Note: A shortened version of this post appeared under the title "Obama the Conservative" in The Guardian [London] on January 26, 2009.
Like millions of Americans, particularly Democrats, my eyes teared as I watched the inauguration of Barack Obama. For the first time in many years, I permitted myself to believe that America might at long last have a genuine political progressive at the helm of government. I hoped that President Obama stood prepared to commit the power and prestige of the nation’s highest office to the agendas of promoting economic equity, deepening civil rights, and preparing America to adjust to a less exalted station in an increasingly multipolar world. I was prepared to understand, somewhat reluctantly, that the pursuit of such goals required compromise and, perhaps, even some “post-partisan” posturing. Radical change often must be couched in ideologically neutral and conciliatory language. But I was ill-prepared for an inaugural address and the first two days of an administration which have revealed that Obama is not only the new face of America, but also the embodiment of conservatism.
This may seem a far-fetched, even ridiculous claim at first glance. How can President Obama, a symbol of the victorious culmination of a centuries’ long struggle against racial discrimination, a community organizer who labored selflessly in the poorest neighborhoods of Chicago, and a brilliant, charismatic politician who electrified America’s youth and brought the Democratic party from the political wilderness to the White House represent the triumph of conservatism? How can a man who stands poised to deliver the USA from the macabre years of the Bush administration be considered a conservative? There is no doubt that President Obama’s administration will pursue many policies that we have long associated with American liberalism and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Yet this fact should not conceal Obama’s deep debt to the conservative tradition.
We must recall that the first conservatism in the modern sense originated in the late eighteenth century as a belief in moderation in politics to serve the interests of “social harmony” and the “common good”. The first conservative thinkers, men such as Edmund Burke, were wary of radical change based on infatuation with lofty ideals or abstract Reason. They venerated tradition and preferred to place their faith in institutions which had endured patiently and relatively unperturbed the calamities of the ages—long-established, moderate government, the Church, the University, a society of Orders, and a stable set of mores and manners which developed slowly over several centuries. They were not hostile to change. Burke himself famously stated that “a state without a means of change is without the means of its conservation”. Rather, the first conservatives wanted incremental change, arising from the organic, necessarily slow evolution of society, that would reflect and remain consistent with long-established beliefs and values.
History often portrays these early conservatives as hostile to the revolutionaries, in France and elsewhere, who sought to abruptly and comprehensively reshape society so that ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ could reign. This view is only partly true. Undoubtedly, they appraised revolutionary aims with some skepticism. But the early conservatives were threatened less by the goals of revolutionaries than by their methods, their hasty, reckless, and presumptuous effort to remake the world in their own image.
The Conservatives fought on two fronts. On the first front they battled those who sought to reform society according to abstract, untested philosophical ideas and raze the long-established institutions which propped up the Old Regime. On the second front they combated an even more dangerous group. These were the allies of the “Crown and the Altar”, men and women who opposed social and political change that undermined (or even questioned!) the legitimacy of monarchy and religious doctrine as the preeminent authorities in society. These ‘enemies of the enlightenment’ were perhaps even more dangerous than their progressive counterparts. Their hysterical intolerance, intemperate rejection of innovation, and uncritical allegiance to organs of authority were uncompromising.
It is one of the quirks of history that both conservatives and the radical reactionaries they loathed have been lumped together as a single, united force bent on destroying the new world which progressives aspired to bring into existence. The failure to make such a distinction prevents us from grasping a simple truth of our own time. George W. Bush was not a conservative, but rather a curious hybrid of reactionary and progressive. He was a reactionary by temperament and conviction whose methods were borrowed from the most radical progressives. He and his enablers, the much-touted ‘neo-conservatives’ steeped in Trotskyist traditions of ‘permanent revolution’, turned democracy into a creed for evangelization and forced conversion around the world. They defiled long-cherished American principles in the name of national security and, they claimed, to safeguard those same principles. Government spending ballooned and fiscal restraint was discarded. In his denigration of government’s usefulness on ideological grounds and unsophisticated worship of the abstract ideal of an unfettered market, Bush betrayed the conservatives in his own party, scorning them when they dared complain. He allowed reactionaries, yahoos, and loyalist hacks to sack government programs and run roughshod over the constitution. In a parting shot, he besmirched the conservatism that he had long-ago forsaken and led it, along with his accomplices, from the corridors of power into the political wilderness.
Into the breach steps Obama. Progressives rightly await this moment with anticipation. How can someone with his background—racial, intellectual, professional—fail to pursue a progressive agenda? There is little doubt that the Obama administration will put an end to the profligacy of the Bush years. But progressives should not hold their breath for anything more. President Obama’s words and deeds underscore his significant sympathy with the conservative tradition. In contrast to the radical, reckless Bush, who misleadingly assumed the mantle of ‘compassionate conservatism’, the failure of the American commentariat to recognize Obama’s conservative streak is understandable. After all, who wants to spoil the festivities for the newly ascendant Democratic Party and cast a cloud over Obama’s presidential honeymoon?
Since progressives persist in depicting Bush as an arch-conservative, instead of the curious amalgam of reactionary and radical revolutionary that he actually was, they are blind to Obama’s conservatism. His senior appointments, the tenor of his inaugural address, and his agenda during his first days in office bear the familiar imprimatur of conservatism. The Cabinet is stocked with a bevy of Clinton administration veterans, many of whom lucratively wiled away the Bush nightmare in the bosom of the same financial institutions whose greed and mismanagement precipitated the present crisis. These selections could be justified as the need for battle-tested, “old hands” to navigate the ship of state through rough waters if the political ideas espoused in the inauguration address, too, did not smack of conservatism.
On Tuesday, President Obama brushed aside debates about the optimal size of government or whether “the market is a force for good or ill”. Instead, he substituted a simple criterion for judging government action, “whether it works”. Such an emphasis on utility and efficiency is almost textbook conservatism. It is the negation of ideology in politics.
The Obama presidency is not a “revolution”, but instead a “restoration”. The “values upon which our success depends”, Obama reassures America, “these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout history”. He asks for a “return to these truths”. Nothing new is needed, neither fresh ideas about the human condition’s betterment nor utopias; merely a return to and vindication of the past. Obama has inserted conservative language of “responsibility” and “duty” in place of the progressive language of “rights”. He also offers a full-throated endorsement of the restoration of America’s global power, dismissing the “nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable”. The return to core tried-and-true values as the only reliable basis for political action, the consignment of ideology—whether concerning the virtues of unregulated markets or government’s scope—to irrelevance in developing policy, the celebration of “responsibilities” and “duties”, and commitment to America’s global leadership: It is hard to imagine inaugural address more steeped in the classical conservative tradition than the one delivered by President Obama on Tuesday.
The first few days in office have confirmed that the Obama administration is a restoration not a revolution. There is much to cheer one up after eight years during which the inmates ran the asylum. Swiftly-issued executive orders closing secret overseas prisons, banning torture, and putting Gitmo on the fast-track for closure are all laudable acts. Removing restrictions on federal documents to increase transparency and a salary freeze on senior staff are likewise welcome, long-overdue gestures.
But these initial acts of the Obama presidency merely turn back the revolution in government over which the radical reactionary-in-chief Bush presided and seek to restore the status quo ex ante. Where are the ambitious plans for programs which will transform the place of government in American life? Where are the plans to overhaul, instead of simply bail out, the financial system, to tackle child poverty head on, change the way that public schools are funded, and address the long-neglected working poor, to say nothing of health care? Or plans to confront the stark reality of national decline and prepare the American people for the inevitable adjustment to a polycentric world, in which the dollar’s status as a reserve currency is not assumed and America’s leadership in international organizations is shared?
It could be argued with some justice that the economic tailspin precludes new government initiatives. It is necessary to “clean up” the mess left behind by the Bush administration before any new policies can be pursued. Such reasoning is prudent and somewhat persuasive. Yet I would argue that what made Obama elect-able in the first place, besides his formidable political gifts, was precisely his conservatism, a faith in his capacity and intention to restore and renew, but not to revolutionize America. Bush was a reactionary who exploited conservative symbols to disguise a radical, even revolutionary political project. I fear that Obama will end up as a conservative adorned by the trappings of progressivism who fails to pursue a radical program.
“Change” will happen on Obama’s watch, of course. But if universal health care becomes a reality, it will come about because America cannot remain economically competitive without it, not because it is the right thing to do. If American adventurism in the Middle East is halted and its gunboat diplomacy elsewhere is curbed, it will be because the American taxpayer refuses to sustain the burdens entailed by endless intervention around the globe, and not because such routine violations of sovereignty are unbecoming in a nation which long-ago anointed itself as the leader of the free world. Change will come in some areas, as it does under all conservative regimes, organically and slowly. Adjustments, many of them beneficent, must be granted so that the entire edifice is not torn down. But the old progressive dream of transforming society through the power of new, vigorous ideas will have been consigned to History’s dustbin. Who would have imagined that an historical moment so unprecedented, so notable for its novelty, and so emblematic of the hard-fought victory of progressive politics might instead usher in an age of rejuvenated conservatism?
I certainly hope that the analysis offered in the paragraphs above is misguided and wrong. I want Obama to be a progressive who deftly wields the political languages of conservatism and restoration in order to make radical programs possible in a nation traumatized by the Bush years. Such changes could truly make America into a “city on hill”, admired and emulated around the globe. I do still believe that such an outcome is possible. But we who are outside of government must vigilantly monitor the sources and influences that inform the thinking of our political leadership. The conservative streak in Obama’s thought must be recognized and subjected to scrutiny. As Americans learned so painfully during the past eight years, ideas do have consequences.
