Jack's Back, a Year Late

Perhaps it would have made no difference, but it would have been nice to have "24" around during the presidential campaign just ended. As any addict of the show will tell you, it's not a Republican soapbox but it does embody a core Republican/conservative idea -- that this a dangerous world, and force must be met with force. Jack Bauer also knows a thing or two about torture, from both ends of the process. The writers' strike, of course, delayed Season 7 for a year and forced fans to wait until after the election. But what if Jack Bauer had been on the tube fighting the forces of evil every week? Would Barack Obama have felt compelled to be a tad more steely in his talk and actions? Would John McCain have looked a little more mainstream to the American public?

There's been a bit of the debate about how much "24" has influenced American politics. Dennis Haysbert, who played President Palmer in early seasons, thinks his role may have helped pave the way to Obama's election. Kiefer Sutherland (Jack Bauer) disagrees. You be the judge. There's no denying that a very popular and very well executed TV drama can influence popular culture and public attitudes, though. That's why "24" may be helpful to the more conservative among us if it stays on its game.

So far, it appears to be doing so. The prequel "24 Redemption" aired on Nov. 23 was among the best "24" episodes I've seen. And it was more pointed than usual in its political commentary. The one totally worthless character was a cowardly U.N. blue-helmet who is apparently assigned to guard (or maybe just watch) the boys' school run by Jack's old special-forces buddy Carl Benton, played by Robert Carlisle. As a vicious press gang from the rebel army approaches, aiming to kidnap the boys and turn them into soldiers, Bauer gets off the best line of the show when he tells this little worm: "Why don't you go into the shelter with the other children?" Which the U.N. guy (played by Sean Cameron Micheal) proceeds to do.

There's also an intriguing hint of politically relevant things to come in the set-up for Bauer's return to the States. He has been subpoenaed to testify before a Senate committee about his actions at the now-disbanded Counter-Terrorism Unit (CTU). He's in trouble, we assume, for those many lively interrogations he conducted, with or without Agent Richards, that scary guy with the attache case full of injectables. This coming plot line could not have been more perfectly timed, because it was revealed just as President Bush was making his first round of pardons amid speculation that he might, as the AP put it, "decide to issue pre-emptive pardons before he leaves office to government employees who authorized or engaged in harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks." If the show doesn't go wobbly, we'll get to hear Jack make a spirited defense of what some call "torture" and what others call "doing what you have to do." In any event, it's good to have Jack back, even if he's a year late.

Nowhere to Go but Up -- and to the Right?

A new Gallup poll has some gloomy news about the Republican brand: 61% of those surveyed have an unfavorable view of the party, with only 34% favorable. And quite a few Republicans, not to mention independents and Democrats, have a low opinion of the GOP. To be exact, only 78% of Republicans viewed their own party favorably, while 91% of Democrats felt that way. And this is not all about George W. Bush. GOP ratings have generally followed his downward, but as recently as early September -- around the time of the Republican convention -- the party's favorable rating was as high as 47%, exactly equal to unfavorables and just a bit below the 51% favorable rating for Democrats. The ups and downs of the campaign clearly added a lot of volatility to views of both parties. In the GOP's case, the ratings rose when John McCain looked like a tactical wizard -- when he picked Sarah Palin and she wowed the convention, and before the campaign took a header with Palin's first TV interviews and McCain's failed mission to Washington to solve the financial crisis.

But that's all history now. For those looking forward, the interesting data in this survey come from responses to the question of whether the party is conservative enough. Most Republicans -- 59% -- said it should be more conservative, while only 12% said it should move toward the left aqnd 28% thought it should stay about the same. That's good news not just for conservatives but for the idea of a two-party system, because it says most Republicans want their party to be a real alternative to the Democrats, not just a watered-down imitation of them. This means good riddance to Bush's "compassionate conservatism," with its implied message that conservatives as morally deficient without a dose of welfare liberalism. It also means that rank-and-file Republicans would rather see their party act as the principled opposition in Washington and let the Democrats get the credit or blame for acts of Congress.

But what about the independents, whose votes are needed for any party, conservative or liberal, to gain a majority. They're split on the question of where the GOP should go: 35% say it should turn right, and 35% say it should steer left. Faced with a toss-up vote like that, the Republicans have no reason to resist the will of the party faithful. While the poll isn't exactly a green light to go right, it's no worse than yellow.

But what does it mean to be "more conservative"? That's a big question, on which I'll comment before too long. I'd like to read your thoughts on it in the meantime.

Barack's Big Tent

Senate Democrats have decided not to cast Joe Lieberman into the outer darkness for breaking with the party and endorsing John McCain. Lieberman is losing a minor (subcommittee) chairmanship but keeping the post with real power, chair of the Homeland Security Committee.

This is smart. Given a choice between enforcing lockstep party loyalty or strengthening their majority, the Democrats chose the latter course and will now be a stronger force in the Senate. Any chance of Lieberman bolting to the Republicans is gone. And I would expect Lieberman to patch things up quickly with his party. The Iraq war, the issue that really drove the wedge between him and his colleagues, is winding down and no longer has much power to divide people. His friend John McCain is off the presidential campaign trail and back in the Senate. And on most issues, Lieberman is a mainstream-to-liberal Democrat.

The caucus vote on Lieberman came after Barack Obama let it be known that he didn't want to see the senator punished for straying. That might not be how his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel would handle an apostate, but Barack's the boss and he believes in the Big Tent.

Now it's true that magnanimous acts come more naturally to winners than to losers. Witness the Republicans, who seem to be following the typical pattern of backbiting that follows a political disaster. Mike Huckabee already has a book out, and (to judge from reports), he takes it to Mitt Romney, Gary Bauer, the Club for Growth and everyone else who wouldn't endorse him. He also lays claim to representing "real" conservatism against the "faux-cons" who opposed him. McCain's campaign ended ugly, too. Its staffers first went after Sarah Palin, then Palin roared back with a blitzkrieg of interviews with whoever would point a camera and mike at her. Now she's said to be angling for a $7 million book deal. When the GOP gets get serious about winning again, the fratricide and arguments over right-wing purity will wind down. But Republicans may then find that Barack has already shepherded most of the Independents into his Big Tent before they've managed to pitch one of their own.

What Happened to the Investor Class?

George W. Bush's vision of an "ownership society" is just a faded memory now, but for a time it was central to his economic agenda and to his party's political strategy. On the political side the thinking went like this: The bigger the equity stake that Americans had in the economy -- whether as homeowners, stockholders or business owners -- the more conservative they would become and the more Republican they would vote. Their views on taxes, for instance, would lead to the supply-side position of keeping levies on income as flat as possible and low, preferably down to zero, on capital gains and dividends.

Before, during and after the 2004 elections, this theory of an "investor class" with its own distinct politics looked plausible. Roughly half of American households owned stock, either directly or through mutual funds, and Republican strategists like Grover Norquist saw this group as a possible ticket to a long-term GOP majority. "Every demographic group, including race, gender, age, and income, becomes more Republican with stock ownership," Norquist wrote, and he cited pollster Scott Rasmussen's data that, back then at least, if you owned at least $5,000 in stock you were 18% more likely to be a Republican. Not everyone accepted the theory -- you can get a window into the debate here and here -- but what data there was seemed to back it up. An Investor's Business Daily poll in October 2004 showed Bush beating John Kerry by a much wider margin, 53% to 42%, among self-identified "investor-class" voters than his edge in the general population.


Four years later, IBD polled the same group just before the election and found them almost evenly split, at 47% for John McCain to 46% for Barack Obama. This was no enough for McCain to win, but it still beat his edge in the overall popular vote.


So maybe the investor class is still marginally more Republican than the people at large. But it was less Republican in 2008 than in 2004, and it did not give McCain anything close to the support he needed to win. Investors as a group aren't GOP stalwarts -- certainly not in the way that conservative Evangelicals are. They are more of a bellwether of economic confidence or pessimism, depending on the times. And their shifting party preferences don't seem much different from those of voters in general. They vote their pocketbooks, or more specifically their portfolios. As the 2004 election approached, the stock market had risen steadily for the past three years (gaining about 30% as measured by the S&P 500). Just before the 2008 election, as we all know to our deep and abiding pain, the market fell off a cliff.

And here's an irony for the GOP investor-class theorists: The high number of Americans with stock investments might have done the party more harm than good by striking fear into the hearts of so many millions of voters. By linking its fortunes to wealth of investors, the Republicans may have bet too much on the stock market, an entity that neither they nor anyone else can control or even accurately predict. Just as good times can make Republicans out of more investors, who like the GOP talk of low taxes on fat capital gains, a bad bear market can produce more Democrats who say "never again" to stocks and opt for the sort of safety only government can provide. The way things are going now, 401(k)s may give way to Japanese-style postal savings plans. Remember that the 30s and the political revolution of the New Deal came after a binge of retail stock investing and a boom in home ownership. A happy investor class may be good for Republicans, but a disillusioned investor class is something else.

The Conservative Mind: Does It Still Exist?

The first thing a party in defeat does is trash the losers. You don't see a lot of love out there for John McCain.

The next thing is to start talking about the need for "ideas." Utah Gov. John Huntsman Jr., at a GOP governors' meeting this week in Miami, said, "Everyone wants to talk about personalities . . . But for us it's: Where are the ideas? Then the personalities and the names are going to come from those ideas over the next couple of years." (Read the whole story here)

Good question, depending on what Huntsman means by "ideas." If he's just talking (like most politicians) about policy proposals, then the party has plenty of those. Some are old, like school vouchers, but some are relatively fresh, like the various market-based health-care reforms in McCain's platform this year. And I have no doubt that conservative policy shops such as the Heritage Foundation will crank out more of these in coming months and years. Some of them will be geniunely interesting to the few people who follow such things. But none of them will produce the shift in public attitudes that Republicans need to create a governing majority once again.

For that to happen, a different breed of "ideas" -- or maybe just one big idea -- is needed. These are the ideas that transcend policy specifics and exist apart from the day-to-day problem-solving and dealmaking that politicians do. These ideas don't come out of think tanks. They emerge from universities, literary circles and other corners of American life that conservatives (and identified Republicans in particular) have almost completely abandoned. Among all the academic disciplines, for instance, only in economics is conservative thinking still represented, and it is no longer dominant. The humanities and social sciences are lost to conservatism for at least this generation, and the physical sciences (for now) mostly apolitical, as they should be.

So what are conservative ideas, and why is it important that they re-enter the intelligentsia? The first part of that question has been debated for decades. You can find the wide-ranging points of view in Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind, Jerry Z. Muller's Conservatism and William F. Buckley's anthology Have You Ever Seen A Dream Walking? (the latter apparently out of print, but hopefully available at a good library). If I can pull out a few common threads in these and other books on American conservative thought, it's that conservatism is rooted in these ideas (big, big ideas):

• Individual liberty, especially as set forth in the Declaration of Independence.
• Individual responsibility (a tougher sell politically) for the outcomes of one's life. That is, a conservative doesn't think the world owes you a living even if, as Democrats like to say, you "work hard and play by the rules."
• An acceptance of some inequality of outcomes, at least to the extent that it reflects the inequalities of individual ability, drive, willingness to take risks, etc.
• A government with clearly -- and constitutionally -- defined limits to its power,.
• A right to property that puts the burden on governments to prove why they should take any of it, through taxes or other means.
• On social issues, a respect for tradition (as in marriage, say) and a suspicion of innovators. As with property, the burden of proof is on the innovators to say why a long-standing tradition should be changed. This idea goes back to the man whom conservatives of all stripes still seem to accept as a common ancestor, Edmund Burke.
• In economics, a belief that the actions of myriad individual actors (businesses and consumers) in the marketplace will always be wiser than the attempts by politicians and bureaucrats, fewer in number if higher in their view of their own intellects, to control economic activity. At least in America, there is not such thing as a conservative socialist,. On markets that cross national borders, conservatives do have some differences, which leads to the next point.
• Country first. This is a very American conservative idea, springing from the historical reality that the U.S. grew to a great nation in happy isolation from Europe's crowded, violent, dysfunctional family of nations. As an answer to the Old World and its corruptions (now joined by the corruptions of the Third World), America as seen by conservatives should never submit to the rule of others. If it engages abroad, it must do so as a leader, not a follower. Conservatives differ mainly on how much America should involve abroad, especially when war is involved. But they share a distrust of anything, like the U.N. of liberal fantasies, that smacks of "world government."

There's more in this rich tradition of thought. But for now I'll leave these few ideas out there to ponder, along with the question: How many of today's Republican politicians could do a decent job of explaining, much less defending, these fundamentals? Another way of putting the question is to ask if you heard these points raised, in more than sound-bite form, in the past campaign. At least Barack Obama showed some skill at throwing big ideas around, in the style of a smart grad student who has mastered the basic academic lingo but has nothing original to add. The leading Republican lights (maybe not the best word) didn't seem willing or able to get beyond slogans and present an extended argument. Maybe this is extension of George W. Bush's style, which was usually to say what he was going to do, like the no-nonsense CEO he was, and then repeat the message over and over. It might also be a holdover from way that campaigns are fought now -- less by trying to persuade the undecided than with bringing as many of your true-believers as possible to the polls. This worked well for the GOP in 2000 and 2004. Unfortunately, the Democrats learned how to do the same in 2008.

Maybe what the Republicans need most right now is not a few bright new faces and new policies, but a big book or two. It takes a book to lay out a case from fundamentals -- and to counter GOP's reputation as "the stupid party." A good book or two also could re-connect the party with young readers who are bright, intellectually restless, maybe reading Ayn Rand and wondering if that's all there is. Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative did that trick in the early 60s. Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind 25 years later popularized conservative ideas on the fate of culture and academia. If nothing else, a book like that would reaffirm the existence of a Conservative Mind.

Nothing Fails Like Failure

Barack Obama didn't win any war of ideas. He didn't have to. Republicans' failure as the governing party was all the argument he needed.

Too harsh a judgment? Well, just do this thought experiment: What if the Bush Administration had sent enough troops to Iraq in 2003 rather than waitinng until 2007? What if FEMA had showed up on time in New Orleans after Katrina? What if Treasury and the SEC had moved a year or so earlier to regulate the vast new market in mortgage derivatives before it collapsed and brought down the global financial system? In other words, what if Republican government had been demonstrably competent at key junctures, and not asleep at the switch?

You might differ, but I would bet that we would not be looking ahead to an Obama administration if the Republicans hadn't failed in some spectacular ways. There would be no talk of a "permanent progressive majority" or a realignment on the order of 1932 or 1980. As pollster Scott Rasmussen pointed out a couple of days ago, most Americans still agree with Ronald Reagan's view that, more often than not, goverment is the problem and not the solution.

And notice that Obama won by promising tax cuts to most voters. He made a far bigger deal of these than of any new programs. I know that a big chunk of these "cuts" are handouts (refundable credits) rather than reductions in actual taxes owed, but that distinction doesn't count in politics. Virtually all Americans who vote see themselves as taxpayers. If it's not income tax they pay, they'll insist that they pay plenty through other means -- payroll tax, sales tax, property tax, etc. Obama wasn't pulling America to the left with his tax-cut pitch. He was stealing one of the Republicans' best themes. He was shrewdly selling himself to an electorate that, deep down, hadn't really changed much over the past eight years.

What has changed in the past eight years is the public's perception of GOP competence. George W. Bush came into office with memories of Republican success still fresh. Reagan, in particular, was revered on the right and respected (grudgingly) on the left not because he was a great communicator but because his administration had been, by any objective measure, a success. Eight years after coming into office with the economy in chaos, the Soviet empire on the march on multiple fronts and Americans humiliated in Iran, he left office with Soviet Communism on the verge of collapse and an economy enjoying its longest peacetime expansion -- an no inflation. (Our hostages were long gone from Iran, though trouble was still in store there for a later time).

His successor, George H.W. Bush, successfully fought the Gulf War (though with limited aims); he might have been re-elected were it not for the Ross Perot's strange obsession with bringing him down. Then, after eight years of a personally undisciplined president, the new Bush administration seemed at first like the return of adult supervision, with respected figures like Colin Powell and Dick Cheney (yes, Cheney was respected) in important jobs.

It will not be easy winning back that reputation for getting things done right. But there's some good news in that grim assessment: If Americans want competence above all, they will vote for leaders with whom the don't completely agree as long as they see them as people of demonnstrated ability and common sense.

To go back again to Reagan, it was critical to his success in 1980 not only that Jimmy Carter had failed and that Americans were willing to try something new, but also that Reagan had been governor of the nation's most populous state for two terms, and California hadn't fallen into the sea. His consevative credentials were second to none, but so was his track record as a practical chief executive.

No secret where this discussion is leading -- to governors. Everybody has been talking about two of them, Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal. But Republicans also have big-state governors (in Florida and Texas) and might elect a governor constitutionally qualified for the presidency in 2010. The ideological battle for the soul of the GOP is always interesting to watch, but this time around I doubt if it will really determine the success of the party. My guess is that track record will trump ideas for the time being What do you think?

Immigration Hang-Up?

It's no secret that the elites of the Republican Party -- I use the e-word in a non-pejorative sense -- disagree with most of the rank-and-file on the question of what to do about illegal immigration. Here's one view (California-focused) typical of the elite side. Peter Robinson argues that Hispanics, the largest group of immigrants, are "natural" Republicans in their values and economic ambitions. He also claims, based on Hispanics' generally favorable opinion of a ballot measure against bilingual education, that they believe in assimilation as full-fledged, English-speaking Americans. He implies that they have been driven away by the party's hard-liners who would never, never give any illegal immigrant an eventual "path to citizenship." I'm interested in hearing arguments for the other side: That is, how the GOP could become a majority party in California without accepting the "path to citizenship" idea. I'm even more interested in hearing thoughts on how the elites and grass-roots of the party might settle their differences and win elections.

California 2010 - More Names

The Los Angeles Times today comes up for a few more names of potential candidates for California governor in 2010. These included Republican Tom Campbell and Democrats John Garamendi, Steve Westly and -- drumroll -- Dianne Feinstein. At 75, Feinstein may prefer to end her political career as a powerful member of the U.S. Senate, but the Times is probably right to say she would be an instant frontrunner if she declared an interest in being governor. And Jerry Brown, whatever his flaws as a chief executive, is always good for a quote. Reflecting on his previous two-term tenure, which ended in 1983, he tells the Times: "I can see the unintended consequences of all these 10,000 laws that a governor puts in over the course of eight years." Is this a way of saying that, if elected, he would not make the same mistakes? Sounds like a campaign slogan in the works: "Elect Jerry Brown: Older but Wiser."

Reaganism not dead - Pollster

Scott Rasmussen writes in today's Wall Street Journal that most voters still appear to agree with Ronald Reagan's statement, "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is our problem." Read it all.

Talent Search -- California 2010

The 2010 California gubernatorial election is wide open as far as I can tell -- no incumbent running and no candidate in either party with a lock on the nomination. California may be a blue state in presidential elections and heavily Democratic at the congressional/legislative level, but Democrats have a problem finding a statewide leader. The only governor they've managed to elect in the past 26 years is Gray Davis, who was recalled in favor of a Republican (and yes, Arnold ran then as a mainstream Republican, not the post-partisan centrist he has since become; he also won reelection under the Republican label in 2006).

This year, the Democrats have several potential candidates with problems -- Gavin Newsom, Antonio Villaraigosa and Jerry Brown (!). Newsom has to live down his starring role as an in-your-face promoter of gay marriage ("like it or not..."). Villaraigosa's appeal seems strictly local to Los Angeles. Regarding Brown, too many Californians still remember that he was, in fact, a failure as governor and took decades to revive his political career. Do the Democrats want to be known as the retread party?

The Republicans have one statewide officeholder, Steve Poizner. His post as insurance commissioner is not visible enough to put him on any political fast track, but he was smart enough to get elected and may be smart enough to capitalize on the position he occupies now. I'm more intrigued with people like Meg Whitman, who've made their mark outside politics and have the executive ability to be governor. Any names (besides Whitman) that you would suggest?

About GOP Future

This is a site for Republicans and others who believe that the Grand Old Party is not dead, just disoriented. We're here to help the party get back to its philosophical basics, find new leadership at the local, state and national level, and re-learn the art of winning elections.

I want to stimulate a freewheeling discussion that aims to identify the people and ideas most likely to lead the party back out of the wilderness. We'll be talking about potential candidates, known and not-so-known, constituencies that that party must reach to create electoral majorities, and the messages that will reach them.

As a Californian, I will focus on the challenge of reclaiming the Golden State for the GOP, starting with the governorship. This state propelled Ronald Reagan into national leadership, and I believe it can do something like that again. I've lived here all my life, and I know how surprising California politics can be. That said, I'm also eager to hear from people in all 50 states and D.C. about the state of the party nationwide, its challanges and its opportunities.

Also, if you haven't figured it out already, GOP Future is in no way affiliated with the Republican Party or any of its state or local units. The opinions expressed here are strictly those of the individuals who post.