In today’s Friday interview the John Locke Foundation’s Mitch Kokai discusses the state of conservatism with David Keene, Chairman of the American Conservative Union. The interview aired on Carolina Journal Radio (click here to find the station near you).
Kokai: Just what is the state of conservatives right now? Is this a time that they need to be worried?
Keene: Well, you know, the fact of the matter is that in the political world you always have to be worried, because the struggles that take place between those that want to do things one way and those who want to do them another never really end. Right now, particularly in Washington but in the states as well, conservatism has to sort of reclaim its roots. Conservatives disagree on a lot of different things. I was at a conference on the history and present and future of conservatism at Princeton University a couple of months ago, and this fellow jumped up in the audience. I thought he was an itinerant homeless person, but, in fact, he was a senior history professor at Princeton. And he said, “The problem with you conservatives is you don’t have a single line. I’m a liberal. I know exactly how I feel.”
Well, we conservatives don’t agree on everything, but the one thing that we’ve tended to agree on over time is that the power of the government takes away from the power and freedom of the individual. As a consequence, conservatives have always rallied around the idea of limited government, of lower taxes, not just because government is inefficient but because to the extent — as Ronald Reagan used to say — to the extent that government makes decisions, people don’t get to make them. To the extent that the government takes our money and spends it, we don’t get to spend it ourselves. To the extent that the government makes the choices that we might otherwise make, we’re not as free as would otherwise be the case. That’s really been the crux of it.
The problem is that conservatives, like everybody else, are people, and when they begin to win and they get into the government, they forget what Ronald Reagan used to say, which was that, “You know, when we start thinking of the government as us rather than them, we’ve got a problem.” And when you get elected to public office, it’s very tempting to start thinking about the government as “us.” And the conservative who’s not in office, the conservative who shares that body of beliefs, who walks the precincts, who licks the envelopes, who gives money to candidates, has a job, a continual job. And that is, at the first instance, to make sure the people they send to wherever are people that share their values. But then, they have to make sure that once they get there, they don’t forget why they got there. And that’s — as I say — that’s a human failing, not a conservative failing. But right now, conservatives have, particularly in Washington, been in power for long enough that a lot of them have come to the conclusion that maybe it’s more important that we stay here than that we do the right thing.
Kokai: Now we know, as you pointed out, this is a constant concern — those who are conservative who are not part of the power structure in Washington making sure that those who are in power are sticking by the conservative principles. Has it become worse in recent years with the Medicare prescription drug benefit, all of the things?
Keene: It’s become much worse. You know, I’ve been around for a long time, so I’ve seen it before. In 1968, when Richard Nixon ran for president, he ran ads attacking the food stamp program. In 1972, he ran ads bragging about the fact that he had enlarged the food stamp program more than anyone had ever imagined possible, because it became his food stamp program. The Medicare system became George Bush’s Medicare system, and, as a result, he wanted to expand it and make it better. In Congress, members of Congress became convinced that they ought to do that, because it would be helpful to them electorally — that if you bought people prescription drugs, they might vote for you. As a result, they managed to pass an entitlement that will result in a deficit in less than ten years, larger than the entire deficit of the Social Security system. And so that, down the road, when all the chickens come home to roost, when we’ve got to pay for these things, they’ve made the problem much, much worse, even though privately they would tell you as they marched out there to vote for it, that this might not be such a good idea.
Kokai: There are some folks who would probably be labeled by those outside the conservative movement as conservatives who seem to have said, “We’re never going to win this battle of shrinking government, let’s just make sure that the money is spent wisely.” What do you think about that?
Keene: Well, I think that’s foolish. I think that is a surrender of the very core principle of the movement. Now, the president’s advisors argue that. They say, “It’s not important how much money we spend, it’s important how we spend it.” The conservatives always thought that both of those things were important. There are people within the movement who have suggested that because it’s hard to cut government spending, we ought to spend our time doing something else. But oftentimes, accomplishing good is hard — it’s hard work. That, frankly, is why voters try to pick people and send to Washington and elsewhere to do their work, because it’s hard and they know it’s hard and they want good people to go out there and do it. It is always easier, not just in politics but in life, to go along with the crowd. The conservative has always been out there, traditionally, saying, “Wait a minute, sure it would be nice to give this interest or that interest some money, but it’s not your money to give them. It’s somebody else’s money that you’re taking out of their pocket and giving to people because they’ve got a stronger lobby, or because you think they’re going to get some votes for you in the next election.” The conservative’s task, in that sense, is a difficult one, and it’s one they should be proud to pursue rather than just throwing up their hands and saying, “You know, it would be easier just to join the other side.”
Kokai: One way to get back to the conservative principles is to lose power and forget how that works. Is there a good way though to get back to the principles while maintaining the power?
Keene: Well, I think what’s happening right now is scaring the living daylights out of conservatives who have wandered away. The current polls show that, not just for the president but for the Congress, that approval ratings are falling, not because liberals are upset with them, but because their conservative base is saying, “What are you people doing?” I don’t think you actually — you know, it’s always better to win an election than lose it. I don’t think that they have to lose an election, but if they don’t get their act together, they will. And I think that as this year approaches and we approach the fall elections, a lot of them are going to realize that, gee, maybe they better listen to the folks back home.
Kokai: When you speak to the people who are in the administration or members of Congress who you feel have sort of stepped away from the core principles, what’s the main thing you want them to keep in mind moving forward now?
Keene: I want them to keep in mind that if they want to stay where they are, they should do the right thing. Not just because it’s the right thing, but because, in the long run, if they don’t do the right things, the people that put them where they are, are going to stay home in the next election and they’re not going to have the jobs that they so crave.
Kokai: Do you think 2006 looks like a hold-steady, or like a bad year for conservatives?
Keene: It’s not going to be a good year for conservatives. It’s too soon to say whether it’s going to be a disastrous year. What we have to realize is that…November could be two or three political lifetimes away.