Decline with a Chance of Fall

I was never a fan of Barack Obama's bipartisanship routine. His famous plea at the 2004 Democratic convention for an end to the red state/blue state divide, I thought, sounded noble but overlooked the obvious: that a unilateral display of brotherly love from the Democratic Party had no chance of actually ending the culture wars. The reason those wars have raged ever since 1968 was because they help Republicans win elections. For Democrats to wish that they would please stop was about as useful as asking Genghis Khan to a tea party.

What would beat the culture wars was always clear from the pseudo-populist language in which they were framed. In place of a showdown between a folksy "middle America" and a snobbish "liberal elite," Democrats needed to offer the real deal -- the conflict between a public that craves fairness and an economic system that enables the predatory.

Acknowledging class was always difficult for "New Democrats" -- it was second-wave, it was divisive -- but 2008 made retro politics cool again. Watching the Dow get hacked down, seeing the investment banking industry collapse, hearing about the lavish rewards won by the corporate officers who brought this ruin down on us -- all these things combined to make a certain Depressionesque fury the unavoidable flavor of the year. When your mortgage is under water and your neighbors are being laid off, the need to take up the sword against arrogant stem-cell scientists becomes considerably less urgent.

The Republican response, of course, was to double down on the righteous rhetoric of red-state grievance and spin the wheel one more time.

John McCain's campaign was not just another culture-war offensive; it was a flamboyant pantomime, grotesquely exaggerated in each of its parts, and, ultimately, separated from the life of the everyday Americans it claimed so extravagantly to revere. It was "overripe," to borrow the term Johan Huizinga used to describe late Medieval culture. The campaign's vision of America was like a Norman Rockwell painting in which all the figures wear flag pins and weep swollen, steaming tears for their betrayed homeland.

What previous Republican campaigns had whispered, this one screamed. What had been contained to the movement's feverish fringes moved to center stage.

Traditional Republican talk about the heartland became Sarah Palin's "real America," with other campaign officials speculating about precisely where the realness started and stopped. Conventional appeals to the working class became "Joe the Plumber" and a cast of supporting hardhat caricatures. An unremarkable Obama reference to progressive taxation became "socialism," there was conjecture by Rep. Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, about his "anti-American views," and one almost longed for the naïve stages of the campaign, when the Democrat's elitism would be established by sly references to arugula.

Media bias has been a favorite theme of the right for decades, of course. But apart from Spiro Agnew, this aspect of conservatism was mainly the province of the movement, not the leadership. The McCain campaign, which owed more to the media than any Republican effort in years, brought it back into the mainstream with relish. The amazing Mrs. Palin even persuaded herself that the press was violating her First Amendment rights when it criticized her, and Republican audiences rediscovered the joy of booing the media.

The mode of the music changed, too. Where campaign songs are usually anodyne ditties, Mrs. Palin was accompanied on the campaign trail by Hank Williams Jr., who would bellow out a media-baiting anthem, "McCain-Palin Tradition," that makes Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee" sound like a lyric of delicate symbolism. The song may be the first to explicitly discuss the financial crisis, and it is surely the only one to use a syrupy slide guitar to sweeten a call to let "bankers" off the hook for making "bad loans." That Mr. Williams is billed on his Web site as "the voice of the common man" only heightens the gothic weirdness of the achievement.

Turning our eyes from the presidential campaign to conservative Washington generally, we can see the same overripeness, the same flamboyant contradictions that have long since become too great to paper over.

The conservative movement, after all, came to Washington under a banner of "reform" but promptly turned Congress over to lobbyists and opened countless regulatory agencies to the industries they regulated. The movement clamored for fiscal responsibility and proceeded to outsource, at vast expense, every government operation it could. It boasted of its business savvy but just couldn't see the housing bubble bursting. It looked to the Northern Mariana Islands as a beacon of human freedom. It insisted that Tom DeLay was a man of integrity.

This is a story of decline but not necessarily of fall. Conservatives may believe that impoverished borrowers destroyed Wall Street. But we liberals will not fool ourselves that stupid bankers sank conservatism for good. This movement will be back, and the biggest fights are yet to come.

Read more reaction from HuffPost bloggers to Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election

Comments

[Citizen-Jane]

I agree with this article. I never met a republican­/conservat­ive that I trust.
I just do not get their philosophy the whole "limited" government thing. It is only about government being out of their way so that "they" can do what ever they want business wise including flushing the U.S. down the toilet. Anything for a buck.

But this party are masters at distractions wedge issues, average plain speaking folk (Sarah Palin George Bush's gender opposite match) and destruction. Did I mention corrupt? They are hypocritical and bullys. Over the past 56 years we've had 6 republican presidents and only 4 democratic presidents. Twenty years under a Democratic president administration and the rest (36) republicans. Thirty six years of darkness, paranoia, war, scare tactics, sable rattling, economic slumps and yet U.S. citizens don't seem to get it. They believe they (the repugs)are safer, morally superior,(LOL) and fiscally responsible. (LOL)
I really hope Obama knows who he is reaching out to. I am hoping that it is to those lost and confused citizen and not the repugs with a chainsaw ready to cut his arm off.........
If so..... that's where we and others like us come in. :-)

[homesteader]

BTW, "Okie From Muskogie" according to Merle Haggard was written as satire.

[sensate]

There seem to be so few moderate Republicans anymore. Indeed Obama's wish for bipartisan rule is not likely to be met with open arms. They don't want change. Capitulation to our new President to them would be like a deal with the devil.

[any1]

"The reason those wars have raged ever since 1968 was because they help Republicans win elections." This statement is a conclusion to a thesis I've only recently begun to consider as a result of dating a Republican whose personality tends toward a laughable sort of "noodge". He's made me see the Republican rhetoric through his noodge eyes where it finally makes some sense to me. It's not about proposing answers so much as derailing those who might appear prepared to propose some answers. Hence, abortion is a favored topic as it is an issue that has no really good answers and the position the Republicans take on it allows them to appear morally superior. But, I believe their use of this issue is in fact a shameful ruse by which they use the power of the people who have strong religious convictions for political purposes risking the fabric of both religion and politics for the short-term gain of power hungry people. Hmmm ... interesting!

[tompoe]

The Party of Corporate Welfare makes a pretty big statement, and if it becomes part of the nation's mindset, I doubt we'll have to fight too hard. Next Republican you see, remind them they belong to the Party of Corporate Welfare, not the Party of Small Government. If they ask for a date, remind them it's September 19, 2008, when Paulson demanded entitlement for Bush's going away present for his cronies.

[whitebird46]

I have learned so much about the history of the Conservative movement and its odious aims from your two books. I just finished The Wrecking Crew and talk about it to friends. It sounds like your next book is in the works? Your insights helped me see the rhetoric of the right wing (coming to DC to clean house, get rid of lobbyists) through your historical lens and to see the truth through their lies.
Thank you!

[Cassandra2]

Sadly enough, this is spot on. Obama's biggest problem will be if he does too well economically, a la Clinton in the 1990s. As soon as enough people have two pennies to rub together again, along will come the greed- and fearmongers, whispering how they can help them keep their pennies from the greedy welfare mothers and socialists. Enough people will listen, the Repubs will get back in, loot the treasury again, and the whole process starts over.