By Brendan Loy
Ross Douthat opines:
It’s possible to be a celebrity and a serious politician at the same time: Barack Obama’s career proves as much. But Obama’s celebrity status is frequently a political liability, and he’s (usually) wise enough to know it. That’s why he plays the wonk as often as he plays the global icon.
For now, no Republican leader projects a similar level of seriousness. Late in the Bush years, it was easy to dismiss conservatism as brain-dead. Among policy thinkers, that isn’t true anymore: the advent of Obama seems to have provided just the jolt that right-of-center wonks needed. But innovative proposals are useless without politicians willing to champion them.
When the Republican minority needed an alternative to the Obama administration’s sweeping stimulus proposal, for instance, a number of free-market economists were ready with an answer: a payroll tax cut. It was plausible, elegant and easy to explain — but there was no Republican leader with the wit to seize on it and sell it.
You could tell the same story about regulatory reform. A slew of conservative economists and think tankers, led by the University of Chicago’s Luigi Zingales and the Manhattan Institute’s Nicole Gelinas, have been working on ways to protect free markets from a re-run of last fall’s “too big to fail” fiasco. But most Republican politicians would rather rail against bailouts that have already happened than talk about how to prevent them from happening again.
In the health care debate, too, conservative and libertarian policy thinkers have floated a number of plans to expand insurance coverage. Some are incremental and some are sweeping; some build on the existing system and some would essentially replace it. But any of them would be better than that threadbare plan House Republicans actually put forward, which would hardly expand coverage at all.
True, these ideas won’t sell millions of books, or excite the crowd on Huckabee’s talk show. But they’re what the Republican Party needs if it’s going to be more than just a brake on liberalism’s ambitions. And they’re what voters are going to be looking for, in 2012 and beyond, as proof that conservatives can be trusted once again.
This means that there are substantial political rewards awaiting the politician who becomes the voice of an intellectually vigorous conservatism. It probably won’t be Mike Huckabee or Sarah Palin. If Republicans are lucky, though, it will be somebody who shares their charisma — but who prefers the responsibilities of leadership to the pleasures of celebrity.
A serious, “intellectually vigorous,” grown-up conservative leader with charisma: now that would be “going rogue.”
Seriously, it would be a profoundly good thing for the country if such a leader were to emerge. We need the Republicans right now — if for no other reason than to keep the Democrats in check — but they’re off in la-la land. And, as long as they stay that way, a lot of people are going to fall into Casey’s camp:
Personally, I have a lot to say against how Obama is running the country. But I won’t say a word of it. Why? Because I can’t abide being associated with the mainstream Obama opposition. So long as Republicans keep making a lunatic circus of their political affairs, they’ll never win over people like me. They’ll be stuck battling to get out their base.
Ah yes, “their base” — which is only slightly bigger than CNN’s viewership, post-Dobbs.
P.S. TNR’s Isaac Chotiner says Douthat’s argument is tautological:
Sure, it would be nice for the GOP if Palin and Huckabee were interested in policy. But if they were interested in policy, then they would not be so appealing to the GOP base. In other words, the problem is that a large part of the right has no interest in a policy wonk, and sneers at intellectuals and elites and the types of people Douthat would like to see running the party. A candidate who was interested in learning the ins and outs of the welfare state and health care policy is unlikely to ever achieve Palin/Huckabee levels of popularity with the grassroots.
The weakest part of Douthat’s article is the assertion that seriousness is “what voters are going to be looking for, in 2012 and beyond, as proof that conservatives can be trusted once again.” Says who? Voters tend to like shiny things. Wishful thinking aside, I fail to be overwhelmed by the evidence of voters’ interest in genuine political leadership.
