Sultan Knish
Modern politics is often fought on the battlefield of the 19 inch or the
50 inch screen with grim bursts of image artillery directed by experts
and consultants. But for all the experts and consultants, it is the
ability of the politician to communicate what he feels and believes is
true that trumps everything else.
Margaret
Thatcher's death has touched such a nerve because her passing takes
place in the shadow of mediocrities like David Cameron who talk a great
deal but say nothing at all, whose preferred form of communication is to
avoid controversy. Likewise so many American conservatives turn to
memories of Reagan because when they turn toward the marble mecca of
D.C., all they see from their party are former conservatives scurrying
to evolve into blithering idiots in time for the next election.
The missing element is conviction. When conservatives remember Thatcher
and Reagan, they hear the echoes of clear and principled messages.
Neither of them were perfect as politicians, but their rhetoric was
perfect because they knew what they believed, said it clearly and
colorfully and enjoyed themselves doing it.
Modern conservative parties eschew that kind of plain talk. They flee
from principle selecting candidates who speak as indirectly as possible
and mean as little of what they say as they can get away with. Sometimes
it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But no cause is advanced in the course
of these evolutions from communication to obfuscation.
Conservatism never wins. It loses. It comes to be associated with slick
empty men and women who smile a lot and lie a lot. And that in the long
run is far more devastating than the occasional senate candidate who
says something horrible or idiotic. Candidates like Mitt Romney are more
damaging than a hundred Todd Akins because they fix the image of a
soulless party that cares about nothing and no one.
It is better to have the public think that the Republican Party stands
for horrible and divisive things than to think that it stands for
nothing. There are people who will vote for horrible things... but who
will vote for nothing except in opposition to the something that the
other party is selling?
Conservatives bemoan that Obama, who blatantly said that he would raise
energy prices, redistribute wealth, diminish national power and ram
through a radical agenda, could be elected twice. And the wrong lesson
that GOP leaders have taken away from that is that the country turned to
the left and that they have to turn with it. The real lesson is that
voters will choose a radical agenda over no agenda at all.
Obama clearly stood for something. Many of those things were lies and
deceptions, others were horribly destructive, but they were there. What
did McCain and Romney stand for? They stood for good governance which is
an unexciting thing. It might have been enough in the past when a good
work ethic, modesty and reputability were more admired than they are
today. And even then candidates with an inability to communicate
anything of significance would have suffered.
Today even Thatcher's ideological foes were forced to pay tribute to
her. Will anyone pay tribute to David Cameron on his passing? Doubtful.
He will be far less hated, but also far less loved because he will have
done nothing to earn any extreme or feeling. Had Mitt Romney won and
served for two terms, is there any conceivable possibility that he would
have been remembered in the same breath as Ronald Reagan?
It's not a matter of the pivotal period. All periods are pivotal in
their own way. Today's leaders face challenges every bit as stark as
those that Reagan and Thatcher did. What they lack is the ability to
transmute those challenges into transformative victories because there
is no conviction behind their political aspirations.
Politics is a strategic battlefield, but it's also an ideological
battlefield. Winning elections is not the same as winning the argument.
And winning elections while losing the argument is not enough.
Many of the candidates from conservative parties are unable to
understand the ideological argument or to take it seriously. To them
politics is policy and policy is non-ideological. They run on the
conservative side of the aisle because it's the more reasonable camp,
but they don't understand the ideas that animate the other side. They
don't understand that the battle is not over individual policies, but a
clash of worldviews.
In the last election, Obama articulated the campaign as a clash of
worldviews. Romney did not. To Romney, this was about policies and he is
still hurt and baffled that the superior policies didn't win. But to
Obama, this was about the big picture ideology and that was how he
fought the campaign. Instead of choosing one of the primary candidates
who understood that this was an ideological fight, the leadership
favored the most electable candidate who proved to be unelectable
because he did not understand the terms on which the fight was taking
place.
Thatcher always understood it and articulated it. As did Reagan. They
weren't mere creatures of politics and policy. They understood that the
politics and the policy, the task of getting elected and getting things
done, was taking place within the context of a larger struggle between
worldviews. And they were animated by the conviction that one worldview
was healthy and the other was toxic. Their great gift was to combine
that with communications skills that allowed them to forthrightly
express that struggle in a way that most people could understand and
appreciate.
Modern conservative parties have far too much messaging and too little
message. You hear a great deal about how responsible they are and very
little about what they stand for. They have a great many strategists and
very few thinkers. They are political machines that no one really
likes, including their own voters. They have industrialized conservatism
and mass produced conservative politics with no content.
Thatcher did not work overtime to try and seem reasonable the way that
her successors do. Neither did Reagan. They did not present themselves
as the sane choices, but the best choices. They could compromise but
their images were uncompromising. They were not laboring to the moderate
alternatives to something else. Instead they became the model to which
alternatives were presented. Most of all they gave everyone within the
sound of their voice the sense that they knew what they were doing and
that they wanted to begin doing it as soon as possible.
Winning the argument is hard, but the most important ingredient is
conviction. Politics flows in tides that ebb and churn. The unshakable
position of yesterday becomes the controversial one of tomorrow. There
is no politically secure territory. Only territory that can be won and
lost by the politics of the next day. The short term politics of the
poll may win some elections, but it has no long term future. The
movement that sets its agenda by the polls has no ideology. Its leaders
are mercenaries who will believe and do anything if their consultants
tell them to. Only the movement that has convictions can win long term
victories.
All
this can seem abstract, but it comes down to plain human needs and
feelings. Most people vote for what they think is a good life. And they
vote for leaders who care about them and will keep life good for them
and their children. There are any combination of policies that can cover
that ground and it is the candidate who can convincingly make the case
for the good life who stands the best chance of winning in the short
term and the long term as well.
Thatcher and Reagan convinced millions that they were fighting for the
good life. And they delivered. The damning sin that the left cannot
forgive them for is that their policies, at home and abroad, succeeded
more often than they failed. But they didn't convince with mere empty
words, with the same tired slogans that stood for nothing and opposed
nothing and advocated nothing. They did not skulk in on the heels of
consultants who made them seem as nonthreatening as possible. Instead
they made it clear that they were here to fight against the forces of
decay, the ideologies of terror and the sense of morality that comes to
every great nation in the hour of its decline.
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are dead now, but in life they won a
victory over the seeming deaths of their nations. They came in the hour
of twilight and they stepped down with the sunrise. Their victories
were temporary but they showed that leaders can stand against decline
and breathe new life when most of the experts believe that all is lost
and that we must learn to accept that. They showed us that with
conviction and courage we can resist the inevitable.
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