—for the rest of their lives.

And that is the point of telling this story.

We Republicans—we conservatives—have become a rather schizophrenic lot over these last 33 years since Buckley and Reagan debated: we revere and promote principles of individualism and liberty for our country and for mankind; and yet, we demand a form of orthodox purity from each other on every conceivably important political issue. I don’t think we can have it both ways and still remain political friends and allies, let alone form a long-term, effective governing majority party.

Over the last few years, as I’ve taken public stands on issues and ruffled some feathers, I’ve been derided as a libertarian, a moderate, a Christian conservative, a RINO, a Tea Partier, a liberal, a social conservative, an economic conservative, a neo-conservative, a limited-government conservative, even a Democrat (just to list a few of the labels that are clean enough to post on this website)—and these labels came from fellow Republicans. My wife and I would always laugh about all of this, because what it really reflected was the independence of my spirit, and how hard it is for some Republicans now to deal with someone like me.

So, let me be clear—for the umpteenth time—what I am, and what I always have been, is a Republican. Because of my independence of mind and judgment, I, like you, think through each issue based on my core conservative principles and come to positions that I then strongly support. I, like you, care about some issues more than others. My pet issues are education and national defense, and my concern for these different issues leads me to want strong and effective local leadership to address education while wanting strong and effective national leadership to address our national defense. To some my desire for strong and effective government locally and nationally at the same time is inconsistent, but I can complete this circle because of my understanding of the Founders’ idea of federalism and the different spheres of responsibility for each level of government.

Whether we like to admit it or not, we all share commitments to different pet issues, and we all come to positions that, to others, might seem politically inconsistent. Over time, some of us have gotten our pet issues written into our party platforms at the state and national level. That’s not a problem; in fact, it’s a good thing, because the aggregate contained in these platforms reflects the broad consensus within the party at any given time on the issues of the day. It is important to document this consensus so our elected officials and candidates have guidance as to that consensus; and it is important to remind our elected officials and candidates that they should heed that guidance or explain pretty clearly to us what conservative principles they are using to deviate from it.

The problem comes when we try to read the planks of a platform, or impose fidelity to our own pet issues, as if they are the political equivalent of verses of scripture—like an inerrant political Word. As I’ve said in other posts over the years, Republicans aren’t sheep and we aren’t jackasses—that's the other party. Instead, we’re pretty ornery and independent-minded elephants, who are proud and stable beings who care for our herd, but who don’t want someone else’s political litmus test or pet issue imposed like a yoke upon us.

So, why do so many of us want to impose such rigid purity of thought on our fellow Republicans? Think about this—if each of our own pet issues and ideas must be considered as the scripture for the party that must be followed literally without deviation, can we ever really form a lasting and strong political party with those who disagree with some of our verses? Instead, aren’t we going to break-apart into smaller and smaller units with narrower and narrower agendas, until we can not elect anyone who will have the political support to make the fundamental and innovative changes we so desperately need? Isn’t this drive toward purity what is really behind the effort to label every Republican we disagree with as a RINO? If we are all RINOs to each other, are there any Republicans left?

To bring this post back full circle, will our future Buckleys and Reagans be allowed to hold opposing positions on the important issues of the day and still remain friends and allies, let alone be called “conservative” or "Republican"? Heck, will we even attract future Buckleys and Reagans to our party if we continue down this road?

The problem I am discussing is a problem Reagan and his generation foresaw, and it’s why they embraced principles, rather than orthodoxies or ideologies.

So, as our newly-elected representatives in Austin and Washington debate the issues before them, and as we start evaluating candidates for 2012, let’s not impose on them our own litmus tests, and let’s not call them “traitors” or threaten them with retaliation if they deviate from a platform plank. Instead, let’s tell them that it is alright to debate and disagree on how to use our conservative principles to solve the problems we face, and then let’s encourage them to debate the potential answers on immigration, the budget, ballot security, national security, the wars, foreign affairs, and many other issues guided by our platforms, but governed by our principles.

If we follow that path, I believe we eventually will get some great and innovative solutions based on our conservative principles—just like the solutions Buckley and Reagan worked together to give us a generation ago.

Some Perspective about Electability and Consistency

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

Well, we now are getting mercifully closer to the beginning of the voting in the Republican caucuses and primaries to choose our next Presidential Nominee. As I pointed out in a recent post about a focus-group we conducted at the last meeting of the Clear Lake Area Republicans, we Republicans share a lot of anxiety about this approaching election, because we sense that we are at a real tipping point in our history for many reasons. For this reason, we all are concerned about choosing the right candidate who will not only win in 2012, but who will lead a transformation of our political system based on conservative principles to fix the mess we face.

So, the concern of the moment, as Newt Gingrich sustains his improbable rise to the summit of the polls, is whether Newt can sustain the discipline he is showing, and whether he will be accepted by enough independent voters if he wins the GOP nomination to beat Obama and sweep other Republicans into Washington with him. With each passing day, we are being told that he can’t—by the media, by pollsters, by Democrats, and by virtually every Republican who considers themselves to be a leader within our party—while he keeps surging in the polls of GOP primary voters. Two recent images emerged from columns by Jonah Goldberg which aptly portray the anxiety many Republican leaders feel, when he described Newt as both a wild beast re-introduced to his natural habitat, and the re-incarnation of Godzilla (“Newtzilla”). It is this image of Newtzilla that is driving some pundits to start to encourage consideration of a third-party candidacy for Ron Paul, that is driving other pundits to beg voters to take a second look at Rick Perry and the rest of the field, and that is driving fundraisers to shovel money to Mitt Romney. “Newt hysteria” is the psychosis of the season for the Republican establishment.

With all this hyperventilation going on around us, it’s hard to maintain some perspective. But, with just a few weeks remaining before the voting begins, it’s time for all of us to take a deep breath for a moment, and then to remember that many of us have seen and heard all of this at least once before—and, when the dust settled that time, conservatism not only survived, it thrived for a generation.

As I wrote in my last post, it’s so hard now to objectively recall how Reagan was perceived at the end of 1979. When he gave the closing speech of the 1976 Republican Convention, most Republican leaders believed that they had finally vanquished the idea of a Reagan Presidency, and of a conservative ascendency within the party. Although Reagan’s ideas for a “New” Republican Party in 1977 were tolerated as they helped to mobilize conservatives for the mid-term elections, the party establishment believed he could be managed as an elder statesman. Even when he announced that he would seek the Presidency again in 1980, the party establishment did not take him seriously.

I encountered this attitude first-hand during my senior year of college in Rockford, Illinois. John Anderson was the local Congressman, and he had announced that he would run for the Republican nomination. At that time one of my mentors was the co-chair of John Anderson’s Presidential campaign, and he asked me to join the campaign to manage the national recruitment of college-student voters. I’ll never forget the reaction I got when, at the end of a meeting to discuss the offer, I told him and the others in attendance that I could not accept the position because I didn’t agree with Anderson and I was supporting Reagan. The incredulous, smug, and derisive reaction was something I will never forget, and not only my relationship with my mentor soon ended, but not long after that meeting I was asked to stop my work for Lynn Martin’s campaign to succeed Anderson in Congress (Martin later became Secretary of Labor under George H.W. Bush).

In the meantime, I recruited a handful of classmates to block-walk for Reagan, and to work for Reagan at polling places on the day of the Illinois primary in 1980. I’ll never forget one afternoon when I was at a grocery store wearing a Reagan pin, and one of the cashiers—a middle-aged woman—asked if I would wait a minute. She then gathered several of her co-workers and asked if I had more buttons, which I did, and I handed them out. She said her manager said it was “ok” to wear them, and they all put them on the lapels of their uniforms. As I left the store, she thanked me, and said they were praying that now was finally the time for Reagan. I knew that day that something extraordinary might happen that fall.

And, my gut was right—something extraordinary did happen that fall, as Reagan swept the nomination, swept the election, and swept in a Republican Senate for the first time since the Eisenhower years. But that process was not easy or pre-ordained. As much as no one wanted Carter re-elected—even Democrats—there was a lot of apprehension about Reagan until the very last week of the campaign when he debated Carter on national TV. It is hard to remember this now, but Ted Kennedy was leading all candidates of both parties in the polls at this time in 1979. The polls throughout 1980 would reflect a dissatisfaction with Carter, but a real apprehension of Reagan—which fueled Anderson’s ego enough to get him to run as an Independent. The following editorial cartoon reflects the mood and viewpoint of the country toward both Carter and Reagan as the election approached:

Look familiar? Today, in place of the Frankenstein image of Reagan from a generation ago, we are given the images of a wild beast and Godzilla from a fellow conservative to portray the current GOP frontrunner in an election cycle where most voters don’t want to re-elect the incumbent Democrat.

So, before we work ourselves into a frenzy of fear and anxiety, let’s step back. I don’t know if Newt will, or even should be, our nominee, but I don’t fear his candidacy. Nor will I allow myself to be torn with anxiety as the polls move all over the place next year. If he wins this nomination, he has a very realistic chance to win the race as the electorate evaluates his candidacy throughout the next year—even up to the eve of the election. I believe that we will not lose this election if Newt is nominated, but we will lose this election if we let the establishment’s concern over his electability pre-ordain the outcome. We didn’t let that happen in 1980, and we can’t let that happen now.

That reflection leads me to address my final point for this post—the current attack on Newt’s alleged failure to be a “consistent” conservative. The new label of “consistent conservative” is nothing more than a new version of the tired old label of “true conservative,” which typically is trotted out in a final, desperate attempt to differentiate a candidate from his or her opponent when all substantive arguments have failed, and to set the opponent up for the final Scarlett Letter of “RINO” or “moderate.” The use of the label is intended to foreclose serious thought and discussion, and to trigger a Pavlovian response of support for the candidate who invokes it to describe herself and of revulsion toward the opponent. Using labels like “consistent” or “true” underscores a triumph of ideology over principle in conservative debate.

As I tried to subtly point out in another recent post, the battle between libertarians and religious conservatives over the extreme ideological future of conservatism is really hurting this party. This battle focuses on the worst of both extremes—a misreading and misapplication of Adam Smith, and an over-application of the literal Word to secular politics. Russell Kirk, Bill Buckley, Whitaker Chambers, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan roll in their graves as this battle intensifies.

Framing the debate within the Republican field as being about who is the “consistent conservative” necessarily judges conservatism ideologically, which is the antithesis of Kirk's view that conservatism is based on principles, not ideology. It reminds me of Reagan’s favorite philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous discussion about the problem with “consistency” in his essay on self-reliance. In that essay, Emerson observed that the consistency that matters is that of character, and that character only reveals itself over time from the cumulative evaluation of actions and statements, not from a foolish adherence to rigidity of action and thought moment by moment, day by day:

• The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. …


• … A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. … To be great is to be misunderstood.


• I suppose no man can violate his nature. … A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; — read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. … Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.


• … The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor.

Are we going to continue to live in a time dominated by “foolish consistency”? Are we going to continue to vote for men and women who choose to be “little statesmen” in order to satisfy the test of consistency driven by the 24/7 news cycle, the “Meet the Press” gotcha quotes, and the Internet. In such a world nothing fades into the haze of memory in order to give us the breathing room to think deeply, evaluate our positions based on new facts and information, and apply our principles with imagination over time.

In such a world, men and women like Gingrich, who have served in the Arena over decades, and who have had to think about many issues and ideas over many years as data and circumstances have changed, would naturally be foreclosed from higher office because considerations they discussed 20 years ago no longer meet the test of consistency. If that is to be our world, then our politics will be dominated by those who either have never thought about or discussed the pressing issues of the day, have been too timid to ever deviate from orthodoxy in their consideration of what is the best course of action based on enduring principles, or have been in the Arena too short a time to ever have had to consider the impact of new data or circumstances on the application of conservative principles.

In thinking about this issue, I found the most revealing moment from last Saturday night’s debate on ABC to be when Rick Santorum—a very self-professed “consistent” conservative—said it was Newt’s GOPAC CDs on conservatism that attracted him to politics. Does Santorum really think that the Newt he admired no longer exists? Isn’t it more appropriate to reflect on how Newt has tried to think about and apply conservative principles to the issues he has faced over 40 years, and how he has matured through that process, than to judge him based on whether he said the same thing over and over again for 40 years no matter what the issue was or what experience had taught him?

Say what you will about Newt’s flaws, he’s closer to the Emerson ideal of a leader whose “[g]reatness appeals to the future” than most of the others up on that stage last Saturday night. I don’t know about you, but I’m looking for a leader in 2012, not someone who is trapped by his or her own “foolish consistency”.